SpeechTEK 2012

With the unprecedented adoption of internet-enabled mobile devices, customers can connect with your organization, 24x7, from nearly any location using any connected device. Smartphone and tablet applications provide convenient and intuitive interactions by allowing customers to use different input methods (talk, touch, and type) and see and listen to results. Multimodal applications have raised customer expectations for service across all modalities, and organizations need to understand and deploy self-service technologies wisely to meet the needs of today’s connected customers. That’s why SpeechTEK 2012 is expanding its focus beyond IVR to include smartphones and tablet applications.

Speech-enabled virtual agents, such as SIRI, provide intelligent, personalized services for a richer and more insightful customer experience. When applied to self-service environments, these virtual agents can maintain a high automation rate while improving the quality of service. Tuesday’s keynote panel discusses what speech-enabled agents can do and how they will change our industry. Other sessions explain how IVR and smartphone applications can help your customers select products and services that best fit their needs, and how virtual agents can encourage customer self-service in assembly, installation, troubleshooting, repair, and use of your products, eliminating the need for service manuals and minimizing the burden on call center agents.

New ways of connecting with customers also present new challenges to organizations. SpeechTEK offers clarity and insight into the challenges that go with providing a consistently positive customer experience across channels. A decade ago, a self-service strategy meant providing a website and an IVR system to enable customers to perform a limited range of tasks. Today, customers expect organizations to recognize them, anticipate their needs, and help them solve problems proactively, no matter how they choose to connect with you. To do this, your organization must be ready to facilitate seamless switching between channels without loss of information. SpeechTEK offers expert guidance for organizations seeking to develop coherent, intelligent, cross-channel strategies for customer self-service.

This year’s event is going to be one of our best ever. Attendees can go to tracks devoted to Business Strategies, Voice Interaction Design, Customer Experience, and Technology Advances. Attendees can concentrate on specific topics by going to virtual tracks—sequences of presentations devoted to various topics, such as multimodal applications, cross-channel applications, and speaker identification and verification. Also, attendees can have breakfast and exchange ideas and best practices with peers and industry experts during the informal and interactive Sunrise Discussion sessions. SpeechTEK University offers pre- and postconference half-day courses on the latest speech techniques and technologies.

With so much to offer, you won’t want to miss this year’s SpeechTEK conference. There’s no other event in our industry that offers this much information and this many networking opportunities. Attend SpeechTEK 2012, connect with peers, and help your organization better connect with customers.

Monday 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. WELCOME & OPENING KEYNOTE Become Preferred: Up-Level the Brand Experience Michael Vickers , Executive Director - Summit Learning Systems Based on Michael Vickers’ best-selling book, Becoming Preferred, this keynote presentation teaches leading-edge strategies and tactics that will help place your company in the preferred position every time. Attendees learn how to become unique and distinct in a crowded marketplace, how to bring distinctive value to their customers or clients, how to build long- term economic relationships, and how to create added value to win the price war. This presentation is filled with applicable anecdotes, examples, and strategies that will give your team immediate results. Tuesday 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. KEYNOTE PANEL Intelligent Voice Assistants, Part 1: The Vision Moshe Yudkowsky, President - Disaggregate Vlad Sejnoha, Chief Technology Officer - Nuance Communications Ashish Patwa, Founder and CEO - Tronton Johan Schalkwyk, Manager, Mobile Speech Team - Google Where is the industry heading? Voice has taken center stage in the last year, especially since October with the introduction of Siri. Unique and sophisticated apps and services that make the human-machine interaction natural and simple are rapidly coming to market. So how will this spotlight on voice, when combined with the advances in natural language understanding (NLU) and intent-driven interactions, change the way we interact with devices and cars? Are voice-enabled virtual assistants an industry inflection point or just a fad? What technologies will converge to create useful and usable virtual assistants? In addition to smartphones, which devices will be used to interact with virtual assistants? How will businesses, manufacturers, and consumers embrace virtual voice assistants? Which markets and industries stand to benefit the most from the voice-enabled virtual assistant trend? Wednesday 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m. KEYNOTE PANEL Voice Biometrics: Opportunities and Challenges Dan Miller, Senior Analyst - Opus Research, Inc. Julia Webb, Executive Vice President, Sales & Marketing - VoiceVault Shahar Belkin, CTO - FST21 Alexey Khitrov, President - SpeechPro Today, nearly 10 million people have enrolled in systems or services that use their voiceprints to improve customer care, to reset (and ultimately replace) passwords, to provide irrefutable electronic signatures, or simply to prove they are alive and eligible to receive their pensions. Beyond the basics of using a voice as a biometric means to support identification and verification, the unique characteristics of a person’s utterances are under evaluation for a fascinating set of functions surrounding detection of such human dimensions as sobriety, sentiment, and voracity. The panel members discuss new uses and applications of voice biometrics and how these will impact the security of property, people, and information. Sunrise Discussions SpeechTEK will host early morning discussions on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for business professionals, project leaders, designers, and developers to openly talk about the topics listed below. This is a great opportunity for attendees to network, discuss challenges, and share ideas with peers and speech technology professionals. Full Schedule SpeechTEK University SpeechTEK University courses are in-depth, focused, 3-hour seminars on topics of special interest to speech technology and IT profession- als. Taught by experienced instructors, the courses offer a structured and participatory learning experience. These are separately priced or may be purchased as part of your conference registration. Full Schedule Customer Case Studies Customer case study presentations marked with a Customer Case Study icon give you insight into how speech technologies are being applied in real-world situations. Presenters share how they suc- cessfully procure and deploy existing speech applications and how they avoid common pitfalls. In addition to formal conference sessions, there are many networking opportunities to meet other customers, including breakfasts, session breaks, lunches, receptions, and infor- mal gatherings of customers with similar interests. Full Schedule Virtual Tracks Attend presentations devoted to specific topics, including analytics mobile, multichannel, multimodal, natural language, and voice bio metrics applications across the traditional vertical conference tracks Virtual Tracks SpeechTEK Show and Exhibition Visit any of the informative exhibits to learn about the latest products and services from all of the major speech technology vendors. Compare technology from multiple vendors and determine which products are most suited to your business needs monday, august 13 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m • Grand Opening Reception tuesday, august 14 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m wednesday, august 15 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m