Date:22/08/2008 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2008/08/22/stories/2008082251750600.htm

Back YES Bank, Cisco tie up for voice-enabled phone banking

— Shashi Ashiwal

Mr Anil Bhasin, Senior Vice-President, Cisco India & SAARC (right), and Mr Suresh Sethi, President, Transaction Banking, YES Bank, at a press conference in Mumbai on Thursday.

Our Bureau

Mumbai, Aug. 21 Private sector YES Bank today launched speech-enabled phone banking services for its customers, jointly with Cisco. The facility allows customers to perform routine enquiries or transactions just by speaking out pre-defined aided keywords, without having to key in numbers.

Customers can avail themselves of multiple channels such as e-mail, Web-chat, IVR and voice to access the services.

This is the first of its kind in the financial services sector, said Mr Ravishankar, Head, Direct Banking, YES Bank.

The bank is also looking at this as a strong opportunity to give its corporate customers a superior experience, said Mr Suresh Sethi, President Transaction Banking, YES Bank.

The next step would be offering biometrics through voice recognition, whereby the software will be able to recognise the customer through his or her voice, said Mr Ravishankar. For this, the bank is working with Nuance Communications, a supplier of speech and imaging solutions. However, he did not comment on a time frame for its implementation.

YES Bank was one of the earliest banks to offer mobile banking services and is hopeful that the Reserve Bank of India’s final guidelines for mobile banking would be ready by September.

The bank has 101 branches and 81 offsite ATMs. It has licences to open 16 new branches and 119 offsite ATMs.