Avaya Unified Communications Boost Employee Productivity and Safety With Freedom of Speech

Avaya Unified Messaging Now Includes a Speech-Enabled User Interface to All Messages, Calendars, Tasks, and More -- at No Additional Cost. Avaya Modular Messaging 4.0 now includes the Avaya one-X® Speech interface to a personal assistant, providing hands-free access to calling and conferencing capabilities, voice, email and fax messaging, enterprise directories and databases, calendars, contacts and task lists -- from any telephone. Avaya one-X Speech helps improve responsiveness and safety for employees on the road by eliminating the need to read messages or to text-while-driving. [click heading for more]

VoiceXML tipped to become the dominant platform for IVR technology in 2008

VoiceXML, which is the open standard software-based approach in interactive voice response technology, is proliferating at a rapid rate as businesses demand greater flexibility, agility, affordability, scalability and innovation in interactive voice response solutions. Datamonitor research suggests that 2008 will be an inflection point for VoiceXML-based interactive voice response (IVR), with the number of shipped ports utilizing the technology expected to surpass traditional IVR ports for the first time.

The advent of web-based, open-standards like VoiceXML, and other next generation platforms, has opened up new possibilities for personalized phone self-service by simplifying the design, development and management aspects of IVR. Datamonitor predicts that global investment in IVR licenses will increase from $475 million in 2006 to $845 million by 2012 as the business climate becomes accustomed to VoiceXML platforms. By 2009 almost 69% of IVR shipments will be based on VoiceXML.

Mature markets like North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa are seeing a lot of replacement and upgrade activity. According to Datamonitor, these markets will witness a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6% and 9%, respectively, from 2007-2012. But it is the greenfield opportunities in the emerging markets of Asia Pacific, the Caribbean and Latin America that are growing at the fastest rate, with predicted CAGR of 18% and 14%, respectively, over the same period. [click heading for more]

Voxify "Checks-In" for Continental Airlines With the First Speech Self-Service Flight Check-In by Phone

Voxify announced today that it developed with Continental Airlines the first interactive outbound flight check-in solution. Under Continental's new "Voice Check-in" service, customers will receive automated telephone calls allowing them to interactively check-in for flights over the phone.

With the Voice Check-in service, Continental's customers receive automated telephone calls 24 hours in advance of departure allowing them, through Voxify's automated speech recognition technology, to interactively check-in and specify whether they want to obtain their boarding passes by email, fax, or airport kiosk. The service also offers customers the ability to request complimentary elite upgrades when applicable, hear airport specific alerts or advisories, and receive carry-on and checked baggage policy information. Voxify's conversational speech capability enables such complex interactions to be successfully performed, end-to-end, through automated speech recognition. [click heading for more]

Northern Devon Healthcare Trust reduces call waiting times with speech recognition from Telephonetics VIP

The Northern Devon Healthcare Trust (NDHT) is using a speech recognition solution from Telephonetics VIP, to answer external calls at busy times. Callers are politely answered by a speech driven automated call routing product and simply need to say the name of the person, department or ward they require to be connected to, quickly, and without the need for human intervention. This relieves pressure on switchboard operators and makes them available to deal with more complex enquiries.[click heading for more]

Equals Party LineTM Application Calls on Voxeo Platform to Bring Voice to Social Networking

[nik's note: yet more disruption in the voice market - I love it! :-) ]

Voxeo Corporation announced today that Equals (www.equals.com) has selected the Voxeo Prophecy Platform for the development and delivery of its new Party Line™ application on Facebook.
Party Line adds voice to social networking by enabling group phone chats that can be instantly launched with a single mouse click right from Facebook. Facebook members can alternatively dial 877 4 BUZZ ME (1 877 428 9963) from their mobile phone and Equals will dial out and add the other users to the Party Line. Users can create an unlimited number of Party Lines ranging from movie and dinner friends to golf buddies -- with each Party Line consisting of up to five people. The application is free, set up is easy, and there are no software downloads, conference bridge numbers or passcodes to remember. [click heading for more]

Euromed to integrate SpeechMagic for accurate, convenient and efficient capturing of healthcare information

Euromed Networks today announced that it has signed a partnership with Philips Speech Recognition Systems, for the integration and distribution of the company’s SpeechMagic platform in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Euromed Networks’ digital dictation and image management software MedSpeech now features Philips industrial grade speech recognition for accurate, convenient and efficient information capturing. MedSpeech powered by SpeechMagic has been designed to seamlessly integrate with healthcare IT applications, such as hospital or radiology information system (HIS/RIS) or picture archiving and communications systems (PACS). Highly scalable and network-based, the solution supports large volumes of dictations and a high number of simultaneous users.[click heading for more]

Turn Asterisk into an open standards IVVR: New VXI* 3.0 released!

[nik's note: I'm very interested to see how the new VoiceXML browser for Asterisk develops. This has all the feelings of being quite a disruptive influence in the market - opening up sophisticated IVR services to the SME market. ]

The newest VXI* VoiceXML browser 3.0 ref. 2008-04-14 is now released!This release contains important enhancements for Asterisk 1.4.X last versions.[click heading for more]

Philips announces professional services portfolio to drive accuracy, convenience and efficiency in using speech recognition to capture healthcare info

Royal Philips Electronics (AEX: PHI, NYSE: PHG) announced today the launch of its services portfolio which enables its global network of SpeechMagic partners to access the company’s know-how and expertise in the field of healthcare documentation. The aim is to facilitate the integration, deployment and support of the SpeechMagic platform as well as provide expert consultancy on productive medical reporting. The launch of its service portfolio is part of Philips Speech Recognition Systems’ strategy to grow from a technology provider into a team of globally recognized experts on information capturing in healthcare. [click heading for more]

Customer Service Debacles "R" Us

[nik's note: sadly this experience from Toys 'R' Us is typical of so many contact centres and the mere act of deploying speech recognition IVR does nothing to change it. For me this is worrying- as an industry we need to tackle the stigma associated with traditonal IVR, which means we must get next-generation contact centre experiences and speech recognition experiences right first time.]

There are some customer service fiascos that make you want to bang your head against the wall. When they come to you courtesy of a mom-and-pop Internet business, all you can do is sigh, heave your shoulders and say “Well, that’s my fault for going with amateurs.” When the debacle is brought to you courtesy of a national chain, it really makes you wonder how the business has managed to keep its doors open and who is running the company’s customer service.

I called the “helpful” Toys “R” Us customer service line again. I routed myself obediently through their IVR system using their oh-so-fine speech recognition solution. Part of this process included speaking my 10-digit order number, which the system accepted. Informed by the automated system that my order was “processing” (presumably in the same manner and at the same rate that erosion in the Grand Canyon is “processing”), I spoke the words “representative” to get a human on the line. (I had learned, during my last encounter, that speaking the word “agent” got a caller put into a hellacious and circuitous IVR loop of despair.)

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Voxify Supports Genesys to Deliver the "Intelligent Customer Front Door" Solution

Voxify® announced that it will provide critical speech applications in support of the Genesys "Intelligent Customer Front Door(TM)" (iCFD) solutions. The integrated speech solutions will deliver a virtual front door for all incoming calls to enhance the customer experience and deliver a consistent brand image by applying business logic to each transaction that considers caller identity, intent, preferences and call context to enable personalized interactions.

Already a provider of speech self-service to the Genesys Voice Platform (GVP), Voxify provides a suite of customer interaction applications that are pre-integrated with the Genesys Dynamic Contact Center. Additionally, Voxify brings to the table interactive outbound calling applications and flexible deployment options.

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