Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories' Voice Idol competition demonstrates how speech applications can improve the customer experience

  • D+S solutions wins first Voice Idol competition at annual Genesys EMEA User Conference in London, UK

WOKINGHAM - June 25, 2007 - An innovative voice automation developer from Germany has emerged as the best creator of voice software to improve customer service, in an annual competition that spans Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc., an Alcatel-Lucent company (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU), announced the winner of the Voice Idol Award at its annual user conference, G-Force, EMEA in London. The award, sponsored by IBM, was won by the German speech-solution company D+S solutions.

The Voice Idol concept was established by Genesys to acknowledge the growing importance of speech applications in everyday life and was viewed as an innovative way to showcase the latest applications. Speech recognition has taken time to be reliable enough for businesses to use but with technical standards such as Voice XML, which provides a standard way to programme voice dialogues, rapid developments in speech solutions have brought speech recognition into the business mainstream. According to Datamonitor, companies spent $1.2 billion on such solutions in 2005, and this is forecast to grow by 22 per cent a year to reach $3.2 billion by 2010.

Companies entered the Voice Idol competition from seven different EMEA countries - UK, Ireland, Belgium, South Africa, Germany, Pakistan and France.

The competition had three key categories:

  • Telco/Government/Utilities - won by D+S solutions
  • Financial Services/Healthcare - won by Vicorp
  • Horizontal applications (such as messaging, status, and locator) - also won by Vicorp

The winner of each category award was decided by a group of distinguished industry figures including Ri Pierce-Grove, Senior Analyst at Datamonitor and chaired by Tom Houwing, Founder and Director of voiceandvision. The overall winner was voted for by the 900-strong audience at the G-Force conference, after viewing demonstrations by the category winners.

D+S solutions won with its application Telco Portal Suite, which delivers automated voice services for telecommunications companies offering intelligent call steering functionality for the most common customer requests such as account status, shop-finder, address-change, etc.

"We are happy that we were able to create an application that is convincing industry professionals and is appealing to the end user at the same time. The buzz surrounding our product at this event shows us that we are on the right path," stated Christian Pereira, Managing Director of D+S solutions.  

Vicorp won their category awards for a mortgage identification and verification system and for speech application support for a pay per view provider.

"Speech applications are finally coming of age and becoming a regular part of our lives, especially in customer care. It has also become an integral part of Genesys's business," stated Bruce Eidsvick, Genesys Vice President, Voice Platform Sales, EMEA."The Genesys Voice Platform, combined with the applications taking part in Voice Idol, is empowering companies to introduce more and more speech enabled solutions into the contact centre, both improving the customer experience and keeping costs down."

"We are delighted with our sponsorship of the Voice Idol competition and pleased that the audience chose the excellent Telco Portal Suite from D+S solutions," stated Duncan Ross, Voice Solutions Manager at IBM. "D+S solutions is a recognised and experienced leader in the field of speech-enabled self-service applications. They have applied their expertise to the creation and operation of hosted applications for a range of industries on more than 1,000 ports of IBM WebSphere Voice Server and Genesys VoiceGenie. IBM is delighted to be associated with D+S solutions in their speech self service initiatives."

About Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc.
Genesys, an Alcatel-Lucent company, is the only company that focuses 100 per cent on software to manage customer interactions over the phone, web and in e-mail. The Genesys software suite dynamically connects customers with the right resources - self-service or assisted-service - to fulfill customer requests, optimise customer care goals and efficiently use resources. Genesys software directs more than 100 million customer interactions every day for 4,000 companies and government agencies in 80 countries. These companies and agencies can leverage their entire organisation, from the contact centre to the back office, to improve the overall customer experience. As a result, Genesys helps stop customer frustration, drive efficiency, and accelerate business innovation. For more information, go to www.genesyslab.com or visit the industry blog at www.betterinteractions.com

About Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) provides solutions that enable service providers, enterprises and governments worldwide, to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users. As a leader in fixed, mobile and converged broadband networking, IP technologies, applications, and services, Alcatel-Lucent offers the end-to-end solutions that enable compelling communications services for people at home, at work and on the move. With operations in more than 130 countries, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with global reach. The company has the most experienced global services team in the industry, and one of the largest research, technology and innovation organisations in the telecommunications industry. Alcatel-Lucent achieved adjusted proforma revenues of Euro 18.3 billion in 2006 and is incorporated in France, with executive offices located in Paris. [All figures exclude impact of activities transferred to Thales]. For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on the Internet: www.alcatel-lucent.com

Media Contact:
Duncan Burford, UK PR for Genesys. 01780 721 433, dburford@iba-europe.com 

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