Acclaim Telecom Services, Inc.

Here’s something amazing — these days, you don’t even need the power of speech to take advantage of speech recognition technology.

We’ve been talking a bit about some of the extraordinary ways speech recognition applications can improve life for everyday people, as well as businesses; and not just with IVR systems.

Previously, we highlighted a paralyzed man and father-of-four who — thanks to reality TV hit “Extreme Home Makeover” (the one where they “move that bus!” and reveal a thoroughly remodeled home for a family in need) — could live more independently in a house equipped with assistance from voice recognition. More than 250 tasks that had always been difficult to complete from his wheelchair could be done via voice commands that responded exclusively to Carl’s voice.

Here’s another inspiring way Speech Recognition technologies can help those in need:

Al Keneda lost his vocal cords — and his voice — to cancer 16 years ago.

He remembers the panic he felt when he awoke in the ICU unable to speak, and the challenges of learning to communicate without his voice. In the beginning, he communicated with a white board and a pen. Then, with something called an electrolarynx — a cylindrical metal device about 3 or 4 inches long that he holds to his throat when he speaks.

“I used this for three years before I got my voice prosthesis,” he says in the robotic voice produced by the electrolarynx. “It was a barrel of laughs.”

Recently, at a scientific conference in Washington, D.C., German researchers showed off a technology that might work even better for Keneda — once it’s perfected. The system, called EMG-based Silent Speech Recognition, relies on a computer to construct words by reading the muscles in the face.

(Read the whole inspiring story here).

The basic idea isn’t too much different than a computer learning to read lips. A person can mouth words without actually saying them, which is enough for a computer to interpret the muscle movements and detect words. So far, the technology can recognize more than 2,000 words with 90 percent accuracy.

Here at Acclaim Telecom, we love seeing how Speech Recognition can improve lives in such a broad variety of ways. And while most IVR systems are not used in the medical manner described in this blog, our goal is to use this innovative technology to make life as easy as possible for both businesses and their valued customers who utilize IVR systems.

At its core, customer service is getting folks what they need — whether by answering questions, solving problems, responding quickly to information requests, or guiding them a more complex  procedure. Our turnkey speech recognition applications can make big a difference, both simplifying the process of getting help for customers, and saving companies costs while doing it. Enterprise-critical IVR solutions are win-win, and we’ve been developing them since 1993.

The buzz and discussion around cloud computing continues to heat up and generate ever increasing levels of interest.  It seems there are as many definitions of cloud computing as there are vendors offering their services in the “Cloud”.  In order for a company to take advantage of the many offerings, it makes sense to understand the fundamental components that make up the “Cloud”.  So we thought it might make sense to take a step back and look at the basics of cloud computing.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (www.nist.org) provides a comprehensive definition of Cloud Computing.   It can be summarized as:

Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.

The definition goes further indicating this cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics:

1 – On-demand self-service,

2 – Broad network access,

3 – Resource pooling,

4 – Rapid elasticity, and

5 – Measured Service

And finally there are three service models to this definition:

1 – Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS),

2 – Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS), and

3 – Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

We will focus on the Software as a Service (SaaS) since it is the model level IVR services are offered.

The original concept of SaaS can actually be traced back to the early IBM mainframe days where the concept of time-sharing first developed.  Obviously a major difference between time-sharing and SaaS is that the service was delivered primarily through hardwired connections as the internet did not exist at that time.   With the internet expanding in the 1990s, another acronym came into being, the ASP (Application Service Provider).  Centralized computing resources were utilized to provide software hosting services of specialized software applications.  The intent of this service was to reduce the overall cost through centralized administration of hardware and software systems.   SaaS is an extension of this original ASP model.

The SaaS acronym is said to have first appeared in an article called “Strategic Backgrounder: Software as a Service”, published in February 2001 by the Software & Information Industry’s (SIIA) eBusiness Division. ¹

However you wish to define it; IVR Hosted Services or  IVR as a SaaS, IVR functionality is a great application to deploy to the Cloud.   Why?

