Case Studies Provide Answers to Real-World Problems

Regardless of the industry in which you work, you don’t need us to tell you which problems you’re experiencing on a daily basis or why. You already know, as you’re likely hearing concerns or complaints from your customers and employees, seeing reports that show where your business is struggling, and watching customer retention suffer, customer satisfaction scores decline, or opportunities to grow your business disappear. It doesn’t help your bottom line to know that others in your industry are having the same problems, and that knowledge isn’t going to help your employees feel any better about coming to work every day or encourage prospects to start doing business with your company.

So you’ll notice that this year we’ve changed course with our coverage of some of our key vertical market sectors. Instead of relying on industry insiders to highlight which unique challenges your industry faces and how speech technologies might be able to help, we’re presenting real-world case studies that demonstrate how some of your peers have solved problems similar to yours.

Our approach is simple. We highlight real companies in seven key verticals—legal services, financial services, healthcare, hospitality, warehousing/distribution, waste management, and entertainment—identify a persistent problem (or problems) they were facing, discuss the technologies they deployed to address them, and the improvements they’ve been able to achieve as a result. We also present an array of speech technologies, including speech-to-text solutions for dictation and transcription, speech analytics, text-to-speech and voice cloning, intelligent virtual assistants, and warehouse voice picking solutions. The companies we profile have deployed technologies from a wide swath of prominent speech technology vendors, including Verint, NICE, Lucas Systems, Philips, PolyAI, Resemble AI, and Nuance Communications.

These case studies provide real-life examples of positive customer outcomes and sentiment, which can go a long way when you seek buy-in from senior leadership to support any technology investments you’d like to make. Rather than having the speech technology vendors tell you which products you should buy, these case studies are an unbiased review of the vendors’ products and services.

On the consumer side, the large majority of people look at product reviews and social media posts about products before buying them, and they spend much more time with customer feedback than with product descriptions on company websites. B2B buyers like you shouldn’t be any different.

And though we don’t present this information as a full case study—although we probably could have—in this issue we also highlight how one U.S. congresswoman is using text-to-speech technology to deliver remarks on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Rep. Jennifer Wexton, who has been diagnosed with a degenerative brain condition, has been using TTS on an iPad for the past few months.

Wexton, I’ve since learned, is not the first federal legislator to use speech technologies on Capitol Hill. Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman has been using captioning technology that allows him to read what his fellow legislators are saying in real time. The technology lets Fetterman, who has been experiencing auditory processing issues resulting from a stroke, see a transcript of spoken remarks on his wireless tablet.

Though we were not able to identify the speech technology vendors that supplied these technologies, the fact that they are being used on the floors of both houses of Congress shows just how far speech technology has come and just how vital and effective it is today.

Throughout this issue, one message is clear: Speech technology is being used in a wide variety of industries and to address a wide variety of unique business challenges with great success. Organizations are saving money, improving customer and employee experiences, streamlining workflows, and opening new revenue streams with speech technology, and you can too.

Leonard Klie is the editor of Speech Technology magazine. He can be reached at lklie@infotoday.com.