AT&T Intros VoiceToneAT&T Intros VoiceTone

BEDMINSTER, N.J. -- AT&T today introduced a contact center service that could revolutionize the way businesses automate and streamline customer service with breakthrough speech recognition technologies.

Now in controlled introduction, AT&T VoiceTone® is the first "high-touch," carrier grade, end-to-end automation solution that integrates conversational speech technology with a full suite of contact center networking services, from traditional toll-free service and interactive voice response (IVR) systems to AT&T-hosted and managed multimedia contact center applications. Backed by AT&T's unsurpassed expertise in networking reliability, scalability and security, the service also gives businesses a Web-based "window" to monitor the performance of their contact center networking infrastructure.

"The service makes it possible for customers to hold natural conversations with computer-based systems that understand what they say and mean, and that respond to them to fulfill their request," said Eric Shepcaro, vice president, AT&T application services. "With AT&T VoiceTone, we are changing the automation paradigm by giving businesses more options to communicate with customers, from pre-defined, menu-driven prompts to free-flowing dialogue that can help customers complete their transactions even more quickly.

"AT&T VoiceTone enables businesses to improve customer service interactions, increase transactions, and enhance productivity by personalizing the customer experience-all while helping to reduce operations costs," he added.

Based on open standards, the service uses dialogue automation, an array of technologies such as the conversational speech capabilities developed by AT&T Labs, to mimic the experience of speaking to a live agent with minimal to no agent involvement.

AT&T Corp.