SpeechCycle has launched a mobile division that will focus exclusively on meeting the growing demand for customer care solutions on the smartphone.

The need for the new division emerged when the company began looking at the smartphone market, according to Roberto Pieraccini, chief technology officer at SpeechCycle. “The paradigm of customer interaction is different, the type of customer is different, and the technology is different,” he states. “The type of interaction with a customer over a mobile device is so different that it justifies a new division.”

The company’s goal in launching the new division is to leverage the smartphone, which offers significant opportunity for companies to deliver a highly differentiated customer experience that drives customer loyalty, optimizes contact center operations, and increases revenues.

“The telephone as we know it is changing into a much more powerful device,” Pieraccini  says. “It’s mostly multimodal technology that requires its own systems. You can use voice, text, or touch, and since it has a built-in display screen, you do not need to go through lengthy dialogues.”

“The launch of the Mobile Division of SpeechCycle is the next step in our evolution,” said Zor Gorelov, CEO of SpeechCycle, in a statement. “We have had great success in providing intelligent, phone-based self-service applications that improve the customer experience while reducing costs. Extending these capabilities to the mobile platform is a natural progression for the company.”

Pieraccini is quick to point out, though, that the creation of the new division in no way suggests that SpeechCycle is abandoning the IVR market. “The IVR will still exist, and we see a real need for it too,” he says.

The Mobile Division of SpeechCycle will dedicate significant resources to creating products and solutions that support the operating systems of leading smartphones and other mobile devices. Among the top three right now are Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android, and RIM’s BlackBerry, according to Pieraccini

The new division will be housed at SpeechCycle’s New York headquarters. It will be led by Albert Kim, a veteran software industry executive who prior to joining SpeechCycle, founded a startup and worked at Microsoft for more than 13 years focusing on the service provider market..

“With 300 million smartphones sold worldwide in 2010, consumer behavior has undergone a seismic shift. Smartphones have changed how consumers interact with enterprises and service providers. in fact, nearly two-thirds of them use their mobile phone to contact customer care,” Kim said in a statement. “Consumers are carrying around powerful computing devices, and they expect faster and better customer service. Our vision is to enable companies to tap into this powerful medium to build lasting and profitable relationships with their customers.”