Intervoice Announces Next-Generation, Packaged Voice Banking Application

Intervoice, Inc., a world leader in converged voice and information solutions, today announced the general availability of its next-generation, voice banking application with both speech and touchtone options. Intervoice Banking responds particularly well to renewed financial services industry interest in the power of speech to improve customer service and reduce costs by transcending the limits of hierarchical touchtone-only menus.

Built on more than two decades of financial industry leadership, Intervoice Banking is designed to meet the most stringent requirements of the largest institutions, with pricing and packaging options that also meet the needs of small and mid-size institutions. Intervoice Banking customers enjoy the lifecycle management and feature enhancement of a packaged application without sacrificing the custom features they require to reflect their brand and enhance customer service.

The growing need for competitive differentiation in the financial industry has created a renewed focus on fine tuning customer care that is causing financial institutions to re-evaluate their self-service options. Support for traditional environments as well as the latest technology and feature enhancements, along with speech, touchtone and blended system options enables Intervoice Banking customers to enhance and evolve their systems at the pace that's right for them - and their customers.

"Financial institutions, more than any other industry, are under severe competitive pressure to cost effectively boost customer service. This is further complicated by evolving regulatory requirements that can only be met with technology flexible enough to adapt to these changes," said Marie Jackson, senior vice president of global marketing, Intervoice. "With this new enhanced application, Intervoice is able to offer banks and their customers not only the richest voice self-service experience in the industry, but also the technology solution they need to respond to change while still providing service and convenience anytime, anywhere, and at minimal cost."

Out of the box, Intervoice Banking 3.0 offers a speech-enabled application that delivers a personalized voice self-service experience. In addition to offering over 200 natural language speech recognition options for customers to access account information and perform transactions, Intervoice Banking 3.0 includes these new features:

-Debit Card/CC Activation/Deactivation
-Multi-factor authentication
-Loans - Escrow Balance
-Rate Information - Recordable
-English and Spanish Language Touchtone
-Speech version English with additional language readiness
-Routing Application
-Member to Member Transfer
-Check Withdrawal

Also critical to fast adoption of any new application is the ability to integrate into existing financial institution environments, and Intervoice Banking 3.0 has added new backend interfaces to ease this integration.

"Providing excellent customer service is critical to maintaining loyalty and keeping ahead of the competition. It's also important to choose technology and technology partners that can do this and still lower costs," said Krithi Rao, program leader, enterprise communications, Frost & Sullivan. "Intervoice continues to impress us with their knowledge and experience in the financial sector. This, coupled with an offering that helps banks respond to customer service and regulatory pressures more effectively now and in the future, should put them on the short list for institutions of every size."

Key to a successful implementation of the new banking application is Intervoice's industry-leading Global Consulting Services. Customers are no longer content to take a "one-size-fits-all" solution. More sophisticated than ever, they demand control and a better user experience. Intervoice understands that customers expect ease-of-use, speed, security, convenience and personal attention from their handset, PDA, telephony or Web experience. Global Consulting Services is also the catalyst of Banking 3.0's automation capability that allows the solution to be customized and allows financial institutions to take advantage of ongoing product releases as they become available.

By Intervoice