Prudential Pilots Revolutionary New Speech-Based Telephone Customer Service System Developed by AT&T Labs

Business Wire, Dec 6, 1999

NEWARK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 6, 1999--

Prudential Insurance Company is ushering in a new era in customer service with its current trial of an innovative voice-response system - which uses natural language technology - that was developed for the company by AT&T Labs.

AT&T Labs' 'How May I Help You?'(SM) Service is designed to understand a customer's request and to route the call to the appropriate person, rather than requiring the caller to state a specific word that the system recognizes. For example, a caller can say phrases such as, "I'm calling about the claim I submitted last week," or "I want to change my beneficiary," and the system will transfer the call to the appropriate person.

Prudential will use 'How May I Help You?' in its Jacksonville, Florida call center for a trial that will last several months. During this period, two Prudential customer service representatives who are participating in the evaluation will answer and route client calls while 'How May I Help You' listens in to 'learn' the words that Prudential clients typically use to express their needs. Afterwards, Prudential customers will respond to the system's 'How may I help you?' prompt by simply stating what they want, as if they were talking to a live operator.

Earlier this year, Prudential released the results of a survey conducted for it by Roper-Starch that found that traditional push-button telephone customer service often makes customers frustrated and angry. According to the survey, 36 percent of those surveyed say that recorded messages are often confusing or not right for the situation.

"The last thing any company intends is to test people's patience," said Kathleen Krall, senior vice president and head of Marketing and Customer Management at Prudential. "That's why we are so committed to finding ever-more responsive ways of communicating with our customers. We expect that 'How May I Help You?' will be well received by our customers who call in for information because it is so easy to use and enables them to quickly get the service they want."

Prudential's Marketing and Customer Management unit is dedicated to enhancing the ways in which Prudential interacts with customers and to constantly finding new communication methods that are sensitive to the concerns and priorities of customers.

Warren Leary, vice president of call center technology at Prudential, added that, "We need to do everything we can to make customer interactions as pleasant and seamless as possible. 'How May I Help You?' should make it faster and simpler for our customers to get to the right place." He said Prudential's call centers handle 20 million calls a year.

Developers at AT&T Labs are customizing 'How May I Help You?' for Prudential by drawing from a suite of integrated speech processing techniques that recognize spoken words, grasp their meaning, and enable the system to confirm and clarify a caller's request. It will recognize meaningful phrases in fluent, everyday speech. It represents a significant advance over "word-spotting" systems that recognize only a limited, pre-programmed vocabulary, and is decades ahead of touch-tone-driven menus that ask callers to "Press 1 for more information, 2 for an attendant, 3 to repeat this menu," and which, according to the Roper-Starch survey, so often infuriate consumers.

"The advanced spoken language technologies we've developed enable machines to recognize and understand what callers really want, as opposed to forcing them to pick choices off of a menu," said Jay Wilpon, director of speech processing research at AT&T Labs. "Because the interaction is so life-like, many people participating in previous trials thought they were talking to humans. Sometimes they've even said 'Thank-you,' at the end of their call as if they were talking to a real person."

AT&T Labs, the research and development unit of AT&T, is working to create the information services and communications network of tomorrow. AT&T Labs is a leader in the development of technologies and standards for audio, speech, video and image compression; electronic commerce and digital copyright management; search and directory services; speech processing and coding of all sorts; network architecture, design, engineering and operations; and other areas critical to the advancement of new communications and Internet offerings. Visit the AT&T Labs Web site at http://att.com/technology.> The Prudential Insurance Company of America, with $375 billion in total assets managed and administered at year-end, is the largest life insurance company in the United States and one of the largest diversified financial institutions in the world. It is a leader in the global financial services industry, providing a variety of products and services in the areas of insurance, securities, investments and real estate to more than 30 million customers in 30 countries. Prudential is headquartered in Newark, New Jersey. Visit the Prudential Web site at http://www.prudential.com.

AT&T 'HOW MAY I HELP YOU?' SERVICE AND SPEECH TECHNOLOGIES