CONVERGYS THOUGHT LEADERSHIP SPEAKER SERIES: Speech technologies have enormous potential to greatly improve automated self-service and agent-assisted customer service. Now what?

Cincinnati. - At the SpeechTEK 2008 Conference and Exhibition hosted by Speech Technology Magazine this week in New York, NY, Convergys Corporation (NYSE: CVG), a global leader in relationship management, will share its insights on how to realize the enormous potential of speech technologies to improve business performance across automated self-service and agent-assisted customer service.

Convergys’ Dr. Matthew Yuschik, in the Company’s Relationship Technology Management organization, will deliver two presentations and host one conference session at SpeechTEK 2008.

* Speaking on “A Multimodal Interface for Call Center Agents,” Convergys’ Yuschik describes developer experiences designing a multimodal user interface using a standard design methodology, modified to include special steps for designing the voice and graphical components. In his presentation, he describes a formal procedure for evaluating and selecting voice-enable features to include with the GUI, and discusses product development stages and test results.
* Speaking on “Steps to Determine Multimodal Mobile Interactions,” Convergys’ Yuschik discusses how observing call center agents using a multimodal tool that overlays speech onto an existing GUI identified multimodal procedures that reduce the complexity and increase the efficiency of the transaction. This process becomes an early step in migrating an agent-enabled transaction in the call center to a self-service transaction performed by the caller on their mobile hand-held device. In his presentation, he describes the steps in the design procedure that highlight how call center agents become a test-bed for end-user multimodal User Interfaces.
* Convergys’ Yuschik also moderates a conference session on “Video and Speech,” which discusses how to harness video in VXML to quickly create rich voice and video applications, as well as how to author multimodal applications.

Convergys Senior Consultant Sunil Issar, from the Company’s Relationship Technology Management organization, will deliver a presentation and moderate two conference sessions during SpeechTEK 2008.

* Speaking on “Building Robust NLU Applications,” Convergys’ Issar discusses when it is appropriate to build Natural Language Understanding (NLU) technologies and how to build robust statistical models for optimal performance.
* Convergys’ Issar also moderates a conference session on “Preventive Medicine: Keeping Your Speech System Healthy,” which teaches attendees how to monitor and manage their speech applications throughout the application’s lifecycle.
* He also moderates a conference session on “Speech in CPG/Retail,” which focuses on how consumer packaged goods companies and retailers rely on speech technology in a variety of ways.