First, one of the key benefits of a SaaS model is to provide services in a “one to many” model.  That is a single or central service providing services to many end-users.  IVR applications have a long history of doing just that even when not deployed in a hosted services or SaaS model.

Second, IVR systems are well suited to a centralized support environment for software upgrades, hardware upgrades, operating system upgrades, and specialized system software upgrades.  In many cases, IVR systems deployed in a SaaS model will bring upgraded and improved system features before many users could afford it if they had purchased the equipment directly.  In effect they benefit from  piggybacking on the requirements of other customers whose needs  drive the necessity for improved or enhanced features more rapidly.

Third, IVR application development requires very specialized development skills.  These specialized skills apply not only in the application coding effort, but also in the area of requirements analysis, call flow development, vocal user interface (VUI) development, specialized stress or load testing, and post implementation application tuning.  Due to the nature of most IVR applications, these skills are not typically needed throughout the enterprise once the application(s) have been deployed, and therefore are expensive resources to keep on hand if not utilized fully.

Fourth, some applications are only needed for  a short time or when demand spikes significantly.  A few examples include specialized surveys, special event announcements, temporary emergency service offerings, new product support efforts, seasonal surveys, or service outage coverage.  The need for speed of rapid development and deployment most often exceed the capabilities of I.T. development staff members who do not specialize in IVR application development.

Fifth, is scalability and elasticity.  Sometimes demand for a service exceeds expectations and let’s hope that is a good thing.  Not being able to respond quickly enough can be a bad thing.  Being able to scale capacity up or down based on demand while only paying for actual needed capacity is a powerful benefit.  With few exceptions, accurately predicting demand, ordering needed additional equipment, increasing network capacity, and installing and testing the application(s) rarely take place in a scheduled or orderly manner if increasing demand is stressing the organization.

And finally, the cost of incremental capital equipment comes into play.   In some cases the need to scale a system may only be marginally greater than existing installed equipment.  However, it is not always possible to scale a system to just the level desired, and you can be forced to scale a system based on minimum equipment upgrade paths.  That can be hampered further if you have an older installed system with an application that works well, but the IVR vendor no longer supports an upgrade path for your existing system.

IVR is a proven and powerful tool in increasing customer support functions, enhancing call center operations, and providing quick and easy retrieval of highly repetitive or common information retrieval tasks.  Deploying IVR systems in a Saas or Hosted Services model is another step in the evolution of increasing the ROI on IVR usage and allowing greater flexibility for the users of IVR applications

¹ – “Software as a Service Strategic Backgrounder” , Software and Industry Information Association,  Washington, D.C.   February, 2001

A challenge faced by almost every customer with IVR equipment is system obsolescence. Servicing the IVR industry since 1993, we have seen our fair share of client companies looking for effective ways to minimize the operational and financial impact of equipment obsolescence.

Typically, IVR system obsolescence occurs in four primary areas:

• Operating System
• System software
• Hardware
• Security

Notice anything really important missing? How about Application Obsolescence?

Our experience has shown (with few exceptions) that application obsolescence alone rarely drives the need for new equipment purchases. So if the application seems to work great and last a long time, what options exist to extend the life of an IVR system when the original system vendor no longer provides hardware or systems support?

You basically have three choices:

1. Buy new equipment. The system vendor will love you, but it’s really not the solution you were looking for.
2. Move to an IVR hosted service / cloud computing service provider like Acclaim Telecom.
3. Engage a 3rd party firm, such as Acclaim Telecom with expertise extending the hardware and systems software for IVR systems.

Over the years our clients have expressed the following reasons for considering the decision to choose extended life maintenance support for older IVR systems:

1. Current system(s) are performing well and the customer wishes to maximize the value of their investment for many more years.
2. Preservation of (potentially scarce) capital $$ for other more pressing corporate needs.
3. Customer is trimming expenses.
4. Manufacturer has discontinued hardware, software or operating system support for their installed equipment.
5. Manufacturer’s upgrade path is very expensive and the customer is looking for alternatives.
6. Customer is moving to a new IVR manufacturer’s system and needs short-term support on the current system.
7. Customer is considering moving to a hosted solution and wants to continue to run their existing applications until the migration is complete.

