Most people have experienced an automated speech-recognition system when calling a company. Instead of prompting callers to choose an option by entering numbers, the system asks questions and understands spoken responses. With a more advanced application, callers may feel as if they're having a conversation with another person. Not only will the system respond intelligently, its voice even has personality.

The Art and Business of Speech Recognition examines both the rapid emergence and broad potential of speech-recognition applications. By explaining the nature, design, development, and use of such applications, this book addresses two particular needs:

Business managers must understand the competitive advantage that speech-recognition applications provide: a more effective way to engage, serve, and retain customers over the phone.

Application designers must know how to meet their most critical business goal: a satisfying customer experience.


Author Blade Kotelly illuminates these needs from the perspective of an experienced, business-focused practitioner. Among the diverse applications he's worked on, perhaps his most influential design is the flight-information system developed for United Airlines, about which Julie Vallone wrote in Investor's Business Daily: "By the end of the conversation, you might want to take the voice to dinner."

If dinner is the analogy, this concise book is an ideal first course. Managers will learn the potential of speech-recognition applications to reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction, enhance the company brand, and even grow revenues. Designers, especially those just beginning to work in the voice domain, will learn user-interface design principles and techniques needed to develop and deploy successful applications. The examples in the book are real, the writing is accessible and lucid, and the solutions presented are attainable today.