VoiceGenie and BBN Technologies to Market Speech-Recognition Product for Large Business Call Centers; Tell-Eureka Partners with VoiceGenie to Deliver Call Center Automation Solutions

TORONTO, CANADA and CAMBRIDGE, MA - A new product from VoiceGenie Technologies Inc. and BBN Technologies replaces voice mail menus with speech recognition technology that allows callers to get where they want to go in one step. The product is designed for businesses that use large call centers to provide service to their customers. VoiceGenie and BBN, a Verizon company, are jointly marketing BBN's voice-recognition Call Director and other speech-based applications with VoiceGenie's VoiceXML (Voice Extensible Markup Language) Gateway. The VoiceGenie platform enables enterprise businesses to develop and deploy speech-enabled Internet and data services, enabling access to VoiceXML applications via the phone. Verizon, BBN's parent company, will be the first to use the new product. The service will be tested in one of Verizon's call centers. BBN's combination of speech processing and natural language technologies allows customers dialing into a company's call center to state the reason for their call after the prompt: "Briefly tell me the reason for your call today." "BBN's speech recognition products integrate unique language-processing components that do more than recognize spoken words -- they provide the answer," said Stuart Berkowitz, VoiceGenie president and CEO. "With over 30 years of research and development in speech and language understanding, BBN has acquired significant expertise that is extremely valuable in the call center market. "BBN's speech recognition technology and VoiceGenie's VoiceXML Gateway solution together provide call centers with the widest choice of speech- recognition applications, and the ability to use a unique call-routing capability," said Marie Meteer, director of the Customer Contact Center Products and Services Group at BBN. "Our collaboration allows more customers to deploy Call Director, the only speech-recognition product of its type in the industry to use what is known as fully statistical speech recognition solution, a proven way to increase routing efficiency in call centers using the robust and scalable VoiceGenie platform. This collaboration is specifically designed to provide Call Centers with a cost-effective answer to increasing automation and substantially improving customer satisfaction." "VoiceGenie and BBN are delivering a real solution to increasing call-center automation and improving customer satisfaction with voice-enabling technology," said Berkowitz. In addition to BBN's Call Director, VoiceGenie will market and sell BBN's Call Center Assessment service, a data-driven methodology that provides quantitative data analysis for enhancing call center productivity. BBN's assessment helps call center directors make informed decisions about when, where and how to roll out speech-recognition technology, by validating the business case. In particular, it identifies where the problems lie and which solutions will solve those inadequacies, prior to deployment. "The combination of VoiceGenie's VoiceXML Gateway and BBN's Call Center product is the right solution to increasing call center efficiency at the right price," said Berkowitz. Tell-Eureka Partners with VoiceGenie to Deliver Call Center Automation Solutions NEW YORK, NY and TORONTO, CANADA - Tell-Eureka Corporation, a developer of multi-channel self-service solutions for call center automation, announced a technology partnership with VoiceGenie Technologies Inc., a provider of VoiceXML Gateway solutions. Tell-Eureka's flagship product, LevelOne Virtual CSR, will integrate VoiceGenie's VoiceXML Gateway solution to fully automate first-level technical support. Together, LevelOne Virtual CSR and the VoiceXML Gateway represent a powerful new way to automate the most common technical support phone calls with no human intervention, providing callers with 24x7 help and offloading routine, repetitive calls to the speech-enabled system. Through a combination of advanced speech recognition and Web technologies, LevelOne Virtual CSR enables faster, consistent levels of service to deliver significant reductions in the cost per technical support call. "This is a milestone for creating economic value and, ultimately, a key advantage in terms of customer retention," said Zor Gorelov, founder and chief executive officer of Tell-Eureka. "Building on the VoiceGenie platform, LevelOne Virtual CSR is the only solution of its kind that allows companies to automate first-level technical support while leveraging their existing Web support articles, FAQs, and user guides." "Tell-Eureka is delighted to announce this technology partnership with VoiceGenie," added Zor Gorelov. "The company's VoiceXML compliance leadership and fully open architecture will enable us to deliver multi-channel applications that meet customers' needs quickly and efficiently." A key component of LevelOne Virtual CSR is the Visual Knowledge Publisher, an authoring tool for multi-channel self-service customer support applications that can support output in VoiceXML, SALT and HTML. As a result, call centers can synchronize speech-enabled conversations with online knowledge base articles and diagrams, enabling callers to choose the most appropriate support channel at any given time. "VoiceGenie is pleased to announce this partnership with Tell-Eureka, an innovator in developing multi-channel customer support applications," said Stuart Berkowitz, president and chief executive officer of VoiceGenie. "Together, we are providing a much-needed solution for manufacturers and call centers whose customers are non-expert users of computer, office, and consumer electronic equipment."