So how do you determine if the choice of IVR extended hardware maintenance is a viable option? In most cases it is a straightforward process.

If the hardware is stable, the existing or new application needs do not require the latest and greatest features of new IVR capabilities, and the operating system can be upgraded to accommodate the corporate IT security requirements, you are probably a good candidate. If you would like to learn more about our IVR Extended Maintenance Services or discuss your specific need, we would be happy to share our experiences with you. Give us a call at 1-866-324-6416 or email us at atsi_ sales@acclaimtelecom.com.

Most of us in our industry associate Speech Recognition with an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) application used in a customer service or call center environment.  As a provider of Speech Recognition / IVR / Mobile Solutions,  Acclaim Telecom Services strives to assist our clients with efficient,  effective (and hopefully creative in some cases) uses of various IVR technologies to support their customers.

Recently I saw a wonderful example of how advances in speech recognition help individuals in a much different manner……….. improving the life of individuals who have experienced a catastrophic injury

Carl Hall was an all-American baseball player during his college years at Wichita State.  Carl married his high school sweetheart and has 4 great children.  In a split second his role as father, husband, and primary supporter of his family changed.  In 2010, Carl Hall was paralyzed from the neck down in a tragic car accident.

Carl’s family was the subject of an Extreme Home Makeover project which aired in April, 2011. Besides the obvious need of building a home to accommodate Carl’s special mobility and personal care requirements, technology became a central theme throughout the house.  Speech Recognition enabled far greater independence than Carl or his family had ever imagined.

The home incorporated over 250 voice commands that responded exclusively to Carl’s voice.  The voice commands ranged from the obvious of controlling lights and doors, cooking appliance control, to controlling automated hoists to help move Carl throughout his home.

You can view the TV program here.

This is but one example of how speech recognition can be applied.  Application areas abound in healthcare IVR, high performance aircraft, training, command and control,  home automation, video games, mobile telephony, robotics, transcription and more.

Closer to home in our area of expertise, Acclaim Telecom Services would be happy to discuss how IVR, Speech Recognition, or Mobile applications can help your company.  The areas of application are potentially limitless.

It’s cool. It’s cutting edge. It’s a glittering tech toy from the future. Just in the past few weeks, we’ve heard stories of speech recognition technology being used to everything from writing emails while driving and giving a voice to those who don’t have one.

Speech recognition innovation truly is amazing. And last month here on the IVR services blog, we explored just a bit of the extraordinary science behind the technology that powers speech recognition.

But how can it make your IVR system better—especially if you’ve already invested in an effective standard IVR application? Let’s take a look:

IVR is More Useful in More Situations

These days, more and more nitty, gritty tasks of life are being conducted on the go. Fueled by the smart phone boom, folks are increasingly getting used to the ability to access information, communicate messages, and get things done on the fly. So the last thing you’ll want as a company is to not be equipped for callers to get the customer service support they need, wherever and whenever they decide they need it.

For example — let’s say a customer calls in while driving, and prefers not to be looking down at their phone while navigating traffic. Without speech recognition, the caller would have to pull over their car to manually dial their way through your phone tree—instead of either talking to a live representative or simply speaking their way through a speech recognition-based IVR application. This can cause obvious frustration.

In other words, a speech-enabled IVR application simply eliminates that one extra step. And even if pressing a button on one’s phone is a pretty small step, it’s one that can hinder callers from getting what they need. That’s the bottom line. 

IVR is More Personal and Modern

Let’s be honest—appearance, reputation, and feel matter just as much sometimes as utility. And while an IVR system will never fully replace the interactions possible between two humans (because, let’s be honest, that’d be kind of unnerving), the back-and-forth nature of speech recognition does conversationally engage callers in a way that regular IVR can’t.

Furthermore, an investment in technology like speech recognition highlights your company as modern, cutting-edge, and caring enough about your customer service capabilities to invest in the best. Customers will notice this.

Of course, these benefits only matter if you do speech recognition right. Without a speech recognition application that’s planned thoroughly, implemented expertly, and built upon the best available technology, you’re likely to find your customers frustrated and scrambling to the nearest company with a basic no-frills phone tree that works.

