Lastminute.com announces voice recognition telephone service - Company Business and Marketing - Brief Article

Telecomworldwire, Oct 6, 2000

TELECOMWORLDWIRE-6 October 2000-Lastminute.com announces voice recognition telephone service (C)1994-2000 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD http://www.m2.com

Lastminute.com is to introduce a voice recognition service.

The move, part of the company's multi-platform strategy, will enable customers to order products and services over the telephone without the need for an operator. Lastminute.com claims the service will be the first in Europe to provide transactional voice capabilities in e-business.

The service will utilise natural language speech recognition to enable users to simply speak what they want, for example a customer might say, "I'm in the West-End this evening and I want two tickets for Chicago and a nearby restaurant booking after the show." The speech platform would then respond to the key words in the sentence to offer immediate choices, availability, prices and booking confirmation.

Lastminute.com has plans to make its services available via interactive digital television and personal digital assistants as well as the PC, telephone and WAP.

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