We’re closing an issue this week, so expect us to be M.I.A. from blogging until Thursday or Friday. See you then.

Just when I thought my life was complete, Disney makes a possibly life-changing (for me) announcement. In preparation for the much-hyped and mind-blowingly adorable new Pixar movie, Wall-E, the company will release a line of Wall-E products, including a robot! So what if it’s $190? I can drop that kind of cash for anything that does all this (and includes voice controls)–

With voice activation and a follow-me mode, WALL·E can follow the sound of a human voice and detect someone entering a room. He also has several emotional states and an easy system for programming thousands of combinations of movements with the remote. Numerous sensors allow him to detect and respond to his environment, including infrared sensors that allow him to detect obstacles and steer around them, sonic ears that detect sound direction, and touch sensors.

Can I please get one? Please? In the meantime, follow the jump and watch the Wall-E preview for further explanation of why I’m so excited for this movie. And why everyone at work is going to make fun of me for posting something so sappy. [Source: MakerFaire.com; Image: FirstShowing.net]

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Since the announcement yesterday that the Boston Subway system would introduce new TTS voices to its line-up, I got to thinking about the differences I’ve noticed in various public transportation systems. When I was living in London, the Tube’s persona closely mimicked that of the typical British lady in her 50s - calm, contained, and overly polite. Of course, the woman behind the voices (Emma Clarke) was recently fired following public statements she made regarding the Tube’s shoddy service. Here’s a video that should give a taste of what it’s like to ride the Tube:

Next up, one of my favorite countries - Espana! Their Barcelona subway system, called el Metro, just got tricked out with new trains, which feature male voices. Call it machismo or consistency.

Alas, Oslo’s T-Bane has no persona! Fellow Norwegians, I beg of you…

And, of course, NYC’s own subway … which has no real name aside from “somewhat unreliable” or “increasingly annoying.” Here’s a video of the L train, which runs from Manhattan to northern Brooklyn, and has some of the newest personas.

Have a great weekend!

Good morning! This post is coming to you super-early, because I have way too much to do later today. So, before my boss creeps in, here’s all the news for the week so far. Our faithful, intrepid managing editor Len hath returned from the Genesys G-Force conference (read his posts about G-Force here), and he’ll have more to report to you in coming days. Such as what he did with the Genesys-emblazoned belt buckle … and how the rest of the office kind of wants it to add to our wall of “free stuff vendors send us.” So, unless you’re totally intrigued by how Xerox (haha, remember photocopies?) plans to compete with Google and Salesforce, or that giant squid is still freaking you out (hello, it has the world’s largest eyes), follow the jump for less-disgusting news stories! [Speech Tech Blog, Information Week, Associated Press]

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At last year’s G-Force in San Diego, the company unveiled its Dynamic Contact Center (DCC), bringing the contact center beyond the phone to include customer contacts that come in from the Web, email, chat, fax, text message, and any other mode imaginable. Not to be outdone, this year, its big launch is the Intelligent Customer Front Door (ICFD), taking DCC a step further to bring a level of personalization to those interactions and tying them all together through front- and back-end business processes.
In just a week or two since first announcing the solution, it has already attracted big-name partners like Nuance, TuVox, and Voxify, all lending technologies to the effort. Interest has already built among the user base as well, with Air France, Belgacom, and T-Mobile among the first to sign on.
What makes ICFD so special is that it promises to make customer service convenient, consistent, personalized, responsive, and proactive; something badly needed in an age when customers have rising expectations from their company interactions, are super-empowered with information, and have the propensity to tell the world about good or bad experiences through things like blogs (Ed: See our user reviews for proof), and social networks. Companies have no less of a responsibility to learn and know as much as they can about their customers, and can leverage that through the ICFD.
As Brian Bischoff, Genesys’ vice president of voice platform sales and solutions told me, it’s all about eliminating customer frustrations in an age when 44 percent of customers who stopped doing business with a company did so because of a bad customer contact center experience.
Gone are the days when an IVR can contain a caller. Do that, and it¹s not just ‘Click’, but ‘Click and I’m gone’. ICFD could be a just the shot in the arm I need as a customer to not only continue doing business with a company, but to also walk in the front door and do more business with the company.

San Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States, and the cultural gateway to the American Southwest. It’s also home to this year’s G-Force, Genesys Telecommunications’ annual customer conference. As the first day of the conference comes to a close, I can’t help but feel a sense of novelty. Compliments of Genesys, I have my first metal belt buckle (with the Genesys logo emblazoned on the front, of course), a cowboy hat, and bandana, none of which I have any idea how I’m going to get on a plane. (Ed: Wear it on the plane!)

I also took in a bullriding competition, armadillo races, and a real Texas BBQ, and probably ate more ribs in one night than I will all year. But all the cool stuff aside, there’s much more to the conference than Texas-style fun. There’s a lot of work going on as well.

With more than 1,300 attendees from all over the world, it’s the largest G-Force ever, according to the Genesys people. This year’s event has seen a large number of Latin American customers (nearly doubled from last year), indicating just how large the call center industry is growing in that part of the world. In Brazil, Internet service provider UOL is taking more than 1 million calls a month from the country’s 33.1 million Internet users, and its biggest challenge is dealing with rapid growth using outdated technologies and poor system design. It turned to Genesys to bring all its customer-facing applications (phone, email, Web chat, etc…) together, and has achieved staggering first-call resolution, proper call routing, cost reductions, worker productivity, and sales growth as a result. Unibanco, a Brazilian bank, is handling 10 million calls a month with just 6,000 agents using Genesys systems.
G-Force is an international event, and American, Canadian, European, Australian, and Asian companies are also represented in full force. The one lesson from all this: No matter where in the world it may be, call center technologies are alive, well, and thriving. From Panama to the Philippines, Rio de Janeiro to the Rio Grande, may the G-Force be with them.

Speech Tech’s managing editor Len Klie will be attending the Genesys G-Force Conference this week in San Antonio. Being the task master I am, I’ve asked Len to blog from the conference during his stay there. Look back tomorrow for his first post, as well as Ryan’s logo for Len’s adventures - check out my VoiceCon logo for proof of Ryan’s MS Paint prowess. And now, your Monday morning moment of Zen:Julie the Amtrak Lady, a la Saturday Night Live.

You may remember my previous review of free voicemail and STT provider YouMail. Well, rather than writing a freaked-out and angry email or making a furious phone call, the people at YouMail were kind enough to do a follow-up interview with me following my review. We went over how to better use the features and navigate the system (I griped that the prompts were often confusing and hard to understand). I let them share their piece, and got some first-hand advice on how to use the system.

So, after speaking with them, I can say this: because I’m lazy, I like this service. I do not care about the ability to make personalized greetings for my callers, nor do I want transcriptions. My favorite feature is the audio file of each voicemail, which is sent automatically to my email account. Yes, I am too lazy to pick up my phone and actually call into my voicemail. Instead, I can put on my headphones and listen to the file play. Sometimes, for laughs, I read over the voicemail they transcribed and see how horribly wrong the technology was. One more YouMail bonus: when playing back your voicemails, they start with the most recent one first. Gnarly.

The verdict: because I’m a sloth, I liked YouMail’s service. One facet of it. And, because I’m too lazy to cancel my account, I’m keeping YouMail for now. Am I excited about this? I don’t know. I’m also apathetic.

Following a completely speech-unrelated weekend, we’re back at work….begrudgingly. (It’s in the 70s! There is sun!) Anyhow, remember that V-ENABLE test run we’re doing? It’s still going on! But to keep you up to date, here’s big news V-ENABLE released today: it has spun off a new service called FreeMobile411. Available for download, the program works multi-modally. Alas, you must own a Sprint phone to use it. Bummer!

Here are the details:

- The application combines both speech and text. To find a business or category, users speak what they’re looking for. The results then appear on the screen in text format.

- If the caller is still unable to find their desired search, they can access an operator.

- It’s ad-supported. Frown face.

- The numbers: 140 million residential and 14 million business listings.

- It also includes maps, driving directions, and names of nearby businesses.

For more info, check out the press release here. Yes, it’s in PDF - sorry!

[Image via PrivateLine.com]

For those interested in updating your speech rec parameters, SpinVox had compiled a list of popular US and Canadian slang. The company’s Voxgeist dictionary is tuned into a country’s ever-changing vernacular.

For your enjoyment, here are the Canadian words, ranked in order of popularity, after the jump.

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