COLOGNE, Germany, July 7, 2005 – VoiceObjects AG announced today that its customer, Postbank AG, has received the “Most Innovative Solution Award” from Speech Technology Magazine for Postbank’s banking services voice portal. Postbank is Germany’s largest retail bank, and its voice portal handles over 200,000 calls per day from Postbank’s three million telephone banking customers. The voice application management system (VAMS) VoiceObjects X5 enabled the deployment of the many trend-setting innovations that were honored by the award. More information about VoiceObjects X5 can be found at www.voiceobjects.com.
“The voice portal at Postbank is an outstanding example of a new generation of voice-enabled, self-service solutions that are made possible by today’s sophisticated voice application management systems,” said John Kelly, editor-in-chief of Speech Technology Magazine. “From personalization to multiple, user-selected personae, to the handling of tens of thousands of audio prompts, the complexity of these solutions can only be managed by a VAMS.”
“We’re really pleased to have received the ‘Most Innovative Solution Award’, because it confirms the success of what is probably the most ambitious telephone banking project yet undertaken,” said Werner Wessinghage, Vice President of Direct Sales at Postbank. “Telephone banking powered by the VAMS VoiceObjects X5 is now one of the cornerstones of our multi-channel strategy. We have completed the evolution that started with automatic teller machines, continued with online banking and culminated with our voice portal.”
Voice-Driven Success at Postbank
The enthusiastic customer acceptance of the Postbank voice portal has been demonstrated by the decreased call load at Postbank’s customer care call center. As a result, Postbank’s customer service agents have been able to devote more time to providing intensive, personalized customer assistance and to cross-selling suitable banking products. At the same time, the system’s server-based VAMS has helped to integrate the telephone services into the company’s existing IT infrastructure, providing access to the existing SAP/R3-based account management software. Additionally, the VAMS manages every phase in the lifecycle of each of Postbank’s voice applications, providing administration, monitoring, maintenance and analysis capabilities.
Postbank executives will be discussing the success of their banking services voice portal at SpeechTEK 2005, to be held August 1-5 in New York City.
