SPEECH TECHNOLOGY

Best Practices
July/August Issue
• Speech Is an Essential Business Tool
• Engaging Customers in Mobile

Series Environments
• ROI in Speech—Invest in New Technology
or Leverage Existing Infrastructure
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about each topic and have your questions answered
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Sept/Oct 2011 Issue:
• Speech Analytics
• Speech in Government
• Speech Targeting Senior Audiences—
How to Best Utilize and Gain Acceptance
• Secrets to Better Customer Service
Using Speech
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Nov/Dec 2011 Issue:

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 CONTENTS
> > F E AT U R E S
May/June 2011
Volume 16, Number 3

>> COVER STORY

22 Speech Analytics
Captures Consumer
Sentiment
Technologies blend data
16
from different sources, Hosted IVRs
emotional states and
moments in time.
Bring Peace
BY LEONARD KLIE of Mind
Price and flexibility are
28 Don’t Let M&As
encouraging corporations
to switch from premises-
Steer You Off based systems.
Course BY PAUL HYMAN
Tech vendors gets
acquired. What can your
organization do to protect
its investments?
BY PAUL KORZENIOWSKI

>> FYI >> COLUMNS

10 SpeechCycle Dedicates Division to Smartphone Customers 2 Editor’s Letter
Interactions over mobile devices are so different that SpeechCycle created Making a Case for IVR Hosting
a unit devoted to customer care. The first application, Smart Care Mobile, BY DAVID MYRON
takes calls out of the contact center to optimize the customer experience.
4 In Other Words
11 Call Centers Receive Guidance on Protecting Credit Card Data Based Global Presentations Using TTS
on the Payment Card Industry’s Data Security Standard, service providers get And Automated Translation
recommendations to ensure the integrity of phone-based transactions. BY SUE ELLEN REAGER

12 Tech Investments Buoy Workforce Optimization The WFO suite 8 Inside Outsourcing
market is forecast to post healthy growth during the next few years. Spring-Cleaning or a
New House?
12 Overheard/Underheard Under-the-radar speech news. BY KEVIN BROWN

13 Mobile: The New Frontier for Voice Security Nearly a third of 9 Interact
consumers believe voice biometrics is the best method for verifying their Much Ado About Toronto
identities on mobile devices. BY MELANIE POLKOSKY

14 Market Spotlight: Government Homeland security drives voice R&D.

38 Standards
Making Modalities Play
15 Soundbytes News roundup. Nicely Together
BY DEBORAH DAHL

>> DEPLOYMENTS
39 Voice Value
Emergency Preparedness
Is a Job for All
34 IVR Is Good News for Scripps The media company leverages Pronexus BY ROBIN SPRINGER
system to standardize subscription services for 14 newspapers.
BY LEONARD KLIE 40 Forward Thinking
If This Passes, Only Criminals
36 Rural Arizona Connects With Residents Switching from a hosted to an Could Do Speech Technology
on-premises contact center suite speeds service and cuts costs. BY LEONARD KLIE BY MOSHE YUDKOWSKY

www.speechtechmag.com MAY/JUNE 2011 Speech Technology | 1

 EDITOR’S
LETTER
Making a Case for IVR Hosting
uilding and maintaining an IVR on premises can be complex and costly. In
B addition to the costs of deployment, periodic upgrades should be expected.
But the details of the maintenance and upgrade costs raise questions: When is the
next upgrade? How disruptive will the deployment be to systems and processes?
How long will the upgrade take? How much it will cost?
There are situations—as suggested by our cover story, “Hosted IVRs Bring Peace
of Mind” (page 16)—in which on-premises IVRs are more economical than hosted
IVRs. However, on-premises solutions require a large up-front capital expense. And,
unless an organization sets aside money and resources to maintain and upgrade its
IVR system periodically, it can easily get stuck with antiquated technology—espe-
cially during prolonged economic slumps. According to research cited in our story,
the on-premises IVR market has been in decline in recent years during The Great
Recession. Conversely, the hosted IVR market has been trending upward.
Many who still resist the hosted model argue that organizations lose too much
control of valuable data, processes, and customer interactions. And, unfortu-
nately, some fool themselves into thinking they can do a better job than a company
that specializes in customer service. That is akin to saying, “I don’t want to lose con-
trol, so I’m going to fly the plane instead of an experienced pilot.”
Additionally, farming out the IVR to a third-party vendor doesn’t mean you have
to lose control, either. Too many organizations mistakenly think that handing an
important business process to a vendor means that they should throw the project
or process over the fence and walk away. On the contrary, organizations should get
regular reports and necessary alerts from the hosting provider, and they should peri-
odically discuss opportunities and concerns that undoubtedly will arise.
Those who recognize the value of the hosted model appreciate the fixed and pre-
dictable costs. Plus, they get technology upgrades at the push of a button at no addi-
tional cost. They also get a scalable system, so when IVR usage dips, the client can
scale down to cut costs and scale up as needed.
If that doesn’t convince you to consider a hosted IVR, contemplate this: What
happens if your IVR vendor gets acquired? Acquisitions are common, according to
the feature, “Don’t Let M&As Steer You Off Course” (page 28). It states, “In an
industry rapidly evolving, acquisitions have become a common way for vendors to
expand their businesses. Last year brought more than a dozen purchases…and
Nuance Communications Inc. has made more than 30 acquisitions—including nine
in 2007—since the turn of the millennium.” This article offers tips for navigating
a new course if your on-premises speech vendor gets acquired. On the other hand,
if your hosted IVR solution provider gets acquired, it’s immensely easier to switch
to another hosting provider than it is to try to protect your on-premises investments.
The benefits of the hosted model are clear, but if you’re still not sure, then conduct
a low-cost, no-risk test run—something you can’t do with an on-premises solution.
But, first, read our cover story on the topic.
David Myron
Editorial Director
dmyron@infotoday.com
@dmyron on Twitter
2 | Speech Technology MAY/JUNE 2011
Editorial Director David Myron
dmyron@infotoday.com
News Editor Leonard Klie
lklie@infotoday.com
Managing Editor Greg Lupion
glupion@infotoday.com
Senior Designer Laura Hegyi
Proofreader Greg Edmondson
Contributors Kevin Brown, Deborah Dahl, Paul Hyman, Paul
Korzeniowski, Melanie Polkosky, Sue Ellen Reager, Robin Springer,
Moshe Yudkowsky
Editorial Advisory Board The Editorial Advisory Board of Speech Technology
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Sponsored Content | May/June 2011
Doing the Right Math:
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Improve customer satisfaction AND reduce
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Larger and more interactive dialogs now cost
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Using internal and/or external data to deliver
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menus that recognize situational realities
– For example, immediately prompting
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– Knowing a customer is a new mover
may provide a bank an opportunity to
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• Remembering customer preferences
expressed in previous interactions, such
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IMPLEMENT HIGH QUALITY VOICE
RECOGNITION
Advances in voice recognition technology
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customers to be more frequently understood
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sensitivity to:
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PROACTIVE OUTREACH REDUCES
INBOUND INQUIRIES
Outbound calls help to improve customer
satisfaction as well as reduce inbound calls.
Effective outbound campaigns include credit
card activation notices, new account
welcome messages, and notification of
suspicious account activity. Changes in
regulatory disclosure rules prompted one
VoltDelta customer to use the DeltaCast
service to notify their clients of account
inactivity. Over 30,000 automated calls were
made without IT involvement via an easy
web-based configuration interface for
uploading files, creating distribution lists
and scheduling campaigns. Real-time
reporting provided managers with instant
insight into the effectiveness of each
outbound campaign. Robust hosted outbound
systems should also include the ability to
reach out and then convert responses with an
inbound speech recognition application or
agent support to deliver immediacy with
cost savings.
EVALUATE “VOICE OF THE
CUSTOMER” ACROSS ALL CHANNELS
Every interaction is potentially a customer
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Speech In Finance
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all channels of communication. Call
recording cost effectively captures the more
subjective aspects of customer satisfaction.
An organization can get a more thorough
impression of the caller’s experience by:
• Recording the experience as a single
entity through any transfer.
• Providing agent screen recording to
identify the agent’s perspective.
• Providing a graphical user interface to
easily listen, see and share caller
experiences.
DELIVER CARE WITH CONFIDENCE
Customer service excellence is positively
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ABOUT VOLTDELTA ONDEMAND
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More information on VoltDelta OnDemand can
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or call 866-436-1169.
 SUE ELLEN REAGER
IN OTHER
WORDS

Global Presentations Using TTS

And Automated Translation
It’s the future of sales materials, worldwide customer support, and corporate media
he most exciting—and underused—technology is file, in order to compensate for the latency associated with
T the global online world of text-to-speech. TTS may buffering and playing online audio, as dictated by the
not yet be emotive, but at this adolescent stage, the technol- user’s access to the Internet.
ogy can meet most industries’ needs by providing vital sales Web page presentations with audio also offer interactiv-
and customer support. ity. Fields, check boxes, multiple choice, and other response
Among marketing and sales professionals, PowerPoint is mechanisms add spice and interest to a page while provid-
popular for its ease of use. The program functions on all ing valuable feedback to its creator.
computers and all languages and is versatile enough to be
saved in other formats, including Web presentations, ROI, TTS, and automated translation
movies, and pages, as well as JPEGs. The combination of TTS and automated translation rep-
Built into PowerPoint is the capability to be a stand- resents the future of international sales materials, global cus-
alone, with audio acting as the presenter. The audio can be tomer support, and worldwide corporate media. Like TTS,
TTS, especially in other languages. Slides rotate as audio automated translation is in its adolescent stage, and its
clarifies the content, with the audio launch timing defined results cannot be used “as is.” But the results of automated
in the custom animation settings. The translation can be processed, polished,
ensemble creates a revolving presenta- Automated translation and improved by in-house personnel or by
tion for DVD, desktop, or the Web. and TTS enable audio vendors using online software. Examples
Translations can be used to generate and presentations to of the latter include http://www.Subtitle
TTS in other languages, replacing the be translated into YourVideo.com and http://www.Translate
need for international voice talent 10 or 20 languages. YourWebpage.com, which store auto-
recording. Then, the results of the text- translation, provide an online interface for
to-speech can be improved with music in the background. users to modify content, and predetermine preferred trans-
When translated, audio with PowerPoint is a fine solution lations to improve automated translation results.
for international presentations, demos, Web slides, and take- Automated translation and TTS enable audio and presen-
aways from global meetings or shows. Though recording a tations to be translated into 10 or 20 languages at a lower
human voice talent may make the greatest impact on the tar- cost with less administrative management. Importantly,
get audience, TTS is powerful, and the cost of human record- corrections or modifications are faster, easier, and cheaper.
ing—plus the management and administration required to Is TTS less impactful than a voice talent? Yes. Is auto-
organize the effort, install the audio, and handle the account- mated translation less impactful than a professional trans-
ing issues—discourages 99 percent of companies from global- lator? Yes. But what is far less impactful than both is not
izing their presentations. TTS offers an affordable solution. translating at all, which is the current status of the industry.

TTS with Web presentations Making a difference

The concept of a TTS audio file associated with a slide
also applies to Web pages by boosting multilingual online
help and how-to instructions. The Web brings the freedom
to modify and expand content more easily, adding languages
and new TTS, in addition to refreshing stale content.
Web pages can be timed to move from one page to the
next by inserting a meta tag in the <head> of a page. The
following code dictates that, after 12 seconds, the page will
swap for “nextpage.html”:
<meta http-equiv=“refresh” content “12;url=nextpage.html” />
Nonetheless, the timing of a Web page swap should be
longer than the exact length of the associated TTS audio
As a technology, TTS could help thousands of companies
increase their international support and help small compa-
nies go global. Together, TTS and automated translation
reverse the impediment of language, reduce the cost of pur-
suing international sales for companies that never could
have afforded globalization, and enable others to improve
their customer support worldwide. 
Sue Ellen Reager is CEO of @International Services, a translation and software
solutions company that performs translation, voice recording, and global system
testing for speech and touch-tone applications as well as media localization.
She can be reached at sueellen@internationalservices.com.

4 | Speech Technology MAY/JUNE 2011 www.speechtechmag.com

August 8–10, 2011

NYC
Will You Be There?
AUGUST 8–10, 2011
HILTON NEW YORK, NEW YORK CITY

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W W W . S P E E C H T E K . C O M
 WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
 C-level executives
 Enterprise IT decision-
makers
 Telecom IT decision-
makers
 Customer service
managers
 Customer experience
designers
 Contact center
professionals
ATTEND SPEECHTEK 2011
TO LEARN HOW TO:
 Meet business goals
with speech.
 Improve customer
satisfaction and loyalty.
 Increase adoption and
acceptance of
self-service offerings.
 Select the best technology
for your business problem.
 Choose the right tools
and environments.
DON’T MISS!
SPEECHTEK LABS
SPEECHTEK EXHIBIT HALL
SPEECHTEK UNIVERSITY
W W W . S P E E C H T E K . C O M
 Speech solutions
managers and developers
 Marketing executives
 Voice user interface
designers
 Consumer electronics
designers
 Anyone who wants to
learn about deploying
speech technology for
business applications
 Diagnose and solve speech
application problems.
 Design a successful speech
customer experience.
 Apply the latest principles
in voice interaction design.
 Use the latest advances in
speech technology.
 Plan and manage
successful speech
deployments.
Check ou
t the
enclosed
progra
for det ail m
s goal? The hard reality is that the industry must embrace change or
K EY N OT E S
MONDAY  9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.
WELCOME & OPENING KEYNOTE 
Responding to the Voice of the
Constituent/Customer
David Gergen, Senior Political Analyst for CNN, Former
Adviser to four U.S. presidents
The internet, mobile devices, and social media are having such a
profound effect on the way people acquire and share information.
From the latest U.S. presidential and congressional shifts to political
unrest in the Middle East, an inescapable truth has emerged: Peo-
ple want to be heard and they want the governments and organiza-
tions that serve them to respond to their needs. Failing to do so, as
recent events have shown, can inspire a severe backlash that threat-
ens a change in leadership and government stability. Drawing on his
extensive political experience and acumen, David Gergen will explain
why this is happening and how businesses can avoid the mistakes
of government leaders.
TUESDAY  9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.
KEYNOTE PANEL 
Mobility — A Game-Changer for Speech?
Bruce Pollock, Vice President, Strategic Growth and Planning,
West Interactive
Mike Phillips, Co-Founder & CTO, Vlingo
Mazin Gilbert, Executive Director of Technical Research, AT&T
Vlad Sejnoha, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer,
Nuance Communications
New mobile devices are dramatically changing how customers inter-
act with businesses. This panel of industry experts describes what
new applications will be supported on mobile devices, discusses
how speech technologies will be used by these applications, and
describes how voice user interfaces will be integrated with graphi-
cal user interfaces. Will users embrace voice as they have embraced
keypads on mobile devices? Are speech recognition and natural
language processing able to process user speech into mobile
devices? Will speech-enabled mobile applications replace IVR appli-
cations? Learn the answers to these questions and more during this
keynote panel.
WEDNESDAY  2:15 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.
CLOSING KEYNOTE 
Prescription: What’s Needed to
Move Speech Forward?
Susan Hura and James Larson,
Program Chairs, SpeechTEK Conference
With IVR market saturation, industry consolidation, and customer
distaste for automated IVR systems, what’s needed to move the
speech industry forward? Speech technology holds the promise of
enabling customers and businesses to connect in a timely, effec-
tive, and engaging manner, but how can businesses achieve this
become obsolete. The days of separate voice-only and visual-only
interactions are gone. An organization must enable customers to
get the same information via any channel (IVR, web, mobile appli-
cations, social networks, or face-to-face interaction) and enable them
to switch channels seamlessly without losing information. This clos-
ing keynote reviews the best ideas presented at the conference and
adds suggestions for how to improve the interaction between cus-
tomers and businesses in this smartphone age.
 KEVIN BROWN
INSIDE
OUTSOURCING

Spring-Cleaning or a New House?

