Speech recognition is becoming an increasingly popular lower-cost yet customer-retaining high-touch option to live agents, especially in troubled economic times, and hosted or cloud speech services offer the further benefits of minimal up-front costs.

 

Tellme, Microsoft’s (News - Alert) hosted speech services subsidiary, has demonstrated the popularity and attractiveness of its speech recognition offering by announcing that 10 go-to-market and professional services partners have joined its partner program just four months after the launch.

 

Go-to-market reseller partners include Aspect Software, Dimension Data, NEC (News - Alert) Unified Solutions, Quilogy, and SpeechCycle. Professional services partners include Gold Systems, Mackraz Design, Pivot Systems, Servion, and VoxMedia.

 

Tellme (News - Alert) has created a model that creates a unique opportunity for go-to-market partners to own the customer relationship and share in a long-term revenue stream, creating stable and predictable cash flow for its partners. It provides a high-growth opportunity for partners as businesses are increasingly turning to on-demand services to help them minimize capital expenditures and eliminate the risk of running on-premise equipment, with platform upgrades at no extra cost.

 

Tellme is a proven solution that cost-effectively and accurately handles a wide range of high-volume, multiple selection, and often urgent interactions- from travel reservations to pizza delivery. With Tellme, clients also can implement outbound notification, personalization, advanced call routing, ID verification and bill pay.

 

The Tellme partner program enables participant companies to bring flexible, cost-efficient speech-based solutions to their enterprise customers. Here’s how for the five go-to-market partners:

 

-- By partnering with Tellme, Aspect is enhancing speed to market of a hybrid solution leveraging a premise-based and network-based contact center offering, helping businesses realize cost savings benefits.

 

-- Dimension Data helps customers plan, build, supports, and manages their IT infrastructures. It uses its consulting, integration and managed services skills to create customized customer solutions.

 

-- NEC Unified Solutions is building a Professional Services practice in the Americas to support the deployment of Tellme services for a wide variety of customers in key industries. These include hospitality, healthcare, higher education, and public sector. NEC’s high-quality voice applications, including IVR is combined with Tellme’s on-demand offering.

 

-- Quilogy is a Microsoft National Managed Partner and is working with Tellme to provide customer care and speech solutions for enterprise customers across specialty verticals.

 

-- SpeechCycle (News - Alert) is an industry pioneer in delivering Rich Phone Applications (RPAs) on-demand for U.S. and global service providers and enterprises. SpeechCycle’s contact center automation applications include natural language speech, enterprise-connected troubleshooting, and personalized phone portal services. SpeechCycle’s SaaS RPAs are powered by TellMe’s platform.

 

In addition, five new professional services partners are working with Tellme to provide voice-enabled speech applications to global enterprises in key vertical markets. The partners are:

 

-- Gold Systems (News - Alert), a unified communications specialist, developing voice-driven communications solutions utilizing IVR, text-to-speech and speech recognition. Offerings include packaged applications and customized contact center solutions built on Office Communications Server 2007, and unified messaging deployment and telephony interfaces to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

 

-- Mackraz Design, a professional services consultancy whose areas of specialized expertise include voice user interface design, mobile and web interaction design, user research and early-stage design strategy.

 

-- Pivot Systems, a global provider of information technology and R&D services. It gives customers the flexibility of onsite and offshore outsourcing.

 

-- Servion, a consultancy and systems integration firm which specializes in customer interaction management (CIM) solutions across all channels. It has worked with industries such as banking and finance, telecommunications, business process outsourcing, transportation, retail, and hospitality.

 

-- VoxMedia, which specializes in requirements planning, application design, and “tuning” for speech-based solutions, and has completed many successful projects in financial services, automotive, telecom, healthcare and travel. 

 

“The Tellme partner program was designed from the ground up to provide new business opportunities for our partners,” explains Bob Crissman, general manager of Partner Programs at Tellme. “In a time when many companies are experiencing financial loss, Tellme partners are increasing revenue generation opportunities by partnering with us, creating cost savings for their customers and significant demand for Tellme’s unique Software-as-a-Service-based solution.”