from Nuance

Jon Morrow Video – Speech Recognition for Bloggers

Erica Hill — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:16:00 GMT

Jump over to Problogger to check out Jon Morrow's terrific video about speech recognition. This is a great overview that covers everything from sound cards to microphones to PC set-up to software. Jon includes a great demo of Dragon as well!

"Speech recognition technology has come a long way in the last few years – in this in depth, informative and inspiring video which Jon Morrow (Associate Editor of Copyblogger and Co-founder of Partnering Profits) shares his first hand insights into speech recognition for bloggers."

Happy viewing!

Cool Series from GearDiary: Look Ma, No Hands...

Erica Hill — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:33:00 GMT

An interesting new series has kicked off over at GearDiary focused on the state of voice recognition technology today. Writer Dan Cohen has started his series with an in-depth look at Dragon NaturallySpeaking. He's even included some great videos that take us through the process of getting started with Dragon.

Hop on over to GearDiary and take a look!

Alex Shines Through!

mgeremia — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:45:00 GMT

I'd like to share a story that was submitted to us from a proud parent:

"For our 12 year old son, school was a nightmare. His Aspergers made the work tedious, his dyslexia was frustrating, and his dysgraphia made handwriting extremely difficult and exhausting. According to him, it was torture every day until he met the Dragon. It took a bit of practice and he was frustrated when the dragon didn't understand him. He even was heard reprimanding the dragon for making mistakes! Soon, however, he and the Dragon became fast friends. Sometimes they would play too much and Alex enjoyed tricking the Dragon with sound effects. It's now almost 4 years later and Alex and the Dragon are still friends. Alex has been able to write wonderfully imaginative stories with the help of the Dragon, as well as, complete other academic projects in high school. Now, he and the Dragon talk often which allows his ideas to be communicated more effectively so that the true Alex shines through. Thank you Dragon!"

Are you using Dragon to overcome a learning disability? What about someone you know? Let us know! These stories are great to share, and can really help others who might be struggling alone with learning disabilities.

Australian Webinar for Legal Community from WinScribe

Derek Austin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:03:00 GMT

You are invited to attend a FREE webinar

Digital Dictation, Workflow and Speech Recognition: A Legal Case Study

Wednesday, November 25th 2009
12:00pm - 1:00pm (AEST)
1:00pm - 2:00pm (AEDT)
via WebEx online meeting

* Please note you will need to dial in using your phone to hear the audio portion of the event.
The toll free number is 1800-093-897.
Pre-registration is required

Register Now

Speech Recognition has been a hot topic in the legal industry in recent times, but how can this technology integrate with your dictation system? In this educational session, you'll hear first hand how these technologies can work together with an introduction to the options available to deliver maximum efficiencies within a law firm environment.

Guest speaker and WinScribe Dictation customer Malcolm Sinclair, Practice Manager at Queensland based Law Firm Payne Butler Lang, will present his experiences with the technology, which will include discussions around the following:

Challenges within the firm that led to the requirement for Digital Dictation with the Speech Recognition and how it is being used within the firm.
Key objectives and how the technology met those needs
User adoption and training
Speech Recognition component accuracy and results since implementation.

The session will conclude with a Q&A discussion to give you the opportunity to share your experiences, and pose your questions to our expert panel

Panel members:

Scott Winstone - Sales Executive, WinScribe
Cameron Foale - Sales Executive, WinScribe
Derek Austin - Sales Manager APAC, Nuance Communications.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Best regards,
Derek Austin
Sales Manager Asia Pacific, Integrative Technologies
Nuance Communications

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Law Firm
Administrative
Management

Dictation Services
Management

Dictation &
Transcription Users

Information
Technoilogy Directors
and staff

Those looking to take
advantage of using
both Dictation and
Speech Recognition
components.

CONTACT

Please contact
Nicole Williams at nwilliams@winscribe.com
with any further enquiries.

Register Now

Dragon Review in Post Chronicle

Erica Hill — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:33:00 GMT

Writer Jim Bray just posted his review of Dragon to the Post Chronicle.

Take a look!

November Dragon Newsletter is Here

Erica Hill — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:34:00 GMT

The November issue of our Dragon NaturallySpeaking newsletter is up. This month's newsletter includes tips and tricks to boost accuracy and productivity, as well as new command and control tips. We've also featured a great student success story. Check it out here.

If you'd like to keep tabs on Dragon, you can sign up to receive our monthly newsletter via email. Hop on over here to sign up!

