The 2015 State of the Speech Technology Industry: Application Testing and Tuning

Would You Do This?

Vendors are betting that you will as they move toward a one-call-to all unified communications strategy

Using the Phone to Transform Customer Service into a Strategic Asset

Contact centers in several thousand enterprises around the world have derived cost savings and customer satisfaction benefits by deploying speech recognition technology to automate customer service calls. The return on most of these deployments is usually measured in months, and customer satisfaction surveys indicate that callers frequently prefer voice for conducting service transactions—as opposed to touchtone or lengthy live agent interactions. …

Vendor Directory of Assistive Technology

A-C ALVA Access Group436 14th Street, Suite 700Oakland, CA 94612Tel: 888-318-2582info@aagi.comwww.aagi.com ATIA – Assistive Technology Industry Association401 N. Michigan AvenueChicago, IL 60611-4267 Tel: 877-OUR-ATIA (687-2842)Tel: 312-321-5172Fax: 312-673-6659Info@ATIA.org www.atia.org Avaya, Inc.211 Mt. Airy RoadBasking Ridge, NJ 07920Tel: 866-GO-AVAYAwww.avaya.com AVSI--Automated Voice Systems, Inc.17059 El Cajon AvenueYorba Linda, CA. 92686Tel: 714-524-4488Fax: 714-996-1127mastervoice@mail.comwww.mastervoice.com Closing the GapComputer Technology in Special Education and Rehabilitation…

Virtual Assistants & Mobile Phones: How Speech Makes the Merger

Within the next decade, true interactive speech is expected to be pervasive and in everything. Digital cameras, air conditioners, watches, televisions, PCs, printers, mobile phones, cash registers, kiosks, automobiles, and vending machines will all have voices to announce their status and function. Not only will they accept spoken commands, they will hold conversations with us. Your TIVO will discuss its programming, your car will tell you where to turn, and your mobile phone will remind…

Conversational Marketing:
Speech technology makes the telephone a new medium

The Voice User Interface (VUI)—speech recognition supported by text-to-speech and speaker verification—is changing the way the telephone is used in two ways. First, by helping us connect with one another. The VUI enhances standard telecommunications functions, such as dialing and voice mail, making them easier to use. It makes the addition of enhanced communication services, such as telephone access to email, feasible and usable. It makes directory assistance more economical, benefiting the service provider, but ultimately the consumer as well. In the long run, the network may use "voice tone" (speech recognition) rather than dial tone (the keypad), as its primary means of interaction with the caller.

Automated Directory Assistance
Speech-enabling the Next Generation of Customer Service

In the recent Voice Portals and Applications Report published by Datamonitor, the company combines the Auto-attendant and Directory Assistant Applications for reporting purposes, but states that supply-side revenues in 2002 will be $145 million and will grow by 31% to $190 million in 2003. The Directory Assistance (DA) market is gaining new ground as companies in the space have begun implementing premium services to their offerings, e.g., speech recognition technology. While providing such enhanced services to their customers, companies around the world are trying to reduce operating costs and/or create new streams of revenue. Keeping increased customer satisfaction and driving-up repeat usage in mind, many service providers are finding that automating their DA service is helping them meet their goals.

HUMAN FACTORS
Can Speech Improve Cell Phone Interfaces?

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems are everywhere. For the past decade, consumers have dialed regularly into computer systems to obtain automated bank, portfolio, and account information, airline schedules, movie times, and the like. We have become so accustomed to using IVRs that, like answering machines, we may no longer be aware of whether or not we like them. They are useful, relatively easy to use, but mostly so prevalent that we frequently have no choice but to use them.

Speech On The Web: Speech Combines Telephone and Internet

Lucent Technologies is driving the convergence of the Internet and telephone networks to make accessing a business' services a better experience for customers through a choice of natural interfaces. The Natural Information Interface, demonstrated at the Council on Competitiveness' National Innovation Summit at MIT in March, combines advanced speech technologies with flexible Web and phone interfaces to create a true convergence of telephone and internet applications, making it possible for users to converse naturally with an automated system.

Market Analysis: Telephone Present a New Face

William Meisel, a well-known speech industry consultant, has just completed a comprehensive market study of telephone speech recognition entitled The Telephony Voice User Interface: Speech recognition, Text-to-speech, and speaker verification over the telephone. Brian Lewis, the editor of Speech Technology magazine, talked to Meisel about the report.

Market Analysis: Opportunities in Speech

During the second half of 1997, Wohl Associates spent considerable time looking at various aspects of the speech marketplace, interviewing vendors and users, and forming opinions as to the status of the market and its future directions.