The CSI Call Center blog recently posted -- what? No, not that CSI. This is Coordinated Systems, Inc., the blog "assembles tips for improving the call center agent performance and helping teams evolve into world class call centers." If you find a body in your back yard you'll have to call, um, those other guys.
"It's a given," the blog says, "that Speech Analytics has good buzz, but let's step back a second before we assume everyone understands what Speech can do for you. Different people interpret Speech technologies in different ways. Speech is being used in more and more diverse applications every day."
The post deals with Speech Analytics for the call center, "where recorded calls are indexed by a speech engine and then made available for search and reporting," company officials say, and finds "eight ways Speech Analytics can impact your quality process."
Improve agent script adherence: Modify imperfect agent processes by quickly finding instances where agents have used slang.
Read more here.
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Ever wonder what Cisco's own best practices for their data center operations management are?
You're in luck -- they've released a white paper titled "Cisco on Cisco Best Practices Data Center Operations Management."
Some highlights, much more good stuff in the paper itself:
Communication. "Communication is letting the right business or support groups know about the existence of a down or degraded resource," says Ian Reddy. When a P1 or P2 resource goes down, the management tool displays a notice in red on the monitors in the OCC. The OCC team is trained to open a case on the failed resource within five minutes, which automatically initiates a page to the support engineers responsible for that resource.
Coordination. "Our team will coordinate the overall response for multiple groups," says Reddy. Some failures may affect several applications or resources simultaneously, requiring several duty support engineers working together on a problem. The goal of the OCC team is to get all the duty support responders required to identify and resolve the problem talking together to keep the resolution process active. Typically, a conference bridge is used to connect, for example, a database administrator, network technician, and system administrator together to diagnose the problem.
Read more here.
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The World Wide Web Consortium, according to Dr. Dobb's World of Software Development, has "extended speech on the Web with support for Asian languages and multi-lingual voice applications."
This would be the Speech Synthesis Markup Language which has been extended to Asian languages.
"Recommendation provides control over voice selection as well as speech characteristics such as pronunciation, volume, and pitch," the good Dr. Dobb reports, adding that "SSML is part of W3C's Speech Interface Framework for building voice applications, which also includes the widely deployed VoiceXML and the Pronunciation Lexicon (for providing speech engines guidance on proper pronunciation)."
Dan Burnett, co-chair of the Voice Browser Working Group and Director of Speech Technologies and Standards at Voxeo, said with SSML 1.1 "there is an intentional focus on Asian language support, including Chinese languages, Japanese, Thai, Urdu, and others, to provide a wide deployment potential. With SSML 1.0 we already had strong traction in North America and western Europe, so this focus makes SSML 1.1 incredibly strong globally. We are really pleased to have many collaborators in China, in particular, focusing on SSML improvements and iterations."
This would be the Speech Synthesis Markup Language which has been extended to Asian languages.
"Recommendation provides control over voice selection as well as speech characteristics such as pronunciation, volume, and pitch," the good Dr. Dobb reports, adding that "SSML is part of W3C's Speech Interface Framework for building voice applications, which also includes the widely deployed VoiceXML and the Pronunciation Lexicon (for providing speech engines guidance on proper pronunciation)."
Dan Burnett, co-chair of the Voice Browser Working Group and Director of Speech Technologies and Standards at Voxeo, said with SSML 1.1 "there is an intentional focus on Asian language support, including Chinese languages, Japanese, Thai, Urdu, and others, to provide a wide deployment potential. With SSML 1.0 we already had strong traction in North America and western Europe, so this focus makes SSML 1.1 incredibly strong globally. We are really pleased to have many collaborators in China, in particular, focusing on SSML improvements and iterations."
Read more here.
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India's Tata Teleservices Limited has announced it has recently partnered with Healthcare Magic to launch a mobile health service which "provides assistance under medical emergency situations and also offers medical consultations."
According to Tata officials, "to use the interactive voice response-based doctor on call service, Tata Indicom subscribers need to dial 54887. A doctor registers the personal data and medical history of the subscriber. Then an attending doctor diagnoses the case and determines whether a subscriber's case falls under the acute, chronic or emergency heads."
But what if it's more of an, ah, acute situation? Those can be tricky. Glad you asked, the system's built for that too: "In an acute condition, the caller will be given three different diagnoses by the attending doctor who also suggests some home remedy for immediate relief."
Read more here.
