Speech Technology eWeekly - June 20, 2018

Case Studies

Bluegreen Vacations: Using Speech Analytics to Improve Customer Experience

When its customer service call volume had unexplained spikes, the resort vendor turned to CallMiner for answers.

Speech Technology News

Amazon Announces Alexa for Hospitality

Amazon announced Alexa for Hospitality, a new experience offered by invitation to hoteliers.

Roxy Teams Up with Sensory to Pair its Speech-Enabled In-Room Concierge System with Branded Wake Words for Hotels

Roxy, the speech-enabled device that provides full customizable in-room concierge services has announced a partnership with Sensory, the leading provider of wake word technology for voice devices.

[24]7.ai Partners with Blue Prism to Deliver New AI-Enabled Automation Capabilities For Virtual Agents

[24]7.ai, a provider of intent-driven customer engagement solutions, announced that it is partnering with Blue Prism (AIM: PRSM) on a new joint offering that allows [24]7 AIVA customers to use Blue Prism's Digital Workforce to efficiently automate hard-to-access back and front office systems.

Speaksee Develops Assistive Device for the Deaf

SpeakSee has developed an assistive device for the Deaf and hard of hearing consisting of a set of portable microphones that transcribe speech to text in real time using speech recognition.

Layoffs at Jibo

Jibo, maker of a social robot that caught TIME Magazine's attention as one of the best inventions of 2017, has confirmed a round of layoffs. And this isn't the first time.

Alexa Voice Tech Lab at Bennett University

Amazon and Bennett University have set up an Alexa Voice Tech Lab for research in artificial intelligence.

Mozilla Announces Open Source Common Voice Speech Recognition Datasets

Mozilla has announced an expansion to its crowd-sourced Common Voice project. The Common Voice Project, which is just about a year old, is creating an open source voice-recognition dataset.

TCN Announces Integration Partnership with CallMiner, Enhancing Its Cloud-Based Contact Center Platform with Speech Analytics

TCN, Inc., a provider of cloud-based call center technology for enterprises, contact centers, BPOs and collection agencies worldwide, announced its integration partnership with CallMiner, a platform provider of speech and customer engagement analytics.

ViewLift Integrates Alexa Voice Control to its Fire TV Apps

ViewLift, a digital distribution and monetization platform, brings Alexa-based voice-activation to its video applications on Fire TV, by integrating Alexa Video Skill capabilities into its feature set. All of ViewLift's partners now can incorporate Alexa voice controls into their Fire TV applications.

Standards

The Right Standard Makes Developers’ Jobs a Lot Easier

You'll never know whether a standard's a good fit if you don't try it out

Industry Voices

Video: What Can NLP Do for Your Converted Text?

Paco Nathan of O'Reilly Media's R & D Group discusses the benefits of natural-language processing (NLP) when working with text converted from video in this clip from his SpeechTEK 2018 keynote.

Four Ways Conversational Interfaces Could Simplify Your Life

On the last day of SpeechTEK 2018, I had the pleasure of moderating a Sunrise Session entitled "The Future of Speech-Enabled Applications." The goal of this roundtable was to brainstorm about creative and useful applications that could take conversational interactions to the next level. More than a dozen attendees from a variety of backgrounds held a lively discussion and came up with four innovative ideas, which I have summarized.

Market Spotlights

Market Spotlight: Travel and Hospitality

Transforming the travel experience through voice