Nuance to Provide Verizon with Speech Technology for Directory Assistance Services

By Stefania Viscusi

TMCnet Assistant Editor

 

In an expansion of their relationship with Verizon (News - Alert), Nuance Communications announced today they have been chosen to provide their Nuance Voice Search for future Directory Assistance (DA) services.

 

Nuance (News - Alert) Voice Search (NVS) is a portfolio of speech solutions that address directory assistance needs and make it faster and more convenient to find information. With the new speech solutions, callers are able to utter their desired request in any natural way and without having to use specific vocabulary or key phrases to navigate the system.

 

Both wireless and wireline callers will benefit from the ability to speak their requests, while carriers and service provides benefit from an increase in automation rates.

 

For Verizon, adding the new technology will make it possible to optimize their caller experiences by helping them to quickly attain the information they're looking for quickly and accurately, and making calls more natural and interactive.

 

Michael Thompson, vice president and general manager, telco search and communications, Nuance commented in a statement, "Nuance has provided Verizon with customer care speech solutions to automate their customer service operations for several years. Were pleased to expand our existing relationship with Verizon, and look forward to creating new speech solutions for Verizon."

 

Nuance Communications first launched the enhanced version of their DA services, Voice Search, in April of this year. The solution features "Unsupervised Learning", an application supporting artificial intelligence which allows for continual performance improvement using statistical rules and operator actions from manually routed calls. By noticing trends and commonalties the system is able to learn and adjust so it can better complete similar, future inquires.  It also features, "Dynamic Disambiguation," an engine reducing the number of qualifying questions needed to attain a desired listing.