Microsoft Speech Server is the software giant’s contribution to every Science fiction fan’s dream of a computer you can talk to, and which can talk back. Speech recognition has been around for a while in various forms. The ability to control your computer with spoken words is, for example, incorporated into Microsoft’s latest operating system, Vista. It is one of the more functional examples of the technology, but anyone who has used it will no doubt have been frustrated from time to time by misinterpreted commands. The software boasts the ability to adapt itself to individual user’s speech patterns, but it isn’t seamless. Speech Server purports to be much more than speech recognition software: the objective is primarily to allow businesses to develop communications platforms that can act as their first point of contact with clients.
One might also fairly say that Microsoft Speech Server is the organization’s contribution to the continued development of annoying telemarketing. IRV (Interactive Voice Response) platforms have becoming more and more prevalent. Whether you’re calling to have your phone line installed or trying to find a number from directory services, you are very likely to come into contact with an automated system. You’ll be greeted by a simulated or recorded human voice, and you will be asked for voice input in order to query a database.
The main problems associated with such communications systems is that they have trouble compensating for varying accents or individual peculiarities of speech. For individual computers with known users, the problem can be effectively surmounted by having the user read known command words into a microphone and having the software cue its responses accordingly. For a remotely operated system with multiple users, the challenge is to create a system flexible enough to handles the wide variety of different users.
One of the larger problems that hinders voice response systems is that people are not computers: they don’t always respond the same way, even to the same stimulus, and they make mistakes. Hesitation halfway through a word and a person’s natural tendency to correct themselves in mid speech, can all result in a system’s inability to respond correctly to users. The technology is constantly developing and new algorithms are constantly being devised in an attempt to overcome such difficulties.
Some would question the desirability of such systems. They benefit companies because they reduce the amount of workload that falls on call center agents, allowing them to save on staffing costs. Ostensibly, the voice response system retains enough of a personal touch to make customers feel that been treated with human consideration. However, unless the system is as easier to use than a touch-tone menus or some other kind of user input and IRV isn’t likely to meet all of its objectives. Much research is being put into programs that can help such a systems be more intimately responsive, adapting on the fly to individual users, but one can’t help but wonder if people would rather interact with a machine that doesn’t pretend to be more than it is. If one is a science fiction fan, the horrific example of the Genuine People Personalities from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy springs immediately to mind.
Still, as the technology continually develops its viability as a genuinely desirable type of system interface becomes more and more conceivable. For anyone interested in adapting the current technology to current business needs, Microsoft Speech Server is worth investigating further.
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