From Speech Technology Magazine, click here for the original article.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) of New York City today launched an automated version of Trip Planner Voice in conjunction with Nuance Communications, Aspect—an unified communications software and consulting firm—and Trapeze Group, a transportation solutions provider.
Trip Planner is a 24/7 itinerary service aimed at New York City residents that lets users plan routes over public transport within any two municipally located points. The service was first launched as an online service three years ago and grew to include a telephone version, Trip Planner Voice, which began beta-testing in September of 2008.
By April of 2009, an average of 18,045 customers used Trip Planner daily, an increase of 172% over 2008’s 6,640 daily average. The call center version in particular, Travel Information Center, has received an average of 4,560 calls daily. These calls will now be fielded by an automated system with speech recognition powered by Nuance. The routes themselves will be mapped by Trapeze and linked with the speech components by Aspect.
Users will be able to get results by making their way through a series of prompts that allow them to set points of interest, intersections, or subway/bus stops as their beginning and end points. Once that has been entered, they are read back directions by the system through a combination of live recording and text-to-speech (which handles the name of streets). Should users have trouble with the automated system, they will be automatically routed to a live agent for additional assistance.
According to a prepared statement, today’s release represents both an effort to reduce call time and dependence on agents (and thereby costs) and to increase convenience for callers.
From a speech recognition perspective, one of the biggest challenges facing the project was the sheer number of street names in New York City. They city is home to tens of thousands of different streets, points of interest, and hundreds of bus and subway stations—all of which had entries that posed specific challenges for accurate speech recognition.
“Often there are many subway stations with the same name,” says Bobbi Manian, senior project manager for Nuance in its professional services division. “If a person said they wanted to plan a route and that they were starting at 14th Street, but they didn’t say ‘14th Street, Union Square’ they just said ‘14th Street,’ we had the intelligence to recognize that, but the back end database didn’t know what to do with that because it could have been 14th Street and Seventh Avenue, or Eight Avenue—so we made enhancements to say Which one do you want?”
Manian also points to difficulties with pronunciation. Houston Street, famously pronounced by most New Yorkers as “House-ton Street” is sometimes pronounced as if it were the Texan metropolis. Hoyt–Schermerhorn, an intersection and train stop in Brooklyn similarly has at least three different widely accepted pronunciations.
To deal with such complications, Nuance had to build its voice user interface to use graduated prompting and ask for clarification and get more precise information—offering more and more examples until a user is able to furnish the information the system needs. As the system continues to get more calls it is expected to become more accurate through the accumulation of data and resultant tuning.
This project represents the first joint venture between Nuance and the MTA. After tuning is more complete, the speech company’s role in the project may recede.
Currently, Nuance is working on a Spanish language version of the application. In the future, MTA may expand Trip Planner Voice to include other features such as text messaging, but no plans have been made definite.
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On-Device Self Service for Simple Fixes Eliminates Need to Sit in Queue
BURLINGTON, MA — April 14, 2009 — Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) today announced findings that show consumers are more demanding than ever, and require access to customer care directly from their mobile devices. The results of the study revealed that 62 percent of users said they want to bypass automated systems and be given an opportunity to use their mobile phone screen to complete simple inquiries that should not require agent intervention.
The study focused on how consumers want to receive customer support from enterprises and mobile carriers in the U.S. The report shows that over 60 percent of mobile users believe on-device self service is an important offer and want access to it on their mobile phone. Additionally, over 80 percent of users surveyed want the ability to complete an entire customer service interaction, such as paying a bill or upgrading an account, directly on their mobile device versus enduring long wait times for a live agent.
On-device self service provides carriers a solution that solves basic consumer inquiries, like paying a bill, directly on the mobile phone. This leads to a meaningful bottom line savings considering over 60 percent of consumers have contacted customer care more than three times in the last six months.
“Wireless carriers and enterprises need to adjust their customer care offerings by providing consumers information when they want it, where they want it and how they want it,” said Sheryl Kingstone, director of Mobile and Wireless Communications at Yankee Group. “On-device self service provides this capability by solving many of the problems subscribers have on the device – providing a powerful user experience and significant cost savings to the operator.”
“Nuance is seeing an increase in consumer awareness across the board, which has increased the options that carriers can consider when they are thinking about their customer care strategy.” said Mikael Berner, SVP and GM Enterprise Division at Nuance. “Self-service on the mobile device is the next natural progression of the call center.”
Consumers are becoming more comfortable with utilizing the handset for more than just basic calls. The mobile users surveyed had an age span across all demographics, with 18-24 year-olds admitting to using their mobile phone all the time, even at home, while the 55-58 year age group also held strong at 42 percent. Additionally, the study illustrates trends similar to that of desktop internet use stating by 2012 mobile internet habits are forecasted to resemble that of today’s PC habits. Based on the Yankee Group research, there are many reasons consumers contact customer care, including:
- 50 percent of respondents call to question a line item on a bill
- 44 percent call to pay a bill
- 24 percent call just to get a confirmation of an automated transaction
The following is excerpted from a commissioned work conducted by Yankee Group on behalf of Nuance Communications as of March 2009.
