Case Study:

Investors get instant automatic access to share price information
 
TD Waterhouse offers clients improved stock quotation service with advanced speech recognition technology from BT and Eckoh Technologies

Background
TD Waterhouse is one of the UK’s largest brokers, offering online and telephone trading and information services to both active traders and longer-term investors.  Part of the TD Bank Financial Group – which provides personal and commercial banking, wealth management and wholesale banking to 13 million customers worldwide – it entered the UK share dealing market in 1997.

Today TD Waterhouse offers access to UK and International Equities, Unit Trusts, Bonds, Covered Warrants, Contracts for Difference (CFDs), and Financial Spread Betting, plus a high interest savings account. In addition, the website offers free access to a wealth of information from some of the world’s leading providers.  An Investor Centre for customers preferring face-to-face meetings with investment representatives was opened in London in 2002.

In addition to providing brokerage service direct to retail investors. TD Waterhouse also provides white-labelled brokerage services for other financial services organisations.

Challenge
To maintain market leadership, TD Waterhouse believes that it is quality of service that truly sets it apart from its competitors. But business activity is difficult to predict. Stock market fluctuations can mean spikes in customer demand, creating sudden and dramatic increases in call volumes. In the summer of 2002, when stock market confidence started to return, calls to the TD Waterhouse real-time share price service boomed. This coincided with TD Waterhouse taking responsibility for thousands of new customers by providing white label services to two other leading banks.

So that it could continue to provide its clients with excellent service, TD Waterhouse was faced with a choice: to continue to take on more and more staff with their associated overheads and training requirements, or to find a rapidly deployable technological solution. In either case, the service would have to be scaleable – handling peaks in volume yet still being cost effective in quieter times. Most importantly, given company philosophy, the quality of the customer experience had to be just right. So while an automated solution seemed appropriate, it had to be one with which customers would feel confident and at ease.
           
Solution
TD Waterhouse sought BT’s advice and a hosted Advanced Speech Recognition (ASR) service, which could be quickly implemented to provide an automated real-time share price service, was proposed. The service would use a hosted call-processing platform – developed by BT’s partner, Eckoh Technologies – to intercept and manage calls to the TD Waterhouse contact centre in Leeds. Stock prices would be received over a secure VPN from a third party information provider.

Darren Hepworth, Vice President, Customer Contact Centre, says: “We did not want to compromise on the customer experience under any circumstances, because that would inevitably have backfired. With BT and Eckoh we had a cost effective quality product in a very short lead time.”

A quickly deployed and successful pilot for internal customers gave TD Waterhouse the confidence to offer the full automated share quotation service to its clients, as well as to supply “white label” versions to corporate customers. Share prices for 1,500 companies are currently provided, including changes on the day, and more shares and market indices will be gradually added Eckoh’s highly scaleable speech platform, capable of handling up to 8,000 calls simultaneously, means that calls are answered immediately even when there are large peaks in demand as the stock market fluctuates.

The service dialogue uses advanced speech recognition to recognise the customer’s response, dealing with customers from different social and ethnic backgrounds with a wide range of accents. It also distinguishes between similar sounding stocks such as BT and BP. Although the service is bespoke, the entire infrastructure was already in place. Delivery was therefore significantly faster than an in-house solution, and the pay-as-you-go pricing regime eliminated capital risk.

About 42% of calls to TD Waterhouse are for information only, and these continue to use the original information line number. The same voice answers the phone and manages the IVR sequence, so calls are perceived as a seamless experience. Those who then wish to trade are given high priority transfers to representatives who place the deal in the market.

Browser-based online statistics, measured by volume, type of request and time of day allows the company to measure customer service. There are also figures for individual stocks so that a sudden interest in a previously unpopular stock can be managed. Should a problem arise, a monitoring system automatically alerts key managers by SMS as well as by e-mail.

The service was delivered in less than four weeks. Clients now have immediate access to stock prices, with no waiting for a representative to pick up the phone. When they want to deal, they get through more quickly because representatives are not tied up on the phone providing quotes. And representatives can concentrate on those calls that generate revenue for the company.

Darren Hepworth says: “The usage and demand on the automated quote line has exceeded all expectations. The number of automated quotes has doubled since the launch with consistent daily growth. The platform’s scalability is exactly what we need. When the stock market is going crazy – that’s when the pressure is on. We have the confidence and the evidence that the service will stand up to such heavy demand. To date 2.5 million quotes and 3 million minutes of traffic have been handled by the automated quotation service.”

“We did not want to compromise on the customer experience under any circumstances, because that would inevitably have backfired. With BT and Eckoh, we had a cost effective quality solution in a very short lead time”.

Summary Requirements
As confidence returns to the UK stock market, individuals are beginning to feel more comfortable again with shares as a vehicle for private investment. This has led to increasing demand for TD Waterhouse’s investment services. The company was adamant that the quality of its customer service should be maintained while capacity was scaled up to meet the industry’s growing and unpredictable demands.

Advantages
The solution is user-friendly and highly scaleable – giving customers faster and more efficient access to share price information and allowing representatives to focus on customers’ more complex (and revenue generating) requirements – as well as enabling TD Waterhouse to control its call centre labour costs.

 “The platform’s scalability is exactly what we need. When the stock market’s going crazy – that’s when the pressure is on. We have the confidence and the evidence that the service will stand up to such heavy demand.” Darren Hepworth, Vice President, Customer Contact Centre, TD Waterhouse

Results
“Accuracy of voice recognition is so good that clients find the service seamless and very accessible. Although they could transfer at any time to a representative, this virtually never happens. Darren Hepworth endorses the experience: “I use the service myself and have never known voice recognition to work this effectively. Even if you access the service during a conference call – with the inevitable interference – recognition is excellent.”

"Since its introduction, the service has provided our customers with more than 2.5 million quotes. The figures do really speak for themselves Darren Hepworth concludes: “Trading volumes have been improving year on year as investor confidence in the stock market has returned, and the automated quote system has allowed us to successfully manage the significant upturn in business. I am certain that our customers are getting a better service than ever before.”

Over the past 2 years, the speech enabled call handling service has expanded to incorporate an additional 10 branded products, including stock quote services for TD Waterhouse’s corporate clients and a “find my register” service on all quoted stocks. BT and Eckoh’s Stock Quote solution now handles over 40% of TD Waterhouse’s daily inbound calls.