This week’s multi-pronged speech technology announcement by Microsoft is just one of a number of interesting speech announcements in the past month on the adoption of speech to improve customer and consumer experience. In the announcement press release, I liked what Zig Serafin, GM of the Speech at Microsoft Group said; “Speech is the new touch”, because it really is. We have known this for quite a while, but now there is an acceleration of the adoption of speech that is happening in mobility applications, desktop, and unified communications, that is quite appealing.
On October 28th, the Speech at Microsoft group, (renamed from the Speech Components Group), announced a number of speech-related products. One of the most interesting is a voice mail preview feature within Exchange Server 2010, which provides speech-to-text (STT)transcription of voicemails, which are then plopped into the user’s inbox. While S-T-T isn’t the least bit revolutionary since we have had similar services for two or more years from companies such as SpinVox, Yap, and TravellingWave, what is revolutionary is for Microsoft to make this an embedded capability in Exchange, rather than that capability being a service provided by an outside vendor. Exchange Server 2010 launches at TechEd Europe in November.
Another tasty component of the announcement was Bing 411, a Bing for mobile application that is Microsoft’s answer to Google’s GOOG-411; mobile voice search. I haven’t tried Bing 411 yet, but so far, my use of Bing.com has been so positive I have almost given up using Google. I hope Bing 411 is the same.
Microsoft also jumped on the outbound IVR bandwagon with an enhanced outbound IVR using the Tellme platform. This is a trend that has been heating up a lot in the last year or so. Already we have companies such as Voxify, Convergys, SoundBite Communications, Contact Solutions and dozens of other companies provide interactive outbound applications for customers. But Microsoft service, along with some of those companies in this space are focusing not just on the delivery, but multiple channels of delivery and making the delivery of the call a workable, and useful exchange with the recipient of the call. The Microsoft service works across multiple channels including the phone (call or text), email, IM or the web, and they have put a lot of effort into smoothly blending both the inbound and outbound calling experience for users, so that if a person receives an outbound call, they can easily interact with the application and get tasks related to the purpose of the call done. For example, a person could receive an outbound call for a cancellation of their plane flight, and on the spot rebook.
Microsoft also spoke of partners that are using Microsoft speech technology to provide a better end user experience. Noted in their release was the new Samsung Intrepid phone from Sprint, which is the first Windows phone to use the Tellme user interface. Users can do everything from voice search on the phone to dictating texts messages or navigating, just by pressing the Tellme button on the phone. Also, Microsoft gave the example of Ford Sync, powered by Microsoft and Tellme that provides in-dash voice-activated navigation and search.
I like seeing the continued practical application of speech that Microsoft is providing and I believe that they are really helping spread the usage of speech across many different platforms and applications. But the month’s announcements certainly weren’t limited to Microsoft alone. I’ll leave that for tomorrow’s blog.
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