Radish Systems: The ChoiceView Company

February 11th is National 211 Day. This day is set aside to celebrate 211 call center teams and their work connecting their communities to thousands of programs, services, and information.

Radish salutes all the 211 providers for the care and support they provide to those needing help. We’re pleased that our ChoiceView® technology allows Mile High United Way to provide voice-to-visual navigation on 211 calls.

Callers can quickly see and hear information such as emergency shelter locations, food resources, COVID-19 testing locations, and more. This information is too complex to be conveyed in a standard voice-only call, but it’s easy to understand in a voice-and-visual call. Callers don’t need a mobile app or broadband connection, so it works the first time. Visual information can be saved on the device.

 
ChoiceView Benefits

ChoiceView allows businesses and organizations to convey information in a smarter and more efficient way. It’s better than a voice call and less intimidating than a video conference. It’s easy to deploy, use, enhance, and maintain. It’s positioned for wide adoption worldwide in many industries with killer applications such as customer service, e-commerce, telehealth, technical support, and more.

Ideal Use Cases for ChoiceView

1. Customers are presented with complicated and time-consuming menus.
2. They’re frustrated by an unmanageable stream of voice responses.
3. They’d like to enter text information during a phone call.
4. They need help in absorbing and retaining complex information.
5. Businesses want more calls contained in automated systems.
6. Accessibility and CX improvements are required.

Learn more about ChoiceView and 211 voice-to-visual navigation. Please spread the word. Contact Radish to learn more and see ChoiceView in action!

    A guest article by Dr. Theresa Szczurek, former CIO / Executive Director of the Governor’s Office of Information Technology for the State of Colorado.

Can you imagine the millions and millions of tech support calls that occur daily? Even though online websites try to help, phone calls are not going away. Some of these calls require complex, personal interactions. However, many are simple and could be solved via an appropriate automated system. Unfortunately, they’re not.

Password reset is the most common reason that customers call tech support. Sometimes customers can handle password reset at a website, but often they call. These calls can consume a lot of tech support time, often keeping other callers waiting for live support. But customers can easily change their password, without live help, when they call a company with ChoiceView®. With a ChoiceView Visual IVR / Visual Chatbot, a company can deflect calls from support reps while providing more efficient customer service. Rather than just hearing options to route their call, customers discover that ChoiceView can actually solve their problem.

Consider this tech support situation. To change her password, a customer calls tech support from her smartphone. Instead of hearing a long voice prompt, she immediately selects the option to interact visually. She now sees and hears menu options and responses. She enters her ID to authenticate her account. She taps her location and language preference. She selects from the menu, then resets her password on the next screen. As a result, the call is contained in the ChoiceView Visual IVR and the customer is pleased to quickly and securely reset her password 24/7, without waiting for a live rep.

Benefits of Visual IVR / Visual Chatbot

    1. Password resets and many other tech support issues are completed without a live rep, saving time and money.

    2. Other customers with more complex problems obtain live tech support more quickly and spend less time waiting for a rep.

    3. Customers interact with a ChoiceView Visual IVR by both hearing / seeing and speaking / tapping.

    4. ChoiceView combines AI, machine learning, and enhanced voice processing with the power of visual menus, forms, and responses. It’s the best of both worlds and the way customers prefer to interact.

    5. Deployment is easy since ChoiceView resides directly in the IVR’s call script, thus preserving the existing IVR’s native environment and eliminating the need for an ancillary server. ChoiceView works with most existing IVRs.

Contact Radish and find out why a large, global telecommunications supplier has this to say about Radish’s ChoiceView for technical support, “ChoiceView Visual IVR is a different way to provide support. We want to deflect calls from live agents. This is amazing. ChoiceView gets maximum points for its solution, especially for password reset.”

A guest article by Dr. Theresa Szczurek, former CIO / Executive Director of the Governor’s Office of Information Technology for the State of Colorado.

I was talking recently to the Director of Call Centers for a large, multi-national manufacturer. She said, “The time is right for a ChoiceView® Visual IVR. We need to get funds into next year’s budget NOW.”

This very experienced Call Center Director then explained, “The voice call is not going away. We get thousands of phone calls each day. Our voice-only IVR routes calls to agents, and often it’s NOT the proper agent. That’s frustrating for callers. And there is little call containment in the IVR to solve the callers’ needs. A Visual IVR can help ensure that the call is routed to the right agent, so the caller saves time.”

