Case Study: pdf

Uk's first and most ambitious mass-market automated speech service wins approval of rail travellers

Background

National Rail Enquiries operates one of the UK's busiest telephone enquiry services, taking 40 million calls a year from the travelling public.

An important part of this programme has been the introduction of TrainTracker™ a ground-breaking automated speech solution that gives callers immediate access to up-to-the minute train departure and arrival time information for direct train services between all 2,500 stations across the UK mainland.

Launched in January 2005, TrainTracker™ has proved highly popular with travellers. 30% of callers become repeat users and the service currently receives more than 225,000 calls per month. Because it is directly linked to the same real-time information systems that feed all station arrival and departure boards, the information it provides is highly accurate and timely.  Since it is an automated system, it is available 24-hours a day giving travellers immediate access to information whether they're at home or on-the-move.

"Our aim is to give the travelling public as many different ways of accessing information as we can - by phone, internet or by SMS," says Chris Scoggins, CEO of National Rail Enquiries.  "TrainTracker™" (0871 200 4950 *calls cost 10p from a landline, costs from other networks may be higher) has proved particularly popular because it's fast, reliable, easy to use and constantly available.  It also allows us to manage our business more cost effectively, since it eases the pressure on our contact centres during peak times."

Eckoh, which developed TrainTracker™ in association with BT to support National Rail Enquiries multi-channel strategy, believes it to be the UK's first and most ambitious automated speech service designed for the mass market.

Solution

"TrainTracker™ overcomes two key challenges that have made speech recognition difficult to apply in mass market situations," explains Eckoh's CEO, Nik Philpot.  "First, it accommodates extremely high and volatile call volumes.  On days when travel has been severely disrupted, TrainTracker™ has handled in excess of 34,000 calls a day with ease. Second, it handles complex enquiries very well, for instance, two stations with the same name or towns with multiple stations."

It is Eckoh's telecommunications infrastructure that allows TrainTracker™ to handle high call volumes.  "TrainTracker™, like all of Eckoh's speech solutions is centrally hosted on our own platform, "says Philpot.  "It has the capacity to handle more than 8,000 calls simultaneously and up to 650,000 calls per hour, making it the most flexible speech platform in Europe."

In addition to dealing with ambiguity - asking callers to clarify whether they want trains from Newport in Essex or Newport in Gwent, or to London Euston or London Kings Cross, for example - TrainTracker™ has 'built in' intelligence that allows it to recognise callers and anticipate their requests.  "A frequent complaint about automated speech services is that they are inflexible and impersonal," says Chris Scoggins.  "That's not the case with TrainTracker™.  If you call in the morning and request departure times from London to Edinburgh the system will assume, if you call again later in the same day, that you're looking for return details for the same journey and will offer that information first.  It's this degree of personalisation that makes TrainTracker™ stand out from other automated speech information systems. "

TrainTracker's ability to personalise information is based on its ability to recognise the caller's telephone number.  It identifies regular callers, memorises their most frequent requests and tailors its responses accordingly.

When National Rail Enquiries was named 'Rail Supplier of the Year' at the 2005 HSBC Rail Business Awards its multi-channel strategy - of which TrainTracker™ is a key element - was cited in its success.  "The award was evidence that we're delivering a better service; one that's encouraging more people to travel by train," says Scoggins.

Because TrainTracker™ is a hosted service, its introduction required no upfront capital investment from National Rail Enquiries, while responsibility for maintaining the technology and the platform on which the service depends, resides with Eckoh. The service is powered by information fed from Thales real-time information system, which uses advanced monitoring technology to pinpoint where trains are as they pass individual stations and reporting points. Furthermore, the system's popularity as a source of routine travel information means that calls to the contact centres are reduced, leaving advisors free to deal with less routine or more complex calls.

"That means there's genuine benefit for everyone", concludes Scoggins. "For travellers who get the information they need quickly, for the train operating companies, who can offer their customers more communication choices and for the advisors in our contact centres, who can focus on more complex and therefore more rewarding tasks."

Nik Philpot believes that TrainTracker's success means Eckoh is well placed to serve other travel organisations.  "TrainTracker™ is a rail industry specific version of a generic service we have designed named Journey Finder.   Journey Finder can be tailored to meet the needs of any organisation that's obliged to provide arrival and destination information to customers, including airlines and airports, bus operators and taxi companies."