The program serves as an antidote to the reticence that IT and customer care professionals have shown (especially during the economic downturn) toward launching the lengthy design, deployment and debugging processes associated with natural language understanding (NLU) and enhanced call processing. The pitch is quite simple. Nuance first shows that callers benefit from shorter wait times and fewer call misdirections when a well-designed Call Steering app is deployed. Then they demonstrate how companies can benefit from shorter wait times and greater cost certainty when they adhere to a fixed scope deployment approach.

The term “fixed scope” is well chosen. Based on years of experience with Call Steering implementations among large global companies across multiple vertical industries, Nuance understands the application characteristics and communications architectures that will benefit from Fast Start. It has distilled those learnings into a “configuration file” which provides a foundation and design framework for getting started. Customers and clients are not being offered a “crippled app” or proof-of-concept, instead they are deploying the same code that has worked in full scale deployments.

The constraints have to do with the demographics and architecture of targeted companies. Based on experience in the field, Nuance recognizes that Fast Start will work most effectively for firms limited to 80-100 call destinations and 5-10 instances that require serious interpretation of “disambiguation” of a caller’s intent. In those cases, implementations can be completed in as few as 90 days and the total start up costs are a significant discount from the “full service” approach.

The offer seems very attractive to healthcare providers and utilities where companies have high standards for customer satisfaction but often lack the call volumes that justify investment in NLU. As Foley explained, Nuance had observed a threshold in the 10-12 million calls per year range (with some of the largest systems handling over 100 million calls each year). Fast Start can make Call Steering attractive when annual call volumes are less than 4 million. The clear message coming from Nuance is that “Natural Language Call Steering” is not too expensive for mid-sized businesses.

Initially, our plan was to move existing service into our new building, and we made plans accordingly talking with Comcast frequently to make sure everything was moving along as our moving day approached. But, one week before our move, when we called to see when the phone service would be installed, Comcast told us that it was not going to run a new line into 350 Brannan. As we figured it, our only alternative (which may or may not be the case) is AT&T, so we started the process with Ma Bell.

This is where we entered the theater of the absurd. From our perspective, we were establishing service in our new building. Something that the AT&T Web site says should take 5-7 business days. The problem is, to AT&T we, apparently are a “win-back.” Which, for reasons that only Comcast and AT&T can justify, adds another 20 days to the process (while AT&T waits for Comcast to “release the number”). I’d like to say “it’s not my problem,” but, because in the mean time we have no phone service, it is. The alternative that the folks at AT&T are proposing is to establish new service in our new building (which means getting a new phone number) and using a feature called “Remote Call Forwarding” to have calls to old number arrive at our new place. The actual resolution is pending (thus the recommendation above to call my Google Voice number).

I used to work for the part of Pacific Telesis (now part of AT&T) that sold and helped provisionsmall business phone systems, so I thought I knew what we were getting into. I was amused at first that, after three phone calls to learn about our order status, I still had not talked to the right person. Sales didn’t know because it wasn’t a “new sale.” Service provisioning had no record of it because an order had not yet been placed. It got down to locating the single sales rep at an affiliated company who took our order. That amazed me. If I were to do all of this over again, and were gonna change numbers anyway, I’d look more seriously at Web-based provisioning through Bandwidth.com Inc.’s Phonebooth.com. It delivers the features of a small business phone system over the Internet.

In the mean time. I plan to enjoy the features of Google Voice, which makes incoming calls ring in multiple places, transcribes voicemail, let’s me send and receive SMS text messages from my computer and originate phone calls when Gmail is running on my browser. Our neighbors in the new building are letting us “share” their WiFi, while we wait to learn more about the progress of our installation.

Life’s good.

