Conversational Computing Strives to Meet the 'Star Trek' Standard

Callers can surprise any speech-enabled system by saying things that aren't on its preprogrammed list of expected responses. Natural language technologies, though, can be more forgiving and understand more caller responses, but they come at a price. Developers of such systems need to be able to predict everything callers might say and build grammars in advance that contain each word and phrase to be recognized.

This differs greatly from directed-dialogue systems. Because callers are being directed to say very specific options, there are fewer likely responses to account for in the grammar. This makes directed-dialogue systems easier to develop, and they require less time to troubleshoot and test.

But here, too, technology has solved many of those issues. "The fear was that [with natural language] you would have to build huge dictionaries," Kaplan says. "Technology has largely overcome this. It's not so much of a fear-inducing thing where you have to worry that it will be so much work."

Most businesses will only have to take the words specific to their industries and incorporate them into the dictionary, he says. Kaplan, nonetheless, recommends that companies looking to deploy a natural language interface "be clear about the types of things you want people to be able to do. Know what services you want to provide and how people might ask for it," he says.

There are many other reasons for not going with natural language systems. Cost is perhaps the greatest. According to Meisel, natural language systems can be expensive, especially if changes need to be made. Changes, he says, usually require more data gathering, testing, and the involvement of vendor professional support.

"The prices are enormous," Tetschner says, noting that a natural language interface can cost $500,000 to implement because of all the customization and data that is required.

But, he says, the added costs can be offset over time by increases in customer self-service. Additionally, "a lot of the hang-ups will disappear because customers will stay on the call," Tetschner points out.

CUSTOMER CONFUSION

Another hindrance is customer perception of natural language technology. "Callers are still looking to talk to a live agent," Tetschner says. "Automation of any kind is a turnoff for a lot of people, and that is universal."

Also, when met with an open-ended prompt, many consumers still get confused. "There are plenty of consumers who are not familiar with these systems and need some guidance," notes Bruce Pollock, vice president of strategic growth and planning at West Interactive, a provider of contact center solutions.

At the other extreme, some callers faced with natural language prompts tend to say too much, which also challenges the system. "If the nature of the call is more urgent, people tend to go on at great length about why they're calling and explaining their problem in greater detail than is needed," Pollock states.

For these reasons, some companies that have field-tested natural language IVRs have backed them up with directed-dialogue interfaces just in case the natural language engine fails or the caller has other problems. An example of this is the following: "I'm sorry. I did not understand you. You can say, 'check my balance,' 'make a payment,' or 'update my account information.'"

While those types of backups are useful to customers, they have done little to advance the cause of natural language processing and have left companies wondering why they should invest in natural language if they still must rely on directed dialogue.

NLP IS NOT FOR EVERYONE

Another factor that has stood in the way of more widespread adoption of natural language is that not all IVRs are suited for it. "[Natural language] is not necessary if you're going to present customers with a small list of menu options," Julio Murillo, a speech technologist at West Interactive, says. "You might not need a natural language interface. You probably just need to reorganize the prompts and shorten the menu options."

In some cases, a graphical interface might be more effective. "If a caller wants to find a movie, it doesn't make sense to have a system read off information about fifty different movies that are playing at the time," Kaplan contends. "That can be presented visually."