Nuance exec talks speech-to-text service

VoIP, unified messaging, products and services

Following a recent announcement where Nuance Communications disclosed that its Voice-to-Text messaging service is being integrated with as part of the Cisco Unified Communications System 8.0, we interviewed John Pollard, vice president, voice-to-text services, Nuance about how services like those his company offers can be integrated with Unified Communications.

Pollard described how Nuance voice-to-text services transcribe enterprise users' voice messages into text so the text message can then be sent to PCs and mobile phones via e-mail or text message. The feature gives users the option to answer by text rather than by voice when it is more convenient to do so as is the case when a user may be sitting in a meeting, on a conference call, or on travel where a returned phone call is not optimal.

Pollard believes one of the greatest benefits enabled by a speech-to-text transcription service is improved responsiveness to customer and co-worker requests. The ability to "index" calls as text messages can be applied not only to improve personal communications management but also in a call center environment to distribute messages and append messages to a customer record.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

Following a recent announcement where Nuance Communications disclosed that its Voice-to-Text messaging service is being integrated with as part of the Cisco Unified Communications System 8.0, we interviewed John Pollard, vice president, voice-to-text services, Nuance about how services like those his company offers can be integrated with Unified Communications.

Pollard described how Nuance voice-to-text services transcribe enterprise users' voice messages into text so the text message can then be sent to PCs and mobile phones via e-mail or text message. The feature gives users the option to answer by text rather than by voice when it is more convenient to do so as is the case when a user may be sitting in a meeting, on a conference call, or on travel where a returned phone call is not optimal.

Pollard believes one of the greatest benefits enabled by a speech-to-text transcription service is improved responsiveness to customer and co-worker requests. The ability to "index" calls as text messages can be applied not only to improve personal communications management but also in a call center environment to distribute messages and append messages to a customer record.

In the case of the Cisco and Nuance integration, Cisco's SpeechView uses Nuance's Voice-to-Text messaging to extend the Cisco Unity Connection platform with voicemail messages that are automatically transcribed and delivered as text. According to the two companies prepared remarks describing the service, "Each transcribed voice message also includes the full audio file as an attachment, as well as the Caller ID in the subject line when available. [If] users want to listen to messages, the audio remains in the user's voice mailbox. Message delivery maintains enterprise security levels, [because] SpeechView applies encryption from the voicemail box through all stages of the conversion process."

When we asked Pollard why Cisco chose his company over others that also offer speech-to-text services, he touted his companies range of languages supported (currently at 10 languages and dialects), the technology Nuance uses to maintain high call quality (which is also important to transcription accuracy), and the redundant global data centers Nuance employs to assure scale and reliability.

Our observations: While we don't think that every organization will be able to cost-justify the business case behind integrating speech-to-text transcription as part of their unified communications deployments, we do think that services like those Nuance provides should at least be part of what is considered in the business case — especially where indexing voice messages can improve responsiveness and customer service.

Read more about voip & convergence in Network World's VoIP & Convergence section.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.