Speech-Recognition Solutions
Nuance Communications, Menlo Park, Calif., and SpeechWorks International, Boston, are the two major suppliers for voice-recognition software engines. The applications solution providers build and sell with the vendors' software can be as simple as a dialer that allows users to call a business and access a directory by speaking names or commands. Or the solution can be much more elaborate, including a personal assistant who helps callers trade stock over the telephone or find a lost bag, or access flight arrival and departure information.
Vendors and solution providers predict a steady pickup in customers for speech recognition. Despite a sluggish economy, service-oriented companies are likely to invest in speech recognition at some point because automation helps them cut costs. As for telecom companies, voice recognition is a way to offer new services to their customers.
"Enterprises are adopting it because it gives them the ability to eliminate touchtone,' says Matt Keowen, Nuance's director of corporate marketing. "It means they can route calls more effectively, and they are automating a repetitive task that otherwise call agents would have to take on. This allows companies to have their customer services focus more on valued-added tasks, and it helps reduce costs.'
Networking vendors, including include Avaya, Cisco Systems, Mitel Networks, Nortel Networks and Aspect Communications, are moving to incorporate speech engines into their hardware for call centers and unified-messaging platforms. At the same time, solution providers,from large professional service organizations like Accenture to smaller VARs,are finding that speech recognition is a nice niche that rewards them for precise skills and expertise.
Gold Systems, a solution provider in Boulder, sends its engineers to attend frequent training sessions so they're adept at working with speech engines and are on top of constant improvements in the technology, says Beth Hoskin, Gold's national account manager for speech. Gold has deployed speech-recognition systems for enterprises that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and take several months to install if the solution provider is involved in designing a script for the application, she adds. The company, which integrates speech-recognition systems into call centers, has developed and sells a software solution that links a voice system to Web-based content and corporate intranets. Recent customers include insurance companies that use speech recognition for increased security; some applications can verify a speaker's voice.
But working with speech recognition isn't always a lengthy, complex process. Quentin Kramer, director of operations for Columbia, Md.-based Enabling Technologies, says it takes a day at most to deploy unified communications solutions using Avaya's Speech Access product, which adds speech recognition to Microsoft Outlook e-mail, calendar and contact functions.