SPEECH TECHNOLOGY

Customer Inter@ction Solutions, Feb 2005

Finding cost efficiencies in the call center seems to be following Moore's law: that is, as more and more call centers implement various call center technologies, it becomes more and more difficult to "squeeze" cost savings on each phone call. Fortunately, there is one nascent technology that has yet to be fully adopted in the call center - speech technology. Speech technology performance and accuracy is drastically better now than it once was, as integration is much easier and developer tools are much easier to use. The ROI on speech technology deployment is often very quick because repetitive or automatic inquiries and tasks can be offloaded from an agent to a speech recognition system.

Customer Interaction Solutions^ magazine knows that speech technology will be a key differentiator or cost savings method for call centers. We have been covering call center technology for over two decades and have therefore seen the progression from primitive predictive dialers and recording systems, to full CTI integration, to IP-PBXs with remote VoIP call center agents. You would be hard pressed to not find all aforementioned technologies in a good call center. And so, soon it will also be the norm, rather than the exception, that the best call centers have speech technology implemented.

With new products and whole new categories of products in the contact center space, it is tough for our readers to keep up with the latest and greatest products and services. That is why Customer Interaction Solutions" launched the Speech Technology Excellence Award: so we can judge the "best of the best" in speech technology and pass our findings on to our readers.

Congratulations to the winners.

- The editors, Customer Interaction Solutions® magazine

BeVocal, Inc. www.bevocal.com BeVocal VoCare Customer Care Call Automation Suite

Comprised of more than 25 customizable applications, Be Vocal's VoCare endto-end call automation solutions are capable of handling all stages of customer care - from name/address capture and service provisioning, to account maintenance and bill payment.

The company's call automation solutions help enterprise call centers to answer, automate and route customer care calls for less money, while significantly improving customer service levels; they are intended to eliminate the expense, time wasted and headache associated with traditional call automation deployments. Core customer care application modules are reusable and are easily customizable, thus bringing the following effects: high automation rates, out-of-the-gate caller satisfaction and quick time-to-market; tools that enable rapid analysis of applications' 20-30 key performance metrics; and an architecture that allows improvements to be made quickly, seamlessly and cost effectively improvement can be easily leveraged by all applications.

Edify Corporation

www.edify.com

Edify Voice Banking

Edify Voice Banking is a fully licensed, comprehensive software application that enables banking establishments to automate customer interactions and provide access to financial information through speech-enabled self-service. Based on industry standards, the application can eliminate enterprise customer concerns over application functionality and compatibility issues. With Edify Voice Banking, customers calling into the system can verbally identify themselves, their account and their requests without having to traverse a complex touch-tone menu.

Edify Voice Banking is comprehensive, with 16 separate modules of functionality, and is therefore able to entirely replace existing touch-tone IVR applications. The application includes all business logic, error-handling, grammar structures and data access sequences for each module. The application also includes packaged prompts and effective default personas. Licensed application support means investment protection, and it provides the ability to upgrade from release to release.

Edify Corporation

www.edify.com

Edify Voice Interaction Platform (EVIP) 9.0

By combining automation technologies - such as speech recognition, speaker verification, text-to-speech, fax and touchtone capabilities - with a powerful application development environment and natural language capabilities, Edify Voice Interaction Platform (EVIP) 9.0 completely automates transactions that formerly required live agent assistance. The platform allows for information access across an organization and beyond, enabling companies to increase call accuracy and to accommodate higher call volumes globally, while still delivering more personalized and intelligent customer interactions.

IBM

www.ibm.com/pervasive

WebSphere Voice Server

IBM WebSphere Voice Server for Multiplatfbrms Version 5.1 is an advanced ASR/TTS engine with support for Media Resource Control Protocol (MRCP). IBM's product is easier to manage and quicker in resolving problems, with end-toend administration offered by the integrated administration and systems management features of WebSphere Application Server (WAS). It is more scalable and more flexible, and it can integrate to existing IT infrastructures because of the load balancing network dispatcher of WAS.