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August 13 - 15, 2012
New York Marriott Marquis
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SpeechTEK 2012 - Tuesday, August 14, 2012
SUNRISE DISCUSSIONS
SD201 – Developing Mobile Customer Service
8:00 a.m - 8:45 a.m
R.J. Auburn, Chief Technology Officer - Voxeo, an Aspect Company

Leading analysts predict that mobile phones will overtake PCs as the dominant web access device worldwide by 2013. In this session, we'll discuss UI design fro mobile customer self-service, developing native apps for Android and iOS, as well as the future of HTML5.

SD202 – Educational Options and Resources for Developing Speech Applications
8:00 a.m - 8:45 a.m
Deborah Dahl, Principal - Conversational Technologies

Unlike many professions, there’s no traditional educational path to becoming a speech application developer or VUI designer. Some developers have backgrounds in related fields like linguistics, psychology, or computer science and learn the specifics of speech application development on the job. This session discusses how current application developers learned their skills, what they wish they knew more about, existing educational resources—including online, vendor-specific, and university-based options—and what other resources are needed that aren’t currently available.

SD203 – Removal of Sensitive Information From Call Recordings
8:00 a.m - 8:45 a.m
Bernhard Suhm, Director of Professional Services, AVOKE Call Experience Analytics Division - Raytheon BBN Technologies

This presentation discusses the various methods for removing sensitive information to satisfy the requirements of widely accepted data security standards such as the Payment Card Industry (PCI DSS). It also discusses important metrics that allow call centers to understand the trade-offs in trying to remove sensitive information from their call recordings.

SD204 – The Unvarnished Truth from a Patent Attorney
8:00 a.m - 8:45 a.m
Ria Farrell Schalnat, Registered Patent Attorney - Dinsmore & Shohl

It has been a busy year for the world of patents and speech! The American Invents Act finally passed last fall, Nuance acquired Vlingo after a contentious litigation, and new patents are issuing every month in speech technologies. How do these items affect the future of the speech world? JOin us to ask questions and debate the effects of patents and speech inquiring minds!

KEYNOTE
Intelligent Voice Assistants, Part 1: The Vision
9:00 a.m - 10:00 a.m
MODERATOR: Moshe Yudkowsky, President - Disaggregate Corporation
Vlad Sejnoha, Chief Technology Officer - Nuance
Ashish Patwa, Founder and CEO - Tronton
Johan Schalkwyk, Manager, Mobile Speech Team - Google Cloud

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?

Break in the Exhibit Hall
10:00 a.m - 10:45 a.m
TRACK A: BUSINESS STRATEGIES
A201 – Analysts Discuss Analytics
10:45 a.m - 11:30 a.m
MODERATOR: Rich Garrett, Senior Solutions Consultant - [24]7

Analytics offer organizations vast amounts of data to transform the automated customer experience, but using this data requires strategy and expertise. Minkara describes the strategic business activities and technology deployments required to personalize each customer interaction to build a 5-star customer experience program. Dawson discusses the trends shaping speech analytics and how it is moving closer to business intelligence and big data processes.

Speech Analytics: Demystifying the Secrets to Go beyond Voice and Create a Best-in-Class Customer Experience Program
Omer Minkara, Research Director, Contact Center & Cust Exp Man - Aberdeen Group
Transitioning Beyond Speech Analytics
Keith Dawson, Practice Leader, Customer Engagement - Ovum
A202 – Planning for Cross-Channel Experiences
11:45 a.m - 12:30 p.m
Jenni McKienzie, Voice Interaction Designer - SpeechUsability

As organizations fully embrace cross-channel customer contacts, they are faced with a new range of planning and strategy tasks. Nowlin-Green presents a checklist of foundation elements every contact center needs, including developing a contact history database, and accurate knowledgebase, and how to plan and prepare your environment for the customer experience of the future. Sharma presents the benefits of a well-designed, unified, multichannel application framework that increases customer satisfaction and retention.

