For a while I had worked at a local Community college in Haverhill, Massachusetts, near where I live in Methuen, Massachusetts as an Assistive Technology Assistant. As part of my job, I worked with a voice recognition software called Dragon Dictate/Naturally Speaking. The company who vended it out to us claimed that it would accurately recognize a person’s voice after 45 minutes of training. The truth of the matter was that it took a good committment of training to even get the software to recognize one’s voice accurately, if at all. Even after all of the trainign that was put into it, it still had accuracy flaws in recognizing people’s voices.
Today, lots of companies like Sony and 800 directory use voice recognition technology as their primary automated telephone answering services. 800 directory uses a program known as Tellme and Sony uses a program known as Max. One of the programs does not recognize numbers too well. For instance, when I called Sony to seek hekp for a PDA that I owned, it asked me the modle number, which I spoke through their automated system called Max. The model number I was trying to get Max to understand was PEG-SJ-22. Max kept on saying, no matter how I put my numbers “Did you mean PEG-SJ-20. I kept saying no and it finally kept saying, “Let’s see if I can help.” Finally after all of that frustration I got through to someone and had complained about it on several occassions and to my knowledge they did nothing to fix Max’s voice recognition accuracy. Another example is 800 directory’s Tellme software. I asked it to look up a number and it from time to time did not understand what I had to say and it kept replying that we did not find any match. On another occasion, I used voice recognition with another company that deals with magazines. I kept saying the numbers 400 or 4 0 0 and it kept repeating did you mean 100. Becoming frustrated I handed someone else the phone and they could not even get it to recognize the numbers 4 0 0 and told the customer services agent that their system is not recognizing things too well.
Voice recognition programs are good for people who are physically challenged and need to use it because they either do not have use of their hands or good eyesight to push the keypads on the telephone. But to have it as a primary automated telephone answering service without no requirement of having a contingent alternative automated system or better yet, a live person come over the phone is just bad business and bad policy. Especially with directory assistance. Even more troubling is when there is only an operator there from 9:00 AM-9:00 PM Mondays-Fridays and on the off hours, only a voice recognition system that is not perfected to a 99% degree of accuracy or better with no contingent system in place when the business closes, and even more so on weekends when you someitmes need a number is also bad business and bad policy. Both, the FCC, the FTC and our legislators needs to step up to the plate with this voice recognition technology and insist that businesses who are going to use voice recognition technology as their primary automated system must also have a live person there at all times or an alternative way of communicating with an automated system and without passing the costs onto the consumers.
