Speech SDK ...

I like speech technology.  I think it’s really neat but has a ways to go.  Recently, Microsoft announced its new SpeechSDK used to bring speech recognition to web apps.  My first thought was “web apps – who cares?”  Thinking more on this I realized the importance of server side speech recognition, especially when it comes to customer service and phone support.  I realized this even further after I blew my Sony receiver this past weekend.   I decided to call customer support to find out where I could bring my cooked receiver and was pleasantly surprised when I was told that instead of hitting numbers on my phone to navigate options of customer support  I could just “say” what I wanted.  Yup – Sony has implemented some form of server side voice recognition technology – and it did a good job.  Turns out that I ended up pressing buttons anyway, since for voice recognition to work you need to wait for all of the prompts to complete before speaking your entry.  I’m impatient and ended up pressing the correct option as soon as I heard it.

At the end of the day, Sony automated support hung up on me again and again after I voiced my postal code in so that the system could help locate a local service center.  Ended up going to the web site anyway.