Walk Before You Run--Are You Ready For Where This Multi-Modal Conversational World is Heading
Rebecca Nowlin Green, Principal Business Consultant, - Nuance
Does Your Left Hand Know What Your Right Hand Is Doing
Manish Sharma, Founder and President - Techno-ventions Inc.
Sponsored By
Customer Self-Service: Past, Present and Future
12:30 p.m - 1:45 p.m
Jonathan Taylor - Voxeo, an Aspect Company

Over the past 20 years customer self-service has changed dramatically from basic touch-tone IVR to intelligent-speech IVR, email, web, SMS, chat, mobile web, social and smart phone application channels. As an industry we should expect as much, if not more change over the next 20 years. Jonathan will reflect on the last 20 years of self-service advancements and also predict some of the changes we'll likely see in the next 20 years.

A203 – PANEL: IVR Success Metrics
1:45 p.m - 2:30 p.m
MODERATOR: Michael Ahnemann, Director, User Experience - Angel
Peter Voss, CEO - Smart Action Company, LLC
David Suendermann, Principle Speech Scientist - Synchronoss

How do you measure the success of your IVR system? This is a persistent challenge for organizations. Voss explains and compares different types of IVR success measures, including containment, task completion, abandonment, completion, and success rates, along with the difficulties in identifying outcomes and interpreting them. Suendermann discusses adaptation and optimization of speech recognition and understanding as well as dialogue management as a method for understanding the success of IVR systems.

A204 – How a Cross-Channel Strategy Affects the Call Center
2:45 p.m - 3:30 p.m
MODERATOR: Elaine Cascio, Vice President - Vanguard Communications Corp

Cross-channel customer contact affects many parts of the organization, but perhaps none are affected as directly as the call center. Kaiser outlines best practices for building a robust business case analysis to support cross- channel opportunities within your organization by moving beyond call deflection as a measure of success. Wulfraat discusses the challenges of supporting multichannel communications along with managing day-to- day contact centers, which are now being asked to drive revenue and build customer lifetime value.

Building a Business Case for Cross-Channel Conversations
Lizanne Kaiser, Sr. Principal Business Consultant - Genesys
Is your Contact Center Ready for Transformation?
Bruce Pollock, Vice President, Strategic Growth and Planning - West Interactive
Break in the Exhibit Hall
3:30 p.m - 4:15 p.m
A205 – Case Study 1: Analytics
4:15 p.m - 5:00 p.m
MODERATOR: Keith Dawson, Practice Leader, Customer Engagement - Ovum

Learn how two different companies have benefited from using speech analytics. Aetna has revised customer agent training to turn negative interactions into positive experiences. Managers in the Garanati Pension call center are able to access details of conversations between customers and call center personnel without listening to individual conversations and can take action immediately to improve poor agent performance and business operations.

Speech Analytics for Garanti Pension Call Center
Yasemin Donmez, Business Development Specialist - Garanti Pension
How Speech and Chat Technologies Revolutionized Our Call Center
Tammy Sills, Manager, Call Center and Techonology Support
Tim Arnold, Call Center and Technology Support

Analytics is transitioning from an emerging technology to an applied business solution. In this session, a major
healthcare provider details how it successfully implemented a speech analytics solution to help identify what drives repeat calls and longer call durations, resulting in significant business benefits.

TRACK B: VOICE INTERACTION DESIGN
B201 – Multimodal Interaction Design
10:45 a.m - 11:30 a.m
MODERATOR: Catherine Zhu, Principal Consultant - SpeechUsability

Customers now contact organizations using multiple devices with varying capabilities, but designing a unique application for each device is impractical and expensive. Baul discusses how to create experiences from real-time data about the user’s mobile device and how to use new design idioms and best practices to enhance the experience of the smartphone user. Suendermann presents a method for using the accumulated speech science knowledge to reshape and transform multimodal designs.

