ExecutiveAssistant Speech Recognition Auto Attendant Setup Guide

Back in the 1970’s, touchtone telephones were first becoming popular. For those old enough to remember, it was a big time saver to eliminate the need to pull the dialer all the way around just to dial the “big” numbers like 8, 9 or 0. For those of you too young to remember, the word “dialing” had a very real and painful origin with the old rotary telephones.

Despite the huge transition from rotary dialing to touchtone, the transition from touchtone to voice is even more dramatic.

ExecutiveAssistant has speech recognition at its core. As opposed to speech recognition products for other phone systems that have voice engines servers “strapped on” to a legacy touchtone interface, BrightArrow ExecutiveAssistant for the 3Com NBX was entirely written using a speech recognition framework. Yes, you can always use touchtone with ExecutiveAssistant, but speech recognition is the underlying technology.

BrightArrow ExecutiveAssistant Auto Attendant Configuration Guide

Here is a link to a new detailed Setup Guide for 3Com ExecutiveAssistant’s Speech Recognition functionality:

Speech_Recognition_Auto_Attendant.pdf

You will also find it in the Installation_Information folder on the ftp.brightarrow.com ftp site. The document contains the following topics:

· What Is a Speech Recognition Auto Attendant?
· How to Set Up 3Com ExecutiveAssistant Speech Recognition
· Speak when Asked, or Interrupt
· How to Design Voice Prompts
· How to Design Flow Through the Groups
· Optimizing Pronunciations
· Reading Back Choices
· Multi-Tenant and Caller Speed Keys
· Changing Prompts Remotely
· Troubleshooting
· Backup and Maintenance
· Summary


Two Types of Speech Recognition

There are two fundamental ways to do speech recognition (and, of course, many variations of those two approaches). One is the method you typically see in the “voice dialing” feature of cell phones. It needs training, asking you to record each possible spoken name a few times. When you speak a name, it performs a sample-by-sample waveform comparison between the new audio and its database of samples to find the closest match. This way is simple and cheap enough to embed in inexpensive standalone devices. Unfortunately, its accuracy is very low and requires a lot of training even for that frustrating result.

The other method is called Hidden Markov Modeling. Originally developed at Princeton University, the most sophisticated speech engines use this approach. ExecutiveAssistant also delivers this type of speech technology, with a special emphasis on untrained, speaker-independent name and command recognition. Hidden Markov Modeling takes a significant amount of CPU and memory to achieve its high accuracy, and until the past couple of years you needed to purchase dedicated, high-priced telephony boards with DSP’s to be able handle the processing requirements of digital trunks. With today’s high-powered PC’s, however, those days are gone. Today’s 3.0GHz processor represents the first time that an entire PRI (23 trunks) can simultaneously process speech recognition within a single processor, without extra telephony boards or DSP’s.

To expower ExecutiveAssistant, 3Com offers unlimited ports at one low price, an unbelievably low-cost scalable cost model for a solution that uses the most successful server-based type of speech recognition.


Fill In The Blank instead of Multiple Choice

Speech recognition in an auto attendant makes it a much more pleasant experience for the caller. Even if the company uses a live operator during the day, a speech recognition interface for nights, weekends, lunches and breaks keeps the caller’s experience positive during those times. The interaction using a speech recognition auto attendant is somewhat different from and much friendlier than a touch-tone-only one.

Touchtone-based telephone menus are typically multiple choice:

For Sales, Press 1. For Service, Press 2. For Service Sales, Press 3. For Sales Services, Press 4. For Widget 1 Sales, Press 5. For Widget 2 Sales, Press 6. And so on and so on.

Speech recognition-based menus are fill in the blank:

Please say the name of the person or department you would like to reach now.

With speech-recognition, you can even get the best of both worlds:

Please enter an extension, press 1 for a list of options, or say the name of the person or department you would like to reach now.

Which voice menu delivers the most flexible, elegant, friendly and scalable interface? Over time, we expect that touchtone will be disappearing ... finding its place on museum shelves alongside the rotary telephone.




Companies Using 3Com NBX + ExecutiveAssistant Sound Big And Successful

A company usually wants to appear bigger and more successful than their competitors. Speech recognition is associated with large enterprise-level organizations, so when a caller reaches a professional-sounding speech recognition system, and it works, they automatically assume they are talking to a successful and leading-edge organization. In a competitive market where first impressions often make the difference between whether you get or lose a sale, the positive impression of a speech recognition auto-attendant delivers a powerful winning edge.

The Value of Reducing Absenteeism

At the Broward County Florida Office of Research and Evaluation, officials stated, “Absenteeism presents problems on three levels: that of the student, the school, and the community. On the student level, absenteeism contributes to poor academic performance. Moreover, truants are at greater risk for dropping out than are their peers. On the school level, absenteeism costs schools billions of dollars due to lost instructional time. Absenteeism also reduces the amount of state and federal funding that a school receives. Society is impacted through crime associated with students skipping school and individuals who failed to acquire the skills necessary to be productive citizens.”

http://www.broward.k12.fl.us/research_evaluation/Evaluations/Attendwaiveeval.pdf

Here are some studies collected by the University of Illinois documenting the correlation between attendance, grades and delinquent behavior. They include research that supports their conclusion that: ”research on school attendance consistently shows that low absenteeism is correlated to students' positive school behavior, participation in extracurricular activities, higher grades, and better long term educational outcomes.”

http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/BER/webpages/School_Attendance.html

Parent Notification Dialing is the single most effective technology tool available to notify parents of unexcused absences quickly enough to do something about it. With the increased usage of SPAM e-mail filters, it is more important than ever to deliver urgent and important messages to parents by voice. Fortunately, the prevalence of cell phones means that parents will receive the call promptly without the risk of the message being secretly deleted.

What can I do now? How should I choose which direction to go?

You have a number of options, and they tend to fall into three categories: (1) Voice-over-Internet hybrid dialing system, (2) hardware-based on-site dialing, and (3) high-priced hosted dialing services. I welcome you to review the following chart to better understand some of the pros and cons of each option.

Voice Notification Dialer Types

Voice-over-Internet technology has become mainstream and delivers dramatically lower costs and higher flexibility, because VoIP infrastructure is software-only. As a result, there are no additional costs in expensive telephony hardware, no maintenance headaches associated with this hardware, and no leased banks of phone lines needed to make those notification calls.

For a live (over-the-Internet) demo of the software, or a formal quote, please reach out to us at 425-558-2100 (800-649-9660) and ask for Sales, or e-mail Sales.