Dragon 10.1 earns Windows 7 certification!

Erica Hill — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:03:00 GMT

Windows 7, the newest version of the Windows operating system, was just launched in late October. And a lot of you have been asking recently: “What’s the deal with Dragon and Windows 7 support?” Well, we are pleased to report that Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10.1 now officially supports Windows 7 (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions). Dragon has earned the Windows 7 logo certification for compatibility!

More information can be found here, including what to do if you are currently using Dragon and planning to upgrade to Windows 7.

If you’re using Dragon 10.1 with Windows 7, drop us a comment here, @ us on Twitter (@DragonTweets) or post a message on Facebook. We’d love to hear your thoughts on using Dragon in the Windows 7 environment.

Dragon Makes the Grade in Education

mgeremia — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:47:00 GMT

There was a time when talking in the classroom was strictly forbidden. Those days are fading fast as Dragon NaturallySpeaking helps students and teachers at all educational levels better exploit their full potential just by speaking.

What's behind this growing trend? For starters, U.S. laws mandate support services for students with physical and learning disabilities. Dragon provides accessibility for students with a wide range of physical impairments that make traditional keyboard typing painful, if not impossible. By enabling them to create documents and emails up to three times faster than typing, Dragon helps special education students keep up with their non-disabled peers - even in a mainstream education setting.

Dragon has proven especially helpful for students with language-based learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, because it enables them to transfer their ideas into print more easily. Research also suggests that speech recognition can help dyslexic students achieve significant improvements in reading, decoding, spelling and comprehension by giving them the opportunity to practice their reading skills and positively influencing sound-character awareness. What's more, Dragon has been shown to improve core reading and writing skills for students of all abilities through heightened strategic engagement with print and language while dictating and correcting errors.

Speech recognition is gaining traction as an integral part of business education curricula too. With industry pundits like Bill Gates hailing speech and touch as the interfaces of the future, many forward-looking schools are integrating speech recognition into traditional middle school, secondary and post-secondary business courses to prepare students for the 21^st century. What makes Dragon the ideal speech recognition choice for these courses? It's remarkably easy to use. It's highly accurate - even for non-native speakers or students who speak with strong regional accents. And it's available in many languages to help students receiving bilingual education services.

Teachers love Dragon because it dramatically streamlines the assessment of student assignments. Consider this: for each assignment, teachers can spend up to 20 minutes handwriting comments on each paper. With 25 students or more per class, this can easily add up to 8 hours per assignment. With Dragon, teachers can read and respond to student assignments quickly and easily because they're not constrained by time-consuming handwritten feedback. It's a win-win for everyone; teachers enjoy better work-life balance and students benefit from more comprehensive and detailed assessments.

Interested in learning more? Download our information-packed whitepaper, "Dragon NaturallySpeaking: Helping All Students Reach their Full Potential."

When Touchtone Automation Isn’t Good Enough

Jeff Foley — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:43:00 GMT

Today thousands of contact centers are saving even more money by increasing call automation and they continue to keep their customers happy. What's their secret? They have designed their automation system around their customers' needs. Overwhelmingly consumers prefer an easy to use speech interface for phone self-service. Surprisingly, many contact center managers haven't even considered taking advantage of speech technology. Some lack understanding of just how much a great speech solution...(read more)

Man vs. Machine: How do people prefer to get customer service?

Nuance Expert TIPS — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:35:00 GMT

Companies worldwide will spend more than $100 billion in customer care in 2009. Despite the significant investment companies are making, consumer satisfaction rates for customer care are extremely low. When it comes to self-service options by phone, a whopping 72% of consumers are not satisfied with their experience and 80% of consumers have taken action by telling family and friends and leveraging various forms of media to spread the word. So, where are companies going wrong? While many factors...(read more)

Dragon Making a Difference: Heraldo's Story

Peter Mahoney — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 03:09:00 GMT

I just received this great story today from a woman named Carol Roche. Carol teaches students with learning disabilities and she has been using Dragon to help some of her students with writing. The attached story was written by a gentleman by the name of Heraldo who recently finished her class.

Congratulations, Heraldo, and thanks for sharing your story!

Peter

Heraldo’s Story

Written By Heraldo 7/28/09 Using Dragon Naturally Speaking Software

I would like to invite you to take a look at the class from which I’m graduating. I’ve never been very good at spelling but now, because of this class, I can do a lot of spelling, and different things that I never was able to do. The class was hard, yes, I have several disabilities but the class was well worth it. I really do feel that if there’s anyone out there listening who may have a disability like me or a series of disabilities, they really should take this class because it helps build self-esteem. This class also gives them the tools that they need to do a lot of writing, so they can improve like me.