VUI designers can help sort out requirements
for outsourcing your IVR
hen organizations consider outsourcing their IVR, we solving, and how important is it to solve it?” More-
W most of them review their existing applications to over, you want to ensure that your house is welcoming
seek opportunities for improvement. However, this activity and has a good flow throughout.
is much like spring-cleaning in your house: When you are The responsibilities of VUI designers require under-
finished, you feel good but you still have the same home standing the problem the IVR will solve, from both the
with which you started. caller’s perspective and the goal of the owner of the IVR
With additions and major renovations over the years, application. Furthermore, designers must maintain a con-
this is the house that now resembles something a 7-year-old sistent theme across multiple applications in an IVR (think
child might build out of Lego bricks. For starters, you have decor in your house).
the “really useful” addition to the back of the house Customer experience designers and interaction design-
designed by your eccentric uncle (the IT telephony man- ers are similar to VUI designers, but they all don’t play
ager who stuck around for less than a year) and the various identical roles. The speech technology industry isn’t as
“travel rooms” featuring different languages that do not well defined as others, hence the confusion over small
match the rest of the house. degrees of difference. Given that the discus-
Don’t forget the confusing and unfriendly Seldom are sion centers on speech-enabled applications,
foyer, where all guests hate having you force speech-enabled a VUI designer is the correct choice for
them through it. Shouldn’t they feel grateful applications in these activities.
that you have added to the house, to the good shape If you believe you own a house that is
point where they should quit asking to come before they are already in good order—meaning it would
in through the less formal side door? Why outsourced. not require many changes before you out-
do some of them listen to that annoying man source your applications—you might con-
who posted a map on the Internet that shows people how sider having a VUI designer perform an audit to provide an
to get inside your house without going through your elab- external perspective. By doing so, you would quickly con-
orate foyer? firm whether your belief is correct. And the audit would
Perhaps outsourcing your IVR should be more like build- clearly provide examples that you may have never heard
ing a new well-designed home, rather than a daylong before, unless you called into your IVR regularly as you
spring-cleaning of your house. If you agree with that made changes over time.
hypothesis, then to whom should you turn for help in Seldom are speech-enabled applications in good shape
determining what your real requirements are? And who before they are outsourced. So, to set the proper application
will help you sketch out a high-level perspective of your budget expectations, do yourself and your organization a
new home? big favor. Don’t call a cleaning crew until you have thor-
Voice user interface (VUI) designers are excellent oughly reviewed your existing applications with an experi-
resources to help you define your true requirements. enced VUI team. A dust mop, pail, and broom would be
Why call them “true requirements”? Well, requirements better placed in the broom closet of your new, well-designed
come in many forms; if you are building a new home, you house that should serve you well for years to come. 
want to ensure that you are fulfilling your current
Kevin Brown is an architect at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Services, where he
requirements, as opposed to imagined or outdated ones. specializes in speech solutions design. He has 18 years of experience in designing
Bruce Balentine, of Enterprise Integration Group (EIG), and delivering speech-enabled solutions, and he can be reached at
kevin.c.brown@hp.com.
uses the term “never asked question”: “What problem are

8 | Speech Technology MAY/JUNE 2011 www.speechtechmag.com

 MELANIE
POLKOSKY
INTERACT

Much Ado About Toronto

Watson’s Jeopardy gaffe underscores importance of resolving miscommunication
nless you’ve been living under a moss-strewn rock, which slows the rate, and repeat the message verbatim.
U you’re aware that IBM recently either pulled off a However, higher error types would not be quickly resolved
massive marketing stunt or ushered in the next era of com- using that method. When we can’t assume an easy cause, we
puting, depending on the blogosphere pundit in your earshot. resort to emphasis of specific points, analogy, examples,
For three days in February, IBM’s intelligent speaking super- inference explication, and other explanations to get the con-
computer Watson not only played Jeopardy but also handily versation back on track to shared meaning. Interestingly,
beat two celebrated human contestants. Yet a Final Jeopardy while lower-level failures are generally seen as the respon-
mistake on the first day had tongues wagging and fingers sibility of the speaker to fix independently, higher-level
pointing, followed by much explanation of the gaffe. Watson causes are perceived as being the responsibility of both con-
responded to a clue about a U.S. airport with the answer versational partners to resolve.
“What is Toronto?” Oops. While the surprising error in an Watson’s Toronto breakdown was a model failure
otherwise dominating performance has because of inadequate background
been analyzed ad nauseam (http://www. Watson’s Toronto knowledge; a socially skilled human
pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/ferrucci- breakdown was a conversational partner would quickly
smartest-machine.html), such errors are model failure because of resolve that by expanding his knowl-
constants in everyday human interac- inadequate background edge base. Imagine if Watson was sim-
tion and really no big deal. knowledge. ply speaking to Mr. Trebek, instead of
I’ve been known to argue passionately playing Jeopardy:
that miscommunication handling is the most important part Watson: Well, I think the answer might be Toronto, but I’m
of building intelligent speaking applications. Of course, Wat- not quite sure.
son wasn’t designed to converse but simply to answer and Trebek: [incredulous] Seriously? Toronto’s in Canada.
select clues, in the highly constrained interactive style of Jeop- Watson: OK, then I think the answer is Chicago.
ardy. That may be fine language usage for a TV game show Trebek: And you’d be correct. (aside, chuckling) Didn’t you
but not so much in the practical world of real interaction. guys bother to feed Watson a map or a geography book?
Most designers know writing error recovery is half, or The communicative constraints of the Jeopardy game
even three-quarters, of the real work in dialogue design. And, itself worked against Watson because there is no option for
in contrast to our engineering colleagues, we’re pretty cool resolving problems through dialogue. Watson had low con-
with errors. They aren’t something to avoid and debug at all fidence in his Toronto answer, and, even more importantly,
costs; they are a natural part of everyday conversation. We had the correct one as another low-confidence response. In
don’t gasp and stay up all night if someone gets an error mes- a single turn of conversation, this miscommunication
sage. Instead, we make sure we correctly anticipated the could have been painlessly resolved. Stuff like that happens
cause of the breakdown, offered the appropriate message to us humans all the time.
content, and the user successfully advanced the dialogue. As advanced speech technology moves from research
Same as when we speak to people. experiment to practical application in business, its useful-
Research on breakdown reveals a hierarchy of error types ness and usability largely will be determined by whether it
that occur in every conversation. The two broad categories of can successfully shift from the highly constrained Jeopardy
conversational error are input failures and model failures. exchange to a more robust interaction that allows for easy
The former can stem from an inability to hear information resolution of miscommunication. As in other language-
(perceptual failure), incorrect or no interpretation of informa- based interactions, when miscommunication is viewed as
tion (lexical failure), or misunderstood meaning (syntactic inherent and designed for with an eye to human behavior,
failure). Model failures are more complex and occur because errors can be resolved outside the awareness of users, just
of a lack of information, different belief systems of interac- as they are in our daily interactions. And that isn’t trivial
tants, inadequate inferencing, and other cognitive issues. to Watson’s acceptance, in Toronto or anywhere else. 
Theorists suggest that when we recognize a problem dur-
ing conversation, we assume the lowest levels of the hierar-
Melanie Polkosky, Ph.D., is a social-cognitive psychologist and speech language
chy, because they require the least cognitive effort and are pathologist who has researched and designed speech, graphics, and multimedia
the easiest to resolve. For example, if we assume a perceptual user experiences for almost 15 years. She is currently a human factors psychologist
and senior consultant at IBM. She can be reached at polkosky@comcast.net.
failure first, the fix is generally to increase vocal intensity,

www.speechtechmag.com MAY/JUNE 2011 Speech Technology | 9


SpeechCycle Dedicates Division
to Smartphone Customers
SpeechCycle has launched a mobile division that will focus
exclusively on meeting the growing demand for customer care
solutions on the smartphone. Shortly thereafter, the company
released its first application, Smart-
Care Mobile, a smartphone platform
and application suite for customer care.
The need for the mobile division
emerged when the company began look-
ing at the smartphone market, according
to Roberto Pieraccini, chief technology
officer at SpeechCycle. “The paradigm of
customer interaction is different, the
type of customer is different, and the
technology is different,” he says. “The
type of interaction with a customer over
a mobile device is so different that it jus-
tifies a new division.”
The company’s goal in forming the
division was to leverage the smart-
phone, which offers significant oppor-
tunity for companies to deliver a
highly differentiated customer experi-
ence that drives customer loyalty, opti-
mizes contact center operations, and
increases revenue.
The Mobile Division of SpeechCy-
cle will dedicate significant resources
to creating products and solutions
that support the operating systems of
leading smartphones and other mo-
bile devices. The top three right now
are Apple’s iPhone, Google’s An-
droid, and RIM’s BlackBerry, accord-
ing to Pieraccini.
“The telephone as we know it is
changing into a much more powerful
device,” Pieraccini says. “It’s mostly
10 | Speech Technology MAY/JUNE 2011
> > N E W S > > T R E N D S > > A N A LY S I S
multimodal technology that requires
its own systems. You can use voice,
text, or touch, and since it has a built-
in display, you do not need to go
through lengthy dialogues.”
That’s one of the strengths of the
new SmartCare Mobile app, which in-
cludes the following key features:
“ It allows customers to bypass
traditional IVR menus and get right to the
applications they want to use.
• intuitive navigation with T3
(touch/type/talk) interface;
• predefined, customizable widgets;
• a dynamic deployment model; and
• seamless integration with enter-
prise contact centers and back-
end systems.
Companies can plug SmartCare Mo-
bile into their existing customer service
applications to create custom widgets
for customer surveys and feedback, no-
tifications, billing, support, and sched-
uling. SmartCare Mobile also has
integrated mapping so companies can
send geographically targeted advertis-
ing messages to interested customers.
SmartCare Mobile supports all of the
leading global smartphone operating
systems—including Android, iOS,
Windows Phone 7, and BlackBerry—
on a single application platform.
“One great feature and value proposi-
tion to SmartCare Mobile is that it com-
bines a number of customer care
applications into one portal,” says Alan
Pan, vice president of product manage-
ment at SpeechCycle. “It allows cus-
tomers to bypass traditional IVR
menus and get right to the applications
they want to use. It creates a highly
”
differentiated customer experience.”
SmartCare Mobile is a white-label
application that customers can access
when they download a participating
company’s customer care application.
Several corporations are piloting the
application.
SmartCare Mobile’s goal is “to take
calls out of the contact center and opti-
mize the customer experience,” Pan says.
“For the smartphone customer, em-
powerment is what this is all about,”
he adds. “This allows the customer to
take control.”
“Today’s consumers have become
power users of devices like the Android
and iPhone; they are accustomed to
watching videos, playing games, and
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browsing Web sites and are expecting
the same rich experience when they
communicate with their service
providers,” Zor Gorelov, CEO of Speech-
Cycle, said in a statement. “Smart-
phones are game-changers for providing
world-class customer care, and Speech-
Cycle has developed a solution to help
service providers meet the challenge.”
Pieraccini is quick to point out,
though, that creating the mobile divi-
sion in no way suggests that SpeechCy-
cle is abandoning the traditional IVR
market. “The IVR will still exist, and
we see a real need for it, too,” he says.
The division is being housed at
SpeechCycle’s New York headquarters
and is being led by Albert Kim, a vet-
eran software industry executive.
“With 300 million smartphones sold
worldwide in 2010, consumer behavior
has undergone a seismic shift. Smart-
phones have changed how consumers
interact with enterprises and service
providers. In fact, nearly two-thirds of
them use their mobile phone to contact
customer care,” Kim said in a state-
ment. “Consumers are carrying around
powerful computing devices, and they
expect faster and better customer ser-
vice. Our vision is to enable companies
to tap into this powerful medium to
build lasting and profitable relation-
ships with their customers.”
“The launch of the Mobile Division
of SpeechCycle is the next step in our
evolution,” Gorelov explains. “We have
had great success in providing intelli-
gent, phone-based self-service applica-
tions that improve the customer
experience while reducing costs. Ex-
tending these capabilities to the mobile
platform is a natural progression for
the company.” —Leonard Klie
“ Criminals are now targeting call centers
because they know there will be cardholder
data stored within their systems.
www.speechtechmag.com
Call Centers Receive Guidance
on Protecting Credit Card Data
If you handle credit card data, you fall within the scope of the
Payment Card Industry’s Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).
That’s the central message of a new
supplemental guidance document the
PCI Security Standards Council re-
leased in mid-March.
The “Protecting Telephone-Based
Payment Card Data Information Supple-
ment” provides actionable recommenda-
tions to merchants and service providers
processing payment card data over the
phone. Additional advice is offered on
protecting cardholder data in recorded
transactions.
The PCI standards apply to organiza-
tions with call center operations where
credit card information processed over
the phone can be recorded and stored,
exposing cardholder data to risk. “The
underlying goal is to protect the card-
holder’s data throughout the transac-
tion process,” explains Jeremy King,
European director of the Security Stan-
dards Council.
The council developed the informa-
tion supplement to help merchants and
service providers meet PCI DSS require-
ments to secure payment data captured
within voice recordings. Its main mes-
sage is simple, King says: If you don’t
need it, don’t store it. And if you do
need it, store it for the minimum time
possible and make it unreadable with
truncation and encryption, he adds.
A product of industry collaboration
and stakeholder feedback, the guidance
expands on a PCI Council FAQ pub-
lished in 2010. “We felt it was necessary
to come out with a special guidance
” is much more substantial than the cost to
MAY/JUNE 2011
document for the call center,” King
says. The guidance highlights the key
areas that organizations with call center
operations must address to process pay-
ment cards securely and outlines how
best to protect their businesses and cus-
tomers from the risks of card data com-
promise. Included are the following:
• an explanation of how PCI DSS ap-
plies to cardholder data stored in call
recording systems, with tables that map
data types to PCI DSS requirements;
• recommendations for merchants
when assessing risk and applicable con-
trols of call center operations, with a
quick reference flow chart that pro-
vides a step-by-step process for deter-
mining necessary controls to meet PCI
DSS requirements for voice recordings;
• specific guidance addressing the
storage of sensitive authentication data,
including suggested methods for ren-
dering data unavailable under query to
meet PCI DSS requirement 3.2; and
• guidance on key considerations
faced by call centers when implement-
ing PCI DSS requirements, including
recommendations and best practices.
King acknowledges that the laws of
individual countries on processing credit
card data supersede the PCI Council’s
standards, and that the standards coun-
cil is not an enforcement body. But most
card issuers have their own penalties for
companies that violate PCI standards.
The attention to call centers reflects
changes in the industry and the tactics
used by criminals, King notes, “Crimi-
nals are now targeting call centers be-
cause they know there will be cardholder
data stored within their systems. If a
criminal [hacks into the system] and
takes that data, the cost to the merchant
become PCI-compliant.” —Leonard Klie
Speech Technology | 11
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TECH INVESTMENTS BUOY • Research and development spend-

