Like home construction alternatives, today’s speech deployment options range from the custom-built to the pre-built. It’s different from in the past, when companies had little choice but to develop speech applications using one vendor’s proprietary platform and tools – aided in many cases by an army of consultants.
People who want to build a new home can hire an architect to design a one-of-a-kind custom dwelling, pick from a range of stock house plans or buy prefabricated house parts ready for the field. Deciding which is the right way to go depends on schedules and budget, among other factors.
Companies in the market for new call routing and self-service speech applications have similar options at their disposal. Like home construction alternatives, today’s speech deployment options range from the custom-built to the pre-built. It’s different from in the past, when companies had little choice but to develop speech applications using one vendor’s proprietary platform and tools – aided in many cases by an army of consultants.
Today, corporate buyers can sacrifice application customization and complexity in favor of configurable, packaged offerings, often geared to specific vertical markets. ScanSoft, for example, offers SpeechPaks tailored for healthcare and utility companies that combine design templates, standard call flows, dialog components and pre-recorded voice prompts.
In addition, the advent of standards such as VoiceXML and the Microsoft-backed Speech Application Language Tags is letting users develop applications that can be ported from one vendor’s platform to another.
Users are buying into the idea, analysts say. According to Gartner, 50% of voice application development will be based on platform-independent application development tools by year-end 2006.
At the same time, outsourced services from vendors such as Tellme Networks and NetByTel are getting the attention of companies that want to avoid the capital expenditure required for traditional voice technologies deployed in-house.
Taken together, these trends are driving up demand for voice-enabled technologies. According to Datamonitor, global voice business revenue totaled more than $800 million in 2003 and is expected to hit $1 billion this year and $1.3 billion by the end of 2005.
Speech in small doses
WageWorks.com’s experience is typical of a midsize business that wants speech-enabled applications but is held back by the cost of entry. Randy Rubingh, director of customer service at the San Mateo, Calif., benefits administration company, had been looking to invest in a traditional interactive voice response (IVR) platform but found the technology too expensive for his company’s budget and too specialized for existing staff to manage.
“Not only was the expense of paying $150,000 or $250,000 for an IVR system too much for a company of our size, but we also would have had to hire another telecom person,” Rubingh says.
He found an alternative in Angel.com, which develops and hosts IVR applications for tasks such as resetting passwords, placing an order and conducting speech-enabled phone surveys. Angel’s hosted model gives WageWorks the tools to build and deploy its IVR applications, billed on a pay-as-you-go basis.
WageWorks is using Angel’s services to automate certain benefits-related functions. For example, customers can enroll in new services or check the status of pending claims using speech commands.
For Rubingh, one important feature is the ability to make application changes through a Web browser. WageWorks can upload its own recordings and modify call flows, for example, on the fly. With other hosted services, the company would have to make change requests and wait for the provider’s technicians to make the changes, Rubingh says.
Getting speech savvy Companies planning to deploy automated speech-recognition technology need a clear plan, Gartner says. Here are some of the research firm’s tips for devising an enterprise-wide speech strategy. | ||||||||||||
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In return, Angel collects per-minutes charges. Service costs start at $40 per month for the tools needed to build and manage an application, plus 300 minutes of usage, says Mike Zirngibl, president and CEO of the company.
Angel’s line charges are three to four times the cost of standard line charges, Rubingh says. But transactions handled by the automated service cost about one-quarter the price of those handled by live WageWorks agents, he says. “Right out of the box, we started saving the equivalent of four full-time employees,” Rubingh says.
Speech to go
One real estate firm’s foray into speech-enabled applications was driven by a need to find its agents more easily.
For realtors, accessibility is critical, says Mike Crowley, vice president of Century 21 Automated Real Estate Center in Mission Viejo, Calif. Crowley for years had mulled unified messaging services that promised anywhere, anytime access to voice, fax and e-mails, but only recently pulled the trigger on technology that combines automated attendant, call-processing and call management applications.
“We had been thinking about unified messaging for many years. The seed germinated back in 1997 or ’98, but it was prohibitively expensive at that point,” Crowley says. “In 2003, the technology was refined enough, and the price came down enough, for us to implement.”
The two-location Century 21 franchise is using unified messaging tools from Applied Voice & Speech Technologies (AVST). The vendor’s CallXpress software bundle – which gets tied to a user’s existing PBX or IP-PBX switches – works with IBM, Microsoft and IMAP e-mail servers to combine voice, fax and e-mail messages in one in-box and make them accessible via telephone, wireless device or computer.
With AVST’s Seneca speech-enabled call management module, agents can use voice-activated commands to manage phone calls, e-mails and faxes. Text-to-speech functions convert e-mails and faxes into computer-generated speech that can be “read” to the user over the phone.
Instead of giving customers three different phone numbers where they can be reached, an agent just has one number to give out, Crowley says. The technology finds the agent, whether he is at home, on the road or in the office.
As an added bonus, the technology has let Century 21 Automated cut back on the physical office space it leases. Agents spend less time in the office because they’re not constantly stopping in to check for e-mails and faxes, Crowley says. Most spend 90% of their days on the road now, as opposed to 50% in the past, he says.
Pricing for AVST’s unified messaging platform starts at about $1,000 per port.
Speak, don’t press
TuVox‘s voice recognition software found a place in Activision’s customer service operations – even though the software game developer already had automated 60% of inquiries to its call center using more traditional, menu-based IVR technology.
Using TuVox’s hosted services hasn’t significantly increased the number of calls that are handled automatically, as opposed to through a live agent. But getting rid of tedious, menu-based prompts in favor of a more user-friendly, conversational system has improved customers’ experience, says Jim Summers, vice president of quality assurance and customer support at Activision in Santa Monica, Calif.
“The fundamental problem we were trying to solve is the issue of ‘If you want this, press 1. If you want this, press 2. If you want this, press 3,'” Summers says. “That’s just very tedious, very difficult and very limiting.”
Spending $1 million or more on an in-house deployed speech recognition system didn’t add to up a favorable ROI scenario for Activision, so the company looked to a hosted provider, Summers says. TuVox keeps the system up and running, which lets Activision focus on its core business.
“We don’t want to become experts in speech recognition, we just want to serve customers,” Summers says. Activision supplied TuVox with the material to produce a speech database, and TuVox did the heavy lifting, freeing Activision from a hefty upfront capital expenditure. “From our standpoint, this is really peripheral to our core operations. We didn’t want to invest more than we need,” Summers says.
