Calling All Contact Centres

I recently ran a group with a dozen contact centre managers to discuss their concerns and issues about speech recognition. We all learnt much from it. The group ranged from small contact centres to ones servicing millions of customers. None where currently using Speech Recognition. A wide variety of issues where discussed; identity theft, cultural issues and technology.

The main reason for uptake is of course cost saving. However improved service by eliminating queues and 24 x 7 service are seen as big advantages. One further benefit of automating repetitive, mundane calls are the potential improvements in staff retention due to agents focusing on more challenging value-added tasks.

The consensus was that customer choice was important. Given the option to queue for an agent or to use an automated service now, many callers will choose the latter. Callers are happy to use a simple service that gets the job done quickly.

Due to the bad press that the contact centre industry gets it was seen as important that a careful approach is taken. Start simple, educate callers and build up. Cultural trends mean we're all used to automation, some of the group preferred the consistency and simplicity of it.

They cited many ways that they could use Office Communications Server / Speech Server 2007 in their companies to improve efficiency.

Thanks to The Contact Centre Forum for organising the event, DigitalInc for hosting it and everyone who attended.

Regards,

Andrew Morris

MSS Quick Tip - Switching from TIM to SIP

I recently installed the Beta Refresh. This caused my TIM to stop working. The workaround was to use a new SIP interface to the telephony card. The process to get this working was:

• Uninstall TIM
• Install latest telephony card drivers
• Install SIP Control for telephony card

After doing this MSS refused to start with the message:

Error 1075: The dependency Service does not exist or has been marked for deletion.

Checking the dependencies in the Services MMC all seemed OK. When I looked again using the sc qc command to query the configuration it still had a reference to the TIM service. I fixed this by resetting the dependencies:

>sc config MSSpeechService depend= winmgmt/MSMQ/W3SVC/dhcp/rasman

Restarting the service gave a new error in the event logs:

Event Type: ErrorEvent Source: Microsoft Speech ServerEvent Category: Telephony Interface ServiceEvent ID: 33000Description:The Telephony Interface Service failed to start for the following reason:The Telephony Interface Service was unable to detect a Telephony Interface Manager (TIM) on this machine..

This was due to MSS thinking TIS was still in use, because the following registry key was set to 1:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft Speech Server\2.0\TISInstalled

After setting the key to 0 it worked!

The recommended approach is to uninstall MSS before uninstalling the TIM, then re-install MSS without the TIS option. Thanks to Anthony Bearon for helping me with this.

Speech Server 2007 Video Preview

Would you like short preview of MSS 2007? If so, take a look at the Chanell 9 video link below. Albert and Mithun make a great double act...

Speech Server 2007 Video Preview

MSS Quick Tip – Closed Events

Q: How do you run code after a caller has answered a question or after an activity has executed?
A: Add a Closed event handler.

Suppose you have a speech workflow MyWofkFlow with an activity myQAActivity. You want to set variable based on the caller’s answer. You need to add a Closed event handler to MyQAActivity.

In the auto-generated workflow file MyWofkFlow.designer.cs add the following:

this.myQAActivity.Closed += new System.EventHandler(this.myQAActivity_Closed);

In the code-beside workflow file MyWofkFlow.cs you can add the method called on the Closed event:

private void myQAActivity_Closed(object sender, ActivityExecutionStatusChangedEventArgs activityExecutionStatusChangedEventArgs)
{
if (myQAActivity.RecognitionResult != null)
{
//Do something …
}
}

MSS Quick Tip – Alternates

There are a few gotchas to note when retrieving Alternates for a RegognizedPhrase.

• You don’t get alternates unless you ask for them. The property RegognizedPhrase.MaxAlternates is set to 0 by default. It needs to be set to a non-zero value before the recognition takes place.
• Don’t set it in the workflow constructor. You can’t access it until after the constructor has completed and trying to do so will crash the workflow. Do it in a code activity or a welcome statement instead.

Microsoft Speech Server 2007 ships with Office Communications Server 2007

This isn’t exactly new news but I’ll mention it anyway…

Microsoft has announced that Microsoft Speech Server (MSS) 2007 will ship as part of Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS).

This is an exciting development, as it moves speech from a niche technology to a mainstream product. It’s going to get much more exposure. The details of OCS are thin on the ground but the benefits of combining speech solutions with instant messaging are obvious.

It does make the terminology a little tricky. I’m going to still refer to Microsoft Speech Server (MSS) 2007 on the blog until the nomenclature becomes clear.

Here’s the full announcement:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/aug06/08-08MSSpeechTechPR.mspx

Speaking Your Language

The purpose of this blog is to share findings and ideas on Microsoft Speech Server (MSS) 2007. Its an new speech recognition and synthesis platform from Microsoft. It's currently in a private beta release. This will limit me to taking about features that have been publicly announced, but there is plenty to talk about.

I'm developing some solutions built on MSS. I've discovered lots about it and so there's plenty to talk about.

MSS really is a remarkable. I'd recommend you to get a demo of it as soon as you can. If you're in the UK I may be able to give you a demo. (http://www.aeolian.ltd.uk/contact.html)

Regards,

Andrew