WORKFORCE OPTIMIZATION
In a new report on the world workforce optimization (WFO)
solutions market, DMG Consulting concludes that it’s “a pretty
exciting time.”
DMG’s seventh annual Quality Man-
agement/Liability Recording WFO
Product and Market Report forecasts
that contact centers will continue to
make substantial technology invest-
ments in 2011 and 2012. The WFO
suite market, mostly powered by speech
analytics, is expected to grow by 7 per-
cent in 2011, 6 percent in 2012, and 5.5
percent in 2013.
With a stronger market and increas-
ing options, it is even more important
now for end users to select vendors that
would cater to their individual contact
center and IT needs, DMG President
Donna Fluss says. “Looking beyond
the salesman” and prioritizing price,
product functionality, future direction,
and customer satisfaction rankings
should factor into the end user’s ulti-
mate vendor decision, she says.
The report took about three months
and more than 1,000 manpower-hours
to compile, Fluss says. “The report
makes it easy to see what’s in the mar-
ketplace,” she says. “I’ve been in this
market for awhile, and this is a pretty
exciting time. A high amount of inno-
vation and products continue to be in-
troduced. It’s a buyer’s market.”
Other trends highlighted include:
• The WFO market has recovered
from the recession, and 2011 has gotten
off to a strong start.
ing on WFO suites is high and is ex-
pected to rise as vendors invest in
innovation and building suite synergies.
• Vendors are embedding workflow
into their applications to make results
easier and more actionable for end
users seeking to apply the findings.
• End users are demanding Payment
Card Industry-compliant applications
from WFO vendors.
• Desktop analytics is gaining trac-
tion and should pick up momentum.
• An increasing number of contact
center infrastructure vendors have en-
tered the market with their WFO suites.
• Vendors are offering more feature-
rich WFO solutions for small to mid-
sized companies.
• End users in both large and small
contact centers are pushing vendors
to deliver hosted WFO and stand-alone
applications.
• End users are increasingly inter-
ested in buying multiple applications
from a single suite provider. —Brittany Farb

jokingly added a line welcom- envisions a day when medical

under-the-radar speech news //
  A team of IBM scientists
has worked tirelessly over the
past four years to build a
supercomputer that could
rival a human’s ability to
answer questions posed in
natural language. The result
was Watson, which competed
on Jeopardy against the TV
game show’s two longest-
reigning champions, trivia
superhumans Ken Jennings
and Brad Rutter, on February
14, 15, and 16.
Though imperfect, Watson
still trounced its human com-
petition. At the end of the
three-day challenge, Watson
had amassed a commanding
$77,147. Jennings took second
ing his new “computer over- diagnosis, business analytics,
lords.” The success of Watson contact centers, and tech sup-
represents a leap forward in port can be automated by a
natural-language processing— system like Watson. Let’s
BY LEONARD KLIE the ability to understand and hope Big Blue gives Watson a
respond to everyday dialogues, celebrity makeover: I’d hate to
with $24,000, and Rutter was complete with the puns, slang, be the patient who receives
third with $21,600. And while word play, and obscure cultur- bad news about his latest
Watson seemed unstoppable al references that are a main- colonoscopy from a metal box
against the champions, it was stay of Jeopardy. that talks through a huge
not as dominant against a Based on that success, IBM green ball on a plasma screen.
handful of politicians. In a
much less-hyped challenge on
February 28, Watson faced
four members of Congress:
Jared Polis (D-Colo.), Bill Cas-
sidy (R-La.), Jim Himes (D-
Conn.), and Rush Holt
(D-N.J.). Watson finished on
top with $40,300, compared
with the congressional mem-
bers’ $30,000.
On the screen where con-
testants write their “Final
Jeopardy” answers, Jennings Watson, the IBM supercomputer, handily beat two storied Jeopardy
on the last day of his challenge champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

12 | Speech Technology MAY/JUNE 2011 www.speechtechmag.com

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Mobile: The New Frontier for Voice Security

A recent Twitter poll conducted by Nuance
Communications on consumer preferences for
mobile customer service, transactions, and
security found that nearly one-third of respondents believe
voice biometrics is the best method for verifying their iden-
tities on mobile devices.
According to the poll, 84 percent of consumers contact
customer service through their mobile phones. More than
half (53 percent) of all those polled said that security risks
are a main concern when they complete transactions on
their mobile devices.
“Now more than ever, the need for enhanced security [on
mobile phones] is critical,” Hetal Pandya, director of product
management at Nuance, said in a statement. “Consumers are
using their mobile devices as their passports to managing
their lives, from paying bills to managing and setting up their
accounts. Voice biometrics gives them the added level of se-
curity needed to ensure that their information is protected
every step of the way.”
Organizers of the Voice Biometrics Conference agree, and
that’s why this year’s gathering in Amsterdam in late March
featured security on mobile devices as a central theme. With
5 million mobile devices in the world, “there’s a reason a lot
of attention is being paid [to mobile voice security],” says Dan
Miller, senior analyst and founder of Opus Research, the
event’s organizer. “There’s an interest among the people that
own these devices to do more with them, and so we’re just
now starting to uncover the security flaws in them.”
center solutions provider Helex, which is part of the Bright-
Cloud Group, walked away with the $1,000 top prize. The
company’s BioProximity app, which runs on Android-based
phones, verifies people’s identities after receiving location-
aware mobile marketing messages.
Other finalists included Logica, which created a mobile
banking app; BluePlanet Apps, whose BioLock application
unlocks mobile phones; and Hold Free Systems, which en-
tered an app to authenticate remote agents logging on for
work at a call center.
According to Miller, the Helex app “captured our imagina-
tion and has immediate commercial viability while, at the
same time, lays the foundation for broader applications and
deployment scenarios in the future.”
The challenge originally was touted as a highly visible
means to promote awareness of voice biometrics among mo-
bile application developers, and it did that and more, accord-
ing to Miller. “It’s still a technology that requires a lot of
thoughtful innovation,” he says. “The future of voice biomet-
rics is now in the hands of adjacent industries, systems in-
tegrators, and developers.” —Leonard Klie

“ We’re all exposed to the risk

of identity theft every day.
”
According to Miller, the mobile phone has quickly become
“a personal assistant, wallet, PC, and search engine” for most
people. “It already has your contact list and all your personal
information, and if you lose it, you are in trouble. There’s a
real need to have more security on your mobile device and in
the apps that run on that device.”
Opus Research “is seeing a broader opportunity, driven by
mobile, for integrating a solution that incorporates voice bio-
metrics in a way that is easy to use over the phone,” Miller
adds. “We do live in a dangerous world, and we’re all ex-
posed to the risk of identity theft every day.”
It’s with that as a backdrop that Opus Research and Voice-
Vault this year unveiled the Mobile Voice Biometric Challenge
to uncover the application or service that makes the best use
of voice biometrics on a mobile device for activation, access
control, user authentication, or other applications. About a
dozen companies entered the contest, but in the end contact

