TAB NSW is to implement a speech-recognition telephone wagering system that will handle up to 80,000 telephone punts per hour. Although automating the process will allow TAB to more economically handle phone bets, cut backs in the staff room have yet to be determined.
"It's our intent to preserve as many jobs as possible," a NSW TAB spokesperson told ZDNet.
"The intent is to improve the existing phone TAB service by incorporating the capacity to handle more customers and calls and to process better transactions," the spokesperson said.
The first horse out of the gate to deploy a speech-recognition wagering system was the Queensland TAB in June.
"It has definitely enabled us to reduce the number of telephone operators we require," a Queensland TAB spokesperson said.
The spokesperson described the voice recognition system, which ran almost at full capacity during Melbourne Cup Day, as "labour saving".
It handled 20,000 calls and took 30,000 bets on the race that stops the nation.
"This is business that would have otherwise been handled by [live] operators or lost to the system," he said, pointing to people who get fed up sitting in queues and then hang up.
Betting on the horses comes in bursts, with peak traffic trying to punt just before a race begins.
Therefore, an automated telephone betting system "is more economical than having live [telephone] operators sitting around when there's minimal activity and insufficient operators at burst time," MD of voice enabled e-commerce provider VeCommerce, Paul Magee, said.
VeCommerce is behind the application, platform and implementation of the NSW TAB system and will provide on-going software support and maintenance.
"There's a higher level of security than there is with [current] telephone betting," Magee said.
At the minute telephone punters have to provide their password to the operator taking their call.
"Telling another person your password is opening the opportunity for things to occur that shouldn't occur," Magee said.
TAB NSW's speech-recognition telephone system will implemented in February and is predicted to be fully operational by June 2001.
