Practical issues in the application of speech technology to network and customer service applications

Speech technology is of increasing importance both in the provision of new network services and in the development of new automated business channels often to complement existing call-centre, online or e-commerce approaches. This paper discusses a number of practical issues in the development of complex services and describes a number of experimental, trial and deployed systems focussing on key issues: (i) large vocabulary database searching-UK name and address transcription; and (ii) the management of dialogue complexity in fluent spoken language systems-the Freedom system.