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market
spotlight:
GOVERNMENT Voice R&D Speaks to Homeland Security
Across the world, speech technol-
ogy companies are stepping up their
research and development around
voice biometrics solutions at the re-
quest of many federal, state, and local
governments for homeland security
and law enforcement.
“When voice biometrics really ‘pops,’
government will be behind it,” says
Dan Miller, senior analyst and founder
of Opus Research. “Law enforcement
and government are fueling a very
quiet market right now.”
The lack of noise aside, Miller points
to a “significant amount of invest-
ment” in government projects to do
speaker identification, speaker verifica-
tion, speech-to-speech translation, lan-
guage identification, and transcription
of audio from phone taps.
“Government money is flowing into
researching voice biometrics,” he
states. “There are a lot of areas where
the government is investing.”
In England, for example, VoxGen, a
provider of self-service automation so-
lutions, has been awarded a grant of
£300,000 ($481,000) from the U.K.
Technology Strategy Board to research,
develop, and enhance voice biometrics
to support consumer identification and
verification technologies.
VoxGen will be working with its
consortium partners, Mydex Data Ser-
vices and Latitude Partners, to enhance
the traditional approach to voice bio-
metrics by adding a second factor—per-
sonal knowledge—to its verification
process. VoxGen will develop a statisti-
cally rigorous probabilistic reasoning
system to combine those two incongru-
ent data points.
“Consumers increasingly want reas-
surance from organizations that their
personal data is secure,” Pierce Buck-
ley, head of products at VoxGen, said
in a statement. “For the private and
14 | Speech Technology MAY/JUNE 2011
public sector alike, it’s now an eco-
nomic imperative to have the techno-
logical capabilities to identify and
verify consumers quickly, conveniently,
and, most importantly, securely.”
In Australia, the Department of the
Prime Minister, under the Research
Support for Counter-Terrorism Pro-
gram, has been sponsoring the Biomet-
ric Vulnerability Assessment Project
since 2007 to develop a principled as-
sessment methodology for the vulnera-
bility of biometric systems to deliberate
attack by impostors. The main out-
comes will be a general methodology
for the assessment of biometric systems
vulnerability and a specific methodol-
ogy applicable to a chosen biometric,
outlining the capability to test and re-
port on the vulnerability of any indi-
vidual system, including suggested
countermeasures to identified risks.
“
Government money is flowing into
researching voice biometrics.
In Mexico, Russian company
Speech Technology Center (STC) has
been working for eight years with the
government to merge forensic tech-
nologies and voice biometrics for
speaker identification.
The resulting voice identification
system, which the company deployed
about a year ago, is being used by more
than 250 local and federal law enforce-
ment agencies across the country to
match unknown voice samples to a
database of known voiceprints to track
down criminals. The platform can
compare short utterances recorded over
various channels (microphone or land-
line, mobile, and IP phones) regardless
of the gender, age, language, or accent
of the speaker.
Though many other voice biomet-
rics vendors have been engaged in
similar projects with other govern-
ments, the Mexican deployment is the
largest known speaker identification
project to date.
STC’s CEO, Michael Khitrov, calls
it “a landmark deployment in the
voice biometric industry,” and says
the impact of this project “is difficult
to overestimate.”
As a result of that project, voice bio-
metrics is expected to gain recogni-
tion as a proven identification method
with a real-life track record. STC is al-
ready negotiating with a number of
other governments in Latin America,
Europe, and Asia in an effort to deploy
similar systems.
Growing demand for voice biometrics
in general and voice-based identification
in particular signals an emergence of a
”
new market segment with a potential to
grow to a $500 million industry in a
very short time, according to many in-
dustry watchdogs.
“There’s a lot that companies like
Loquendo, Speech Technology Center,
and PerSay [which is now part of Nu-
ance Communications] have been
doing for governments for covert oper-
ations and surveillance,” comments
Judith Markowitz, president of J.
Markowitz Consultants. “It’s been
going on for a long time—you just
don’t hear about it.”
Government uses of the technology
“are much further along then they are
letting on and much more advanced
than what we’re seeing in the commer-
cial world,” Miller concludes. —Leonard Klie
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SOUND
BYTES
>> Nuance Crafts App for Tablets
Nuance Communications’
multimodal FlexT9 app is now
officially optimized for Android
tablets, including the Samsung
GalaxyTab, Dell Streak 7, and
the Motorola Xoom. FlexT9
also supports these languages:
U.S. and U.K. English, German,
French, Italian, and Spanish.
The four-in-one keypad com-
bines Dragon Dictation, T9
Trace, T9 Write, and XT9, and
lets consumers switch among
any of FlexT9’s input modali-
ties. Users can control the
device and its apps with voice
or by tracing (gliding their fin-
gers from one letter to another
on a virtual keyboard), tapping
on a keyboard, or writing
(using their fingers to draw
words, phrases, numbers, and
other characters on the touch
screen). FlexT9 is currently
available for download in the
Android market for $4.99. It
supports Android OS v2.1 and
higher, including select Honey-
comb devices.
>> Yap Voicemail Fits Android
Yap, a provider of automated,
cloud-based speech recognition
services, has released a version
of its Yap Voicemail for
Android, meaning more than
10 million AT&T, T-Mobile,
and Verizon users with
Android phones can download
Yap Voicemail from the
Android market. The free appli-
cation automatically converts
voicemails into text.
>> Ford Revs SYNC in Europe
Ford is expanding the reach of
www.speechtechmag.com
Ford SYNC globally with the
European launch of the compa-
ny’s popular voice-controlled
connectivity system, now offer-
ing 19 languages. The Ford
Focus will be the first vehicle to
launch with SYNC in Europe in
2012. With the language expan-
sion, SYNC with MyFord
Touch will be available in U.S.,
U.K., and Australian English;
European and Canadian
French; U.S. and European
Spanish; European and Brazil-
ian Portuguese; German; Ital-
ian; Dutch; Russian; Turkish;
Arabic; Korean; Japanese; Man-
darin Chinese; and Taiwanese
Mandarin (supported through
Mandarin Chinese). SYNC,
developed with Microsoft and
Nuance Communications, was
launched in North America in
2007 with three languages. The
system can recognize 10,000
voice commands.
>> Babylon Eyes One-Click
Translation
Babylon, a provider of language
solutions, has chosen Acapela
Group to speech-enable its
Babylon 9 translation solution,
which provides one-click trans-
lation for any computer applica-
tion, such as email, Internet
pages, PDF documents, and
Microsoft Word files. Acapela
text-to-speech will offer an
audio version of the translation
with male and female voices in
18 languages.
>> Ditech, AVST Team on
Voicemail-to-Text
Ditech Networks and Applied
Voice & Speech Technologies
(AVST) entered into a partner-
ship to deliver voicemail-to-text
services to enterprises. AVST is
using Ditech’s PhoneTag plat-
form for automated and hybrid
voicemail-to-text transcription
services as part of its enterprise
unified communications solu-
tion. The PhoneTag solution is
now available in English,
French, German, and Spanish.
>> SuperTooth Finds
Bluetooth Partner
Bluetooth speakerphone maker
SuperTooth has chosen
Dial2Do, a technology platform
provider enabling voice-activat-
ed hands-free communications,
including email and text mes-
saging, to power a new service.
SuperTooth HandsFree Assis-
tant will give users of the
SuperTooth HD speakerphone
two-way, voice-activated,
hands-free messaging. As part
of the white-label arrangement,
SuperTooth HandsFree Assis-
tant users will be able to create
and send SMS, email, and Twit-
ter and Facebook posts with
their voices and have incoming
text and email messages read
aloud on Android and Black-
Berry phones.
>> Loquendo Updates
Speech Suite
Loquendo has released Speech
Suite, version 7.0, based on the
latest versions of Loquendo
ASR (7.9) and Loquendo TTS
(7.20). The language portfolio
also has been expanded with
the addition of ASR in Arabic
and TTS in Romanian; two
new female voices (Italian and
MAY/JUNE 2011
Turkish) are available for TTS,
as well as an improved acoustic
model for U.S. English.
>> Verint Rolls Out
Multimedia Solution
Verint Systems has released
the latest version of Audiolog
for Contact Centers, the compa-
ny’s multimedia recording, eval-
uation, archiving, and quality
assurance solution. Version 5
has been expressly designed for
small and mid-sized contact
centers with 150 or fewer seats.
The solution, backed by
Verint’s workforce optimization
and recording patent portfolio,
operates on a single platform
and features new, advanced
multimedia recording, storage,
retrieval, and playback capabili-
ties. Businesses now can cap-
ture, analyze, and respond to
audio interactions, screen data,
and other multichannel sys-
tems, including digital, analog,
and IP phones and PBXs, call
routers and dialers, SMS/text,
email, Web chat, pictures,
and videos.
>> Vlingo Aims App at U.K. Users
Vlingo has released a new
version of its popular Virtual
Assistant localized for U.K.
users on all Android phones.
The application, which com-
bines voice recognition, natural
language processing, and Vlin-
go’s proprietary Intent Engine,
allows users to speak to their
phones to send text and email
messages, search the Web, get
directions on Google maps, and
update their Facebook or Twit-
ter statuses.
Speech Technology | 15
 Hosted IVRs
BRING
Peace
he numbers say it all. Next year, the premises-based inbound speech-enabled

T interactive voice response (IVR) sector is expected to decline by 5 percent,

followed by a 10 percent drop in 2012. But the hosted sector should grow by
8 percent in both 2011 and 2012.
Those projections, provided by DMG Consulting, reflect what both analysts
and vendors say is an obvious trend toward outsourcing enterprises’ IVR needs. Sales of
premises-based IVR solutions slid by 8 percent between 2008 and 2009, while revenue
from hosted/managed service applications grew by 6 percent and 13 percent, respectively,
during the same period, the consulting firm says.
“There are many advantages to using a hosted vendor,” DMG President Donna Fluss
explains, “including the fact that they don’t charge as much as their premises-based coun-
terparts. In fact, one of the primary strategies for some hosted vendors is ‘whatever prem-
ises-based vendor X, Y, or Z charges, we’ll charge two-thirds less, sometimes even less than
that.’ They can do that because they will reuse a lot of code, whereas premises-based ven-
dors typically won’t.”
Indeed, the highly competitive nature of the hosted/managed service IVR market and
the more than 95 vendors vying for customers put end users in a strong position to nego-
tiate an outstanding deal, Fluss says. That pattern is expected to continue for at least a
few years, she predicts.

Motivations Go Beyond Price

Price, however, isn’t the only reason that enterprises are turning to hosted IVR, a sec-
tor currently estimated at about $500 million a year that is expected to soar past $900 mil-
lion by the end of 2015, says Daniel Hong, lead analyst for customer interaction at Ovum.
Other motivations include:
• scalability;
• reliability;
• convenience;
• minimal up-front investment;
• leading-edge technologies;
• analytics and reporting capabilities; and
• IVR optimization services.

16 | Speech Technology MAY/JUNE 2011 www.speechtechmag.com

ofMind
Price and flexibility
are encouraging
corporations to
switch from
premises-based
solutions
BY PAUL HYMAN

www.speechtechmag.com MAY/JUNE 2011 Speech Technology | 17

COVER STORY
“Enterprises just seem to feel more
comfortable outsourcing the technology
and expertise needed to manage a
speech application,” Hong says. That
comfort level rises “when the enterprise
doesn’t have the internal resources to
effectively manage a speech solution;
when it needs to introduce more fea-
tures or functions but doesn’t have the
budget; when its call campaigns are sea-
sonal; and when the enterprise is look-
ing to hosting providers for other
elements of the contact center, namely
routing and virtualization,” he notes.
In addition, enterprises are delighted
that hosted vendors frequently give them
more attention than their internal IT
staffs do. That point takes on greater
importance if the corporation has gone
through layoffs and one of its two IVR
specialists has left, Fluss says.
“Hosted vendors only make a living
when people access the IVR,” she
explains. “The premises-based vendor
makes a living when you sign an agree-
ment with them. And so the hosted ven-
dor is much more interested in getting
you up and running as quickly as possi-
ble because it doesn’t make a living until
its customers do. So they have actually
geared their business model toward serv-
icing their clients quickly and efficiently.”
Different Vendors, Different Benefits
Customers who intend to turn to a
hosted IVR solution have discovered
that various vendors seem to bring dif-
ferent perspectives about the services
they provide. For example, Nuance Com-
munications acquired BeVocal in 2007
and added features as well as rearchi-
tected the company’s IVR solution.
“Since then, we have added a third
data center, optimized for 100 percent
“Enterprises just seem to feel more
comfortable outsourcing the technology
and expertise needed to manage a
speech application.”
18 | Speech Technology MAY/JUNE 2011
availability, added PCI [Payment Card
Industry Data Security Standard] level
security, added a handset-based Mobile
Care application service and an outbound
solution, and evolved the hosted reporting
system into an analytics offering that pro-
vides business-level users with actionable
insight to make critical business deci-
sions,” says Dena Skrbina, senior director
of solutions marketing at Nuance.
She continues, “In response to cus-
tomer demand, Nuance also added on-
demand ACD [automatic call distribution]
and CTI [computer telephony integra-
tion] to the hosted solution suite. So,
today, Nuance On Demand provides
inbound, outbound, and mobile customer
service that differentiates a company from
competition by delivering the best possible
customer experience while saving mil-
lions of dollars every year.”
In The Cloud
Meanwhile, Microsoft Tellme doesn’t
consider its solution a “hosted” one.
“It’s really a cloud-based product,” says
Grant Shirk, director of industry solu-
tions. “There are many traditional host-
ing providers out there who will take
your boxes or theirs and put them in a
data center and host your application
and hook up all the piping. But we find
there are a lot of inefficiencies in that
model. Instead, our customers use us as
a platform-as-a-service play; they keep
their application, their business logic,
their customer data…all of that stays on
their premises just as if we were a Web
application. Ours is very much a Web
app model.”
Because Tellme’s solution is cloud-
based, “customers aren’t waiting for
the next version, and they aren’t paying
upgrade fees as part of the license,”
Shirk adds. “They are getting the best
of the platform for every call as we roll
out improvements.”
One point of consensus: Before decid-
ing between a hosted speech-enabled IVR
system and on-premises solution, it is
vital to perform a detailed return on
investment, a cost analysis, and a needs
analysis (see “The Anatomy of a Deci-
sion” on page 19).
When Does On-Premises Get The Nod?
While the advantages of a hosted solu-
tion are considerable, does it always make
sense to take that route? Would there
ever be a situation in which hosting does
not make sense or in which an on-prem-
ises solution would be cheaper over the
long run?
“Absolutely,” Hong says. He cites a
scenario in which a company plans to
have the IVR for more than six years and
“if the enterprise takes millions of calls
each day and has the requisite skills set
in house to manage a speech application
and other functions, such as proactive
communications, to really extend the
value of the IVR platform.”
Enterprises are moving toward IVR
consolidation, he says, because of plat-
forms that have been inherited from var-
ious vendors, he says. Hong points out
that managing multiple platforms at the
same time isn’t economically efficient.
“Instead of having various manage-
ment tools, instead of having different
people who need to specialize in each,
their inclination is to centralize it all,”
Hong says. “And once they do that, the
forward-looking ones who are paying
attention to what they can squeeze out of
the one IVR platform that will extend
across different departments…are the
ones who can exploit the advantages of
having a premises-based IVR solution. If
that’s the case, if they have a utilization
rate higher than 95 percent, if they have
the internal expertise, then by all means
premises-based may be economically bet-
ter than going hosted.”
Fluss agrees that, under certain cir-
cumstances, a premises-based solution
is appropriate, “especially if you’re not
concerned about receiving continuous
www.speechtechmag.com

