Deep Learning Boosts Call Center Speech Recognition During the COVID-19 Crisis – IAM Network

A business operation hard hit by COVID-19 is the call center. Industries ranging from airlines to retailers to financial institutions have been bombarded with calls--forcing them to put customers on hold for hours at a time or send them straight to voicemail. A recent study from Tethr of roughly 1 million customer service calls showed that in just two weeks, companies saw the percentage of calls scored as "difficult" double from 10 percent to more than 20 percent. Issues stemming from COVID-19--such as travel cancellations and gym membership disputes--have also raised customer anxiety, making call center representatives' jobs that much more challenging. Companies thinking about investing in speech recognition should consider a deep learning-based approach, and what to take into consideration before implementing it.