"You'll want to find out how often vendors upgrade their engines," says Tom Falk, director of marketing, Philips Speech Processing (Dallas, TX). "You don't want to be developing apps for an engine that the company's moving away from."

SpeechWorks' Chambers advises that you also learn how well speech recognition engines integrate with touchtone IVR systems.

"Two separate engines will vary significantly on different IVR platforms," he warns, adding that the platform can affect the speed and accuracy of an engine. So ask vendors for information on how well their engines work with specific IVR systems. These are usually available in case studies or white papers from speech rec vendors.

A Is For App

When you design speech-enabled IVR menus, you need to write apps that enable callers to select options to hear specific information. And you need to create apps that let you automate tasks, like routing customers to appropriate menus or agents. How well your apps work determine how effectively you deploy speech-enabled IVR at your call center.

How can you design or customize apps to help customers as efficiently as possible? Charlie Rabie, vice president, customer self-service products, Aspect Communications (San Jose, CA), emphasizes "human engineering" over the technical kind (i.e., don't rely solely on your IT staff). Consider consulting product experts - or agents. No one is in more frequent touch with customers than the reps who speak with them daily. Organizing apps can be a collaborative effort.

That's not to dismiss the technical side of designing apps. Although many vendors include proprietary programming languages with their software for writing touchtone- and speech-enabled IVR code, a new standard for apps has emerged.

"What we're seeing is a transition," says Nuance's Johnson. "VXML is an evolving standard. The goal and the theory [behind it] is to remove vendor dependence."

VXML (Voice eXtension Markup Language) is similar to HTML in that it's a Web-based markup language comprising tags that you can add to a text document. VXML, which integrates with speech recognition engines, supports telephone access to Web services. It also supports Web browsing and Web site interaction using touchtone and speech recognition.

Designing apps with VXML permits you more freedom to customize apps than you would have with a vendor's proprietary language. But VXML-based app development can also be time consuming.

"If you have to write [code] from scratch, it'll take you forever," warns Avaya's Feldman. "You'll sit there typing line for line, every syntax of the code." That's why the majority of recent IVR and speech recognition software support VXML in addition to their own languages.

But VXML isn't your only alternative to building apps with vendor programming languages. SALT (Speech Application Language Tags) is also gaining momentum among call centers. SALT comprises tags that enable you to add speech recognition and features to HTML code.

SALT lets you integrate your company's Web site with IVR systems and speech recognition to enable customers to hear text from your Web pages through the phone. If a customer asks to learn more about a product, that customer can listen to a product description posted on your company's Web site.

How do you decide whether to develop apps with VXML or SALT? First, consider the reason that both languages were created.

"VXML comes from a desire to standardize the IVR world," says Heiko Rahmel, vice president of professional services, Philips Speech Processing. "SALT comes from the desire to let Web developers add speech into their Web pages."

So if your goal is to create improved touchtone menus, VXML might be the better bet. If you want to include on-line content as part of your customer service, then SALT is for you.

Since more call centers use IVR systems than speech recognition software, VXML has found rapid acceptance among them. But expect SALT to become equally popular as more call centers adopt speech recognition technology.

"I believe that SALT will gain momentum," says Feldman. "But it's not widely deployed in thousands and thousands of locations. So I would not yet declare a victory."

And remember: Sometimes the simplest solutions work best. You may not need to write apps with VXML or SALT, depending on your needs. To create basic touchtone menus with a limited number of options, the application development modules that come with most IVR software should suit your purposes.

Let the Software Speak For Itself

Aspect Communications provides two options for developing IVR apps with Aspect Customer Self-Service (CSS) 7.0, due for release by January 2003. You can write IVR scripts in VXML code or build scripts by assembling icons into a tree diagram. The icons represent options that customers can select from each touchtone menu. Customers can also perform specific functions, like searching a database for information.

Also new to 7.0 is its ability to integrate with speech recognition engines without voice boards. Rabie explains that servers running speech recognition engines contain voice boards that relay spoken commands from the engines to IVR apps. Since CSS 7.0 communicates with the speech recognition engine directly, you can set rules for routing customers without writing VXML or Java apps.

Looking to give your IVR apps a test drive before your customers use them? With Avaya's Avaya Interactive Voice Response (IVR) 9.0, you can record IVR scripts as .wav files from a PC microphone. After you finish recording, you play back scripts and edit or re-record them as necessary.

You use Avaya Interactive Voice Response Designer, a component of Avaya IVR, to write IVR apps in VXML or with Avaya's proprietary scripting language. You create diagrams with icons that represent each option that customers select from touchtone menus. You can then test completed apps by entering touchtone data from your PC to run through every menu you create.

Omvia from Intervoice also provides an application development environment, InVision Studio. InVision Studio lets you author IVR scripts with Omvia's VXML or with Intervoice's own proprietary language. Depending on the language, you can work from a VXML browser or from a browser for Intervoice's language. The J2EE-based module also lets you develop IVR scripts in Java, using your code or code written with Java-based tools like Dreamweaver.

Intervoice's Owens recommends that users have some programming background. He explains that the software contains libraries with samples of VXML and proprietary code that programmers can piece together to assemble or modify an app.

Unique to Omvia is an optional module that generates reports containing information like the number of callers that do and do not complete a successful search of IVR menus for the information they need; and the reasons why their searches fail.