Tuning in to individual callers can be good for business
Via Customer Think
February 24, 2011
Research shows that the average English-speaking rate is 130 – 200 Words Per Minute. This wide WPM range applies to 90% of the English-speaking population.
• For complex material, 130 – 145 WPM may be required
• For average complexity, 145 – 175 WPM can be optimal
• For simple material, well over 175 WPM is possible
Listeners can be lost to boredom, lost to complexity or fully engaged in a conversation based on the speaker’s ability to deliver all types of material at the optimal rate for each listener. Read more…
Caller-adaptive real time personalization in self-service telephone calls.
Via Customer Think
February 15, 2011
Even with well-designed telephone scripts and call flows, personalization from caller history, more accurate ASR, and better grammars, most speech applications are still static and don’t adjust in real time to caller dynamics.
Try as we might to design great systems, each individual has his own pattern of speaking, level of comprehension, and hand-eye coordination skills (used for entering touchtone responses).
Each person also has his own level of concentration and willingness to use automated systems. Even the speed at which we speak varies widely, as the average English-speaking rate ranges from 130 to 200 words per minute. Read more…
There has been an interesting exchange online recently on the merits of User-Centered Design.
As far as I can tell, the exchange started with Fast Company’s Co.Design’s article titled ”User-Led Innovation Can’t Create Breakthroughs; Just Ask Apple and Ikea”
Some quick quotes from this article are ”At Apple, we don’t waste our time asking users, we build our brand through creating great products we believe people will love”, ”If users can’t tell a company what to do, what should companies do instead? The best brands are all guided by a clear vision for the world, a unique set of values, and a culture that makes them truly unique and that no user insights could ever change” and ”But can’t you create radical new products based on what the user wants? Why do the most innovative brands not care about what users want?” Read more…
Like other interface technologies that provide new levels of ease-of-use, innovation in the mobile device market is affecting not only the way people use their technology, but the fortunes of companies that connect with those users in many ways.
Recently, Board Members from AVIOS (Applied Voice Input/Output Society ) commented on this trend:
“The mobile phone is often the interface of choice in the developed world, but it is the only interface available to many in the developing world. For the majority of the world, speech access to information over mobile devices will be the primary mode of interaction for many years to come. Evolving speech interfaces such as those highlighted at Mobile Voice can play a key role in connecting the developing world with the information age.” - Sara Basson, Program Director, Spoken Web Strategy, IBM Research - sbasson@us.ibm.com
“Speech technology continues to become a part of everyday life, enabling people to get information and take action by using their voice. Microsoft Tellme is taking the lead in delivering speech as part of the natural user interface, giving you a seamless and natural speech experience in your car, in your home, and on your phone.” - Rob Chambers, principal group program manager at Microsoft Tellme - robch@exchange.microsoft.com
Read more…
Your customers want you to treat them as though you know them personally.
And yet, they don’t want you to actually know them at all.
Just ask Facebook, Google, Linked In and other social media and online services as they become increasingly aware of the impact legitimate privacy concerns are having on their business models.
How does this relatively new phenomenon relate to customers calling your self-service voice applications? Well, they too want you to treat them the way a close friend that knows them well would treat them. They just don’t want to be your close friend.
They want you to not only know their particular brand of communication, with all of it’s nuances, conversational pauses, speech tempo and so forth, but they want you to know ahead of time when they are becoming frustrated or bored with the pace of the dialogue. And when they are done with the call and their problem is solved, they want you to act like you don’t know them from a hole in the wall. Until they call again, that is. Read more…
By Walt Tetschner
ASR News Automatic Speech Recognition
January 2011 Vol. 22 No. 1
Walt Tetschner, an industry veteran of over thirty years and not one to take a lot of time getting to the salient points of issues concerning speech technology, recently said of the Dynamic Application Smoothing feature of the Adaptive Audio/VUI Cloud service:
“This appears to be another aspect of Adaptive Audio (AA) technology that would be really valuable for every IVR application to have. Modifying the speaking rate to accommodate an indivual caller makes perfect sense to me. Read more…
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