'Speech technology can help contact centers in cutting costs'

How was Bhrigus started? What kind of products and
services does your company provide?

Bhrigus was started in 2002 and since then the firm has grown to a more than
120 employee company with a turnover of $4 mn.

The company is in the select band of high maturity
organizations world wide that have been successfully assessed at CMM Level 4.
Our primary focus is on delivering system development services in the area of
IV, CTI and speech voice web. We are focused on business process improvements
and cost reduction for our clients, through advanced speech and web based
services.

Bhrigus is a leading provider of ERP and contact center
solutions and we have successfully developed and deployed efficient, scalable
and reliable solutions. We also provide strategic consulting services to
leverage our clients' enterprise application investment for sustainable and
competitive growth. We have a global partnership with AT&T and we are System
Integrator partners with Avaya Global Connect.

What kind of presence do you have in the Indian market?

We have a center in Hyderabad, where development and R&D work takes
place; our nerve center where all projects are offshored. Presently, we are
working with CMU and IIIT on a research project on text to speech and speech
recognition in various regional languages in India-no such product exists yet.

Which industry verticals would benefit from your voice
solutions?

Bhrigus has participated in several verticals, addressing tree target
business functions namely contact centers, HR services and customer servicing.
In India, we are looking at the banking sector and telecom companies as
potential clients. The banking industry is already looking at our solutions.
Telcos are very active in this area due to the value added services that add up
to the bottom line and top line in terms of revenues. Another industry which can
be immensely benefited by our solutions, is Airlines. Airline industry have to
get into self-service and they can leapfrog to the speech technology to maintain
an edge and expand globally.

What are the benefits of utilizing speech technology in
a contact center? How do we ensure quality service with respect to the accuracy
level of the speech engines?

Training an agent in a contact center for so many processes is very
difficult, since you have all the knowledge in the engine, there is no need of
retraining or deploying more agents for another process. The service level of
automated systems is very high and cannot be achieved with agents as there are
many factors affecting them. The speech and voice engine also allows services
such as intelligent routing where calls can be diverted in accordance with the
history of the caller maintained by the system. In the US, we have seen the
level of transaction go up from 20-30% to 60-80%.

Accuracy was a problem before 1997-98; after 1999
everything has changed. The development in voice, especially in the last five
years, has led to a rise in the accuracy level of speech engines up to the
production level of 99.5%.

How much IVR market are you panning to capture?

We provide end-to-end solutions to our clients. In the US, we provide very
high-level consultancy for not only one but a host of platforms, contact
centers, IVRs etc. We have partnered with Nortel and Avaya for providing and
developing voice solutions. We are focusing on the software side of the market.
We are going to provide solutions, which will help enterprisesÂ
move from touch-tone to dialogue, and speech solutions or from PSTN to IP
based solutions. The software component of the market is around 10-20%. We are
new but specialized on the speech side and we want to market and capture a high
percentage.

Sonia Sharma

sonias@cybermedia.co.in