At Acclaim Telecom Services, we can help you develop speech recognition infrastructure that intuitively responds to customer needs.

It’s one of the bedrock technologies powering IVR applications, but if you don’t understand exactly how it is that speech recognition works (here’s a hint—it’s really cool, but it’s not quite magic), you might not realize how much it can do.

Effective IVR speech recognition systems can simplify the IVR process for callers, be more intuitive and flexible than more rigid menus, and—lets be honest—make your company seem modern and caring enough about customer service to invest in cutting edge methods. And even in this increasingly multicultural world, replete with accents, slang, and strange speech patterns, good systems can still easily handle such variation with ease.

Here’s a brief explainer:

At it’s most basic, speech recognition takes something a caller says and converts it into text. The computer then inputs that text just as it would a typed command, and the system goes on from there.

But how does that happen?

Speech, like any sound, is a series of vibrations. Even tinny phone speech, muddled by cell phone interference and background noise, is still just a series of (slightly more complicated) vibrations. These come out of a caller’s mouth and fly through the phone as analog waves.

Unfortunately, analog waves are Greek to computers, so conversion to more palatable digital data is necessary. The speech recognition software does exactly that, basically taking a flurry of tiny, precise measurements of the waves over and over again. It boils down the data, and filtering out as much of the unwanted noise as possible (good programs are trained to ignore sound waves common to background noise) and adjust it all to a consistent level of volume.

The point of all this is to make each variation in those original vibrations mean something, and eventually add up into words and sentences. All languages are essentially just combinations of tiny variations in vibrations—tiny building blocks of language known as phonemes. In English, for example, there are approximately 40 phonemes. By converting, organizing, and slicing and dicing all that digital data, speech recognition programs can finally match data to phonemes, and then analyze the phenomes within a vast web of potential combinations and variations in order to understand words, sentences, and commands.

In other words, it’s just a big, crazy puzzle.

At this point, a commitment to quality really matters. The computer wouldn’t by itself just start understanding what it all means (frankly, that’d be kind of scary). Instead, it matches all these phenome combinations with what’s been already installed into its memory. For example, not every caller is going to speak at the same speed, with the patterns, or with the same accent. So the system memory needs an immense bank of vocabulary. And the system needs finely tuned allowances for variation in such speech factors, while staying narrow enough to keep the system accurate.

Doing all of this requires time, thorough planning, and tireless, nitty-gritty implementation. At Acclaim Telecom, we’re proud to work with the highest quality IVR speech application design and development platforms, like Convergys/InterVoice, LumenVox, Microsoft, and Genesys to accomplish this task.

Take a look around — from Internet shopping, to ATM banking, to self-service checkouts at the grocery store, to self-service check-ins at the airport, customers are taking care of themselves in more and more parts of life. A big part of this comes from the fact that automation is often cheaper for companies, sure. But it’s also simply preferred by customers in many situations, which makes telecom solutions like our hosted IVR applications smart, satisfying investments for both companies and customers.

In fact, studies are beginning to show that many companies have overestimated how much of a relationship their customers expect from them.

This “less-is-more: trend might seem counterintuitive for businesses that have invested heavily in manned customer service. So exactly what kind of relationship do customers want from companies? How important is customer service to loyalty?

The Harvard Business Review (HBR) and the Customer Contact Council have been exploring exactly those questions, and have come up with two conclusions relevant to your approach to IVR:

1. Customers reward competency more than attention.

Sure, a charming, top-notch sales representative might make a unique connection with a caller and leave a warm, lasting impression that makes the customers more likely to return in the future. But more likely is that a customer will punish a company for poor customer service, making the uncertainty and inconsistency of non-automated customer service a risky venture.

According to HBR:
Consumers’ impulse to punish bad service—at least more readily than to reward delightful service—plays out dramatically in both phone-based and self-service interactions, which are most companies’ largest customer service channels. In those settings, our research shows, loyalty has a lot more to do with how well companies deliver on their basic, even plain-vanilla promises than on how dazzling the service experience might be.

