It knows your voice

Nuance Communications wants you to start talking to your wireless devices like car radio, mobile phones, PDAs and maybe even your desktops. "Wireless service providers can't wait for speech recognition developments to kick in. They're convinced that easy access to customer services through voice recognition will increase call traffic and their revenues," claims Sameer Dania, country manager, Nuance Communications.

The $232 million company has already deployed speech solutions for telecom service providers including Airtel, BSNL, Hutch, MTNL, Spice, Reliance and Tata Indicom.

The domestic market for voice portals with speech recognition is estimated to be more than eight million calls and is growing. But what about call centre employees who are currently answering customer calls by the dozen? "Transfer them to sales, customer -retention duties and countering competitive initiatives," is Dania's answer.

Automated speech-recognition-enabled services could result in cost savings for the carriers too; the cost of processing a phone call using an automated directory assistant is about one-tenth the cost of processing the same call using operator assistance.

"That's why, we are actively involved with a few voice portal companies to introduce sophisticated and useful applications like voice access to emails and Web-based information and services," reveals Dania. Interaction and speech services based on regional languages follows, he adds. After years of hype and false starts, automated speech recognition technology is ready for prime time in India, or so Nuance hopes.