The Anatomy of A Decision
N A T U R A L L Y, weighing a hosted speech-enabled IVR
solution against buying an on-premises system requires a
thorough financial evaluation. Dena Skrbina, Nuance’s sen-
ior director of solutions marketing, outlines the following
three elements as critical to the decision-making process:
• Infrastructure and operational cost savings. The well-
known set of benefits includes refocusing IT staff on the
company’s core business, a pay-as-you-use pricing model
that eliminates capital expenditures spending, the ability to
more easily handle spiky call volumes, cost-effective
employment of rigorous security stan-
dards, a variety of well-designed mod-
ern technologies, and operational
performance superiority with
unmatched guarantees.
• Loyalty and higher share of
wallet. IVR self-service is evolving
into a marketing tool that promotes
customer loyalty and spending. A
well-designed IVR—one that unifies
inbound, outbound, and mobile ser-
vice across the customer interaction
life cycle—helps companies earn the
right to keep and even to up-sell to their customers. Some
companies using Nuance On Demand offer their callers the
option to buy relevant products at precisely the ideal point
in the IVR interaction, generating millions of dollars each
year with zero agent involvement.
• Continual improvement resulting in higher self-
service rates. Today’s business climate and consumers are
changing rapidly. Successful companies must evolve their
businesses and the ways in which they interact with their
customers. For companies in highly competitive market-
places, such as travel, transportation, financial services,
insurance, or wireless, it’s imperative that they keep up
with customer demand and stay one step ahead of the
competition. That means continually evaluating their self-
service solutions and iterating to meet customer demands,
as well as wringing more value out of every interaction.
Nuance leverages lessons learned through thousands of
www.speechtechmag.com
COVER STORY
deployments to improve not only self-service technology
but also the effectiveness of every interaction. For many
customers, a 1 percent increase in the caller self-service
rate equates to millions of dollars in savings.
In addition, Grant Shirk, director of industry solutions
at Microsoft Tellme, emphasizes these elements in an
ROI analysis:
• Determine your up-front capital investment versus
your ongoing operational costs. For businesses that are
either capital-constrained or
have strict policies about when
to make capital investments,
the on-demand model is bene-
ficial because of the way it
prices itself by the minute or
uses utility-based pricing. The
up-front cost is basically minor.
It consists of just what an
enterprise would expect to pay
for the physical connectivity
between the two sites if it is
doing any secure data transmis-
sion. In most cases, that
amounts to less than 1 percent of the total solution.
• Determine your need for scalability. In an on-premises
model, an enterprise is generally trying to do very accurate
traffic-volume predictions to figure out exactly how much
port usage it would need to buy over time, and it will pay
for that up front. With an on-demand pricing model, you pay
for what you’ve used after you use it.
“We have a number of companies on our platform who
either have very unpredictable or very seasonally spiky call
volume,” Shirk says. “The utility pricing model allows them
to perfectly right-size their IVR expense against the traffic
they’re driving. They don’t have any wasted or excess
capacity sitting around. On the flip side, they have infinite
burstability. When they have an event and go from 5,000
ports one day to 9,000 the next, they don’t have to carry
those additional 4,000 ports of capacity for a full year and
pay maintenance on it,” Shirk says.
MAY/JUNE 2011 Speech Technology | 19
COVER STORY
technology enhancements, since too
many companies believe that IVR is one
of those technologies that you can put in
and forget about. Some companies will
keep their IVR for 10 years or even
longer without upgrading it. There’s
some very old stuff out there.”
In that case, she says, installing a
premises-based solution might be more
cost-effective because, after a number of
years, you won’t have costs associated
with a host.
“Just remember when you do the
analysis that you’re not just figuring in
Enterprises are delighted that hosted
vendors often give them more attention
than their internal IT staff does.
the cost of the equipment—and there is
certainly a large up-front investment—but
you also need to figure in your own inter-
nal costs of maintaining the solution on
an ongoing basis,” she says. “If you’re
putting in a hosted solution, your annual
run rate will generally be more than what
your annual maintenance cost would be.”
A Nuanced ROI
At Nuance, the company takes a con-
sultative approach and offers companies
weighing their decision a detailed ROI
and cost analysis.
“Hosting certainly doesn’t make eco-
nomic sense for all companies,” Skrbina
admits, “especially not for those that
have recently made large investments in
speech IVR infrastructure, as well as the
expertise to build and continuously main-
tain the end-to-end solution.”
Nuance’s ROI calculator factors in
capital expenditures, maintenance fees
for hardware and software, and a cus-
tomer-derived labor model. A critical
factor often overlooked in traditional
analysis is the impact from leveraging
business analysts and speech experts
that maximize the business benefits of
20 | Speech Technology MAY/JUNE 2011
an automated self-service solution,
whether it’s higher automation, shorter
call duration, or a customer proprietary
business metric, Skrbina adds.
“Nuance’s application developers and
business consultants partner with our cus-
tomers to design solutions that maximize
ROI, enable fast and efficient deployments,
and cater to the highest customer satisfac-
tion scores,” Skrbina comments.
For example, she points out, Nuance
has a long-standing customer that
enhanced its application with one of the
host’s technologies, SmartListener, and
then was able to achieve a 2 percent
increase in call automation.
“The enhancement led to a cost sav-
ings of more than $2 million per year,”
Skrbina says. “Nuance’s ROI projections
accurately predicted those savings from
deploying our enhancements.”
Outbound Growth To Soar
Another exploding trend that is some-
times overlooked is outbound—the
fastest-growing sector of the hosted IVR
market on a percentage basis. In 2011,
DMG’s Fluss expects hosted outbound to
grow by 13 percent and then by another
13 percent in 2012.
“People have realized that while a
cheap inbound call could cost maybe $5,
for argument’s sake, an outbound call can
cost perhaps 10 or 20 cents,” she ex-
plains. “So why in the world would you
want to wait for the calls to come in
when there are so many great uses of out-
bound IVR—from pharmacy refills to
travel company notifications to re-
minders about your doctor appointments
to political calls?”
Indeed, Tellme views outbound IVR
service as a proactive way to advance
conversations with customers. One
Tellme outbound IVR service customer,
Orbitz, delivers tens of millions of out-
bound communications every year, Shirk
points out.
“One thing that many people miss
regarding outbound applications is that
they can be extremely targeted, and the
scripting can be very intelligent because
you know the conversation you are about
to have,” he explains. “On inbound com-
munications, you can publish an 800
number and 10 million people can call
you for one thing but another million can
call you for another 150 things. You need
to design for that, which can be challeng-
ing and complex. But with outbound,
you’re very focused. You’re having a sin-
gle conversation, a single task.”
A Compelling Case
Ovum’s Hong believes that “all compa-
nies should be considering going to the
hosted model. When you look at the
evolution of services being placed on
top of the core platform and what you
can do with them…when you look at the
reliability and scalability of the platform
plus the other cost advantages, hosted
should definitely be an option.”
The bottom line, according to Fluss, is
that enterprises must not take their IVR
solution for granted. “IVR is a mission-
critical solution these days,” she says.
“It’s a really very good technology that,
when it doesn’t work, it’s usually due to
human error.
“Pretty much anyone who hasn’t taken
a look at their IVR environment in the
past couple of years really ought to take a
fresh look. There has been tremendous
innovation over the past five to 10 years,
and not just in the technology but also in
the best practices,” Fluss says. “Organiza-
tions need to realize that if all they can
do is get a 1 percent increment in cus-
tomer usage or adoption of their IVR,
depending on the call volume, these types
of investments pay for themselves very,
very quickly.”
Paul Hyman is a freelance writer based in
New York. He can be reached at
phyman@optonline.net.
www.speechtechmag.com
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 Captures Consumer

22 | Speech Technology MAY/JUNE 2011 www.speechtechmag.com

 Technologies blend data from different sources, emotional states, and moments in time
• BY LEONARD KLIE •

Nothing reveals more about a business

than the voices of its harshest critics

and most ardent supporters—its cus-
tomers. And there was a time when
basic speech analytics was sufficient to
help companies learn what their
clients were thinking. The technol-
ogy could analyze thousands, even
millions, of customer interactions to
unearth the vital intelligence needed
to build effective cost containment
and customer service strategies.

www.speechtechmag.com MAY/JUNE 2011 Speech Technology | 23


However, the days of basic speech ana-
lytics are long gone. That’s not to say
speech analytics has been relegated to a
bottom desk drawer somewhere or
housed on some remote server that sel-
dom gets used. On the contrary, the
speech analytics market is as vibrant as
ever, with research firm Ovum predicting
it would nearly double, from $95 million
in 2009 to $180 million by 2014. Thanks
to changes in how vendors position the
technology, it is gaining ground.
Innovations, which include text analyt-
ics integration, emotion detection, real-
time capabilities, and an emphasis on
actionable results, are driving adoption of
speech-based solutions in the contact cen-
ter and beyond.
Speaking in Text
Once marketed as stand-alone solu-
tions, speech analytics more often than
not is being packaged with text analytics
to provide a 360-degree view across all of
the ways in which customers communi-
cate with and about companies. Speech
analytics takes care of phone conversa-
tions and other audio, while text analytics
handles all of the written forms of com-
munications, including text messages,
email, chat sessions, blog posts, Web
forums, review sites, and social media.
Naturally, companies need to extract
actionable information and sentiment from
the vastly untapped world of social media.
“You need to be able to control all the
mentions of your brand, and so compa-
nies really need to pay attention to
what’s in the public domain and make
sense of it,” comments Ed Shepherdson,
managing director of customer interac-
24 | Speech Technology MAY/JUNE 2011
SPEECH ANALYTICS
tion solutions at Coveo, an enterprise
search vendor that blends speech and
text data to formulate a single voice of
the customer.
Such a blending, he says, makes it eas-
ier for companies to determine whether
there is a correlation between what’s in
the public domain and what they’re get-
ting from customer surveys and from the
call center.
This form of analytics, called multi-
channel analytics or analytics conver-
gence, “is absolutely where the industry
is going,” says Donna Fluss, president of
DMG Consulting.
When it comes to the voice of the cus-
tomer, “speech is just one of the channels
involved,” Fluss says. “There’s written
communications, and there’s spoken
communications. And if you want to
fully understand what the customer
wants, you have to look at both.
“I expect the market to move more
and more in the direction where one
company offers both speech and text ana-
lytics in one solution set,” she adds. “It’s
already happening.”
The blending of the two is a fairly
easy process, given that the foundation of
speech analytics is the transcription of
calls from spoken to written words and
then the indexing of those words in rela-
tion to other words and throughout the
entire recording.
Outside the Walls
With these new capabilities to pull
voice and text together, “all content
comes through a single search box, reduc-
ing the time needed to find information,”
explains Kevin Calderwood, president of
Vivisimo, a provider of enterprise search
solutions that recently launched the Cus-
tomer Experience Optimization (CXO)
solution to blend information sources.
“Now we can go outside a company’s
firewalls to get information that is con-
tained within the public domain, like the
Web and social media.”
One of the first purely speech analytics
vendors to embrace multichannel analyt-
ics was Autonomy etalk. Slightly more
than a year ago, the company released
Explore, which lets businesses connect to
and understand almost any type of cus-
tomer interaction, including audio
recordings, Web site visits, chat threads,
survey responses, CRM records, blog
posts and responses, product reviews,
email and documents, Twitter posts,
social media status updates, wiki entries,
videos, point-of-sales information, trans-
action records, news articles, and forum
comments. Explore has more than 400
available connectors to internal, external,
and public data sources.
According to Andrew Joiner, chief
executive officer of Autonomy’s Promote
Multichannel Technology Business Unit,
the reason for offering such a solution is
simple. “A lot of business today is being
done in unstructured data,” he says. “I
call on the phone, but I also send a fax or
write an email.”
More than 90 percent of customers
engage in multichannel behavior when
dealing with companies, according to
Autonomy. For instance, the same cus-
tomer who called in a complaint to the
contact center might have searched for
products on the company’s site and com-
mented about the company on Twitter.
Other traditional speech analytics ven-
dors—including Nice Systems, Verint
Systems, Nexidia, Utopy, and
CallMiner—are also providing multi-
channel analytics as part of their solu-
tion sets, either on their own or through
partnerships with traditional text analyt-
ics providers.
Verint, for example, partnered with
Clarabridge to add Impact 360 Text
www.speechtechmag.com

Analytics to its Customer Interaction
Analytics portfolio.
“We’ve definitely graduated our speech
analytics to offer more customer interac-
tions in one interface,” says Diego
Lomanto, solutions marketing manager
for speech analytics at Verint. “There
are call recordings, but now with our
new offering, there’s also email, social
media, chats, notes, and surveys.”
Jeff Schleuter, vice president of mar-
keting and business development at Nex-
idia, has seen interest building for text
analytics and speech analytics together,
but he’s not ready to call it a trend.
“We’re seeing a push for text from cus-
tomers. It’s definitely something that the
industry is pursuing,” he says. “But it’s
probably in an early stage, where more is
being hyped than is in adoption.”
According to Lomanto, interest in mul-
tichannel analytics has been strongest in
the hospitality, retail, and technology sec-
tors, “because so much is written about
them every day,” but the growing desire
for such solutions has also come from the
financial services, healthcare, and insur-
ance industries.
With Feeling
In those industries, as in so many oth-
ers, contact centers process thousands of
calls, texts, email messages, and online
chat sessions with customers daily. And
while those interactions hold a wealth of
valuable business insight, “the ability to
put speech into context is critical,”
Schleuter says.
Lomanto agrees. “Everyone wants
information, but without context, it
means nothing,” he says. “You want to be
able to search for a word, but the real
value is in the trending data.”
Therefore, vendors have been busy
enhancing their speech analytics applica-
tions with sentiment analysis technologies
that can identify more than just when and
where a particular word or phrase
appeared in the dialogue. That requires
applications that can identify when cus-
tomers have expressed an emotional
www.speechtechmag.com
SPEECH ANALYTICS
response and can then connect those
responses to a particular sentiment.
The technology needed to perform this
kind of analysis is still fairly new and in
some circles might still be called bleeding-
edge, but it has evolved considerably
recently. “There’s a lot of attention and
investment in emotion detection,” Fluss
observes. “It’s all part of an evolving set
of solutions.”
A major step in that evolutionary
process has been the melding of the two
schools of thought when it comes to
speech technologies for detecting emo-
tions. One school relied on acoustic
qualities—such as tone, pitch, volume,
speaking rate, inflection, and intensity—
while the other looked at linguistic ele-
ments, such as the words used, the
pauses, stops, hesitations, laughter, and
sighs, to determine the emotional state
of a caller.
Advancements have taken the tech-
nology from basic acoustic-only or lin-
guistic-only solutions to more advanced
solutions that depend upon both models.
Utopy, for example, uses this two-
dimensional approach to emotion detec-
tion to not only pick up variations in
tone, pitch, etc., but also to correlate
those variations with the linguistic con-
tent (including what the caller and agent
said before, during, and after the emo-
tional response occurred).
Autonomy’s Intelligent Data Operating
Layer (IDOL) derives meaning by deter-
mining patterns of information, domi-
nant terms, and significant relationships
among distant ideas using multitiered
relevancy modeling.
Nexidia uses more of a lexicon
approach, according to Schleuter, that
looks at the words being used and when
those words and phrases are employed
with other words and phrases.
Coveo’s approach is to look at how the
words are being spoken and used. “We
look at whether the company is being
spoken about in a negative or positive
way by looking at all the words around
the one that you’re looking for,” Shep-
herdson points out.
Another way in which speech analyt-
ics technologies are being applied to emo-
tion detection involves talk-over analysis.
That capability identifies where in a call
the customer and agent are talking simul-
taneously—a common indicator of cus-
tomer dissatisfaction and frustration.
Talk-over analysis also can identify peri-
ods of silence during calls, which might
indicate a gap in the agent’s knowledge
about a particular subject.
I Want It Now!
Speech analytics is still far from perfect
when it comes to detecting and respond-
ing to human emotion. In no way will
the technology ever be superior to a
human’s abilities in that regard. One of
the main reasons for that has been the
very nature of speech analytics, which
typically involved recorded conversations
that are taken apart after the event.
Depending on the volume of data—
where it sits, if it’s hosted or on premises,
and other factors—it could take a few
hours to a few days to index the audio.
But that is changing, as more and more
vendors experiment with real-time ana-
lytics, looking at spoken interactions as
they occur.
Michael Maoz, research vice presi-
dent for customer strategies at Gart-
ner, calls the move toward more
real-time capabilities the technology’s
natural progression.
“Real-time speech analytics is a tech-
nology that has been waiting for a market
breakthrough,” he said in a recent report.
MAY/JUNE 2011 Speech Technology | 25