Before this class, I couldn’t spell and I couldn’t hear the words clearly to learn. Now Dragon Speak Naturally does most of that for me and now I can write letters and send email. I can do my class assignments using spellchecker and also other tools I have in Dragon Speak Naturally or either in Word Perfect. I’m very glad that I’ve been involved in this class.

There was many jobs I really wanted but couldn’t get them. I was quite capable of doing the jobs but I couldn’t put things down on paper because of a lack of spelling and writing skills. I’m learning a lot of these things through this class and now that I’m graduating from this class, I plan to buy this program and I am also going to come back regularly. I want to continue to learn to do things like what I’ve been doing in this class for a long time.

I went to many organizations in the school district and even went to adult rehabilitation and asked for help. I couldn’t get any help at all. I even went to the library and signed up for the special programs that they have. I was put on the waiting list for a year and then I was sent a letter saying that there was no one there who could help me.

Now I have an outstanding teacher. At the same time I am trying to acquire my GED. One of my teachers believed enough in me to encourage me to take the Dragon Speak Naturally class out at Pikes Peak Community College. She pushed me and after a bunch of tests and speaking with a lot of people, I finally came to Pikes Peak Community College. I’m so glad that she pushed me and even drove me out here to speak to the people who know all the information to get into this class. I’m so very glad that all of these things happened and she believed enough in me to push me.

I’ve been trying for so long to learn how to spell and how to write and to learn about punctuation and writing. I know I’m a lot closer than I used to be and I’m so glad I’ve come here. I’ve had so many good and bad experiences in my life that I’ve always wanted to share with other people, but I wasn’t able to because I couldn’t spell out words. I couldn’t put them on paper, but now I can and obviously it has allowed me to learn and I’m looking forward to learning more.

I’m so very happy that I’ve been a part of this class. I worked hard and I will continue to work even harder to get better. I want to thank everyone involved with me, especially the outstanding instructors who have helped me to get here. Thank you so much and I’ll continue to work hard and make you proud of me.

Livin' on a Prayer

Rebecca — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:02:00 GMT

Oh, we're half-way there Oh, oh, livin' on a prayer Take my hand; we'll make it I swear Oh, oh, livin' on a prayer - Bon Jovi No, I'm not reminiscing about my junior prom. This Bon Jovi song came up in conversation at work today, as my friend Ilene and I were chatting about some recent experiences as customers. We were simultaneously excited and discouraged as we tried to take advantage of some really forward-looking customer service options. Problem is, they were more forward...(read more)

The End of Passwords and PINs: Could Your Voice be the “Spoken Token?”

Nuance Expert TIPS — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:06:00 GMT

Imagine you're paying for a purchase with your credit card over the phone through an automated system - how can a "machine" tell if it's really you calling, rather than someone who just stole your wallet? Consumers reported fraud losses totaling more than $1.2 billion last year, according to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Fraud can be committed in various ways, but phone fraud in particular has increased sharply. Do you believe that something as simple as the human voice could...(read more)

Now Pitching For Team Dragon, Former Boston Pitching Ace Curt Schilling

Peter Mahoney — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:20:00 GMT

Starting this August, radio listeners in the greater Boston area will hear former Boston Red Sox pitching ace Curt Schilling talking about Dragon NaturallySpeaking. For those of you who aren't that close to baseball, Curt was the pitcher for the Boston Red Sox who famously pitched through a painful Achilles tendon injury to win one of the key games on the way to the Boston 2004 World Series championship.

Now retired from baseball, Curt is a successful entrepreneur in the Boston area who is working on a large scale multiplayer videogame at his company based in Maynard Massachusetts. Curt was excited about this opportunity to work with Dragon since he is a fan of speech recognition and has been looking at it as part of his videogame development.

We had a lot of fun putting these commercials together and it was great to get a chance to meet Curt in person in the radio studio. Like most professional athletes, Curt was a lot bigger than I imagined. I bet it was pretty intimidating to face Curt's pitching, especially if your baseball skills are like mine and limited to Little League where we faced pitchers who threw the ball at a blazing 35 mph.

We are planning more radio commercials for other regions of the country (don't worry New Yorkers, we won't make you listen to Curt...), so keep your ears out for Dragon on the radio.

