As an annual gathering, SpeechTEK is a chance for members of the speech processing community to get together and take stock of the current state of affairs. This year, with a customer relationship management conference sharing the physical venue, thoughts naturally turned to the state of phone-based self-service. On a global scale, the state of the market reflects the overall world economy. There is evidence that a year-long decline (or some say outright cessation) in enterprise capital spend has come to an end. The Asia-Pacific regions are a bit ahead of the rest (as evidenced by this story in a recent issue of The Economist). This has had some interesting impact on the demand for particular product features, including heightened interest in biometric security, mobile solutions and a visual (or video) element to accompany traditional interactive voice response (IVR) capabilities.

Other global trends are undeniable. With downward pressure on both capital spending and staffing, providers of solutions that include hosted, on-demand or “in the cloud” alternatives have reason for optimism. We were briefed on the new services and features offered by a broad range of service providers, including incumbent telephone companies (Verizon Business), and the broad range of platform providers ranging from the the full-blown version upgrades from Voxeo (showcasing Prophecy 10) and Convergys (introducing “Intelligent Self-Service”) and VoltDelta’s wholesale refresh of its automated contact center solutions.

Evidence of heightened interest in all things mobile was everywhere. This included more enlightened discussions of the ultimate voice user interface for mobile devices, voice search and multimodal/outbound notifications. I was also very encouraged by the level of interest shown in voice biometric-based caller authentication. We’ve clearly crossed a threshold whereby the opening questions are concerned with implementation options and overcoming recorded “spoof” efforts, rather than last-year’s customary “Does it really work?”

Voxeo has trademarked the term “The Unlocked Communications Platform” in reference to the new Prophecy 10 software. In doing so, it may have captured the overall spirit of the speech community. The year-and-a-half-long economic downturn has made us all yearn to be free and has generally sped up the process that enterprise planners go through to identify and define which technologies and personnel to jettison and which to keep and leverage. “Mobility, Security and Openness” are the “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” of the new regime. Add the human element and a focus on the best user experience and you’ve identified where the pockets of opportunity are going to be.

Categories: Articles

Tags: speech processing, Voice Self Service, Recombinant Telephony, hosted speech