User participation and compliance in speech automated telecommunications applications

The paper reviews results from a number of field trials assessing speech recognition feasibility for telecommunications services. Several applications incorporating speech automation are explored: Directory Assistance Call Completion (DACC), partial speech automation of Directory Assistance (OSF-Operator Store and Forward), banking over the telephone (Money Talks) and partial speech automation of a customer calling center (PREVIU). The experimental results presented, were collected through Wizard-of-Oz experiments as feasibility precursors to speech recognition automation. Speech interfaces were clearly superior to Touch-Tone in one experiment (PREVIU), with caller participation increasing by 30%. In another experiment (Money Talks), speech recognition interfaces did not improve caller participation and, in fact, provided no advantages over Touch-Tone automation. A number of prompting strategies have been identified as advantageous in increasing caller participation and compliance in automated services. Ultimately, success with speech automated services will rely on identifying the services most suitable for speech automation and then carefully crafting the user interface.