Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

July 16, 2008

Nuance's SmartListener Technology Enhances Speech Recognition Automation Solutions

By Rajani Baburajan

Nuance (News - Alert), a global provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers, today announced the launch of SmartListener software technology, offering more automated solutions to call center businesses. 
 
Using SmartListener technology, an automated speech recognition system can better focus on the concept behind caller’s words and decipher caller’s actual request.  The resulting system adapts to a larger variety of more natural responses from callers, said Nuance officials.
 
According to Nuance, the most important feature of SmartListener technology is that it can recognize out-of-grammar inputs received in a speech-enabled automated system, enabling the system to recognize the caller requests correctly the first time more frequently.
 
“Out-of-grammar error rates present a set of challenges to businesses and their customers,” said Steve Cramoysan, research director, Gartner (News - Alert), in a statement. 
“Innovation that enables speech solutions to accurately interpret the meaning of the unexpected words and phrases that customers use will help drive the ease of use, quality and accuracy of automated speech solutions while improving the most important element -- the customer experience,” added Cramoysan.
 
SmartListener technology uses Nuance’s Adaptive Grammar Engine to transform the grammar versions of an existing speech solution into adaptive grammars. 
 
“By helping speech solutions proficiently handle unexpected caller inputs, SmartListener technology can increase the savings from speech applications by quickly and cost-effectively achieving greater automation rates,” said officials at Nuance in a statement. 
According to a research conducted by Nuance using its Deployment Databank, out-of-grammar utterances are the main reason for the failure of automated customer service solutions across the world. They outnumber other performance issues by a ratio 5:1. This situation leads to customer frustration and business loss.
 
Nuance Deployment Databank consists of terabytes of contact center interaction data collected from millions of real world samples. Nuance found that when a caller gives a response for which the application has been designed, the accuracy is well above 90 percent. The accuracy falls when the caller gives a response that the application has not been designed for; it falls to about 16 percent.
 
SmartListener addresses the issue by enabling speech solutions to understand what the caller intended, even if their response doesn’t precisely match the application design, according to the company.
 
“Addressing out-of-grammar represents the greatest opportunity for a profound improvement in speech solution performance,” said Lynda Kate Smith (News - Alert), vice president and chief marketing officer of Nuance Communications, in a statement. 
 
 “Out-of-grammar utterances are the largest single challenge facing speech applications today. SmartListener technology significantly advances how the industry can improve the caller experience while providing cost savings to business,” said Smith.
 
Rajani Baburajan is a TMCnet Contributing Editor.
 


Related Contact Center Solutions Articles

    Avaya is Now a Member of Open Visual Communications Consortium

    Avaya, a provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, joined the Open Visual Communications Consortium (OVCC), a non-profit organization of worldwide communications technology companies working together to enable video collaboration across any network, vendor platform and device. [ Read More ]
    05/23/2013

    Are You Using Key Performance Indicators of the Past in a Next-Gen Contact Center?

    As the economy continues to lag (along with consumer confidence), many companies are finding it more important than ever before to retain the customers they have. In a commoditized world, smart companies understand that the best way to differentiate themselves from competitors is by offering top-notch multichannel customer service. [ Read More ]
    05/23/2013

    Contact Solutions Deploys AnyPresence to Develop Mobile Customer Service Apps

    In an effort to create next generation mobile customer service applications (apps), Contact Solutions, a provider of on-demand contact automation solutions and hosted interactive voice response (IVR) in North America, has deployed an enterprise mobile development platform - AnyPresence. [ Read More ]
    05/23/2013

    SYNETY Announces Integration of CloudCall with GoldMine CRM

    Users of GoldMine CRM will now be able to access telephony functions directly from within GoldMine. To provide this capability, Synety has announced integration of its on-demand business telephony application, CloudCall with GoldMine CRM, which will allow GoldMine users to use CloudCall by doing a regular upgrade of the CRM software. [ Read More ]
    05/22/2013

[ View all Contact Center Solutions Articles ]

FOLLOW US

Contact Center Solutions Glossary of Terms

Featured Whitepaper

    Microsoft® Lync® in the Contact Center: Integrating with Customer Interaction Center™ to Provide a Barrier‐free Customer Experience To implement contact center functionality, organizations using Microsoft Lync Server 2010 can follow the unified communications blueprint of open standards interoperability and integrate to a contact center solution of their choice. Customer Interaction Center (CIC) from Interactive Intelligence is a proven best of breed contact center solution that merits consideration ...

Featured Success Story

    Contact Center Solutions Featured Success Story
    Interactive Intelligence all-in-one IP communications software suite integrated with Microsoft Lync helps Bentley save $200,000 annually.

Featured Product Demo

    Contact Center Solutions Interaction Analyzer™
    Interaction Analyzer™
    Real-time word and phrase spotting. Alerting. Analytics. Scoring. Coaching. Watch how Interaction Analyzer turns every moment, of every past and present call, into data that lets you deliver an exceptional customer experience.

Featured Resources

Ask the Expert

Press Releases