With IVR systems, you can invest in an intuitive, effective system that’s not reliant upon a customer service employee performing at a high level from call to call to call.

2. Customers want you to make things easy for them

More than anything else, people really just want their problems solved, whether its via a friendly person on the other end of the line, or an automated application that’s been tested and tested to make sure it’s clear, informative, and capable of providing solutions. (No offense to the lonely souls out there really just calling your customer service reps looking for a little bit of conversation.)

In many ways, IVR can do that job better than a human rep. An effective IVR application includes:

• Less room for misunderstanding and miscommunication.
• Less stress for the caller having to accurately communicate their problems and needs.
• Less social pressure for the caller to be friendly and cordial, and to “connect” in a way a human rep might try to with them.
• Less dependency on consistent customer service from a representative, who’s prone to fatigue, mistakes, and irritability.
• More ability to test and retest the application for thorough effectiveness.

And, of course, you can always include an easy opt-out option that lets confused callers seek help from a human representative.

At Acclaim Telecom, our IVR hosted services include comprehensive turnkey development, deployment, and support for your IVR needs. We’ll help you develop a system that saves you customer service costs, and saves your customers the stress of not getting what they need.

Call it IVR anxiety questions commonly addressed by companies when considering the implementation of an automated IVR system. Hesitations like:

Am I doing my customers a disservice by making them talk to a computer to get what they need?

Will this implementation turn off customers, and push them away towards competitors?

Will I lose the all-important element of customer interaction that plants the seeds for profitable customer relationships?

Take a deep breath. You’ve probably got nothing to worry about.

Here at Acclaim Telecom, we understand the concern. Even the most intuitive and effective automated system isn’t right for every situation especially ones where that extra human touch can make the difference between invisibility and a long-lasting customer relationship. And we encourage all companies to make it easy for callers to “opt out” and connect with a real, live human being when it makes sense.

But what if the there’s an equally import but inverse factor at play? What if the majority of people say, approximately 2/3 of people actually prefer avoiding talking to a human representative when possible?

From the grocery store to the bank to online check-in at the airport, self-service is simply becoming more and more popular in our country. Sometimes customers just want you to make it easy for them to take care of themselves.

According to the Harvard Business Review, this might just be the case:

“Most customers these days demonstrate a huge and increasing appetite for self-service, yet most companies run their operations as if customers prefer to interact with them live.

In our research on this topic, we’ve found that corporate leaders dramatically overestimate the extent to which their customers actually want to talk to them. In fact, on average, companies tend to think their customers value live service more than twice as much as they value self service. But our data show that customers today are statistically indifferent about this they value self-service just as much as using the phone. And guess what? By and large, this indifference holds regardless of their age, demographic, issue type, or urgency.

This attitude toward self-service has been a long time coming. Two-thirds of the customers we surveyed told us that three to five years ago, they primarily used the phone for service interactions. Today, less than a third do, and the number is shrinking fast.

What is it that makes self service so appealing? [...] On a psychological level, it might have more to do with the unique element of control that self service affords. [...] Maybe customers are shifting toward self service because they don t want a relationship with companies. While this secular trend could be explained away as just a change in consumers channel preferences, skeptics might argue that customers never wanted the kind of relationship that companies have always hoped for, and that self service now allows customers the out they ve been looking for all along.”

We mentioned this trend a couple months ago here on the Acclaim Telecom blog, and explored a few reasons why this might be:

IVR adds an element of privacy for matters that callers might not want to share with a human representative. A thorough system avoids potential for human error. And that extra little bit of social stress that comes with having to effectively communicate with another human can be something that many people prefer to just avoid.

In its place, an intuitive, effective system can solve a customer s needs while still impressing them with your company’s thoughtfulness and care.

In the next couple of weeks, we’ll examine further exactly what “a relationship” with a customer means, and how IVR can make it grow. In the meantime, contact one of our telecom solutions specialists for more information.

New year. New challenges. New opportunities to develop IVR solutions that make life just a little bit easier for our friends.

