Speech Technology - October 2008 - (Page 10)

> > N E W S > > T R E N D S > > A N A LY S I S > > N E W S > > T R E N D S > > A N A LY S I S > > N E W S > > T R E N D S > > A N A LY S I S a good sign, more work needs to be done, Pearce argued. “We must increase the alignment in order to penetrate more markets,” he declared. “Otherwise, it’s like pushing water uphill.” The most telling statistic from the study came when the question of how often callers prefer speech was asked. Forty-five percent of customers surveyed said “as little as possible,” while only 9 percent of vendors chose the same response. Additionally, 23 percent of customers remarked that “it depended on the reason for the call,” while 43 percent of vendors selected that response. This led Bergelson to explain that vendors and companies need to provide a compelling reason why speech automation is necessary beyond touchtone or live-agent au- tomation. “We need to use speech when it improves an interaction, when it has a unique value over touchtone,” he said. Bergelson went on to stress that speech automation is just one piece of the IVR puzzle. Touchtone and live agents are also important, and the triumvirate must work together for companies and customers to truly benefit. “Consider automation as part of the overall customer workflow,” he said. “We need to think in the broader context of what the caller is trying to do. Put the customer first.” That was a point illustrated by Jenni McKienzie, a VUI designer for Travelocity, during another session about balancing what business owners want when designing IVR systems with what will make the experience easiest on the caller. “You have to figure out the actual problem beneath the solution you’ve been presented by the company,” McKienzie said. “Does the caller actually share in this problem, or is it purely driven by business needs?” If, as a designer, you decide the caller has no problem and the business just wants to add things, argue like crazy against it or minimize the impact if you lose, McKienzie said. To do this, come up with a solution to the problem, and present it to the business owner along with the logic and data that drove you to it, she suggested. “Emphasize the caller experience over and over,” McKienzie said. “It’s your best argument.” —Christopher Musico and Meghan Goth THE ON ENE: SC SOUNDBYTES improve operating speeds when using large grammars. >> Speech Gets SaaSy Cepstral is now making its entire catalog of 50 text-tospeech voices available online as software as a service (SaaS) through its VoiceForge property. Developers can now access an application programming interface to convert text or Web information into platformindependent audio without the need for client software. >> Genesys Ramps Up GVP Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories unveiled >> A Busy Show for Vicorp Vicorp released version 5.0 of its xMP service creation and execution tool. Among the enhancements is an expanded library of reusable application components. Vicorp also announced two partnerships, one with speech-to-text provider SpinVox to provide voicemail-to-text messages from customers to contact center agents, and the other with HTK, a managed services provider, to offer customers hosted contact center solutions. >> One License, Many Machines LumenVox released Speech Engine v8.5 with a new licensing model that decouples software licensing from the hardware to make it portable from one machine to another. Release 8.5 also has a new pronunciation generator and includes grammar caching to 10 | Speech Technology further leverages voice in customer service by tightly integrating such key technologies such as SIP, Web integration, and voice security software. >> The Ninth Prophecy Voxeo announced the early release of Prophecy 9, a platform for speech, SIP, Voice over Internet Protocol, and interactive voice response (IVR) solutions. Prophecy 9 delivers more than 200 improvements and fixes and now supports integration with any speech recognition or synthesis engines that support a standard Media Resource Control Protocol interface, Web-accessible development platform, or database. >> ICP Means More UC Nortel is expanding its unified communications portfolio with a software solution, the Nortel Interactive Communications Portal, that allows users to add features—such as instant messaging, email, and click-to- call—to self-service and speech applications to expand service options beyond IVR. This software-only solution is built on Nortel’s Media Application Server, a multimedia-processing platform that provides extensive support for conferencing, messaging, and interactive voice/video response features. >> Nexidia on the Fast Track Nexidia released Enterprise Speech Intelligence (ESI) 7.0, the next generation of its speech analytics solution, with new visual reporting tools, improved search performance, scalability, and speed. New dashboards enable users to pinpoint “hot spots” driving call volume, while advanced reporting features reveal the most critical factors impacting service levels, talk times, and agent and team performance. ESI also features indexing speeds of more than 20,000 hours per day—more than twice the speed of its previous version— on a single server. www.speechtechmag.com Genesys Voice Platform (GVP) 8, which is tightly integrated with both Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and the intelligent Customer Front Door (iCFD) solutions from Genesys and its partners, (including Nuance Communications, TuVox, and PSS). GVP 8 OCTOBER 2008 http://www.speechtechmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Speech Technology - October 2008

Speech Technology - October 2008 Contents Editor’s Letter Industry View Inside Outsourcing Interact Keynoter Highlights the Shrinking Technological World Former Hacker Tackles IVR and Biometrics ‘Press 1’ for Caller Thoughts Soundbytes Voice Vote A New Dragon Emerges Overheard/Underheard An Emotional Mess Emotional Intelligence The Case for Call Recording Unified in Care and Communications An Education in E-Learning Guest Column Standards Speech Solutions Voice Value Forward Thinking

Speech Technology - October 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.