Before loading information on what Text to Speech (TTS) can do and how does it take business-customer interaction to the next level, it’s important to know what is Text to Speech in simple words.

Text-to Speech is a software that takes written text and converts it to speech format. Every day a new voice recognition technology helps improve the usage of TTS to make it sound more human like and less machine like. These updates works in understanding the natural spoken language and generates speech output with the correct intonation, pitch and clarity such that the user on the other end can understand it easily.

Though Text to Speech has been in the market for quite some time, with the recent focus on cloud-based platform it has gained tremendous momentum. Text to Speech provides high-quality voice service, reduces costs by automating calls and thus contribute to offering a personalized customer experience. According to latest research, Cloud based global Text to Speech market is expected to grow at least by 16% by 2022.

Benefits of Text to Speech

With mobile marketing making its headway like never before to achieve customer satisfaction, channelizing it via voice calls is on the rise. Let’s take a look at some of the benefits Text to speech offers:

• Text to Speech technology does not impose restrictions that are found in SMS marketing campaigns like character limitations, message regulations of different countries that pose as restriction etc.
• It helps reach a larger customer base and helps businesses get more positive feedback.
• Millions of calls can be processed automatically with cloud-based platform that can trigger these calls automatically reducing manual intervention and workload.
• Research shows operational costs can be reduced by 70% by using Text to Speech software
• By using Text to Speech, it’s easier to reach customers in multiple languages spread across different countries. This helps businesses to reach out to customers on a more personalized level.
• Text to Speech makes mundane telephonic calls seem more human and interactive. It also helps in building brand image.
• Reduces errors by allowing businesses to listen to the text that has been input and provides more accuracy.
• Manual intervention is reduced automating most processes thereby allowing support team to concentrate on more important queries.
• Allows businesses to customize text according to requirements and enter either dynamic/static or a mix of both enabling businesses to reach customers in better way.
• Text to Speech audio can be generated swiftly with the help of Software and it helps upload the same automatically into cloud-based web platforms making it easier for businesses to reach customers.

How does Text to Speech help business-customer interaction?

With businesses eager to make it easier for customers, cloud-based platforms are working twice as hard to fulfil the requirements to bridge business communication gaps. Text to Speech definitely helps businesses to provide fast and efficient customer service and bridge the gaps to enable smoother customer experiences.

Businesses can incorporate Text to Speech in the following ways for improved customer satisfaction and increase ROI:

Interactive voice response (IVR)

Every business nowadays opt for smarter technological features that adds business value and help them reach customers faster. IVR is one such technology that helps businesses of all sizes with its constant updates and implementing new technology to match the market expectations.

A multi-widget based IVR usually has plugin options like Text to Speech that allows call flows to be configured by including DTMF keypress options. These keypress options helps customer record their response accurately while running poll campaigns or receiving customer feedback. Surveys can be conducted with chances of receiving higher response rate from customers as compared to email or SMS surveys which may not receive instant response.

Text to Speech software also helps provide unique user experience by providing them a more personalized platform and allows them to record their feedback and capture specific output. Research shows customers are five times more inclined to providing a response via phone based surveys as against SMS or email surveys.

Outbound Dialing

The advent of outbound dialing has most definitely changed the way businesses communicate to customers. From triggering calls that are personalized with dynamic or static content, these OBD calls uses Text to Speech for most scenarios.

Businesses opt for outbound calls with Text to Speech software not only because of the speed at which it functions but it is one of the most cost-effective ways. Imagine if your support agents have to dial thousands or perhaps millions of calls per day manually. Not only would it be a call centre nightmare, it would also be a waste of resources not to mention highly expensive given the amount of time and money spent on maintaining these resources.

To tackle these problems, Text to Speech incorporated phone calls automates these redundant processes reducing manual intervention and automating processes thus saving money. If your customer centre is getting 1000+ calls every day with customers dialing to check account balance or payment due date, connecting them every time to a customer support agent can be time consuming and expensive. But with Text to Speech, the process can be automated by triggering outbound calls that have been configured to let customers know their payment reminders, appointment reminders, informing customers about promotional offers etc.

Outbound dialing not only can trigger calls, it can even take inputs from customers when the flow is customized with widgets from IVR that allow customers to enter a valid response through keypress. For example, once the customer receives the call about appointment reminder, he/she can press 1 to confirm the availability or press 2 to reschedule or press 3 to cancel.

This resolves most of the repeated queries that support agents face from customers and saves time for both the customers and support agents thereby improving business while achieving customer satisfaction.

How does Kaleyra’s Text to Speech widget works?

Kaleyra’s ever growing business communication platform aims to simplify business customer interaction and turn it into smooth seamless experience. In order to achieve that, Kaleyra configures Text to speech widget and provides an advanced dashboard to businesses that allows them to customize call flow as per business requirement.

The outbound call triggered from Kaleyra’s API is capable of processing both dynamic as well as static content and sometimes a mix of both to serve customers better. API triggered allows businesses to edit call flow and provide input for necessary field like Name, phone number and message to initiate calls to customer’s registered mobile number.

Along with Amazon Polly to convert Text to Speech, Kaleyra also uses its own in-built technology to provide a natural language understanding and sound more human like than robotic. The in-built technology also helps make the commands (dynamic or static) give better output when the call is triggered by transcribing the message better. Parameters used help break the message down into simple inputs which when joined together results in providing the best of customer experience along with high-quality voice call.

The Text to Speech is an easy plug and play option provided by Kaleyra which functions efficiently as well as can be incorporated into already existing systems by configuring in simple steps. It’s lifelike voices help businesses reach millions of customers on a daily basis without any glitches. The dashboard also provides reports which help businesses understand their target audience better and plan future campaigns better.