There are at least six versions of the commercial playing in the Boston area, but here is the long form for your listening pleasure:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Why the Speech Team Hates Business Rule Transfers

Tom Hicks — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:21:00 GMT

Business rule transfers; you know what they are. You have a caller coming into the IVR, making a good faith attempt to self serve, then Wham... they get told "please hold while I forward your call to ..." People building speech-enabled applications hate when that happens. Well, let me re-word that. The speech team may not hate business rule transfers, but we often see them as significant lost opportunities . It's clear that there are multiple objectives and drivers in deploying a speech...(read more)

True Stories of “WOW”: Customer Experience @ Zappos.com

Ilene Kaminsky — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:08:00 GMT

True Stories of "WOW": Customer Experience @ Zappos.com - In preparation for an in-depth analysis of Customer Experience and its connection to customer loyalty and satisfaction, the Nuance Creative Services team decided to take a look at online-based or "non-brick and mortar" companies for best practices. What we found in this true story, are best practices and creative options that can raise the "WOW" factor of your customers' experiences.

...(read more)

Dragon and Windows 7

kwylie — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:47:00 GMT

The newest version of the Windows operating system, Windows 7, was released to manufacturing last week, with general retail availability expected in October. Nuance performed preliminary testing on the release candidate of Windows 7 and found that Dragon installed and ran on this operating system with no major issues. Our preliminary testing of the release candidate of Windows 7 included both English and Spanish.

So for anyone who is wondering if Dragon will run on Windows 7, the short answer is yes. But there is some fine print you should keep in mind: Although Windows 7 may include some new features and functionality, these items have not been reviewed and tested within Nuance labs. You should also note that we tested the "release candidate" so additional testing will be necessary when Windows 7 is formally released as Microsoft may have made changes to the final version of the release that may impact compatibility with Dragon.

Key Tips for Evaluating Analytics Packages (and, Why an “Easy Does It” Approach is Best)

Lauren Hodgson — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:52:00 GMT

Analytics are a key tool to help drive improvements in your phone channel - ultimately leading to lower costs, fewer calls to agents, a more "friendly" IVR that callers are happy using, and event helping to effectively measure customer satisfaction.

But choosing the right analytics "package" can be challenging. How do you determine what the business value of an analytics investment will be for your particular situation? And what kind of package should you invest in to prove out that business value?

Let's be honest - vendors want you to commit long-term to using their analytics tool. After all that's their business right? So if there's great business value for you in such a long term commitment, great. But, if you're not sure - here are a few tips for getting started with Analytics and figuring out what their business value is to you.

When evaluating analytics packages (and vendors), consider the following: (Keep in mind that the pricing for each are ballpark amounts, but should include both consulting services and tools.)

Snapshot
As the name implies, this approach takes a snapshot of your data (typically a week or two worth of data), analyzes that data and then provides you with an analysis of how your phone channel is working. You can then use that data to make IVR and/or agent-side improvements. Calendar time for analysis is about 6-12 weeks. And at $75k-$150k, this is the least expensive way to use analytics and still get some actionable results to help improve your call center.
Single Cycle
This approach does everything that a Snapshot approach does, but it also includes another analysis after you make improvements. This ability to measure the same metrics before and after changes allows you to really nail down the business value of your analytics investments and can help you justify any further investments. Calendar time is typically 6-12 weeks for the initial analysis and an additional 4-6 weeks for the follow-up analysis. Ballpark pricing is $150k-$200k
Continuous Improvement
This final approach runs an ongoing set of "Single Cycles," one after another and establishes ongoing trend patterns for your analytics metrics. Although vendor tools typically can show an analytics metrics dashboard in Snapshot or Single Cycle as well, metrics trending over many quarters is only possible with a Continuous Improvement approach. This approach is ideal because you can build it into your company governance process. This allows you to continuously drive improvements into your phone channel based on observed ongoing trends of your Key Performance Indicator metrics. These engagements are typically a one-year contract to deliver about a cycle a quarter. Ballpark price is $400k-$1M.

In my opinion the best approach is to try a Snapshot or Single Cycle to first prove out the business value of an analytics investment. If things go well, you can then consider investing in a 12-month Continuous Improvement engagement. Don't rush into making a long-term investment in a 12-month engagement simply because "it seemed like a good deal" or "it was part of an upgrade" - chances are it will end up as nothing more than "shelfware."

Don't Believe All the Hype

Donald Davis — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:58:00 GMT

Just the other day I was thinking about all of the buzz words and hype that inevitably pop up every couple of years around the latest "new thing" for contact centers.