Anywhere, Anytime, Any Device: Multi-Modal Interaction Design
Samrat Baul, Senior Director, Application Design - [24]7
Five Techniques Multi-Modal Apps (Should) Inherit from Speech Science
David Suendermann, Principle Speech Scientist - Synchronoss
B202 – Understanding Multimodal Users
11:45 a.m - 12:30 p.m
MODERATOR: James R. Lewis, Senior Human Factors Engineer - IBM Corporation

For all the buzz surrounding multimodal applications, we understand very little about what people do when they have the chance to interact with a mobile device that recognizes both speech and gesture. Milroy discusses how smart phone interactions raise user expectations and require evolving methods for designing and evaluating user interactions in order to meet these expectations.  Balentine presents a unique model of speech interactions and highlights its benefits to users over current approaches

Smart IVRs for Smart Phones
Jim Milroy, Human Factors Solutions Consultant - West Interactive Services
"Super-Natural" Language Dialogues
Bruce Balentine, Chief Scientist Emeritus - Enterprise Integration Group
Sponsored By
Customer Self-Service: Past, Present and Future
12:30 p.m - 1:45 p.m
Jonathan Taylor - Voxeo, an Aspect Company

Over the past 20 years customer self-service has changed dramatically from basic touch-tone IVR to intelligent-speech IVR, email, web, SMS, chat, mobile web, social and smart phone application channels. As an industry we should expect as much, if not more change over the next 20 years. Jonathan will reflect on the last 20 years of self-service advancements and also predict some of the changes we'll likely see in the next 20 years.

B203 – Strategic Multimodal Design
1:45 p.m - 2:30 p.m
MODERATOR: Bernhard Suhm, Director of Professional Services, AVOKE Call Experience Analytics Division - Raytheon BBN Technologies

Moving from design of unimodal speech-enabled applications to multi- modal smartphone applications is not always straightforward. Bouzid highlights fundamental differences between these contexts and how we can transfer what we have learned from telephony-based IVR space to build highly usable voice solutions on the smartphone platform. Kelly discusses how understanding users, their environments, their devices, and available software tools can allow organizations to create powerful, engaging multimodal designs.

Migrating from IVR to the Smart Phone: Some VUI Considerations
Ahmed Bouzid, Co-founder & President - The Ubiquitous Voice Society
Multi-Modal Accessibility and Usability. Make it a Simple, Sexy, Powerful Experience
Tara Kelly, President & CEO - SPLICE Software Inc.
B204 – Multipurpose Design Documentation
2:45 p.m - 3:30 p.m
MODERATOR: Mark W Stallings, Managing Partner, VUI Design Practice - Forty 7 Ronin Inc.

Design documentation faces a host of challenges because it is used by many different audiences to describe interactions across multiple modalities. Owens discusses the challenges of creating design documentation that is able to show different levels of detail to enable differing audiences to clearly understand the design. Pelland presents a method of situation-based design that allows both speech and visual interfaces to be designed using traditional methods with only a few changes.

Challenges of Creating a Cross-Organizational IVR Design Documentation Strategy
Karen Owens, Senior User Experience Designer - LogicTree Corporation
Situation-Based Dialog Design
Dave Pelland, Global Director, IVR Practice - Genesys
Break in the Exhibit Hall
3:30 p.m - 4:15 p.m
B205 – Case Study 2: Voice Verification
4:15 p.m - 5:00 p.m
MODERATOR: Judith Markowitz, President - J. Markowitz Consultants

Prior to deployment of a biometric speaker verification system that is lan- guage- and accent-independent, a large volume of calls required identity verification via a manual agent-assisted procedure. This was causing both time loss and customer dissatisfaction. After deployment, the average call duration was reduced and customers provided positive feedback. Rather than dealing with PINs, passwords, and challenge questions, customers are easily identified by the system before completing their secure transactions.

Biometric Speaker Verification System
Mesut Cure, Customer Services Director - Avea
Speech System for Elderly Population
Shahar Belkin, CTO - FST21
TRACK C: CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES
C201 – Understanding Customer Journeys
10:45 a.m - 11:30 a.m
MODERATOR: Max Ball, Director, Solutions Management - Genesys Telecommunications

Cross-channel customer contact is a reality, but understanding how, when, and why customers choose one channel and switch to another is a challenging problem. Nguyen presents a method of understanding customer experience as a journey, which is comprised of a series of tasks that lead to a specific outcome that must be woven together into a seamless and intuitive experience. Cascio discusses building customer experience maps and life cycle journeys to drive customer loyalty and provide superior experiences.