All of these call drivers are solved with Nuance Mobile Care’s simple, on-device self-service solution, including the ability to make account inquiries or pay bills directly without having to wait in queue. Nuance has seen an automation rate of over 60 percent thus far, and through external focus groups has found that 90 percent of users preferred on-device self service to other forms of self service.
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OutSystems today announced that the company’s Agile Platform will benefit from a joint project between OutSystems and Carnegie Mellon University, whose study of user interaction is being used to enhance the platform’s overall user experience, with a focus on developers.
Over an eight-month period, five graduate students in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute’s Masters program studied the Agile Platform to understand how it is being used by people with varying levels of technical expertise, from developers to project managers.
Following Carnegie Mellon University’s own methodology on experience-driven user design, the students studied the daily activities of Agile Platform users. This style of study allowed the students to elicit user needs, motivations and overall reaction to the platform. With ergonomics, aesthetics and comfort in mind, the team then prototyped and tested solutions to overcome the challenges experienced by users.
In particular, the team focused on improving the user interaction, making information in the Agile Platform more readily available to developers, improving support for commenting and revisiting past work, and supporting collaboration between developers working on the same project.
In addition to this project, OutSystems will continue this research internally, continuing to improve the Agile Platform’s user experience so IT teams have tools that are effective, efficient, and intuitive.
Supporting Quotes
“The main objective of this project was to have a fresh look into our products from emerging areas of expertise,” said Carlos Alves, Vice President of Engineering, OutSystems. “Carnegie Mellon University’s excellence in user experience methodologies, and our own ideas and experience, have stimulated innovation throughout the company, leading to a better product for our customers and the industry.”
“The Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Masters program at Carnegie Mellon University prepares students to participate in the design and implementation of software systems that are usable, are effective and contribute to an overall brand experience,“ said Anind K. Dey, assistant professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science. “Collaborating with OutSystems was a terrific opportunity for our students to really apply their skills to a real-world application. We are thrilled with the outcome and the fact that the industry will benefit from this combined work and innovation with OutSystems.”
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(Cincinnati & NCTA “The Cable Show,” Washington; March 30, 2009) – Convergys Corporation (NYSE: CVG), a global leader in relationship management, today announced the availability of advanced workforce optimization products and services for the global communications industry. This new offering strengthens Convergys’ end-to-end BSS/OSS portfolio, enabling service providers to proactively predict service demand and quantifiably increase dispatcher efficiency and field productivity.
Convergys Field Service Manager enables service providers to proactively manage their field service technicians and operations by optimizing service scheduling and enhancing delivery operations both internally and with their customers, suppliers, and business partners. Increased dispatcher efficiency with intuitive user interfaces helps dispatchers maximize accuracy, reduce errors, and successfully manage a greater number of resources in the field.
On average, service providers can increase available capacity, reduce mileage and fuel costs, and reduce monthly costs per technician. Service providers will also benefit from increased customer satisfaction and improved technician availability, while simultaneously reducing costs associated with inefficient field service management.
Convergys’ approach is unique because it uses actual historical service provider cost and resource data to proactively predict service demand. Service providers can then plan, schedule, and perform service delivery in a way that maximizes value – through decreased resource requirements and cost – across the enterprise. Built upon patented technology, the economic resource optimization engine uses a service provider’s business goals and costs to predict value at every stage of the field service lifecycle, from appointment scheduling through field service routing and dispatch.
Field Service Manager includes:
• Appointment Manager – provides intelligent appointment scheduling driven precisely by goals set by the service provider. Appointment Manager schedules field service appointments based not only on available time slots but also on flexible, ROI-driven goals such as reducing miles driven or number of trucks.
• Field Service Optimizer – includes patented technology and an exclusive and scalable optimization tool, enabling service providers to use their own route and resource data to precisely predict the value of multiple field service management scenarios via daily and multi-day planning. Field Service Optimizer simulates and evaluates various “what if” scenarios to drive a financial impact from adjustments to each element of the field service lifecycle.
• Field Service Dispatch – facilitates real-time dispatching, assigns same-day jobs to technicians, and manages technician calls and ticket/work orders as they occur. Functionality includes technician location maps, work order filters, auto-router, and monitor panels for both dispatchers and technicians.
• Field Service Mobile – provides wireless access through technician mobile units (Mobile Data Terminals) that allow technicians to view work schedules and ticket/work order information. Work order information is sent through the mobile device to the billing system for processing and database entry. Intelligent user interfaces help support cross-selling and upselling efforts.
“Service providers are increasingly challenged to deliver superior experience to their customers, Convergys’ new field service management capabilities will enable our clients to be more proactive in field resource planning, driving ROI from business critical solutions as a result,” said Bob Lento, president of Information Management at Convergys. “Adding Field Service Manager to our BSS/OSS solution footprint allows us to drive higher customer satisfaction and lower costs for our clients.”
Convergys BSS/OSS Solutions deliver innovative support of convergent services leveraging real-time marketing innovation, minimizing risk, reducing operational costs, and generating revenue in order for our clients to focus on building valuable relationships with their customers. Convergys supports six of FORTUNE’s Top 10 communications companies.
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