SpeechWorks Congratulates Winners of 3rd Annual Best Practices Competition

BOCA RATON, FL - At its annual international user conference, SpeechWorks International Inc. (Nasdaq: SPWX) announced Amtrak, National Weather Service (NWS) and Singapore Post (SingPost) as the winners of its annual SpeechWorks Here Best Practices Competition. Now in its third year, the Best Practices Competition recognizes companies whose innovative use of speech technologies produces measurable results and enhanced customer satisfaction. Teleglobe, based in Montreal, Canada, and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas were also named as finalists. "We are pleased to acknowledge the hard work of Amtrak, National Weather Service and SingPost and the leading speech applications that they have deployed," said Steve Chambers, chief marketing officer at SpeechWorks. "Each of these organizations, as well as all our finalists, have demonstrated excellence in the quality of their applications and the results they have achieved. Any company thinking of implementing a speech application should look to these companies for guidance." The competition is open to all of SpeechWorks' end-user customers and its partners' customers, and evaluates excellence in six areas:

• Selection of speech application (vision, applicability, rationale)
• Customer satisfaction
• Measurable results, ROI
• Strategic integration
• Personality and branding of the service
• Effective outreach

To be considered, each applicant developed a case study outlining the decision-making process and implementation of its speech project and highlighting tangible results of the application. A panel of industry experts, including Judith Markowitz, president and founder of Markowitz Consulting, John Kelly, publisher and editor-in-chief, Speech Technology Magazine , and SpeechWorks' Steve Chambers, reviewed the submissions and selected the five finalists and ultimately, the winners. The judges selected the following winners for their "Best Practices" in building and deploying speech services. Amtrak: Winning its second SpeechWorks Here Best Practices Award in a row, Amtrak was selected this year for its Schedule, Fares and Reservations application. One of the keys to Amtrak's successful speech services is its focus on building an engaging "personality" and unique voice brand. Having evaluated its customers' needs, Amtrak departed from its traditional, formal approach with its customer dialogs and opted for a more casual, conversational approach - one that would put callers at ease. Since launching its Schedules, Fares and Reservations application using "Julie," the voice of 1.800.USA.RAIL, in April 2002, automation rates have increased by 61 percent. Julie has also increased Amtrak's reservation bookings by 71 percent. National Weather Service: As SpeechWorks' first text-to-speech (TTS) Best Practices winner, the National Weather Service (NWS) received high scores for its attention to customer satisfaction and results. NWS decided to upgrade its existing TTS voice on NOAA Weather Radio to improve voice clarity and time to broadcast. The previous TTS voice was very difficult to understand and did not sound natural. NWS valued its listeners' experience from the very start. To ensure that listeners would understand and enjoy the new TTS system, NWS evaluated the voice quality of several TTS technologies and posted samples of the leading voices on its Web site. The team used the more than 15,000 comments it received from listeners to pick the winners. The selected male and female TTS voices from SpeechWorks received 95 percent and 80 percent of the first and second place votes, respectively, compared to five percent for the former voice. Its new male and female voices have been characterized as "easy to understand", "knowledgeable" and "warm". The NWS is a federal agency and part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The new voices are being implemented at 121 NWS offices nationwide on more than 700 NOAA Weather Radio stations. NOAA Weather Radio broadcasts NWS weather warnings and other civil emergency messages 24-hours-a-day. Singapore Post: In a first for the postal industry in Asia, SingPost deployed a speech-enabled "Postal Code Helpline," an automated system that offers the public easy and user-friendly access to over 122,000 postal codes island-wide. In Singapore, each building has an individual postal code, so it is common for callers to inquire about postal codes in order to confirm and complete an address. SingPost's previous touch-tone system proved cumbersome to users, requiring many different streets and options to be keyed into the telephone's keypad. After the introduction of speech recognition, automation rates rose to more than 70 percent, up from 30 percent under the touch-tone system, illustrating the high level of customer satisfaction and allowing customer service representatives to concentrate on more complex inquiries.