She emphasized, “Most importantly, however, the Visual IVR can often provide visual information that the caller wants about order status, product information, or installation instructions, for example. Fewer calls will then transfer to a live agent. This saves us money. The caller gets an improved experience and is happier with us.”

A Visual IVR Is Easy!

A ChoiceView Visual IVR provides the benefit of SEEing and HEARing information. ChoiceView opens the door for a new generation of Visual IVRs, Visual Bots and Visual Live Agent positions. Callers can interact with visual menus and responses while talking and hearing on the same original phone call. According to Dr. John Medina, author of Brainrules, when you see and hear information you are 600% more likely to understand. Callers can navigate 4X to 5X faster using visual menus and directories. See ChoiceView in action.

What About My Current Contact Center Platform?

ChoiceView augments, not replaces, your current platform. This is the most logical, realistic, and cost-effective approach.

    1. ChoiceView is built on an open interface that leverages voice platforms from Amazon Connect, Twilio, Avaya, NICE, Cisco, and many others.

    2. ChoiceView provides the visual interaction with callers while the native voice platform supplies AI / machine learning, speech recognition, text-to-speech, call processing, integration points, reporting, and other tools.

    3. As a result, Radish’s Visual IVRs and Visual Bots are very simple to build, deploy, enhance, and maintain since they utilize only one element — the native voice platform with its standard script creation and editing tools. From an architectural standpoint, there’s only one box!

The Power of the ChoiceView Lambda

As an example, ChoiceView adds visual capabilities to Amazon Connect through use of the ChoiceView lambda function. It’s inserted, as any other Connect element, in contact flows using the standard Connect dashboard and tools. Amazon Connect with ChoiceView controls the voice-and-visual call by itself. It is the Visual IVR, without requiring additional components.

Of course this means that third-party developers can easily add visual capabilities to their own voice apps through the same ChoiceView lambda. Shouldn’t we expect this capability on phone calls we make every day? Learn more about ChoiceView for Amazon Connect.

“Now I See What You’re Talking About!”™

A guest article by Dr. Theresa Szczurek, former CIO / Executive Director of the Governor’s Office of Information Technology for the State of Colorado.

CODA won the best picture Oscar in 2022. The acronym CODA means ‘child of deaf adult’. This touching movie raises awareness of the challenges faced by people with hearing disabilities, as well as CODA family members. The question we need to ask is, what are we doing to support people with hearing loss and improve their accessibility?

Why Should You Care?

1. NEGATIVE IMPACT. Hearing loss has been shown to negatively impact nearly every dimension of the human experience, including physical health, emotional and mental health, perceptions of mental acuity, social skills, family relationships, and self esteem, as well as work and school performance.

2. FINANCIAL IMPACT. Those with unaided hearing loss earned on average $20,000 less annually than those who used hearing aids or cochlear implants.

IT’S THE LAW. U.S laws, including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), require that accommodations be made to improve accessibility to those with hearing and other disabilities. Accessibility is defined as “the quality of being able to be reached or entered, easily understood or appreciated.” ADA prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in several areas, including employment, transportation, public accommodations, communications and access to state and local government programs and services.

Practical Pointers for Coping with Hearing Loss

1. GET EDUCATED. Learn about hearing loss and other disabilities and what you can do to accommodate the situation.

2. SEEK MEDICAL HELP and get tested. People with hearing loss wait an average of 7 years before seeking help.

3. COPE AND SUPPORT. The Mayo Clinic offers tips to help you communicate more easily despite your hearing loss. For example, tell your friends and family that you have some hearing loss. Position yourself to hear by facing the person you’re talking to. Turn off background noise. For example, noise from a television may interfere with conversation. See the complete list.

4. TURN ON CAPTIONS. During virtual meetings and while watching TV, turn on captioning so audio is represented in text format. In this way, people can leverage visual as well as audible information sources.

5. TAKE ACTION. Government and businesses must consider the Americans with Disabilities Act and provide technological and other solutions that can help people accommodate hearing loss.

6. USE ‘VOICE WITH VISUALS’ COMMUNICATIONS. According to Dr. John Medina, author of Brainrules, when you see and hear information you are 600% more likely to understand. That’s one reason why Radish Systems offers ChoiceView® as a way to transform voice-only transactions into multi-modal ‘voice with visuals’ communications for both automated and live interactions. Learn more.