Metaphor Solutions Launches Plug & Play Web Site for Deploying Speech IVR Solutions

WELLESLEY, MASS. - Metaphor Solutions launched its Plug & Play Speech IVR, a Web-based solution for customers to customize and deploy packaged speech IVR (interactive voice response) applications. Customers select a packaged solution, customize its prompts and business variables and then connect the solution to data at the customer's site through configured web services.

Once the solution is tested with a phone number provided in the Web site, customers can begin servicing their users through deployment by Metaphor. After deployment, customers can monitor the application, run service reports and download report data.

"Metaphor's Plug & Play Speech IVR allowed us to pick our application, customize it and test it in a few minutes," said Ahmed Albaiti, president for Medullan, Inc., one of Metaphor's customers. "We like that the Web interface gives us complete control of our customer service solution and provides us with a very fast and easy way to change our application, monitor calls and run reports."

"Because the Metaphor Plug & Play Speech IVR is specifically designed to support rapid, inexpensive application configuration, deployment and management by mid-sized call centers, it addresses one of the challenging problems facing speech technologies: how to expand the use of speech in small-to-medium sized call centers," said Dr. Judith Markowitz, founder and president of J. Markowitz, Consultants, an independent analyst firm and consultancy specializing in speech recognition, voice biometrics, and spoken language understanding. "One of the nice things is that applications can be developed on the Web by Metaphor's customers themselves and can be deployed as hosted or premises-based."