24th July 2006

Hundreds of UK consumers to be interviewed, third year running, to gain insight and perspective into their perception of Speech Recognition software

London, UK – July 24th, 2006

- Fluency Voice Technology, (www.fluencyvoice.com) the speech recognition application company, has today announced that its 2006 Consumer Perception Survey into Speech Recognition is underway. This, the third in the survey series, follows on from the tremendously successful 2005 survey which was the first of its kind to provide insight and perspective into how consumers view speech recognition systems, and captured their experiences, perceptions, likes and dislikes of the technology.  This Fluency survey is recognised as the premier benchmark of speech recognition usage in the UK.

This year’s survey, which again measures a range of age groups dispersed geographically across the UK concentrates on three key areas: comparisons in perception from 2005, experiences good and bad; real agent versus virtual agent – interviewee preferences; and 4 pilots where the interviewees are asked to test out speech recognition against 5 sample vertical applications, namely

• Public Sector- pay a council tax bill
• Utilities - pay a gas bill
• Banking - check account balance & transfer funds
• Travel - Order a holiday brochure
• Retail - Check whether you can get a digital TV service in your area

Following each pilot the results will be measured on their experiences using the speech system and how the public feel about using speech for those and similar other transactions within industry sectors listed above.

This valuable research gives companies and their call centres an exclusive insight into how consumers fee; about using self-service/speech recognition for specific transaction types in each of the business areas, i.e. Retail, Local Government, Banking, Travel and Utilities.

Jessica Davies is Marketing Manager at Fluency Voice and is driving this initiative that further confirms Fluency’s position as the acknowledged thought-leader in defining the future of speech and self-service technologies.  “Last year’s survey was widely sourced as a key benchmark for data on speech recognition usage trends. It was also tremendously helpful to Fluency in anticipating and meeting market needs.”  Jessica continues, “To the best of my knowledge, we were the first company in our field to invest in this approach to truly understand and thus respond directly to the emerging market needs. With this in mind, Fluency is uniquely placed to respond to the demands of our clients and prospects as a result.”

The summary of findings, which is expected to be distributed to authorised participants in August 2006, is already attracting interest from call centre managers, customer service directors and publishers representing many of the vertical markets being researched in the survey.

About Fluency Voice Technology

Fluency Voice Technology is a leading provider of packaged speech recognition applications for use in call centers. Our solutions enable enterprises to significantly reduce costs and enhance customer service by automating much of the high volume call center activities.

Key sectors for which Fluency has developed applications are Financial Services, Travel & Transport, Utilities, Telecoms and Retail. Fluency has always been at the forefront of speech recognition and has changed the way in which businesses use speech by introducing the first ever packaged speech application in 2002. Fluency has offices in the UK, US and India.