I have been doing this long enough to remember the TQM craze and how that was going to revolutionize the way we did business. Then came CRM - again changing the landscape of how we interact with customers.

Now, the latest buzz word is "Customer Experience."

First, let me say that "Customer Experience" is not new to the contact center. The most successful contact centers have always fully embraced the idea of happy, loyal customers as invaluable assets. They have always strived to make sure that every interaction with their company meets (and exceeds) their customers expectations.

But as part of the "new" Customer Experience buzz there's now a lot of talk about Web 2.0 and Unified Communications. Unified Communications refers to both real-time and non-real-time delivery of communications based on the preferred method and location of the recipient. While Web 2.0 leads one to believe that customers will be flocking to use things like Twitter, Web chat and other social mediums to interact with companies. These Web 2.0 "hypesters" (my new word) want us to believe that Twitter users will be tweeting with companies and agents as a way to have meaningful customer service interactions.

I have to admit though, I'm just not buying it. Back in the 90s we were told how the universal agent was going to be able to handle Web questions, emails, take voice calls and mix a mean Tom Collins. Although some companies made inroads into realizing this state of nirvana, it has not been the norm and for a lot of good reasons.

Maybe I'm just too old or have heard too many "next big things" that never really lived up to their hype. But what I really think is that I'm one of those people who believes that all that companies need to do is treat customers like they were a critical element to the survival of the company to the exclusion of everything else.

A great "Customer Experience" is achieved by using well-trained agents, relevant technology and good old common sense - to make customers feel meaningful and to provide timely, accurate information to them. That's what makes customers happy with our companies.

Doesn't it make sense that if we provide intuitive customer service channels that are accessible, usable and relevant to customers' situations that we wouldn't have to hype the latest and greatest "new trend" to try and hold market share?

Excuse Me Dear, But Your Stock is Up and Your Package has Arrived

Rebecca — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:03:00 GMT

I was chatting with a colleague yesterday, and he was excited about the evolution of Bluetooth devices – specifically how they could eventually become a stand-alone channel for outbound communications from companies to their customers, whispering sweet nothings like stock quotes and package delivery updates into their ears. After I got over my fear of wifi-induced brain damage, I realized that I probably would wear a Bluetooth earpiece if this happened.

Of course there would have to be an "Important Data Delivery" mode on these devices which users could toggle on and off -- I'm not up for hearing “Darling kiss me” in one ear and “NUAN is up 4 points to $15.23” in the other. But imagine turning 4 or more steps into one!?!

For me, a spontaneously speaking voice would be replacement for: 1) hearing my ringing phone, 2) finding it, 3) telling my toddler for the fiftieth time that day that the phone is Mommy’s and not hers, 4) answering the phone, 5) giving my toddler her fifty-first reminder, 6) telling the outbound application that I am indeed a human being, and 7) finally listening to the information.

That all said, such a day is still some years away. The reason I bothered to mention it, however, is because our customers need to know that we at Nuance aren’t just thinking about what’s possible today, tomorrow, next month, or just next year. We’re busy trying to fathom, influence, and optimize the future of communication. And when members of our Business Consulting Services team sit down with you for a strategic planning session, we’re willing to go as far out of the box as you want us to.

"I Speak Dragon" contest deadline extended

Erica Hill — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:54:00 GMT

Due to overwhelming interest and demand, we have decided to extend the deadline for this year's I Speak Dragon contest to July 15th. That means more time for some great stories to be shared!

If you haven't yet, please drop by ispeakdragon.nuance.com and tell us your own Dragon story!

The People Behind The Scenes of Dragon NaturallySpeaking - Meet Megan McAnulty

mgeremia — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:04:00 GMT

(Please visit the site to view this media)Meet Megan McAnulty. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Programmer

Speech Self-Service: Which Tasks Do I Do First? (Part 2)

Tom Hicks — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:46:00 GMT

In my last post I talked about two important rules of thumb that we use to identify transactions that would be good candidates for speech automation self service – Following the Traffic and How Long is a Typical Call. The benefits are high. Choosing the right transactions will deliver the highest savings and customer satisfaction. But, choosing the wrong functions will waste resources and could cause customer satisfaction problems.

