Hybrid Hopes

Walter Rolandi writes about hybrid architectures for IVR:

For those considering speech-rec technologies in their call centers, the first step is to understand that it is not safe to assume the technology will approach 100 percent accuracy in recognizing human utterances in a deployed speech-enabled application. So, what can those considering a move into speech realistically expect?

Many variables can affect the accuracy rate of a recognizer and great variation can be observed; most telephony-based speech-enabled systems obtain around 82 percent to 84 percent overall accuracy. This means that the average user will experience one or two recognition failures for every 10 utterances that he makes. Alone, an accuracy rate in the low-to-mid 80 percent range might seem acceptable, but most users would find that level unacceptable when considering the cumulative effect of recognition failures. In a nutshell, just two or three recognition errors during an IVR interaction can evoke a seemingly unwarranted emotional response on the user's part--and it doesn't take many mistakes to get a user angry.

Unfortunately, some of the most severe usability problems of speech-enabled systems result from speech recognition failures. The solution is hybrid architectures--it is now possible to remove all of the experience of speech failure from a speech-enabled IVR.

Voice solutions provider Spoken Communications supports a hybrid architecture in which the speech recognizer is backed up by a human who can monitor four or more interactions at once. The human guide or assistant does nothing during the interaction; most of time the recognizer is likely to get things right. However, the guide is alerted in cases where the recognizer is uncertain of what the user said... Read More

Tags:
Spoken, Call Center, IVR