SpeechTEK Mobile Program

Track B: Voice Interaction Design – Mon, August 8 
10:15 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.

Presented by: Jenni McKienzie

Customer Perspectives on Cross-Channel Experiences

Are customers concerned when an enterprise shares information about their recent behavior as they cross channels of interaction? How much information sharing is enough, and how much is too much? This session presents the results of a study that reveals the perspectives of both real customers and contact center representatives. The results will surprise you! Plus, the presenter shares usability best practices regarding cross-channel interactions.

Presented by: Lizanne Kaiser

One Size Doesn’t Fit All: Different Channels for Different Need

While automated phone support remains an important link in customer conversations, a recent survey, conducted by Vocalabs on behalf of Nuance Communications, showed that enterprises need to implement a multichannel approach (through IVR, chat, social media, email, and web self-service) to keep up with the ever-changing needs and requirements of their customers.

Presented by: Peter Leppik, Rebecca Nowlin-Green

Track B: Voice Interaction Design – Mon, August 8 
11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

How can we create the best possible experience for today’s IVR users? The first presentation in this session presents results of research on the changing demographics of IVR users and the impact on best practices in design. The second presentation introduces a rigorous, data-driven method for creating and evaluating personas for speech applications. These talks will help you optimize the IVR experience for your customers.

Presented by: Rebecca Nowlin-Green

The Changing Demographics of the IVR User

With the explosion of smartphones and customized enterprise applications, the population that remains loyal to the IVR has shifted. This talk outlines how today’s typical IVR customer differs from customers a decade ago and uses data from deployments to support the argument that the changes in caller demographics result in different usage patterns and customer expectations. Finally, we make the case that these demographic changes challenge us to revisit and recalibrate some of our tried-and-true design best practices for IVR applications.

Presented by: Martie Viets, Susan Boyce

From Art to Science: A Quantitative Approach to Persona Development

The persona of a speech application is as critical for a new caller’s first impression as it is to a power user’s repeated success. Persona development has traditionally been a qualitative exercise led by the judgments of speech experts and the subjective opinions of a few business stakeholders. This talk presents a detailed scientific methodology to select the best voice actor to convey the desired persona.

Presented by: Samrat Baul

Track B: Voice Interaction Design – Mon, August 8 
1:45 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.

Presented by: Samrat Baul

Which Wording Works?

This talk presents high-level initial findings of a comprehensive study of caller behavior at a prompt-by-prompt level to determine which wording works the best. The study includes millions of calls across many vertical  domains. It focuses on many of the most common types of prompting, such as date of birth, credit card numbers, and language preference, and reveals the results of the best-performing wording for each.

Presented by: Jim Milroy

Adapting Human Conversation to VUI Interactions

As VUI designers, we strive to create a natural experience for our users that takes into account external distractions, the ephemeral nature of speech, and the unnaturalness of talking to a machine optimized for a small set of tasks.  This talk covers the mechanisms of human conversation that enable efficient and informative interaction and their adaptation to dialogues with a minimally sentient nonhuman partner.

Presented by: Janet Cahn

Track B: Voice Interaction Design – Mon, August 8 
3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Usability testing has become standard practice for speech self-service projects, but very few take advantage of valuable user research techniques. User research aims to discover the unmet needs, preferences, and desires of users to reveal information that allows for smart, effective design. Join the experts in this session to learn how user research can help your organization create speech applications that customers will readily accept and use.

Presented by: Susan L. Hura, Catherine Zhu, Lizanne Kaiser, Elizabeth A. Strand

Track B: Voice Interaction Design – Mon, August 8 
4:15 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Presented by: Charles Galles

What’s in a Name (And Why It’s Important for Speech Technology)

Name recognition and synthesis can dramatically improve customer experience, disambiguate confusion, and make interactions more clear and personalized. Because they do not follow the same pronunciation rules as words, names are notoriously difficult to implement well. This presentation shows you how to avoid common pitfalls in name recognition and synthesis, discusses the problems associated with obtaining good data for name pronunciation, and describes best practices for developing good software models.

Presented by: Murray Spiegel

Automated Address Collection: User Behavior and UI Design Practices

This talk discusses the behavior of two distinct user groups interacting with automated speech systems for collecting addresses. One group of callers was hyper-careful, speaking very slowly, with long pauses between words, often spelling out words and giving full ZIP+4 numbers. The second caller group was much less careful, spoke more quickly, and there was often side speech and background noise during the call. This presentation compares these two groups and describes how Novauris adjusted the design to accommodate their behavior.

Presented by: Yoon Kim

Track B: Voice Interaction Design – Tue, August 9 
10:45 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

Today’s customers have multiple paths for interacting with organizations. Speech-enabled technologies can offer advantages in some circumstances, but how do you determine how to best implement speech among the many available channels? This panel presents the results of a workshop conducted by the Association for Voice Interaction Design (AVIxD) on the effective use of speech as one of many possible communication channels.

Presented by: Peter B Krogh