Avaya and Loquendo Expand Relationship in Speech Self-Service

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. TURIN, Italy – Avaya Inc., a leader in business communications applications, systems and services, today announced an expansion of its relationship with Loquendo, a global speech technology provider and leading innovator in speech recognition. This strategic relationship will provide Avaya customers with new and enhanced speech self-service options for a broad range of advanced contact center solutions.

Loquendo is already a participant in the Avaya DevConnect program. As a DevConnect member, the Loquendo MRCP Server (formerly known as Loquendo Speech Suite) is certified to work with Avaya Voice Portal, the company’s flagship speech self- service solution for contact centers, as well as with Avaya Interactive Response. Loquendo MRCP Server is a server-based solution for large-scale deployments of speech technologies in telephony environments, including contact centers.

The expanded strategic relationship announced today enables Avaya to resell Loquendo speech technology licenses as a speech automation option for Avaya Voice Portal in 27 languages worldwide, and growing.

In addition to Avaya Voice Portal, Loquendo speech technologies can now be integrated with other Avaya contact center solutions, such as Intelligent Customer Routing, which unifies delivery of exceptional customer care across self and assisted service, and Proactive Outreach, the multi-channel outbound self-service solution for improving customer response.

“This strategic relationship with Loquendo aligns with our commitment to offer the best technologies available to enhance customer service experiences,” said Anthony Bartolo, general manager, Contact Center Communications. “The adoption of speech self-service in the enterprise continues to accelerate, and by working with industry innovators such as Loquendo, Avaya will continue to help businesses reach new levels of customer service.”

“We are particularly proud to extend our reach as enablers of Avaya’s superior range of self-service and IVR solutions – which lead in providing customers around the world an enhanced user experiences,” said Davide Franco, Chairman and CEO of Loquendo. “The addition of Loquendo’s portfolio of multilingual speech technologies gives Avaya’s customers worldwide a compelling option for speech self-service using the best available technologies.”

The combination of Avaya and Loquendo technologies has been successfully adopted by customers worldwide to develop customer help desks, self-service banking applications, railway timetable enquiry services and football match information and ticketing. A company that currently uses a solution based on Avaya and Loquendo is VIVA, one of Bolivia’s most important mobile service providers. VIVA implemented an Avaya Voice Portal and Loquendo text-to-speech (TTS) solution in its contact center to improve agent staff efficiency by routing customer recursive information requests to Avaya Voice Portal. With Loquendo TTS, specific information is provided automatically to customers, saving agents time and enhancing customer service. This information can be changed easily online for special campaigns, without requiring an audio studio to record new messages.

Members of Avaya’s DevConnect program expect to see new options as a result of the expanded Avaya and Loquendo relationship. Avaya Platinum DevConnect member, Interactive Northwest, Inc. (INI), which provides custom communications solutions built upon leading interactive voice response and telephony platforms, says: “Businesses are increasingly adopting speech-based service as an effective way to improve customer satisfaction. We continue to see growing demand for the services this relationship offers and believe this new customer option will expand the market for high quality speech platforms.”

About Avaya
Avaya is a global leader in enterprise communications systems. The company provides unified communications, contact centers, and related services directly and through its channel partners to leading businesses and organizations around the world. Enterprises of all sizes depend on Avaya for state-of-the-art communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer service and competitiveness.

About Loquendo
Loquendo is the leading innovator in speech recognition and speech synthesis –providing a complete range of technologies for server, embedded and desktop solutions. Currently available in 27 languages with 65 voices, and constantly growing, Loquendo’s best-in-breed technologies have proven to enhance customer satisfaction and greatly reduce costs. Loquendo is headquartered in Turin, Italy, with international offices in North America and Europe, and a worldwide network of partners. For more information about Loquendo, and to hear demos of all Loquendo TTS voices, go to www.loquendo.com.