West's Holly Connects Platform is VoiceXML-Compliant

West Interactive, a provider of hosted and managed automated customer contact solutions, today announced its Holly Voice Platform 5.1, has passed the VoiceXML Forum Platform Certification Program and joined an elite group of companies to have their voice platforms and speech technologies declared VoiceXML 2.1-compliant by the VoiceXML Forum.

The VoiceXML Forum’s 2.1 Platform Certification Program consists of a conformance test suite that covers VoiceXML 2.0, Speech Recognition Grammar Standard (SRGS) 1.0, VoiceXML 2.1, and a subset of Speech Interpretation for Speech Recognition (SISR) 1.0.

“Our customers can rest assured knowing that our technologies have been pre-tested against the highest VoiceXML industry standard,” said Rob Kassel, vice president of platform product development at West Interactive. “By taking our platform and components through this rigorous certification process, we’re enhancing automated voice solutions that deliver customer care and caller satisfaction, as well as drive operating efficiencies and accelerated deployments.”

“Certification provides a new level of vendor differentiation on the VoiceXML platform level,” said Daniel Hong, lead analyst of customer interaction at Ovum. “It is no longer a question of VoiceXML or traditional IVR. Two years have passed since the market has witnessed the inflection point where VoiceXML licenses eclipsed that of proprietary IVR systems. As we roll out the tape over the next couple of years, enterprises need to evaluate platform interoperability and monitoring and analytics capabilities, in addition to performance, to choose an IVR platform that effectively meets changing business needs, while protecting investments.”