Interactive Voice Response system (IVR)
I didn't know Microsoft has upgraded their telephone operation service to IVR system until this morning. I was not feeling well this morning and had to call my manager to reschedule our meeting. I didn't remember her office phone number so I called Microsoft. The IVR system simply asked me to speak a name whom I want to speak with. My manager's first name and last name both start with "M" and I believed I said her name correctly. The phone system asked me if the name of person is #x@!*??. Not even close, I said "No" then phone system gave me the second chance to say her name. This time the IVR gave me 3 names and asked if one of 3 was the right one or not. The first one was something like "M@#?? *$#?" and the second one was "#@*?? $???" (hey, there's no "M" in the name? Where did it go? but that was a good one, I laughed a lot : ) and the third name was too far from what I said. Then the system gave me another chance to reach my manager before my call was being transferred to telephone operator. I said her alias and I could reach her successfully. For IVR's sake it's my pronunciation not system, it must be hard for system to understand English with Japanese accent. I think IVR is pretty cool system and I've just started reading Speech Application SDK (SASDK)
(Click here to read SASDK)