Now let's take a look at the technology and the business considerations:

What Can the Technology Do?
To be honest, speech automation finds recognizing email IDs very challenging (but it will come eventually). If you have a high volume transaction, and it's short and repetitive, check with us to get an idea of how well the technology can handle that transaction. We have created amazing applications, like name and address, that you might not think would work well but they do. Understanding the technical feasibility needs to be included in the business use as well. While speech may not provide 95%+ success rates on a given task, that might be okay for your specific business needs. For example, if I’m sending a contract letter out to a customer, I may need accuracy higher than speech can provide on the “name” field. But in many other cases, the only people seeing the customer names are agents, so a minor misspelling would be tolerable. Understanding what the technology can do relative to your business needs is an important consideration.

What Are Other Business Constraints?
We see a good number of cases where a transaction has all the potential of becoming a successful self-service call, but other “business reasons” override this automation and the call end up going to an agent. In most cases, there is a well thought out reason – the caller will be provided a sales opportunity, they are behind on payments, etc. Basically, the business wants to speak to that person, so automation is skipped either for specific callers or the entire function is not automated. We see this in sales functions, dispute cases and complaints, etc. You know your business and the value of speaking with the caller – you’ll need to do the analysis on whether this outweighs the possible benefits from automation.

By starting with these simple rules of thumb, you can start laying out your plans to bring self-service benefits to your company and your customers.

New Instructional Videos for Dragon

Peter Mahoney — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 13:19:00 GMT

I'm very excited about a new series of videos that we are producing to help users get the most out of Dragon. We just posted the first video in our customer portal area - it can be found here: http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/customer-portal/dragon-naturallyspeaking-training-videos.asp

We've only released one for now, but we have a few more in production and we have a list of topics that we are considering for videos. If you have any feedback on what you would like to see, please let us know.

Peter

The Whole Enchilada (or, The Value of Whole-Call Recordings)

Rebecca — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:34:00 GMT

One type of Business Consulting project I frequently participate in is called an IVR Optimization. During these engagements, we do our best to identify barriers to an application's success...however that may be defined. Our research includes:

interviews with company stakeholders
reviewing system logs & reports
placing test calls
monitoring caller interactions (when possible)

I want to talk a little about the last bullet. On the whole, most of the companies we've done Optimizations for have had easy access to caller/agent recordings. This is a great resource for identifying automatable tasks, or for understanding why callers reach an agent for tasks that are already automated. We'll hear comments like "I just want to make sure the payment went through" (design flaw) or "I tried to use the system but it sent me to you" (business rule issue) or "I hate those automated phone applications" (unfortunate reality).

What's surprising, though, is how rarely we get access to whole-call recordings. Instead, we're left with logs and reports to figure out what's going on in the IVR. But even when those logs include speech data, which obviously doesn't happen when we're optimizing a DTMF application, there are so many stones left uncovered with this kind of information.

To be honest, it's kind of fun to listen to whole-call recordings because you can hear callers talking in the background, such as while they're on hold. A few gems that come to mind include the caller who was overheard saying "I'll bet I can convince this agent to give me a refund if I start crying..." and the one who swore up a storm when he thought nobody was listening but never had the courage to tell the agent he was even a little bit upset. But this important research tool is about much more than eavesdropping. Here is a sampling of important caller experience issues that can only be discovered through whole-call recordings:

Misroutes
It's very enlightening to compare what callers tell the IVR they want to do with what they tell agents they want to do. Consider the caller who chooses the "question about my bill" option and gets a line-by-line description of what each item in the bill represents, but what she really wanted was to dispute a charge. Or what about the caller who chose "discuss a lost or stolen phone" when he actually wanted to complain that his replacement phone wasn't working right? Both of these situations could be fixed by subtle changes to the menu options, and would never have been identified without whole-call recordings.

Audio issues
If you rely on speech recognizer logs and utterance capture alone, you'll never know if there are underlying platform issues that are preventing speech from reaching the recognition engine in the first place. That's what we found in one engagement with whole-call recordings available. Callers were talking and talking, and the system kept replying "Sorry, I didn't hear anything." Based on traditional data, this looked like a working system that was appropriately throwing no-speech errors...but not when we turned to whole-call recordings.

Non-players
Not all failures to cooperate with an IVR are because callers don't like automation. For example, listening to whole-call recordings into a healthcare provider line demonstrated that many failures to respond to a prompt correlated to another phone ringing in the doctor's office. Rather than listening to the quick snippets of background noise that make it into the processed audio the speech recognizer gets, whole-call recordings give a more complete picture of the kinds of distractions that accompany typical customer calls.

If you want your IVR to truly be "optimized," then please adopt a whole-call recording solution...or let us craft one for you as part of a project with Nuance Business Consulting. I can't tell you what we'll find, but rest assured we've never before walked away empty handed.