Financial services

The services of banks, building societies and insurance companies are a key part of personal and professional life for everyone. In order to decrease costs and improve customer services these important firms are often at the forefront of identifying and using new technologies. According to the Rt Hon Patricia Hewitt MP, the market of ethnic communities in the UK is about £32B per year, furthermore the advertising and marketing industry is now starting to focus on these communities with particularly targeted campaigns. Some of the companies in financial services are at the forefront of these initiatives. Communications with customers include:

• Telephoning to check account details or transfer funds,
• Telephoning to report a stolen credit card,
• Telephoning to make an appointment with a local manager,
• Visiting a local office to open a new account,
• Visiting a local office to discuss pensions and other products, and
• Using a mobile device to check account details.

Lattice Voice’ “First Contact” suite of applications enables bilingual communication between the company and its customers in their first language, in all of these contexts. For example, in the context of customers calling a bank’s call centre, “On the Phone” identifies the language of the caller and ascertains the reason for calling. The system then facilitates a dialogue between the caller and call taker, each in their own language, to collect the details relevant to the bank and to give the caller the information that he requires. In addition to the system’s core bilingual facility, the scripted dialogues, developed in collaboration with the bank, ensure that the bank’s agreed procedures for best practice are disseminated into these innovative business development initiatives. Similarly, pairs of touch screens at the front desk of each local bank office enable managers and staff to conduct business in the first language of all their customers, and as with all Lattice applications, there is a log of all conversations and transactions for the purposes of security, which are evidential quality if required. In this world of wireless and mobile devices, customers can also access the bank’s facilities in these ways, through Lattice’s bilingual systems, and these mobile devices can also be used to enable bilingual text and voice communication with the bank’s staff. In this wide array of contexts, Lattice Voice applications offer financial services companies unprecedented capabilities to communicate with their diverse customers in their own language, enabling them to offer products and services targeted precisely at each of these diverse communities.