Next big thing: automated call-centres
Article Date: Aug 15 2008Along with airport car parks and fake tan, call centres are one of the great ills of the modern world. A company based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Artingence, believes it has discovered the antidote.
Sales director Adam Rogers says: ‘We believe we are going to revolutionise the call centre industry. Rather than seeing it as taking people’s jobs, we see it as automating minimum wage jobs that pretty much nobody wants to do.’
Karl Dorner is the chairman and director of Artingence. Formerly the European systems director for global outsourcing specialist Convergys, Dorner set up the company in January. To make the automated call centre technology work, he and his team have brought together four pieces of software: artificial intelligence, voice recognition, voice synthesis and software integration.
The software creates “agents” who field calls. The number of agents can be altered according to customer demand. ‘It will definitely reduce costs – in regard to staffing, property, recruitment, holiday pay and sick pay,’ says Rogers.
Provided the beta-testing phase goes well, Rogers is confident that companies that have outsourced will bring the work back in-house and better quality jobs will be created. The company is concentrating on the UK for the meantime, where the software’s agents can cope with the country’s wide variety of accents. ‘It’s state of the art technology. You wouldn’t know that you are talking to a computer,’ he claims.
Rogers anticipates a trial will be signed with a global business shortly and expects the company to go for a listing with PLUS Markets by November this year.
