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The PC became a powerful general-purpose machine when the Graphical User Interface matured. Now, youngsters are growing up with an intuitive understanding of pointing and clicking, menus, and the desktop metaphor. The Voice User Interface—powered by speech recognition, text-to-speech synthesis, and speaker authentication—will be the way we all think of telephones and wireless devices in a few years. The unfriendly image of the touch-tone pad will dissolve into the accommodating image of a virtual assistant at the other end of the line.

Service providers can add services that the touch-tone interface couldn’t support. They can create solutions for consumers and for business customers that deliver value to users and profits to the provider. Speech Recognition Update follows events and trends in this market segment, from early offerings by application developers and platform suppliers to deployed services.

Enterprises have clear payoffs in just reducing costs in contact centers, but the opportunity goes well beyond the obvious possibilities for automation. For example, natural-language call routing opens the possibility of a single toll-free number for the corporation. The potential of treating every call as an opportunity to gain a customer, retain a customer, or make a sale has been called “conversational marketing” by SRU editor Bill Meisel. And even beyond that, telephone speech recognition can make every telephone a Personal Digital Assistant—adding to the effectiveness of internal-productivity and CRM software. Speech Recognition Update discusses specific platforms, out-sourcing, standards, the impact of basic technology advances, and applications.

Readers gain an edge in understanding what is available, what issues should be considered, and how to take full advantage of the changing face of telephony. “Love your publication!” was the simple summary by one reader.

While telephone speech recognition is the largest market for speech technology today, other market segments are developing. They are energized in part by the public’s growing exposure to the technology in telephony.

Microsoft and Apple are delivering speech recognition with their latest operating systems, and microphones have improved. As a consequence, speech-driven applications are better integrated, easier to install, and work better than earlier PC products. Vertical markets like healthcare and law support successful speech-enabled report systems. Speech recognition makes PCs accessible to those who can’t use the keyboard. More general use is on the horizon as application developers find creative applications. One area of synergy is using network voice applications from the PC; Microsoft already has a prototype voice browser for Internet Explorer.

Mobile devices and consumer products benefit from improved embedded speech technology

Dialing by speaking a name is a common feature in wireless phones, and is an example of “embedded” speech recognition. Embedded solutions can run with limited memory and with the processors found on small devices. Since small devices have cramped keyboards if any, speech recognition is a good match.

Automotive telematics requires a speech interface for safety and convenience

Speech recognition makes it possible to use enhanced automobile electronics without distracting the driver from the road. The key in this market is an elusive mix of applications, convenience, and price.

Voice-controlled non-invasive surgery devices have received FDA approval and are in growing use. The Army has contracted for voice-control devices for soldiers that tolerate noise louder than a rock concert. Devices that fit in your pocket can translate common spoken phrases. SRU reports these and other innovative uses of speech technology.

The Publisher & Editor: William S. Meisel, president of TMA Associates, is one of the speech industry’s best-known analysts and consultants, and a frequent speaker and moderator at industry conferences. He is the author of influential speech-recognition market studies and holds an annual conference on the Telephony Voice User Interface (on business opportunities created by telephone speech technology, see www.tmaa.com/ conference). Meisel is also Executive Director of the non-profit Applied Voice Input/Output Society (AVIOS). Dr. Meisel started his career as a university professor, wrote the first textbook on computer pattern recognition, and founded and ran a speech recognition company for ten years. His consulting services include help with platform decisions, marketing and product strategies, conversational marketing, and enterprise speech strategies.

Meisel has written Speech Recognition Update monthly since 1993—over 110 issues.

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The business case

Speech Recognition Update covers applications and products that pay off for the organizations that deploy them—either making or saving money.

Sometimes the savings are easy to quantify, for example, when speech recognition in call centers can avoid the need to add additional agents. Sometimes the savings are more difficult to quantify, e.g., when an application simply improves staff productivity.

Revenues are easy to measure when the application sells a product or carries a monthly service fee. Revenue payoff is more difficult to quantify when the application helps retain a customer, makes a mobile sales force more effective, helps a brand or marketing campaign, or generates indirect revenue (such as additional minutes on a wireless plan). But, even based on easily quantifiable savings and revenues, speech applications usually pay for themselves quickly.

A single interface to mobile devices

A bewildering number of mobile devices have been developed and proposed, including mobile phones with high-data-rate wireless connections, Personal Digital Assistants with wireless connectivity, and wirelessly connected Tablet computers. Most can be used as a mobile or cordless phone and have a microphone. Since the microphone is the common denominator in these devices, a company trying to extend its services to these devices should make a voice-only interface the first priority.

Network-based telephone speech recognition can make the solution totally device-independent. But one can’t count on always being connected, so solutions which include embedded speech recognition can be an attractive way to keep a consistent user interface. In-device solutions add the additional option of controlling functions of the device by voice command.

This interaction between embedded and telephone speech recognition is an example of the overlap of market segments that Speech Recognition Update analyzes for subscribers.