Speech recognition has matured over the past 50 years from a concept to a reality. It is a complex technology but offers practical business benefits to organizations. As a solution it provides an economical and effective way to reduce overhead costs while improving customer satisfaction, operations and workforce productivity.

Looking forward, as people become more accustomed to interacting with a voice user interface, speech recognition will be integrated into a wider range of services and products outside of the contact center and service provider environments. The technology will continue to improve and proliferate in the market helping drive greater cost savings, top-line revenue and workforce productivity.

Speech applications that deliver a superior caller experience must therefore deliver a conversational approach so that callers can ask for what they need and the speech application must be able to understand their questions and quickly resolve their problems.