We love this time of year at Acclaim Telecom, because we can only begin to guess what sort of unexplored IVR needs and opportunities the upcoming 12 months might bring. But here are just four IVR trends we are expecting to see in 2011, plus a couple ways we can help your company meet the new demands:

1. More Creativity

America’s economic doldrums just keeps chugging on and on, though there are a number of promising signs on the horizon. So with customers on tighter budgets and with less disposable income to throw around, companies are going to have to increasingly compete via non-monetary factors like customer service. For IVR, this will mean creative, innovative solutions that help companies stand out not just avoid problems with emerging services like voiceXML, speech recognition and transcription, and cloud-based services  As we talked about last month here on the Acclaim Telecom blog, your company s IVR infrastructure provides a unique opportunity to create lasting and memorable impressions that solidify long-lasting customer relationships.

2. More Mobile Demand

Smart phone use will continue to skyrocket this year in fact, recent studies showed that smart phones should surpass computers in 2011 as the most common way people around the globe access the Internet.  So you can guess what kind of effect this is going to have on the demand for mobile IVR solutions.

3. More Interactive Voice and Video Response (IVVR)

Similarly, as 3G and 4G technology becomes more widespread, and as more and more people are able to easily place video calls on the go, the very nature of telephone-based customer service will change. In other words, it’s no longer just about voice but about video as well. To keep up with this, expect to see more demand for face-to-face customer care that will fuel IVVR application development.

4. More of Everything, Really

A recently released global report showed the IVR market reaching an expected $20.9 billion by 2015 an enormous figure that demonstrates just how important these telecom solutions are to companies around the world.

Speech technology and IVR solutions can be pretty much recession-proof, because they provide exactly the sorts of expense reduction and productivity enhancement opportunities that businesses need when budgets get tight. And an investment in IVR is one that pays off both immediately and over the long-term, with more effectively serviced customers, more efficient workers, and lower costs of maintaining a vibrant, customer-oriented business. But don’t forget IVR and mobile applications not only help with cost reduction initiatives; they are used quite effectively for top line revenue enhancement also.

At Acclaim Telecom, our IVR application development teams are eager to tackle these new challenges. We’ve deployed more than 1,000 enterprise-critical applications across a wide array of industries since 1993, and we can help you design and implement cutting edge IVR solutions that keep you ahead of the curve in meeting these new customer demands.

To best understand the complex problems facing and plaguing the layered, always-changing, rapidly developing world of interactive voice response systems, sometimes it’s best just to opt out and simplify (sound familiar?).

Stick-figures. Two-dimensional. Flat and accurate. Simplified.

Something like this:

The good folks at Call Center Comics are doing exactly that, boiling down the potential problems, pitfalls, and customer frustrations that any company trying to utilize integrated IVR systems face.

There are multiple lessons we can learn. Here are just a few:

1. Don’t Be Redundant

You should always be looking for ways to remove unnecessary steps in your call tree and any unnecessary burdens placed upon the caller. The first (and easiest) step is to remove these sorts of blatant redundancies. Customers will know when they’re having to repeat themselves more than when they’re just moving through a tree inefficiently.

2. Do Your Research

Thorough and forward-thinking customer research can help you become much more intuitive about customer needs and frustrations. The result is happier customers who get their questions answered and needs met (and, of course, better, more efficient business).

At Acclaim Telecom, we invest heavily in the type of performance analytics, tracking software, and technological development that can keep your IVR system in tune with your customers. Of course, we don’t recommend stringing them along quite as long as this particular strip claims possible.

3. Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

This one should be obvious, but often in the quest to perfect and enhance their IVR system, companies will overcomplicate the process with too many options and too many steps. Sure—accuracy is appreciated, and customers will be thankful to end up speaking with the right department or the right people trained to deal with their specific problems. But if it takes more than a handful of steps to get there, you run the risk of losing callers altogether.

And, as always, make it easy for callers to opt out and talk to a real, live human customer service representative so they don’t end up trying to memorize these byzantine routes to the help and answers they need.

4. Expect Jaded Callers

Acclaim Telecom Services has been solving clients IVR and Speech Recognition system needs since 1993. Contact our IVR experts for more information.