Live Webcast: Voice Biometric Use Cases from the Market Leader

Tuesday, March 1, 2011 — 11 a.m. EST / 8 a.m. PST
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The flagship product moving forward will be PerSay’s broadly deployed text-dependent engine, now branded as Nuance VocalPassword(TM). Nuance Verifier(TM), the legacy, text-dependent voice biometric engine is on a roadmap to be integrated into VocalPassword going forward. Where customers are looking for text-independent or “dual engine” approaches, Nuance-branded FreeSpeech(TM) will be brought to bear. To round out the portfolio, Nuance S.P.I.D.(TM) is a platform for speaker identification and analytics that is employed by law enforcement and forensic specialists.

As I noted when Nuance’s acquisition of PerSay took place in December 2010, concentration brings coherence to the marketplace. Nuance has moved quickly to consolidate the product line and make its future direction clear. This is a very positive development as we enter a period when interest in voice biometrics has moved from “what is it?” to “how *exactly* do you implement it?” in the context of, identity proofing, secure customer care and protection of information made accessible through mobile phones.

Executives from Nuance and PerSay will join other technology providers and solutions providers as Opus Research convenes Voice Biometrics Conference – Amsterdam. It will be an assembly of folks from companies that are trialing and implementing voice biometric-based solutions as part of multi-factor authentication solutions, as well as system integrators, risk management, mobility and identity management specialists who are making voice biometrics part of their solutions sets.

For more information on VBC-Amsterdam visit the Conference Web site.

Today, new technologies put marketing folks, who measure success by CPMs, CPAs and CPCs, against the support fabric who care about building engagement models predicated on trust. They install monitoring and analytic systems that are used to anticipate your next action. The result often feels like “serendipity” as the firms you do business with seem to “understand” you and anticipate your next move. I called these “feel good” tactics that are “destined to fail” because they treat people as “consumers” not loyal or respected customers. Meanwhile today’s CRM technologies put marketing and advertising people on a collision course with the support folks who strive to build engagement models and build trust and loyalty between and among customers.

On February 2-3, 2011 in San Francisco Opus Research will convene the Conversational Commerce Conference (C3) as a venue for raising and resolving the issues exposed in the clash between Marketing and Support. As with the Meeting of the Waters, both disciplines will ultimately be assimilated into a torrent of talkpaths, interactions, queries, responses and transactions. Still the time as come, in these early days, to foster discussions that lead to mutual understanding – or at least an agreement to co-exist.

The idea of C3 began when I gave a talk at a CRM+VRM gathering organized by Project VRM and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. In it I observed CRM systems now monitor and capture input (metadata) from an unprecedented number of sources and use analytical engines to impute your intention, get more prescriptive and manipulate your tastes, preferences and activities. But, as I note in this post, they are *not* doing a very good job of listening and building meaningful conversations with customers.

Over at Internet2Go, Greg Sterling provides his insights into our goals for convening C3. In brief, it will be like no other conference because we’re bringing together a diverse group of executives from multiple disciplines and business focuses to address their real world issues. On the podium, you’ll find folks from Cisco, RapLeaf, Yelp, iCrossing, Marchex, Innovation Interactive/360i, Edelman, Creative Realities, Acxiom, the MMA, Empirix, Lithium, Get Satisfaction, Orange Labs, Air2Web, Oodle, Closely, Vendasta, Praized, Comcast, Fair Isaac Corporation, Weber Shandwick and others still to be formally announced.

As Greg notes, we’ve eschewed “social media fluff” with a list of topical sessions that include:

* Where Does Support End and Marketing Begin – and Vice Versa?
* The ROI of Social Conversations – What Metrics Should Apply?
* Shaping the Conversation: Search, Reputation and P2P
* A Parallel Universe: Social CRM for SMBs
* Customer Care in a Mobile and Cross-Platform World
* The Age of the Individual: From CRM to VRM

The day-and-a-half event will also feature provocative case studies from Cisco, Marchex, Lithium and Get Satisfaction mixed with panel discussions.

There are still a few speaking slots available. To inquire about them or to sponsor, contact Pete Headrick (pheadrick@opusresearch.net). Otherwise, visit the C3 Web site to see the latest speakers and sessions. Or Register Now, to get our early bird rate.

