Speech Recognition and Synthesis Services

Overview

APIs from both Google and AWS have been integrated into our speech interfaces. In addition to the speech integration we also use neural network APIs to determine "User Intent" for the speech recognition apps. Correctly determining "User Intent" is critical as there almost infinite number of ways that people ask for the same thing. Take for example something as simple as a caller asking for an employee we will call Sue Brown, you might get

• Hi is Sue Brown there?
• Sue Brown in today?
• Give me Sue Brown.
• and so on ...

It is "Intent Analysis" that determines all of the above (and many more) are asking for the same "Intent". We are confident that you will find our speech interfaces to be robust and "state of the art". There is no other company that we are aware of that offers this level of sophistication at a price ANY company can afford. In the sections below we go into more detail on the specifics of the implementation. Plus we provide a "demonstration account" so that can call in and test the speech performance for yourself.

Speech Synthesis (Text to Speech)

The Bluestone PBX comes equipped with very high quality speech synthesis. Invaluable for anything from creating anouncements to reading documents, database results etc. Here is some examples of 3 female and 2 male voices available on the system. Below are examples of the different voices saying the phrase:
Hi, my name is Amy. The rain in Spain stays, mainly, in the plain.
This is the literal text that was presented to the system for the speech tracks you can listen to below.

Voice	Play
Amy	Play
Joanna	Play
Salli	Play
Brian	Play
Matthew	Play

Speech Recognition (Speech to Text)

Bluestone offers the use of speech recognition as a user interface, that greatly simplifies the navigation of complex menus. The speech interface can be used in the following areas

>

As a "intelligent" receptionist
When customers call your company they can be connected to people simply by speaking their name. Alternatively they might describe a service, product or problem they want help with and the system will route them to the right person or department.
Voice driven dialing
The system supports an internal contacts list and seperately an external contacts list. Either list can be used in the following manner:
• Pickup the phone and press either the internal or external directory search button
• Say the name of the person or department you want to reach
• The system responds with "Please hold, calling Acme Corporation" (or whoever you asked for)

More details are provided on the tools to configure these functions in the section below.

Configuring Speech Driven Dialing and IVR functionality.

Internal and External Directories

The configuration of internal and external directories is identical. Each entry in the table comprises the following:

• Keyword
  A unique name that will be used within the system if any of the synonyms are recognized.
• Extension/Number
  The extension or number that will be used to contact this person or company.
• Synonyms
  A list of comma seperate words or phrases that, if detected, will be resolved to their corresponding keyword.

The use of synonyms provides a means of routing calls based on phrases other then the literal name of the person or department. For example:

• Assume that you have a department called Networking.
• Customers calling in a printer problem, need to be routed to this group
• Add the synonym "printer" to those for "Networking"
• Now callers mentioning "printer" will be routed to networking.

Intelligent IVRs

We have all used the new speech driven phone interfaces deployed by the Fortune 500 companies - very sophisticated and very expensive. However with the newly released capabilities on the Bluestone phone system now your company can have this capability as well and at a price any company can afford.

Given your company is not the size of General Electric or American Airlines why would you need this facility? Here's why:

• Reduce the load or cost of the receptionist function in your company - have the phone system manage calls for you
• Callers can ask for people and departments by name, of course, but they can also describe the problem they are having and have the phone system route them to right support organization.
• Callers can check on the status of an order without needing help from your staff.
• The interface can be in any language and is operational 365 days a year, 24 hours per day.

In summary this technology allows you to run your company more efficienty and projects a company that is modern and at the leading edge of its field.