Do you believe your customer experience can be improved with a custom touch to interactions? Contact center text-to-speech technology can be the best solution for your needs. TTS can help reduce the workload on agents, automate repetitive tasks, reduce call handling time, and offer a more personalized experience to customers.

TTS can also help make your customer support channels feel more inclusive for individuals with hearing impairments and dyslexia. With various natural voices and languages to choose from, you can select a call center solution that's most suitable for your customers' needs.

Read on to learn more about text-to-speech technology, its benefits, and how it can transform your business communication.

Text-to-speech (TTS) is a speech synthesis technology that converts written text into audible words. Instead of playing back pre-recorded messages, it synthesizes written missives. Since many words are pronounced differently depending on their meaning in English, the technology calculates probabilities and selects the likeliest pronunciation.

TTS was initially developed to assist visually impaired individuals, helping them understand written content on desktop and mobile screens. Nowadays, it has become a popular feature of modern applications and websites and can be incorporated with a single, simple API.

TTS has been used in contact centers to improve customer experiences and reduce operating costs for several years. It can offer personalized messages to enhance customer interaction and free agents to handle more complex inquiries.

A TTS engine converts written words into a phonemic version that a customer can hear directly. Phonemes are the smallest units of human speech that are transformed into waveforms and can be heard as output sound. When these sounds are combined, it creates spoken words, phrases, and sentences. Text-to-speech software providers often have a voice and personality resembling a real human being. These model voices have incredible voice quality and overall rhythm and intonation. They can even have a high natural quality about them.

There are a host of benefits of using TTS at your contact center. The following are some of the most impactful ones:

• Better customer experience

TTS allows for personalized inbound and outbound messages to customers. With dynamic TTS and customer data, call center systems can recall details like names, account information, or customized greetings during calls, offering customers a more tailored and engaging experience. Additionally, this technology can handle repetitive tasks like providing basic account information or answering frequently asked and basic questions. This drastically reduces the need for a live agent and enables customers to access information efficiently.

• Cost-efficiency

By automating routine tasks such as greetings, reading out account balances, or delivering scripted details, contact centers can cut down agent workload and enable them to focus on more specialized customer queries. TTS also helps contact centers handle a far higher call volume without having to hire seasonal or contingency call center agents. As the demand for quality customer service grows, this capability can handle a significant workload, reducing staffing expenses and optimizing workflows and resource allocation.

• Multilingual support

Most TTS solutins allow support for multiple languages, enabling call centers to cater to customers who speak various languages. TTS technology allows call centers to deliver information and instructions in the customer's preferred language, making support more inclusive and enhancing customer experience.

• Time-saving

TTS technology delivers information to customers quickly and consistently. With its help, customers can receive notifications, instructions, and updates without delay, minimizing the wait time and improving service efficiency. TTS can also be integrated with interactive voice response (IVR) systems in order to automate call handling and routing. This allows callers to navigate through menus and use self-service options using speech commands, expediting problem resolution on calls.

• Quality control and consistency

The most underrated benefit of TTS is how every customer can benefit from the same information. Call centers can control and refine the information provided to the callers with speech analytics, ensuring accuracy and compliance with the organization’s policy and guidelines. TTS systems can also be fine-tuned to maintain a high-quality voice output with the optimal speech pattern and pronunciation to ensure customer satisfaction.

There are various ways TTS can be used at a contact center. Below are some of the most common use cases:

IVR systems

Text-to-speech technology can offer pre-selected information and menu options for IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems. TTS can help reduce customer wait times by immediately responding to simple inquiries. It can also improve the customer experience by offering clear and consistent responses.

Call routing

Call routing is the process of directing calls to a specific agent or department for resolution. TTS can help provide customized messages to the caller to help direct them to the correct department or agent, which improves the overall customer experience.

Training and development

Contact centers use TTS technology to train agents on product knowledge, service procedures, and best practices. The agents can listen to pre-recorded training materials with TTS according to their pace and improve retention and comprehension.

Accessibility

TTS technology improves accessibility for customers with hearing impairments, dyslexia, or other disabilities. With TTS, all customers can enjoy equal access to an organization's services and information.

Customer notifications

TTS can automate customer notifications for appointments, delivery notifications, and payment reminders. These notifications can be delivered via SMS or phone calls, offering customers information without needing a live agent.

Multilingual support

Multilingual support can be offered with TTS to customers who speak a language other than the primary one used by the contact center. This can improve the experience for non-native speakers and reduce the need for multilingual live agents.

Outbound communication

Outbound calling in contact centers refers to agent making calls to customers various reasons, such as customer service, sales, surveys, and reminders. This can automate the outbound process by converting text-based messages into speech that can be played to the customer. The technology can ensure the information or missive is read out accurately and consistently without any variations in tone or language.

Text-to-speech, automatic speech recognition, and speech-to-text are all related to speech and text processing, but they have distinct differences and use cases. Understanding the differences is crucial before choosing the right technology.

Text-to-speech (TTS):

TTS is a technology that converts written words into audio. The software synthesizes the text into natural human-sounding speech. TTS technology is commonly used for augmenting virtual assistants and GPS devices, and is also popular for contact centers. It can be used to create announcements, greetings, and voice prompts for call centers to reduce agent workload.

Automatic speech recognition (ASR):

Automatic speech recognition is a technology that converts spoken words into written speech. The voice recognition software is designed to identify the audio signals and categorize them into individual words transcribed into text. ASR is commonly used in applications such as voice dictation, voice search, and voice-controlled devices such as smart home devices. In a contact center setting, ASR can transcribe calls in real-time, allowing agents to view the text on the screen and respond accordingly.

Speech-to-text (STT):

STT is similar to ASR, but focuses on converting recorded audio files into written text. It can be used in a contact center setting to transcribe recorded customer calls, which can be analyzed for insights into customer feedback, sentiment, and behavior.

As enterprises begin to embrace the TTS technology for their contact and call centers, there are several future developments to look forward to. These developments can enhance efficiency, improve overall operations, and provide better customer experiences.

1. Advanced analytics and insights

With contact centers becoming more data-centric, the ability to extract useful data and insights from customer interactions has become increasingly important. In the future, clients can expect to derive greater insights and gain a better understanding of customers’ needs and preferences

2. Enhanced privacy and security

As customer data becomes increasingly vulnerable and valuable, TTS solutions can be expected to have enhanced data privacy and security features. This can give peace of mind to customers that are hesitant to share their personal information with call center agents.

With the right text-to-speech capabilities, customers can engage without needing a human agent or brand representative, helping you reduce staffing costs and promote accessibility.

With 8x8 cloud communications, you’ll find text-to-speech easy to implement without altering any of your favorite existing features.