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TuVox Voice Interface

Posted by timothy on from the voice-menus-are-inherently-evil dept.

pablos writes: "NYTimes has an article about Tuvox who set up Handspring and Activision with voice interfaces for tech support. Apparently they can do away with the annoying 'press # now' menus. I've used things like TellMe, which played an ad everytime it didn't understand you, but I'm wondering if this sort of thing is starting to work anywhere. Anybody called Handspring for tech support lately?"

3 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. First ever slashdotting of a phone number? by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 4, Funny

    I wonder....

    --
    Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
  2. SJ's system by Mike+Connell · · Score: 5, Funny

    The train company in Sweden has one of these systems. It's always amusing listening to my other half battle with it when she wants to buy a ticket:

    OtherHalf (in very clear voice): Stockholm
    Computer : click, click,... Kiruna!
    OtherHalf : Stockholm!
    Computer : click, click,... Moscow!
    OtherHalf : Stockholm!
    Computer : click, click,... Alpha Centauri!
    etc...

    To be fair, it does eventually work, it just takes a while. It probably also takes less total time than the alternative (short conversation with a human, but a long wait to get to talk to them).

    The best thing about them was a recent radio program. They had done some reseach to find out what words sound (to the system) like destinations. During the show they'd phone SJ up and say things like "I want to go to FsckingBastardVille", to which the computer would reply "Northern or central Stockholm?" and other such amusements.

    Hours of fun :-)

    --
    Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
  3. Customer Relations Management is all about... by TekkonKinkreet · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...keeping the customer from costing you any money.

    CRM is *expensive*. Forrester Research did a study a while back on the average cost of handling customer calls by various means:

    Telephone: $33.00/incident
    Email: $9.99/incident
    Chat: $7.80/incident
    Message Boards: $4.57/incident
    Knowledge Base: $1.17/incident

    The technology of this article shifts a call from the top to the bottom of this list. They admit that the advance is not in AI or voice tech, but in making the experience "resemble a conversation". So at its best, this will still let grandma have *some* access to the information she could have had before from a live human. At its worst, it's a puppet show to distract us from the fact that we're not getting very good service.