“When fully integrated with customer-
centric solutions, it will enable contact
centers to realize their strategic business
potential. Processes and measurement
metrics will need to evolve for this to
happen, but the value is clear: Uncover-
ing customer intent and gaining insights
during the actual interaction enable
organizations to deliver exactly what cus-
tomers need in real time. This is the key
to securing the customer relationship,
improving satisfaction and loyalty, and
ultimately driving revenue growth.”
Vendors are taking a look at real-time
capabilities “because their customers are
asking them for this,” Fluss says.
The reasons are manifold, but in the
end, it comes down to a single one: “You
have to mine the data more quickly so
you can do something with it,” Coveo’s
Shepherdson says. “People need to react
to changes in their businesses very
quickly, and they need to react in near-
real time, rather than waiting a few days
or weeks to get the data.”
Today’s solutions pull together the
data at much higher speeds and are far
more dynamic, while the cycle times for
processing the data are getting shorter
and shorter.
“Once we have an initial index, we can
update it very quickly,” Shepherdson
points out. “The information is con-
stantly being re-indexed as soon as some-
thing happens. You don’t have to wait for
it to be turned over to the knowledge
management solution or for the voice to
be converted to text.
“You can set how often you want it to
go in and pull data. It can be very close to
real time,” he adds.
Coveo can supply this data in real time
via dashboard widgets that open on
users’ computer screens.
IBM-Netezza, a data warehousing
company, was one of the first companies
to use those widgets. Within 30 days of
the implementation, IBM-Netezza
reduced the time needed to identify
known problems by 67 percent and cut
the number of duplicate bugs submitted
26 | Speech Technology MAY/JUNE 2011
SPEECH ANALYTICS
to its development engineering depart-
ment by 50 percent, which in turn led to
a 67 percent increase in the number of
customer bugs fixed.
“Coveo dashboards and the analytics
they provide are allowing our managers
and executives, all the way up to our
CEO, to have dynamic views of our cus-
tomer relationships,” Jim Coleman, prin-
cipal support analyst at IBM-Netezza,
wrote in an email.
He continued, “This is particularly
important when one of those accounts
becomes hot with an issue that requires
immediate attention. Instead of spending
hours manually compiling reports from
data in multiple systems, we can provide
them with immediate access to the infor-
mation needed to make informed busi-
ness decisions and respond to the
customer in seconds.”
Guidance on the Fly
Nice Systems was a pioneer in real-
time analytics when in March 2010 it
released Real-Time Guidance as part of
its Nice SmartCenter suite of speech
analytics offerings. Real-Time Guid-
ance provides next-best action recom-
mendations to the agent in real time
during a phone call or chat session
with a customer. It is accomplished by
triggering and presenting to the agent
context-sensitive recommendations and
information according to pre-set busi-
ness rules.
Nexidia customers also can take
advantage of some real-time capabilities
contained within the company’s Enter-
prise Speech Intelligence suite. “To be
able to analyze calls as they are happen-
ing and help agents improve performance
and serve customers better while they are
still on the phone” will be important
moving forward, Schleuter says.
“For real time, the technology is there.
It requires much deeper integration into
the telephony environment and more tie-
ins to the CRM system,” he continues.
“We’re working on our first implementa-
tions now.”
One such implementation is at Page
One Ventures, a supplier of management
and technology solutions for social net-
working providers. Page One incorpo-
rated Nexidia’s Enterprise Speech
Intelligence suite into Page One’s opera-
tions in September; of particular interest
is Nexidia’s Classifier features, which
can detect language, gender, and other
speaker characteristics in real time.
Callers who dial into Page One Ven-
tures are required to record a short greet-
ing before entering each session, and
those greetings are screened to ensure
that calls were routed to the appropriate
agent. Prior to working with Nexidia, 83
agents manually screened the recorded
greetings, but even working 24/7, they
could cover only approximately 5 per-
cent of the total volume.
Now Page One Ventures automatically
reviews all caller greetings in real time
and can flag relevant calls for further
revirew. As a result, Page One Ventures
has lowered agent costs by more than 60
percent while screening every greeting to
ensure the best possible user experience.
“Nexidia’s technology helped us in
several areas, including our quality assur-
ance process,” Jeff Prete, general manager
of Page One Ventures, said in a state-
ment. “Now using Nexidia speech analyt-
ics, we are able to dramatically increase
the volume of calls reviewed and conduct
quality monitoring of our contact center
with a much more rigorous set of data.
This has resulted in an even better expe-
rience for all our customers.”
Schleuter says Page One Ventures is
“doing something unique with how they
use our technology to improve their oper-
ations,” but adds that implementations
like this one are the future.
Fluss says speech analytics in general
is in the early stages of its second gener-
ation, “where they are not just culling
data but also making it more actionable.
It’s about maximizing the results.”
“Speech analytics is definitely starting
to find its rightful home,” Verint’s
Lomanto adds. 
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Conference & Expo 25 & 26 May 2011

2011 Keynotes
SpeechTEK University 24 May 2011 Hear Google UK’s
Engineering Director,
Copthorne Tara Hotel, London, UK Dave Burke, on
Google’s plans for
www.speechtek.com/europe cloud-based speech
recognition for mobile
and web.
Over the past couple of years Google
has been making big investments in
cloud-based speech recognition
Learn how speech technologies are impacting services and applications, particularly
on the way we do business today and how to for Android and Chrome. Dave Burke
discusses and demos some of
build them into a whole range of activities Google’s future plans in this area.
and environments, including:
Hear Professor Alex
> Customer care > Call centres > Security Waibel on providing
solutions that bridge
> Gaming and entertainment > In-car applications the language divide.
> Public transport > Medicine and healthcare In a world where
everyone could
> Warehousing and supply chain connect if we shared a
> Telecommunications > Mobile applications common language and common
understanding, can technology
> Public sector applications > Financial services provide the answer? Alex Waibel looks
at language technology solutions that
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Speakers from: cross-lingual communication systems.
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28 | Speech Technology MAY/JUNE 2011 www.speechtechmag.com
 BY PAUL KORZENIOWSKI

Don't Let M&As

Steer You

Tech
What
Off Course
vend
can y
ors g
et ac
quire
d. A
s a consultant working with a Chinese
language learning company called Qooco,
our o Karl (Bill) Scholz understood the conven-
to pr rganiz
otect ation tional wisdom that “nobody ever gets fired
its in do for buying IBM.” So, he felt confident when
vestm Qooco opted for Big Blue’s speech recogni-
ents?
tion technology in 2007. However, in January
2009, his feelings turned to discomfort as
IBM sold off its business to Nuance Commu-
nications Inc.
While the decision to go with Big Blue did
not cost any jobs, problems ensued. Qooco
found itself trying to establish relations,
influence product design, and attract atten-
tion from strangers. “For a while, our atten-
tion was split between enhancing the system

www.speechtechmag.com MAY/JUNE 2011 Speech Technology | 29

SURVIVING A TECHNOLOGY ACQUISITION
and trying to figure out how best to inter-
act with Nuance,” says Scholz, president
of NewSpeech Solutions and AVIOS (the
Applied Voice Input/Output Society).
Many speech technology purchasing
decision makers find themselves in simi-
lar positions. In an industry rapidly
evolving, acquisitions have become a
common way for vendors to expand their
businesses. Last year brought more than
a dozen purchases (see “2010: A Year of
Change,” page 31), and Nuance Commu-
nications Inc. has made more than 30
acquisitions—including nine in 2007—
since the turn of the millennium.
Suppliers have focused on filling out
their product lines; driving down costs;
and, in the case of start-ups, cashing in
on the fruits of their
labor. But customers
often feel the ripple
effects from such
changes. They have
to alter how they
interact with their
primary vendor, try
to safeguard equip-
ment that is often
sent to the scrap
heap, and find a way
to have their voices heard in larger, more
congested boardrooms. Since purchases
are expected to continue for the foresee-
able future, what can customers expect
from such transactions, and what can
they do to protect their interests?
Part of the Circle of Life
Because consolidation is a typical
phase in an emerging technology’s life
cycle, acquisitions should remain com-
mon in the speech industry. When a new
market, such as voice biometrics, buds,
the ground is level and start-ups sprout.
They race to create buzz and build mar-
ket share. Initially, suppliers grow
because there are so many new accounts.
Eventually, however, the market matures,
the penetration rate increases, and oppor-
tunities become scarcer. As those changes
unfold, a start-up needs to find a defend-
able niche, grow significant market share,
or find a buyer in order to survive.
Another factor in the merger mania is
30 | Speech Technology MAY/JUNE 2011
that speech is becoming a common user
interface. “Speech solutions no longer
stand by themselves; they are being inte-
grated into many other products, such as
VoIP [Voice-over Internet Protocol] sys-
tems and unified communications appli-
cations,” notes Steve Cramoysan, re-
search director at Gartner Inc.
Like other high-technology sectors,
speech is volatile. It has become diffi-
cult—some might say impossible—for
one vendor to develop all the necessary
components. Because large companies
tend to be bureaucratic, they often cannot
move fast enough to adapt. “Acquisitions
help suppliers fill any product line voids,”
notes William Meisel, president of speech
consulting firm TMA Associates.
“Acquisitions help suppliers
fill any product line voids.”
For customers, an acquisition’s impact
is felt first on the personnel front and
later with the underlying technology.
Company principals try to keep news of a
possible buyout as quiet as possible; how-
ever, a variety of parties is involved in the
process. In fact, it is common for vendors
to speak with customers and reseller part-
ners about the potential change well
before it is announced. They do not want
customers and partners learning about
the merger by reading the latest headlines.
However, problems arise because not
all parties keep their mouths shut. As the
chatter grows, rumors circulate. Rather
than servicing the customer, employees
worry about how the potential purchase
may affect them. They revise their
resumes, call friends about job openings,
and check newswires for the latest infor-
mation. As a result, the time needed to
answer a customer’s call can lengthen.
The distractions begin weeks, or even
months, before the sale is announced,
and they end only after the buyer has
fully integrated the acquired company
into its operation. This process can drag
on for months or even more than a year,
depending on the size and complexity of
the deal.
We Love Techies
Once a deal has been signed, the buyer
may start to cut staff. “Usually, the new
company keeps the technical personnel,”
notes Thomas Schalk, vice president of
voice technology at ATX Group, a telem-
atics provider. However, the client may
have to interact with new sales and sup-
port personnel.
For the customer, the most important
decision the purchaser makes is determin-
ing what will happen
with the acquired
technology. That
move depends on
several factors, start-
ing with why the
vendor bought the
company. If the tech-
nology is an item in
an emerging market
and there is no over-
lap, then the product
usually will continue to be supported as
the combined company moves forward. In
fact, vendors often make acquisitions to
help round out their product lines, so
keeping and enhancing the product
becomes a straightforward decision.
Sometimes, the choice to discontinue a
product is also simple. For instance, a
start-up developed a novel technology
and then OEM’d it to various large corpo-
rations that are direct competitors. In
that case, the acquirer has little incentive
to invest time and money to help other
vendors find uses for the technology.
Moreover, the other OEMs would not
want to have part of their sales buttress-
ing their competitor’s bottom line.
In other instances, the decision process
is not as clear-cut. If product overlap
exists, “the best option wins,” says Jeff
Foley, senior manager of solutions mar-
keting at Nuance. While that statement
sounds logical, it may not play out in real-
ity. Sometimes, internal politics overrule
www.speechtechmag.com
technical merit. “Often, the acquirer’s
product will win the battle for accept-
ance,” ATX Group’s Schalk notes.
Mapping Out the Future
While that scenario may not sit well
with customers, they will be given time
and maybe some help from their new
master in moving off of their current
solution. “It is in the best interest of the
purchaser to keep the current customers
happy and migrate them to its equip-
ment,” says Dan Miller, senior analyst
and founder of Opus Research.
As the new company is assimilated,
the larger supplier will lay out a road
map that outlines future product develop-
ments and, if necessary, a migration path
to a new system. “Most vendors con-
tinue to support the current product at
least until a new release combining both
companies comes to market,” says Eliza-
beth Herrell, president of market
research firm Communication Initiatives.
Combining the different solutions pres-
ents the vendor, and its customers, with
challenges. Traditionally, speech suppli-
ers built their products atop proprietary
hardware, and the user was often forced
to scrap its existing system and start
anew whenever an acquisition occurred.
How to Move from Here to There
Increasingly, the market is shifting
from hardware- to software-based sys-
tems, so the migration challenge is being
mitigated. “While it may not be simple,
companies can move from one system to
another more easily now than they could
in the past,” Schalk says.
Standards, such as VoiceXML, are
designed to help businesses jump from
one system to another. Theoretically, the
vendors work from common design
points, so the different solutions will
have a similar code base. While they can
help clients, standards are not a panacea,
for a couple of reasons. First, the stan-
dard typically provides only baseline
functionality. To differentiate their
wares, manufacturers often layer fea-
tures. The more special functions they
add, the more difficult it becomes to
swap one system out for another.
www.speechtechmag.com
NewSpeech Solutions’ Scholz worked “After an acquisition, companies will opt
with a VoiceXML-compliant system but for a new system; in fact, such decisions
found that a vendor had extended its are not uncommon,” Communication Ini-
systems, making it more difficult to port tiatives’ Herrell says. Usually, they wait
it to the new environment. until the current system needs to be
In the end, the customer faces the deci- refreshed or when it no longer meets per-
sion of buying into the new product road formance criteria. For instance, in some
map or moving in a different direction. cases, they may have a solution that is a
2010: A YEAR OF CHANGE
cquisitions have become an important way for vendors to fill
A voids in their product lines and grow their businesses.
Back in 2006, there were 3,295 acquisitions in the high-
technology industry, according to Regent Partners International
Ltd., a supplier of investment banking services to the technology
industry. The economic downturn blunted, but did not stymie, the
merger movement. In 2010, 2,672 purchases took place, and
speech companies have been a lively segment of this space with
double-digit purchases.
Acquisitions have been a key component of Nuance Communica-
tions Inc.’s growth, and the company made three of them last year.
In December, Nuance acquired PerSay, a voice biometrics supplier
with about 200 customers, including Bell Canada and Vodafone
Turkey. In February of that year, Nuance purchased MacSpeech,
which made voice recognition solutions for Apple Inc.’s Macintosh
line. And in January, Nuance ponied up $102 million for SpinVox, a
speech recognition supplier whose clients include Bell Mobility,
Rogers Wireless, and Vodafone Spain.
West Corp. was also active, making two purchases. In July
2010, the vendor acquired TuVox, a provider of speech and inter-
active voice response applications. Two months earlier, West had
purchased HollyConnects, whose focus had been on carrier voice
recognition systems.
The growing importance of speech in business and consumer
applications was illustrated by moves by the high-tech industry’s
most prominent players. In May, Google forked over $68.2 million
for Norway-based Global IP Solutions, a VoIP/unified communica-
tions provider. In April, Apple acquired Siri, which had developed
voice search applications.
The buying frenzy is expected to continue this year. If the econo-
my rebounds, there is a good chance that the number of purchas-
es will rise, so customers need to view acquisitions as likely when
they purchase their next speech solutions. —P.K.
MAY/JUNE 2011 Speech Technology | 31
SURVIVING A TECHNOLOGY ACQUISITION
few years old and struggling to keep pace
with new demands. So, taking a step back
to put a new solution in enables the cus-
tomer to move a few steps forward and
add needed functionality.
Looking on the Bright Side
While there are some downsides, cus-
tomers also can benefit from acquisi-
tions. Often the smaller company has
developed a niche item that complements
what the larger vendor already offers.
The company can roll any acquired tech-
nology into its existing line and create a
more complete, integrated solution.
In addition, “the bigger vendors can
allocate more resources and spend more
money promoting the product than the
smaller company,” Nuance’s Foley notes.
Apple, Google, and Nuance are billion-
dollar enterprises that acquired smaller
speech suppliers in the past year and
dramatically increased the reach
of their new products.
Customization may be-
come easier. If a client has
unique vertical industry re-
quirements—say, financial serv-
ices’ regulations about call record-
ing—that client often has to tweak the
speech system itself to support such func-
tionality. When an industry Goliath takes
over the product, someone else may take
on that work. The buyer may have a large
reseller network. While the industry
giants focus on horizontal sales, resellers
often target vertical markets, such as tel-
cos, health care, or financial services.
Improving Business Processes
In some cases, the reseller may isolate
the customer from any product migration
issues. “Large Fortune 500 companies
hand integration and migration worries
over to their partners,” Opus Research’s
Miller points out.
In addition, the change can streamline
a customer’s business processes. Given
the recent downturn, many entities have
established a corporate objective to reduce
the number of vendors with which they
work. That’s because there are costs asso-
ciated with doing business with a variety
of vendors. Each time a company adds a
32 | Speech Technology MAY/JUNE 2011
supplier, it must go through a complex
legal review before agreeing to the ven-
dor’s terms and conditions. While the
fundamental elements are similar, the
focus and wording of those agreements
vary from one vendor to the next.
Reviewing those items requires time and
money. So dealing with fewer vendors
reduces the volume of work in such areas
as procurement administration.
In the end, customer input on a poten-
tial purchase is limited; vendors make
decisions that they view as their best
“Large Fortune 500
companies hand
integration and migration
worries over to their
partners.”
option. Since acquisitions are so com-
mon, businesses should take steps to pro-
tect themselves. “The customer should
inquire about and track the vendor’s
financial health,” Scholz says.
If a vendor is struggling to pay the
bills, putting itself up for sale is one
way to solve the problem. Finding finan-
cial data is simple with large public com-
panies but gets more difficult with
smaller private enterprises. They may
not be willing to divulge their financial
information. Trying to discern their
health can mean doing a lot of legwork
ferreting out the data, so the customer
has to determine how much effort it
wants to extend.
Relying on a Start-up Is Risky
Corporations should be aware of the
risk they are taking. If they bank on a
start-up, chances are good that the or-
ganization will change—dramatically—
over time, either by being acquired or as
a natural part of its growth. Consequent-
ly, the client needs proactively to moni-
tor the relationship and keep its ear to
the ground for information that could
influence its interactions, such as a cor-
porate restructuring or the possibility of
being purchased.
Another way a business can protect
itself is to include language in the origi-
nal contract giving it the right to renego-
tiate the terms if an acquisition takes
place. Such wording is now fairly stan-
dard. In the event of an acquisition, the
customer may be offered a “sweetheart
deal” to stay, since the acquirer will
probably want to minimize disrup-
tions at the beginning of the
assimilation process.
If the vendor is acquired,
meeting the new owners is
recommended. Customers
should speak with the manage-
ment team first to make certain the
vendor knows who they are. In addi-
tion, the client should describe its desires
and concerns with the relationship. Tak-
ing that step helps to forge a relationship
the way the client wants it. Also, the cus-
tomer gains a better understanding of the
vendor’s product strategy. Finally, the
client should be mindful of opportunities
to influence the development process, so
enhancements are in line with its needs.
The reality is that no customer is
secure. Opus Research’s Miller notes,
“Established companies, like Avaya, Nor-
tel, and Siemens, have gone through dra-
matic restructurings.” If a customer isn’t
safe buying Avaya, IBM, Nortel, or
Siemens, then there is risk in every prod-
uct purchase. Businesses cannot ignore
the market realities; instead, they need to
be aware of the potential challenges and
do what they can to protect themselves. 
Paul Korzeniowski is a freelance writer
who specializes in technology issues.
He can be reached at paulkorzen@aol.com.
www.speechtechmag.com
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subscription services for 14 newspapers | BY LEONARD KLIE