There’s a video demonstration embedded in this blog post on Vlingo’s site. As its author explains, the Action Bar uses the same “predictive intelligence” for both voice recognition and typed commands. This allows users “to initiate actions when it’s not as convenient speak to their phones – like on a noisy bus or quiet conference room.”

Well said, and much needed. As voice-enabled applications mature, developers have come to recognize that all mobile commerce apps must support multi-modal input. This positioning is especially important on Android-based devices where, as we noted back in August, Google has made significant investment in rapid, seamless access to speech recognition for command and control of a multiplicity of apps, features and functions on the Android, as well as dictation for populating search boxes or messaging utilities.

Mobile subscribers are the beneficiaries of the efforts by Google, Vlingo, Apple (which owns Siri), Nuance and a handful of other firms who are goading each other on to improve the mobile user interface. Improving recognition accuracy, as well as predictivity (which I know is not a word) is the task at hand and these technology companies are continually raising the bar in what is much more than “hands-free to hands-free” combat.

Featured Research Reports are available to registered users only.

For more information on becoming an Opus Research client, please contact Pete Headrick (pheadrick@opusresearch.net).

Click Here to View the Report Summary

As a major attraction, eComm 2010 will be the venue where I will present a detailed overview of Recombinant Communications and describe the opportunities that reside at the intersection of highly capable phones, Web Services, cloud computing and a range of “open source” software and well-defined API’s. Based on my previous experiences at eComm, it is the premiere venue to meet both visionaries and practitioners who are defining and developing an impressive array of strategies, tactics, partnerships and products.

See you there.

The description of the range of services to be offered sounds exactly like the Skype application offered on the iPhone. The most salient difference will be that the app will be running constantly in background on the nine devices described (which is not possible on the iPhone). It also marks the symbolic end to Verizon’s (as well as its wireless cohort’s) long-standing concern that VoIP services offered over the data link will cannibalize their core voice revenues. John Stratton, Verizon’s Chief Marketing Officer, told attendees of the Mobile World Congress that he was not concerned about either erosion of the voice traffic on its network or a decline in quality that would result from congestion caused by massive demand for Voice-over-3G.

Stratton said that the application was jointly developed from the ground up, leaving many details up for interpretation. My own belief is that the always-on Skype will be “link agile” using WiFi when available, 3G in some cases or the Verizon cell network if required to sustain qualities. At least that’s how I would architect the service given that subscribers must contract with Verizon for one of its Voice and Data plans. According to an article by Roger Chen in the Wall Street Journal, the “cheapest monthly voice plan now costs $40 for 450 minutes, and a $30 data plan is required with any smart phone.” So you may as well make the best use of all the links you can.

As for the impact on the wireless VoIP world at large, the application seems underwhelming. Sure it rattles AT&T Mobility’s cage by offering a nailed up voice-over-3G service one week after AT&T made it clear that it would continue its WiFi only approach. Yet, the range of services that are offered have an entry-level feeling to them. Meanwhile, Mobile World Congress was brimming with some really impressive X-over-wireless-IP services. Of special interest to me is a “video calling over the Internet” offered through the iTunes store by Fring and this intriguing voice-to-voice universal translator service offered by wireless personal assistant specialist VoxOx.

Harking back to my post about “satsificing”, I’m not sure that any of the services will work at high-levels of quality in all instances, but they are working well enough to make them ready for prime time.

Sign-up to attend this global gathering (May 4-5, 2010 – Hyatt Regency Jersey City) showcasing voice biometrics solutions to support banking and financial services, contact centers, customer care, mobile payments, healthcare and government services.

Confirmed sessions include case study presentations from the banking and healthcare sector; panel discussions on “Seeding the Cloud: Authentication as a Service,” “Opportunities for Mobile Authentication,” and “Data Security and Information Services.” And hear how a North American law enforcement agency has deployed one of the largest known speaker identification projects to fight crime.

Click here for to register now!