Customer Experience Strategy Designed from the Customer's Journey
Patrick Nguyen, Chief Technology Officer - [24]7.ai
The Customer Journey: Creating innovative solutions by building customer experience maps
Elaine Cascio, Vice President - Vanguard Communications Corp
C202 – Using Analytics
11:45 a.m - 12:30 p.m
MODERATOR: Sondra Ahlén, Principal VUI Consultant/Owner - SAVIC

Enterprise contact centers routinely record conversations for post-call use, such as regulatory compliance and quality monitoring. Rehor describes how visionary companies are beginning to use modern analytics applications that leverage live media streaming and open recording on the network to provide real-time business intelligence that guides customer care representatives toward speedier, more accurate resolution of caller issues. Arslan describes ways to obtain reliable and robust speech analytic parameters such as hesitations and breathing, and how these parameters can be useful in agent quality monitoring in speech analytics.

Open Speech Recording & Analytics: Improve Customer Care in Real-Time
Ken Rehor, Voice Technology Group - Cisco
Challenges for Speech Analytics
Levent Arslan, CEO - SESTEK
Sponsored By
Customer Self-Service: Past, Present and Future
12:30 p.m - 1:45 p.m
Jonathan Taylor - Voxeo, an Aspect Company

Over the past 20 years customer self-service has changed dramatically from basic touch-tone IVR to intelligent-speech IVR, email, web, SMS, chat, mobile web, social and smart phone application channels. As an industry we should expect as much, if not more change over the next 20 years. Jonathan will reflect on the last 20 years of self-service advancements and also predict some of the changes we'll likely see in the next 20 years.

C203 – PANEL: Analytics— Promises and Pitfalls
1:45 p.m - 2:30 p.m
MODERATOR: Judith Markowitz, President - J. Markowitz Consultants
Daniel Ziv, Vice President, Speech and Text Analytics Global Product Strategy - Verint Customer Engagement Solutions
Prem Uppaluru, President and CEO - Transera
Crispin Reedy, Director, User Experience - Versay Solutions

Analytics—analysis of recorded conversations between users and automated systems—promises to reveal various problems in the user experience. This session aims to answer the following questions: What are the various types of analytics and what kind of data do they produce? How can this data be used to improve the user experience as well as the company’s bottom line?

C204 – Unified Cross-Channel Experiences
2:45 p.m - 3:30 p.m
MODERATOR: Samrat Baul, Senior Director, Application Design - [24]7

Today’s cross-channel customer experience can sometimes be disorganized and fragmented, which results in decreased efficiency and reduced rates of self-service. Middleton discusses how the speech customer experience across multiple channels can be used to decrease costs and increase customer service. Nordale presents real-world examples of companies that have gone from being strictly IVR to delivering outbound and multi-modal interactions and the business case for multichannel interactions to drive customer satisfaction and continued usage.

Many Channels, One Experience: The Customer Service Imperative
Andy Middleton, Technical Architect - Performance Technology Partners (PTP)
Go Ahead, Help Yourself: Smarter Multi-Channel Interactions Up the Self-Service Game
Dan Nordale, VP, Marketing, Enterprise Division - Nuance
Break in the Exhibit Hall
3:30 p.m - 4:15 p.m
C205 – Case Study 3: Banking and Warehouse Distribution Applications
4:15 p.m - 5:00 p.m
MODERATOR: K.W.'Bill' Scholz, President - NewSpeech LLC

Ramos describes how mobile users are able to connect with a warehouse management system to improve operating efficiencies and ensure stores are properly stocked for customers.  Pannala discsses how BNY Mellon implemented multimodal mobile financial services.

Foods Improves Warehouse and Distribution Operations with Voice-enabled Applications
Luis Ramos, General Manager - Goya Foods
Context-aware Multimodal Mobile Financial Services - an Implementor's perspective
Shekar Pannala, Executive Vice President and Divisional CIO - BNYMellon
TRACK D: TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES
D201 – PANEL: Intelligent Voice Assistants, Part 2: Achieving the Vision
10:45 a.m - 11:30 a.m
MODERATOR: William Meisel, President - TMA Associates
Vlad Sejnoha, Chief Technology Officer - Nuance
Ashish Patwa, Founder and CEO - Tronton
Johan Schalkwyk, Manager, Mobile Speech Team - Google Cloud

This follow-up session to the keynote panel discusses ways to achieve the intelligent voice agent vision. It aims to answer the following questions: How can you participate in the voice-enabled virtual assistant movement? What standard formats and protocols are necessary to enable providers to make their services and content available to virtual assistants? Who should specify these standards? How will virtual assistants discover new services and content and make them available to users? How will user interface designers make user interactions with virtual assistants easy and natural? What security mechanisms will guarantee a safe and hacker-free environment for virtual assistants and their users and contact/service providers? How can you enable assistants to follow customers from one device to another? How do virtual assistants interact with each other?