he E.W. Scripps Co. operates 14 newspapers, the Washington-based Scripps Howard News
Service, and the United Media syndication service that delivers comic strips like “Dilbert”
and “Marmaduke,” columns from nationally syndicated writers like Miss Manners and Cokie
Roberts, and puzzles and games to more than 400 editorial offices around the country.
The central Florida–based media company must manage a readership base of 630,000 weekday
and 790,000 Sunday subscribers in cities throughout California, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, South
Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington. Newspapers account for about 56 percent of total
revenue at Scripps, which also owns and operates nine ABC- or NBC-affiliated local television sta-
tions in Oklahoma, Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, Maryland, Kansas, Florida, and Arizona and one
independent TV station.

34 | Speech Technology MAY/JUNE 2011 www.speechtechmag.com

>> SUCCESS STORIES >> SUCCESS STORIES >> SUCCESS STORIES

With subscribers scattered throughout

the country, Scripps has begun standard-
izing all of its newspaper subscription
services on a single interactive voice re-
“ It’s a pretty big undertaking
because we’re going to have 14 newspapers
sponse (IVR) system built using the VB-
Voice development toolkit from Pronexus,
which is based in Ottawa, Canada.
Scripps first installed the graphical
user interface-based VBVoice at its Trea-
running on that one system.

day, or about 200,000 calls a month, for

all 14 of the Scripps newspapers. All de-
sure Coast newspaper group in central livery complaints, vacation stops and
Florida in 2002. After a systems integra- restarts, delivery confirmations, and
tor built the subscription system based credit card payments will be handled
on VBVoice, Ed Lindoo, senior director through the automated systems.
of IT infrastructure at Scripps since The current IVR usage rate falls be-
2001, took over the maintenance and tween 57 percent and 59 percent, while
further development of it. “Within a the old system, which was made by
matter of about three or four weeks, we Chatterbox, has been operating at be-
had a fully functioning IVR working tween 32 percent and 35 percent. That’s
for us,” Lindoo says. “From there, we’ve a 70 percent increase.
just kept building on it.” The company employs between 50
Recently, other Scripps newspapers and 60 customer service representatives
have started to adopt Lindoo’s IVR, at- as well, “because some people just don’t
tracted by the system’s afford- want to talk to a machine no
ability and effectiveness and matter what,” Lindoo says.
the increased customer reten- The Scripps IVR Scripps’ VBVoice-powered
tion and cost savings that it is expected IVR accepts touch-tone in-
has already yielded. The pub- to field about puts, and the average call
lications are also replacing 10,000 calls handling time is now two to
separate circulation database a day. three minutes, which isn’t
systems at each location expected to change much
with a single centralized sys- with the new system because
tem. Once they have been completed, of the nature of the calls being handled.
both the central IVR and the central cir- “The difference will come when we
culation system will be cloud-based. have a call center that’s slammed with
The entire standardization project will calls. We will not have to worry about
take about 18 months and is due for com- that anymore,” Lindoo says.
”
Pronexus,” he says. “It’s been very easy
to use and very reliable.”
The new systems are being hosted at
Verizon collocation facilities located
in New York and San Francisco, and
each channel can handle as many as
125 calls at a time, giving the Scripps
IVR the capacity to handle up to 250
calls simultaneously.
VBVoice has been hugely successful
for the Scripps publications that use it,
and Lindoo expects similar savings for
the rest of the group. “The new IVR will
save us somewhere around $1.5 million
a year,” he says.
VBVoice is free for developers; once
the system is ready for deployment,
customers would pay run-time licenses
based on the number of lines they
have. It’s an economical price point,
Lindoo says.
“In a fiercely competitive market like
the newspaper industry, VBVoice can
help deliver superior customer service
while keeping the costs down,” Jordan
Sommerville, territory sales manager at
Pronexus, said in a statement. 

pletion sometime in early 2013. “If I was
just doing a single-site IVR upgrade, I
could have it done in a week or two, but
what we’re doing is pretty complicated,”
Lindoo says, noting the project involves
multiple sites, databases, back-office circu-
lation systems, and credit card processing.
“It’s a pretty big undertaking because
we’re going to have 14 newspapers run-
ning on that one system,” he says.
Once completed, the Scripps IVR is
expected to field about 10,000 calls a
The new system will cover three
time zones and vary its greetings based
on the local time, taking advantage of
multithreading.
Over the years, Lindoo has modified
the system with easy-to-use drag-and-
drop controls several times in response
to changes in other back-office systems
and in Scripps’ IT infrastructure.
“One of the things that I like about
VBVoice is its flexibility. Making changes
is fast, and we get terrific support from
 App At a Glance
SINCE IT BEGAN INSTALLING AN IVR BUILT
WITH PRONEXUS’ VBVOICE TOOLKIT, THE
SCRIPPS CO. HAS SEEN:
 IVR usage climb to between
57 percent and 59 percent, up from
between 32 percent and 35 percent with
its previous system; and
 savings on the project reach
$1.5 million a year.

www.speechtechmag.com MAY/JUNE 2011 Speech Technology | 35

 >> SUCCESS STORIES >> SUCCESS STORIES >> SUCCESS STORIES

Rural Arizona Connects

With Residents Pinal County speeds service and cuts costs by switching from
a hosted to an on-premises contact center suite | BY LEONARD KLIE

inal County in rural central Arizona is home to 325,000 resi-
dents who are as diverse as the area’s landscape. From its
county seat in Florence, 42 government agencies routinely in-
teract with citizens through the Citizen Contact Center, which
is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The center has been operating since June 2007, but it only recently
improved service to residents by implementing a communications-as-
a-service (CaaS) solution from Interactive Intelligence. The system en-

THIS BUILDING IN
abled the Pinal County government to add features such as
FLORENCE HOUSES skills-based call routing, call and screen recording, a speech-enabled
PINAL COUNTY’S
GOVERNMENT, BUT interactive voice response system, and supervisory monitoring.
AGENTS WORKING The implementation, which involved changing from a hosted serv-
OUT OF THEIR
HOMES CONNECT ice to on-premises, began a little more than a year ago. “We started
RESIDENTS TO THE
RIGHT EMPLOYEES watching our call volumes, and we came up with the numbers to jus-
BY FIELDING 10,000 tify it,” says Jerry Keely, Pinal County’s customer service administra-
TO 15,000 CALLS
A MONTH. tor, who notes that the contact center’s seven agents field between
10,000 and 15,000 calls a month. “And
we had just completed a data center for
the county, which gave us the server ca-
pacity for an on-premises solution.”
Bringing the technology on-premises
removed the distance, Internet reliability,
and call quality issues that plagued the
county’s previous system, but cost was
the biggest factor.
“Cost is not something I have to con-
cern myself with anymore,” Keely says.
“I pay an annual maintenance and li-
censing fee. My costs have become much
more fixed.”
Keely explains that with the hosted
model, he was paying on a per-minute/

36 | Speech Technology MAY/JUNE 2011 www.speechtechmag.com

>> SUCCESS STORIES >> SUCCESS STORIES >> SUCCESS STORIES

in this issue

“ Cost is not something I have to concern

■ SPEECH USER COMPANIES
myself with anymore.

per-call basis. “At the end of the month,

I received my bill and I did not know
” References are to the first page of the story or
section in which the company appears.

