SpeechTEK show highlights the right way to use speech technology

At the SpeechTEK conference going on this week in New York, attendees are hearing advice about how to deploy speech-based technologies without sacrificing customer service.

Among the keynote speakers at the show is Paul English, who created the infamous cheat sheet for circumventing automated phone systems. English's GetHuman project began as a list of tips for the quickest way to get through certain companies' phone menus to reach a human customer service representative.

At the SpeechTEK conference, English unveiled the work he has been doing with some of the vendors behind today's interactive voice response (IVR) systems. English teamed up with Microsoft and Nuance Communications to create customer service standards, which are designed to eliminate poor experiences with automated systems.

Some of the proposed GetHuman standards include giving callers the option to wait to speak to a customer service representative; providing estimated wait times; offering a call-back option; never making callers repeat information they have provided during a call; and providing an easy mechanism for callers to rate the quality of service they received.

"Consumers have put up with bad customer service over the phone for too long, and this new initiative will put some sanity back into how companies interact with their customers," English said in a statement.

The GetHuman project team plans to solicit feedback on the proposed standards during a 60-day comment period, after which it will publish a final design document. Companies will be able to register their GetHuman-compliant phone services and make use of an auditory icon that will signal to callers that the systems are compliant.

Also at SpeechTEK, research firm Datamonitor dispensed its own deployment advice. The firm unveiled a new white paper, "An Introductory Guide to Speech Recognition Solutions," that provides recommendations to companies in the process of evaluating or deploying speech recognition systems.

Over 7 million calls are handled every day by speech-based routing, portal and self-service applications, according to Datamonitor. Investments in speech are growing at rate of 22.6% per year, the firm says. By 2009, businesses worldwide will spend an estimated $2.7 billion on speech recognition products and services.

Datamonitor's white paper covers the history of speech recognition technology; potential business benefits of speech deployments; how different speech components work; and how commercial products stack up.

Other vendors making a splash at SpeechTEK include:

* Empirix, which is launching an automated testing service that evaluates the performance of speech applications before they're rolled out in contact centers. The vendor's Hammer Service Assurance for Speech provides performance data such as application availability, speech recognition rates and transaction length.

* Intervoice and Datria, which teamed up to provide speech-based packages for field service technicians. The bundles combine Datria's field service and asset management software with Intervoice's converged voice platform. The combination lets field technicians call in and use spoken commands to close a work order or reorder parts, for example. The system converts the spoken words into data that gets fed into enterprise software systems.