New Forest District Council says it has improved access
to services withspeech-based automation
technology.
The new system, from
Telephonetics VIP, is handling about 250,000 incoming calls a
year for the council, providing the automated telephone call
handling system used by the council's customer services, tax and
benefits, housing and, most recently, the switchboard.
New Forest District Council receives more than 8,000 incoming
phone calls a year from council tax payers wanting to pay their
council tax using a debit or credit card.
Until recently, these calls had to be handled by human
operators. The new system enables taxpayers to call the council to
make payments at any time, day or night, without the need for an
operator.
The money is collected and customers' council tax accounts are
electronically updated to show the payments.
Andrew Taylor of New Forest District Council said, "Although
initially designed to accept council tax payments, the system will
soon also be able to accept other types of payments such as parking
fines. Speech recognition technology also has exciting implications
for the provision of other routine services in the future."