Call Genie Partners with StatsFone
Call Genie and StatsFone—a speech software development company—are launching an application that enables fans to call a phone number during a sporting event and vote for the “player of the game”—thanks to the power of speech technology.
Additionally, the application allows callers to receive ads and coupons. Call Genie will provide a hosting facility and a voice portal access solution for StatsFone to install, configure, run, and maintain the application.
According to Alex Blodgett, vice president of corporate development at Call Genie, the partnership came about when the company approached StatsFone to determine synergistic opportunities based on StatsFone’s use of voice applications.
“It was determined that the StatsFone application required more voice portal access than was economically feasible in Canada as well as access to database hosting and voice portals in the U.S.,” he writes in an email to Speech Technology. “Call Genie was a logical choice with its data center in Georgia.”
Blodgett says StatsFone’s use of Call Genie's voice portals and database management will allow for improved voice recognition and increased call capacity as the number of participating sports teams increase.
The application’s initial launch will be aimed at fans watching televised hockey games. StatsFone is currently targeting the service for the National Hockey League (NHL), and then plans to branch out to other sports leagues in North America.
“StatsFone is currently focused on the NHL but is in discussion with other sports leagues including major league baseball, professional golf and European soccer,” Blodgett writes.
In a statement, Gordon Wilson, president of StatsFone, said: “Our agreement with Call Genie offers StatsFone expanded voice portal capacity and improved access to the U.S. market. A recent testing of the StatsFone application with a Canadian NHL team was very successful, and as we grow and expand to other North American sports teams and markets, we will need the expertise and expansion capabilities offered by Call Genie.”