Telstra claims breakthrough on speech

Telstra's enterprise speech solutions (ESS) is claimed to enable improved productivity in Australian government and business by providing a range of automated services employed by a "free flowing" voice prompt.

Voice solutions managing director, Louis Dupe, said Telstra hopes to secure a majority share of the up-and-coming speech recognition market by targeting customers in health, retail, banking, insurance and government organisations.

"These solutions give businesses greater options to communicate more effectively with their own customers from free flowing voice prompts that allow customers to hold natural conversations with advanced computer based systems," said Dupe.

Customers can have their speech recognition solution managed through Telstra or by their own technology, with well known organisation such as Coca-Cola Amatil and Vicroads already employing the technology in Australia.

Dupe says the solution can be used to provide a number of services.

"For example it can be used as a corporate switchboard to ensure the caller gets through to the most appropriate person within an organisation or it can be used as an information source, to provide callers with details such as transport timetables or stock quotes," he said.

Telstra lists other possible uses as transactional calls, for such uses as banking; outbound dialling applications, for emergency public messages; and speech to text (and visa versa) applications.