D202 – Enhanced IVR Systems
11:45 a.m - 12:30 p.m
MODERATOR: Phil Shinn, CTO - ImmunityAnalytics

To remain competitive with smartphone applications, IVR applications must add new features and capabilities. Feinberg describes how location- based services will deliver better customer experiences and higher automation success rates. Szczurek describes how new APIs can transform voice-only IVRs into next-generation visual IVRs that work with any network, any phone, and most mobile devices—without discarding existing IVRs, adding infrastructure, or requiring callers to use special phone networks.

Enhancing Self-Service Applications with Location Intelligence
Brian Feinberg, Sr Systems Engineer - Voxeo, an Aspect Company
Add a ‘V’ for Visual to Your IVR
Theresa Szczurek, CEO and Co-Founder - Radish Systems, LLC
Sponsored By
Customer Self-Service: Past, Present and Future
12:30 p.m - 1:45 p.m
Jonathan Taylor - Voxeo, an Aspect Company

Over the past 20 years customer self-service has changed dramatically from basic touch-tone IVR to intelligent-speech IVR, email, web, SMS, chat, mobile web, social and smart phone application channels. As an industry we should expect as much, if not more change over the next 20 years. Jonathan will reflect on the last 20 years of self-service advancements and also predict some of the changes we'll likely see in the next 20 years.

D203 – New Approaches to Dialogue Management
1:45 p.m - 2:30 p.m
MODERATOR: K.W.'Bill' Scholz, President - NewSpeech LLC

New approaches are needed to develop effective conversational speech interfaces. Vassos discusses multichannel, natural language understanding dialogue management based on a purely declarative, channel-agnostic dialogue model, which enables the realization of the “develop once, deploy everywhere” concept. Thomson summarizes work by the AVIOS Advanced Dialog Forum to minimize development cost, distribute dialogue control in a multimodal environment, and build cross-industry and industry/academia collaboration. The presentation will include a demo and links so audience members can experiment with some of the solutions presented.

Delivering true, multi-channel NLU self-service
Dimitris Vassos, Founder & CEO - Omilia
Three keys to making dialog engines better
David L Thomson, VP Speech Technology - CaptionCall
D204 – Multimodal and Multichannel Languages and Platforms
2:45 p.m - 3:30 p.m
MODERATOR: Daniel C Burnett, President - StandardsPlay

Dahl discusses the pros and cons of existing multimodal platforms and tools and how voice and multimodal standards can reduce the risk of being locked into proprietary technologies. Monegan describes how to provide a seamless customer experience across many channels, including speech, web, and mobile, by using a predictive multichannel platform.

One Application to Many Channels: Creating a Multi-Channel Customer Experience
Mike Monegan, Vice President Product Management - Cyara
Started with Multimodality: Applications, Platforms and Tools
Deborah Dahl, Principal - Conversational Technologies
Break in the Exhibit Hall
3:30 p.m - 4:15 p.m
D205 – Case Study 4: Managing Call Center Changes
4:15 p.m - 5:00 p.m
MODERATOR: David L Thomson, VP Speech Technology - CaptionCall

The merger of two premier brokerage businesses required building all new call center applications from the IVR to CTI to agent desktops to a mainframe. A major Australian bank transformed a contact center to support 28 business units. Both speakers explain the goals, the process, measures of success, and the lessons learned while deploying these major call center changes.

Building New Speech Apps for New Businesses
Phil Shinn, CTO - ImmunityAnalytics
Managing Change: From Release Cycles to Bringing Your IVR In House and the Role of Automated Testing
Kevin Au, Lead QA Analyst - Green Dot Corporation
RECEPTION
Sponsored By
Networking Reception
5:00 p.m - 7:00 p.m

Mingle with exhibitors, speakers, and conference attendees while enjoying good food and drinks.




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