Convergys/Audium Selected as People's Choice

The People's Choice Award, recognizing the favorite application of the first Speech Solutions CHALLENGE at SpeechTEK 2003, has been awarded to Convergys  and its Solutions CHALLENGE partner Audium, a developer of VoiceXML server and application software for customer service IVR systems.

As part of the CHALLENGE, the Convergys/Audium team competed against six other units to develop a fully functional, flexible and sophisticated speech application that had to be completed in less than six hours. SpeechTEK conference attendees could call the seven applications, and based on their interaction with each, they voted the Convergys/Audium solution as the best of the competition.

"Winning this CHALLENGE demonstrates the superior performance of our automated speech applications and our integrated Audium development and ScanSoft tuning tools we use to develop them," said Ted Cwiok, general manager of speech solutions for Convergys. "We are delighted to receive this 'People's Choice' endorsement of our solution. This prestigious award follows our recent announcement about the integration of industry-leading VoiceXML software tools into our open-hosting environment to accelerate the development of speech applications and reduce associated cost."

The demonstration required each team to develop a speech application enabling callers to make appointments at an auto repair business. According to CHALLENGE organizers, this application scenario was chosen because it is typical of thousands of businesses that need to enable callers to set appointments; and included a level of complexity of recognition and business logic that made the application useful in the real world.