E.W. Scripps Co. ................................................... 34

what those costs would be,” he says. “I
was paying $10,000 to $15,000 per Ford Motor Co........................................................ 15
month in telecom costs with hosted.
Now, my basic circuit costs are about Pinal County (Arizona)......................................... 36
$300 a month.”
But Keely has not soured on the
hosted model. In fact, he says the solu-
tion was perfect for the county at the
time. “Since this was all brand new to ■ ADVERTISERS
the county, we didn’t know how much
call volume we would get, so we went AVIOS...................................................................... 33
with hosting so we could grow the solu- call handling time is now 213 seconds, www.avios.org
tion as needed,” he says. “Hosted al- the average wait time is 114 seconds, and
lowed us to expand without being tied to the abandon rate is 15 percent.
Information Today Inc. Offerings .......... Cover 4
a particular location. We could set up at “The Interactive Intelligence CaaS
www.infotoday.com/perodicals
other locations if needed and Contact Center solution has 800-300-9868
offer our agents to work The decision was enabled us to automatically
from home.” made to switch from connect residents to the right
Larson Tech ........................................................... 33
The county still has a a hosted to a employees faster, as well as
www.larson-tech.com
home-based agent approach, premises-based adjust routing in real time
system to better 503-645-3598
but the difference now is based on fluctuations in call
that agents log onto a differ- serve Pinal County’s volume,” Keely says.
325,000 residents. Speech Tech Best Practices Series ... Cover 2
ent server. “Providing superior serv-
Pinal County did not aban- ice to the citizens of our www.speechtechmag.com/webinars
don its hosted solution, either. Instead, it county is a priority for us,” he adds.
turned the system over to its Public Health “As a result of Interactive’s innovative Speech Technology Subscriptions ...... Cover 3
Department for use in the event of a capabilities, we can continue to im- www.speechtechmag.com/subscribe
health emergency. “It’s not live now, but prove on our efforts through faster re-
they can open it up and turn it on in a mo- sponse times, additional ways for Speech Technology Twitter ............................... 33
ment’s notice if needed,” Keely explains. residents to contact us, and improved speechtechnology @ speechtech
Switching from a hosted solution to agent training.” 
an on-premises version was an easy
SpeechTEK 2011 .......................................... 5, 6, 7
process, according to Keely. Interactive
Intelligence moved all of Pinal County’s
IVR scripting, routing, and other data
 App At a Glance
SINCE SWITCHING FROM A HOSTED CONTACT
www.SpeechTEK.com

from its own servers to the new on-
premises servers in about three weeks.
“The transition was amazingly simple,”
Keely says. “I was expecting to have is-
sues, but it was flawless.”
Since the transition, Pinal County has
seen its first-call resolution rates jump
from 70 percent to 87 percent, and the
number of calls answered within 20 sec-
onds has climbed 50 percent. The average
CENTER SUITE TO AN ON-PREMISES
SOLUTION, THE PINAL COUNTY GOVERNMENT
IN ARIZONA HAS SEEN:
 monthly costs shrink to $300 a month
from between $10,000 and $15,000;
 first-call resolution rates jump from
70 percent to 87 percent; and
 the number of calls answered within
20 seconds rise by 50 percent.
SpeechTEK Europe 2011 ...................................... 27
www.SpeechTEK.com/europe
Speech Usability .................................................. 33
www.speechusability.com
512-897-0350
Worldly Voices.......................................................13
www.worldlyvoices.com
615-321-8802

www.speechtechmag.com
 DEBORAH DAHL
STANDARDS

Making Modalities Play Nicely Together

MMI architecture opens door to collaborative multimodal apps

M ultimodal applications have incredible potential to

enrich the interaction between users and applica-
define. With that information, someone who’s building an
application and considering using another vendor’s compo-
tions. But multimodal capabilities, like speech recogni- nent can know whether it would be suitable.
tion, gesture recognition, and biometrics, are themselves The three design suggestions are also helpful for designers
highly complex, and few companies have the resources to of interoperable components. They involve the internal
create independent versions of each technology they want architecture of components. As discussed in the MMI archi-
to use in an application. Simply mastering separate APIs tecture spec, components can be simple, complex, or nested.
for multiple third-party components can be problematic. Simple components are internally black boxes, but in
Standards for integrating technologies from different some cases it may be useful to create components with
vendors would make it easier for third-party technology internal structure. A complex component combines two or
experts to supply components to integrate into multimodal more distinct functions that are bundled for convenience or
systems. The Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces spec- efficiency. An example would be an avatar that needs to com-
ification (MMI architecture) is one such standard. The municate closely with a TTS to synchronize lip movements
architecture enables various vendors’ technologies to work to the synthesized speech. The third type of components,
together to create innovative applications, nested, may include an internal interaction
opening the door for smaller players. Eight best manager. The best practices document gives
At its essence, the MMI architecture practices suggestions for deciding which architecture—
defines a set of cooperating components for guidelines ease simple, nested, or complex—is appropriate.
processing modalities (modality compo- design of Finally, the best practices document has
nents), coordinated by a central interaction interoperable three examples of definitions of modality com-
manager and communicating through a stan- components. ponents that follow the guidelines. The defini-
dard set of life cycle events. tions describe APIs based on the MMI
By standardizing interfaces between modality compo- architecture for each component. Sample components include
nents and the interaction manager, the MMI architecture face recognition, handwriting recognition, and video display.
lets vendors offer pluggable components that can fit into The video display component explains such details as the
other companies’ multimodal applications and provide spe- fact that it is designed to use the H.264 codec, employs
cific functionality, such as speech or handwriting recogni- HTTP for transmitting media, and defines error messages
tion. But, because this involves a high-level architecture, such as “codec not supported” if it is asked to start display-
designers need more specifics to create pluggable compo- ing a video file that uses an unsupported codec. Similarly,
nents. To make it easier to design interoperable compo- the face-recognition example defines error messages such as
nents, the W3C Multimodal Interaction Working Group “known users not found” if the database of previously
recently published a companion document to the MMI enrolled faces is not found. The handwriting component
architecture, called “Best Practices for Creating MMI Modal- example includes information such as the fact that the
ity Components.” Included are eight important guidelines, handwriting recognition is based on InkML input and that
three design suggestions, and three examples of components. it uses EMMA for representing the recognition results.
The eight guidelines should be included in the specifica- Those three examples also include specific XML examples
tion of a component so that third parties can use it in MMI of life cycle events used with each example modality.
architecture-based systems. Think of the guidelines as a The MMI working group is interested in hearing your
“spec for a spec” for modality components. feedback; post your ideas to the the public mailing list, at
The first, and most important, guideline is that a modal- www-multimodal@w3.org.
ity component must implement all of the life cycle events. You can find the MMI architecture spec at
That is, it must accept commands to start, stop, report its http://www.w3.org/TR/mmi-arch/ and the best practices
status, pause, and resume, as well as the other life cycle spec at http://www.w3.org/TR/mmi-mcbp/. 
events defined in the MMI architecture. In addition, any
events specific to the component must be defined.
Deborah Dahl, Ph.D., is principal at speech and language consulting firm
Supported natural languages, audio formats for speech Conversational Technologies and chair of the World Wide Web Consortium’s
recognition, communication protocols such as HTTP, Multimodal Interaction Working Group. She can be reached at
dahl@conversational-technologies.com.
scripting languages, and error codes also are important to

38 | Speech Technology MAY/JUNE 2011 www.speechtechmag.com

 ROBIN SPRINGER
VOICE
VALUE

Emergency Preparedness Is a Job for All

Court ruling in Los Angeles disabilities case teaches a broader lesson

W ith the horrific suffering caused by natural disasters

in Japan and New Zealand saturating news outlets
creating their own plans. Manufacturers can be part of the
solution by addressing the following issues:
and social media sites, many of us have begun to examine 1. Alternative Power Supply: Powering devices during
our personal emergency preparedness plans and those of extended outages is a major concern for all people. SGDs,
our cities and states. Almost simultaneously with the AT, and mobile devices that require power are useless
earthquake in Christchurch in February, a lawsuit about unless a source of electricity is available. Thus, manufactur-
emergency preparedness was being decided in California. ers should emphasize the importance of alternative power
Brought against the city of Los Angeles on behalf of the sources and provide options for charging the devices, such
nearly 1 million Angelenos with disabilities, the suit claims as battery power, car lighter adapters, USB, traditional AC,
that the city failed to provide for the disabled in its emer- and even solar-powered bags.
gency preparedness plans and, as such, violated the Amer- 2. Manual Communication Board: With the pur-
icans with Disabilities Act and other federal and state laws. chase of each SGD, manufacturers should include a
The court agreed, holding that Los Angeles failed to laminated manual communication board for emergen-
ensure accessible emergency evacuation, transportation, cies. Or, at a minimum, manufacturers should provide
notification, and emergency shelters, instructions on how to create your
making the disabled “disproportion- “During a small-scale own manual board, for inclusion in
ately vulnerable to harm in the event emergency, first responders emergency kits.
of an emergency or disaster.” can take more time…But as 3. Replacement and/or Loaner
For its part, the city argued that it the scale of the emergency Policy: Just as pharmacies and in-
does have a “plan,” though it consists escalates, not as many surance companies should have poli-
mostly of general information on how options are available.” cies in place to provide prescription
people with disabilities should be medication to disaster victims who
treated. “Specifics need to be in place as to what can be are forced to leave home without medication, SGD makers
done by whom and in what situations,” disability policy should have policies, in conjunction with insurance carri-
consultant June Kailes says. Los Angeles has been ordered ers, that set forth criteria and the availability of replace-
to create those specific plans, which include coverage for ment or loaner SGDs. Specifics should be included on how
people with communication difficulties. and where users can obtain the replacement SGDs and how
Speech-generating devices, or SGDs, are used by non-ver- providers of the equipment would be reimbursed.
bal people, though non-native speakers might also employ As for personal preparedness, redundancy is key. Individ-
them. Experts agree that it may not be feasible to build a uals should compile multiple emergency kits, including go-
single SGD to communicate across multiple emergency bags, as well as car, bedside, and home kits. Each one
response scenarios (such as in ambulances, ERs, and shel- should include alternative power supplies and hard copies
ters) because the devices are highly customized to the indi- of important documents and phone numbers. People of all
vidual. But SGDs may be one of several tools. abilities should get involved and take part in community
“During a small-scale emergency, first responders can take emergency response training. “[People with disabilities] are
more time and be creative,” Kailes says. “But as the scale of not being invited to the table,” says Sarah W. Blackstone,
the emergency escalates, not as many options are available.” president of Augmentative Communication Inc.’s Rehabil-
From word prediction to visual voicemail, productivity itation Engineering Research Center on Communication
software to text-to-speech, new apps that overcome commu- Enhancement (AAC-RERC). “They may not even know
nication barriers are being released regularly for smart there is a table.”
phones and tablets. While traditional SGDs may always be Being prepared for emergencies and disasters is now
critical technology for some, as the availability and variety of mandated on a governmental level, at least in Los Angeles.
mobile apps increase, more users may rely on these products It’s good advice all of us can use. 
instead of traditional assistive technology (AT). Moreover,
because so many people have mobile devices, government
Robin Springer is an attorney and the president of Computer Talk Inc.
agencies now can alert people of impending emergencies. (www.comptalk.com), a consulting firm specializing in the design and implemen-
Nonetheless, nothing can substitute for personal tation of speech recognition and other hands-free technology services. She can be
reached at (888) 999-9161 or contactus@comptalk.com.
preparedness, and individuals should be proactive in

www.speechtechmag.com MAY/JUNE 2011 Speech Technology | 39

 MOSHE YUDKOWSKY
FORWARD
THINKING

If This Passes, Only Criminals

Could Do Speech Technology
Federal privacy bill would drive up compliance costs and inhibit market
oday I’m reminded of what I’ll call Anderson’s Law, lives), and wait with dread to hear what nonsensical security
T formulated by Poul Anderson, a science fiction regime the regulators would impose.
writer who understood how science is done, as well as Some consequences are easy to foresee. New Web-based
how engineers work: “I never saw a problem, however services, such as Web APIs, would become harder to create,
complicated, that when looked at the right way wasn’t still because of privacy rules and the sheer cost of compliance
more complicated.” (e.g., if I use company A’s API in my product, I’d likely be
The Obama administration in March proposed legislation liable if company A breaks the rules). That alone would
that would affect the Internet and our professional lives in squash experimental APIs. Eventually, that would result in
ways we can’t begin to predict. At first glance, the proposal higher costs through a regime of audits, which would
is nothing but trouble; or, perhaps the legislation would translate into permanently lower start-up activity.
open up vast opportunities. Maybe it would do both. Or nei- As for speech technology, any API-centric platform would
ther. The more I look at it, the more complicated it becomes. face higher compliance costs. Any service using biometrics
The European Union advocates similar regu- would be required not only to secure the bio-
lations with similarly unclear consequences. metrics but also to let consumers review that
News reports about the legislation have Even data. Given that the law would require that data
straightforward
echoed some spokesman’s talking points be presented in an easily understood format,
IVR systems
without thinking through the consequences. might struggle. biometric companies would scramble to explain
Journalists rarely, if ever, give references to features to the man on the street.
primary source materials (see http://www. Even straightforward IVR systems might
stinkyjournalism.org/editordetail.php?id=1263), so I dug struggle. Every user of your IVR system would provide grist
around for the full story and the government press releases. for the mill as you grind away at your user interface and back-
The paper trail starts at the Commerce Department, which end technology; all the data would offer insights into the per-
proposed legislation to protect privacy, with enforcement by formance of your speech technology and user interface.
the Federal Trade Commission. As usual, the FTC would The point of the legislation, if I read it correctly, is to force
enforce rules through its panoply of coercive measures. data collection practices into a rigid straitjacket. We won’t be
The government would be able to mandate that someone, able to wave our arms and claim that our data collection
in this case Internet-based services, abide by the FTC’s Fair operations are so innocuous that we should be exempt. Must
Information Practice Rules. This in turn would require: you disclose all the uses of this data? How can you accom-
• precollection disclosure of what data would be plish that during a phone call? Do you have a lobbyist with
collected from you and for what purpose; bags of cash to beg for an exemption? Data mining compa-
• right of review to verify that your data are correct and nies, including the ones that sift through corporate data for
complete; and problems and trends, would have a party on their hands.
• security of all your personal data. As for the hypothetical vast opportunities, I tried for hours
I know what all you technical people are thinking: What to think of them but to no avail. At first I considered that
a nightmare! A hundred million Web unique visitors to your some companies would rather shut down their Web presence
site, each one wanting to exercise the right to review and cor- and provide telephony services instead, to avoid high compli-
rect whatever background marketing information you’ve col- ance costs, but I doubt that would happen. Someone some-
lected (“No, I do not prefer the color red”). Entrepreneurs where might sell an extra biometric system to provide secure
who want to analyze and monetize statistics would be in for access; a few people would sell extra IVR systems. As for our
some sleepless nights. And the behaviorists are thinking that industry, the costs of compliance would burn money that
everyone who visits Web sites regularly would click through might otherwise be spent creating real value. 
the disclosure agreements, rendering the operation pointless.
Security folks would marvel at the cloddish notion that Moshe Yudkowsky, Ph.D., is president of Disaggregate Consulting and author of
opening 100 million records to the scrutiny of the general The Pebble and the Avalanche: How Taking Things Apart Creates Revolutions.
He can be reached at speech@pobox.com.
public would improve people’s lives (that is, honest people’s

40 | Speech Technology MAY/JUNE 2011 www.speechtechmag.com

Speech Technology magazine has become the voice
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