Mobile Voice and the Enterprise
Moderated by Sara Basson

The proliferation of mobile phones - particularly smartphones - changes the way we do business. We can engage with services on-the-go, without being tethered to a computer. Speech interfaces become more critical for mobile devices, given small keyboards and screens. This has launched the concept of "Voice Sites" - voice-only or voice-primary methods to access information. There are now billions of mobile devices in use, many of these in emerging markets like India and China. How does prolific access to web information change business in emerging markets? How does access to "mobile voice" change existing businesses and their information delivery models?

Panelists:
Bill Meisel, Peter Marshall, Amit Nanavati, and Bruce Balentine

Dr.Phil (Shinn) will introduce and demonstrate an open-source speech application design toolkit, The VUID Toolbox.  It consists of custom Visio stencils, Visual Basic macros and Python scripts that make designing and testing speech apps fun!   Dr. Phil is a VUI designer and speech scientist with Genesys Telecom Labs, an Alcatel-Lucent company.  He has designed and built 'scads' of speech apps, and started the Yahoo Voice User Interface Designer's group (groups.yahoo.com/groups/vuids).

Dr. Harry Baldinger is a podiatrist, and also runs a company providing a web-based EMR (electronic medical records) and PM (practice management) to physicians of all specialties. Speech recognition/transcription has remained a very important component of the EMR, allowing doctors to document their patient visits faster and more completely than any other input method. Dr. Baldinger will discuss Integration of speech recognition and transcription into EMR (electronic medical records) What are the EMR requirements, and how should they best be achieved?

How to Create a Compelling Customer Experience
Elaine Cascio, Vice President, Vanguard Communications Corp

Customer experience is the next competitive battleground.  Good service isn't enough anymore - companies need to truly differentiate themselves through clear strategy that drives the customer experience.  Many companies don't give much thought to the importance of having the IVR, contact center, retail locations, website, kiosks, advertising, written materials and correspondence match the overall company brand, image and values.  We'll look at ways to create a consistent experience no matter how customers contact you, some examples of good - and not so good - customer experiences, and the role speech plays in enhancing the customer experience.

Overcoming the Difficulties of Names
Murray Spiegel, Ph.D, Director, Speech Applications Research, Telcordia Technologies

A key feature of useful speech recognition services is name recognition accuracy - autoattendants, voice dialers and routing systems all depend on accurate recognition of names. If recognizers don't predict how names are pronounced with their full variability - when the pronunciation for Casimir Skrzypczak is a wild guess, the prediction for Alyssia Chaoui is wrong, or the location variants for Bogota , Piaget or Quabeck are unknown - unsatisfactory performance is the result.

Telcordia's name pronunciation package reduces error rates for many players in the speech market.  Developed over more than 20 years, the software package has unparalleled accuracy for the millions of names of people, places and businesses found in the US .  We'll describe the research behind its development, and its flexibility that adapts to any speech engine on the market.

Solving Document needs with ASP Services (Server-based speech recognition)
Dr. James Maisel, President, ZyDoc

Pacific Gas and Electric- How Speech in the call center improved customer satisfaction, caller take rate and first call resolution
Ms. Shelli Feigenbaum, Senior Manager, Nortel

Conversation with Virtual Agents in the Contact Center
David Lubensky, Manager, Contact Center Solutions, IBM Research

This meeting included overviews on speech technology status and vision from IBM researchers, and presentations from universities and museums that are using speech recognition technologies to create accessible user environments. Proceedings available, based on stenographic transcription.

Presentations: Speech Technology: Transcription, Captioning, and Beyond