Q&A talks business-to-client communications with Lou Venezia, CEO of North American operations for Adeptra, a global company that’s refining the way companies communicate with their customers. Adeptra’s U.S. headquarters is in Norwalk.
Q: Adeptra bills itself as “the leader” in automated customer contact and resolution services for multi-language fraud, collections and customer service. In layman’s terms, what is it your company does?
A: We provide the technology that allows customer-centric organizations to interact with their customers through two-way voice, text and e-mail communications. By using our service, these organizations can engage with their customers less expensively than with live call centers. This allows our customers to expand the communication they have with their consumers — we allow them to redefine the value-added conversations that are possible with consumers.
Q: Among other aspects of your company, Adeptra provides the platform for organizations to be proactively engaged with their customers to improve the customer experience and increase customer retention. How do you accomplish this?
A: Our commitment to, and investment in, technology and R&D has allowed us to offer sophisticated technologies that work to segment, route and prioritize communications — in short we deliver relevant content to the right customer through the most appropriate communication channel. Our customers deploy our technology for speed, accuracy and relevance, and to enhance the experience for each individual customer.
Q: Adeptra provides tools for talking to customers. According to your website, instead of the interaction being handled by a human, it is taken care of by a fully automated system that uses a sophisticated blend of recorded voice and text-to-speech. Has Adeptra removed the need for low-cost, overseas call centers?
A: Yes, we can fully automate our customers’ communications, but we understand the need for live interaction between consumers and the companies they deal with. We recently commissioned a survey to look at how consumers would like to be communicated with by their banks and found that, given the option for an outsourced overseas call or an automated message, 86 percent of respondents said they would accept automated communications over the outsourced call centers. Customers want to be informed and are more comfortable with the use of technology.
Q: Another benefit of Adeptra’s technology is faster fraud detection. How does an automated system detect fraudulent transactions?
A: There are standard fraud detection applications which monitor transactions and highlight potentially fraudulent transactions: but even with these technologies in place, the output of potential transactions is tremendous. Companies prioritize these output lists to call the highest risk accounts first and typically do not get to the lower risk work before the next list comes out from the Fraud Detection department. Adeptra enables rapid and accurate communications to the entire list of accounts and by doing this we catch lower prioritized fraud items earlier in the fraud lifecycle. If high risk is confirmed with three or four transactions, low and mid-range risk can be defined after two or three transactions. If we confirm the fraud with consumers earlier, we help our customers avoid the risk of those additional transactions.
Q: Adeptra not only handles incoming calls, apparently it can place outgoing calls, too. What is the purpose of a system like that? What are its real-world applications?
A: Typically we generate an outbound communication based on an event that takes place within the consumer lifecycle. In some situations Adeptra leaves a voice message for the consumer if they are not available. Once we have the customer information in our application for the outbound call, we know the content that needs to be delivered to the customer when they call back in. The toll-free number that Adeptra leaves in the message connects the customer to our inbound network and we service the customer. If the customer needs to (or would like to) speak with a live agent, we are able to deliver that customer to the call center immediately and with context.
Q: How big of a corporation has Adeptra become since its founding in 1996? How big will it be by the time its 15th anniversary rolls around next year?
A: I believe that two factors will determine the market in the next few years: speed and content complexity. As consumers demand more immediate updates based on their relationships with service providers, Adeptra will be there to provide the speed that they require. The second half of this will be based on the complexity of conversations and data that can be deployed to consumers. Adeptra leads the market in this area and will continue to deliver more strategic and detailed communications.
