Yahoo’s $20 million investment in Vlingo and the rollout of a speech-enabled flavor of Yahoo One Search 2.0 signal an important epiphany for mobile service providers. They have confidence that mobile subscribers will readily embrace reliable speech recognition as the fastest, safest, most convenient way to find, interact, and transact with their favorite applications.
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UC’s Impact on Contact Centers and Self-Service
No blockbuster announcements were made at last month’s VoiceCon event in Orlando, FL. This reflects the maturity of the Unified Communications (UC) marketplace where key components of hardware and software have achieved commodity, building-block status.
Grading Free DA: A Qualitative Analysis of the Major Free Directory Assistance Providers
Today’s Free DA offerings are the most visible (or audible) entry points for mass market local mobile search. In this advisory, we assess the offerings of AT&T, Google, Jingle and Microsoft to see how well they fulfill the promise of delivering valuable, current local information to people on-the-go.
People Power: Agent-Assisted Speech Services
The metric for success for customer care voice self-services should not be based on automation rates but rather on task completion. And whether it’s for directory assistance, voicemail transcription or voice self-service applications, it has become increasingly clear that human beings will always have a role to play in the call workflow.
Managed Services Build Worldwide Momentum
It takes a recession, technological uncertainties and a weak dollar to convince global enterprises to take a closer look at hosted and managed services providers. A tipping point has apparently been reached across a broad spectrum of software firms. In this advisory, Opus Research takes a closer look at three very different solutions with Genesys Labs (subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent), Voxify and SpinVox.
CAT in 2008: Transition Without Disruption
In a year that has the scent of recession, enterprise investment in Conversational Access Technologies (CAT) will be more closely linked to business objectives than ever. This puts a premium on packaging and marketing efforts that improve users’ experience by leveraging existing self-service resources and fostering strong relationships with integrators, developers and managed service providers.
The ‘411’ on Mobile Directory Assistance: New Consumer Survey Findings
This is a transformative period for directory assistance (DA) service providers and callers alike. Call volumes are skewing toward mobile devices and competitive threats exist in the form of mobile Internet search, downloadable mapping applications and free DA alternatives. These competitive challenges raise strategic and tactical questions for mobile carriers and their service providers (about pricing and content) in the near term. The findings of a new Local Mobile Search consumer survey, sponsored by V-Enable, present a snapshot of mobile DA usage and of an industry very much in transition.
Microsoft and Yahoo: Well-Positioned for Mobile Search
Microsoft is set to pay a hefty premium ($44.6 billion) to pre-empt others from acquiring Yahoo. While there are several areas of duplication and redundancy, a Yahoo subsidiary of Microsoft is well-positioned to take on Google and capture a significant share of local search and mobile commerce spending.
Packaging Conversational Access in 2008
In 2008, the CAT community will bring more products and services to market that integrate automated speech with wireless bandwidth and computer processing as a way to improve the user experience for search, navigation and entertainment. Instead of pushing the proverbial envelope of technology and capabilities, this trend will put an emphasis on packaging and promotion of available technology building blocks.
SoundAccess Marks Acxiom’s Entry into Voice Authentication
It is good news for the voice authentication community when a billion-dollar leader in the customer data integration industry adds voice biometrics to its product line. With Acxiom joining VoiceVerified to offer the SoundAccess caller authentication, a significant presence in data integration for financial services companies joins the voice authentication community.