Hands-Free Brokerage: How Voice-to-Text can Revolutionize Freight Operations
As voice recognition technology became less of a novelty and more of a valuable business tool, voice-to-text has grown in popularity across many industries. The field service professional who uses voice-to-text to capture job progress notes, the sales rep who relies on it for drafting client emails and the lawyer who uses the technology to transcribe depositions are all benefitting from a hands-free way to log notes, work on the go and communicate.
In the fast-paced freight brokerage environment, voice-to-text offers a powerful and easy way to capture accurate information, update load details and record conversations with shippers and carriers. This helps improve efficiency, reduce errors and improve customer service levels—all of which ultimately lead to better profitability.
In this Q&A, Mike Horvath, COO at Revenova, explains the technology behind voice-to-text, tells how it works and shows how it’s helping freight brokers streamline their operations, improve communications and gain an edge in the competitive marketplace.
Q: What is voice-to-text and how has the technology behind it evolved over the years?
A: Originally developed as assistive technology for the hearing impaired, voice-to-text is a speech recognition program that converts spoken words into written text. The premise is pretty simple: users input information using their voice instead of a keyboard or other manual input methods. These applications once needed extensive training before they could recognize certain individuals’ voices and speech patterns, but their modern iterations can identify any accent and speech pattern. This has opened a world of possibilities for new applications of the technology, and freight brokers are well positioned to take advantage of them.
Q: Why are freight brokers good candidates to use and benefit from voice-to-text?
A: Well, the freight brokerage environment is fast-paced, hectic and constantly evolving. These settings always require a high level of coordination and communication, but achieving that goal isn’t easy if everyone has to take a moment to sit and type up emails, notes and other documents and then use email or text to share those notes. Voice-to-text lets users skip entire steps in that process by simply speaking. They can instantly capture information like load updates, conversations with shippers or critical delivery details with their mobile devices. This hands-free approach gives brokers more time in the day to focus on important tasks like negotiating rates, tracking shipments and building customer relationships.
Q: Can you share an example of voice-to-text in action in the brokerage environment?
A: Sure, let’s say a customer calls in to check on a load status for a shipment that was supposed to arrive at 11a.m. A brokerage can use voice-to-text to receive the call and quickly have an AI agent answer the question. It can also ask questions like “Hey, did that answer your question?” and if the answer is no, then the call can be transferred over to a live operator who is standing by, ready to help. This cuts down on the number of phone operators you need on staff, since many customers will have the information they need right from the AI agent who can receive and address questions in a very conversational manner thanks to voice-to-text.
Q: Are there any limitations to the technology at this point?
A: All applications have their limitations, but they get worked through as the applications mature and integrate more AI, machine learning and other emerging technologies. Since ML learns over time, for example, the actual voice-to-text application may get better at recognizing and addressing your customers’ different accents and dialects (those limitations are more of a training exercise). Ultimately, the more basic, mundane tasks you can automate—and then have employees work on the exceptions—the more efficient, effective and profitable your operation will be.
Q: How is Revenova using voice-to-text and AI to help brokers work smarter, better and faster in today’s competitive business landscape?
A: We have an AI persona known as “Artimus” that’s been built with natural language processing (NLP) capabilities. It takes unstructured text and converts it into data that a system can read and then put into a workflow. Our goal as a technology provider is to supply the automation that our customers can deploy to complement the human assets that they have in place. We understand that the brokerage business is very seasonal, depending on the company’s specific customer base. We help them “even out” those highs and lows using AI and automation. During peak times, for example, you won’t have to work tons of overtime or ramp up extra temporary staff to handle the additional load volume. Technologies like voice-to-text can spring into action and help you maintain business consistency without the need for additional resources.
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