The New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) will deploy an automated speech recognition from Nuance to shorten wait times, with hope, expand the reach of its “Trip Planner” service to the thousands more New Yorkers dialing 718-330-1234.
Articles
Centrelink Unveils Voice Authentication System
In a widely anticipated deployment, Australian social services agency Centrelink has officially launched a biometric speaker verification system used to authenticate customer access to welfare services. The $2 million system has been in development for more than two years, including a pilot program for students and families, and is now available to up to 60,000 Centrelink customers.
Because customers were having trouble remembering passwords for phone access, speaker verification was implemented as “the only thing that might work beyond a PIN,” said Ross Summerfield, Project Manager with Centrelink. Additionally, the voice self-service system frees up Centrelink to handle more complex cases and hopes to improve staff efficiency in handling some 28 million calls per year.
While the opt-in system is initially targeting “customers without complex lodging requirements and who may need to routinely update simple information,” Summerfield says they have no intention of rolling it out to all Centrelink customers. To recruit the initial customers, employees have been actively calling and inviting prospective users.
Summerfield says enrollment takes about five minutes, with a customer repeating an access number three times, their name twice and counting “1 to 9” a minimum of two times. Once authenticated, the user has access to all telephone self-service offerings.
Telecommunications provider Telstra has managed the service delivery, while KAZ provided project management for connecting the system components to Centrelink’s security services. As well, KAZ built dual, text-independent speaker verification engines, with Nuance providing an additional text-dependent engine.
Though the program is only officially available to Centrelink customers this week, Summerfield said measurements during the 2007-2008 pilot showed that 90% of callers would prefer to use speaker verification over a PIN, with 95% finding the system friendly and easy to use and 98% saying they would use it the next time they accessed Centrelink.
IM-inent Success for Voxeo’s Latest Acquisition
Today Voxeo is acquiring IMified, a company which operates a hosted platform that provides its clients simplified ways to off automated Instant Messaging services regardless of protocol or proprietary service provider. It’s all part of Voxeo’s efforts to support what it refers to as “Unified Self-Service” as part of a broad suite of Unified Communications services.
The Palm Pre and Voicemail Services: Feeding Speculation
Now that we know the price and release date of the Palm Pre, I’d like to pour some fuel on the flames that are illuminating Palm (and Sprint’s) strategy for voicemail and other speech-enabled services.
Proof of the Pudding: Aspect and Gold Systems share results of Microsoft OCS Implementations
Microsoft’s go-to-market partners provide the best testimonials regarding the uptake and financial benefits of implementing Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (OCS, for short).
New Yahoo! Mobile For iPhone adds Voice Search
Yesterday executives from Yahoo! Search held a “Chalk Talk” to describe both their guiding principles and major product initiatives. Today, Yahoo! formally launched a major upgrade to the Yahoo! Mobile application for iPhone owners. Among the improvements in the iPhone… Read More ›
Amazing Fact: Second Life Generates 1 Billion Minutes of Voice Calls per Month
This story by Dean Takahashi in Venture Beat provides vivid evidence of the changing models for call origination among social network participants. According to one report, this is about 12% of the traffic level on Skype these days, but given the much smaller user base, it speaks to the power of linking voice channels to all the increasingly addictive and immersive social networks.
Predicting “The Death of Voicemail” Is Wrongheaded
Jill Colvin’s article in the New York Times has had a ripple effect among both users and planners of communications services. The gist of the comments and Tweets (if there is such a thing as a “gist” for a 140 character declaration) is “It’s about time!” As the executives interviewed in the article explain, retrieving voice mail can is a time-waster for busy executives. But the conclusion is wrong that the logic is fundamentally flawed.
EBay is Purging Skype Calls from its Marketplace
eBay issued a letter to its customers saying that it was removing the Skype-based click-to-chat or click-to-talk buttons from their listings, effective June 10. EBay’s management cites “limited buyer and seller usage”. But it is more likely that the company, which derives significant revenue by taking a percentage of the value of transactions carried out through its resources, had no incentive to encourage interactions, and the subsequent transactions, to be carried out over a synchronous voice or text-chat conversations.
Study Finds Consumers Leery of Current ID Proofing Techniques
A comprehensive study into consumer perceptions and attitudes in Australia and New Zealand has found increasing concern that current forms of identity verification, such as PINs and passwords, are less than adequate security measures in preventing identity theft. In an online survey of more than 400 consumers, callcentres.net found 67% of respondents were “very or mostly concerned” about identity theft compared to 63% a year ago.
And while high-profile security breaches and subsequent media coverage may fuel this public concern, the study, sponsored by Salmat VeCommerce, found 37% of Australians (and 22% of New Zealanders) have directly experienced, or know a friend or family member to have experienced, identity fraud or theft.
Additionally, consumers are increasingly uneasy that PINs and password could be guessed or otherwise compromised leading to stolen information and possible theft. According to Laurence Jackson, research manager with callcentres.net, the ever-growing number of PINs and passwords is adding to the uneasiness.
“There is considerable frustration among consumers at having to remember multiple PINs and passwords when dealing the various organizations,” says Jackson. The study found that 70% Australian consumers have more than 4 active PINs or passwords and account for some 63 million total.
Underscoring consumers’ caution towards the more traditional methods of identity verification, the study found voice biometrics as the preferred method of identification processes (45%), followed by PIN (21%), password (18%) and personal details or history questions (16%). To provide a clear understanding of how a biometric identification process works, Jackson said the respondents were each given a brief demo of the technology and then asked whether they would use it.
Still, some of the data presented in the study signals that consumers’ perceptions of identification technologies remains conflicted at best. For example, asked when an organization uses more technology, “I feel my personal information is secure” some 33% of consumers “strongly or mostly” disagreed compared to 26% in 2008. And when asked “how simple or complex a process you would ideally like organizations to use when identifying you,” 75% of Australians wanted a “very or fairly” complex security process, up from 64% the year before.
Jackson says these contradictions are perception realities and reflect a need for technology providers to better educate consumers, as well as pointing “in a good direction toward future technologies, like biometrics.”