DiData in speech recognition rollout

Dimension Data has designed and implemented a speech recognition system to handle phone calls generated at a fundraising event held by Comic Relief Australia.

The three hour live television show and telethon, '50 Years of Laughs: A Night of Comic Relief, will be shown on Channel Seven on 27 November and will feature Australian comedians and entertainers.

DiData’s application is based on its own speech capturing technology, which takes the names and addresses of callers, along with donation payment details.

Those details will then be forwarded to ANZ banks’ payment gateway for processing.

Callers to the Comic Relief Australia donation line will also have their calls answered by Australian comedian, Mark Mitchell, who has provided the voice to DiData’s speech recognition application.

Isabella Villani, speech consultant at DiData’s responsible for the project said the technology sitting behind Mark Mitchell’s voice is Genesys’ Voice Portal and Nuance’s speech recognition software.

“The application DiData built uses an Australian language model based on hundreds of thousands of Australian voices recorded over the last five years, and it has a current recognition rate of 88 percent,” she said.

“The ‘Every Australian’ address contained in the application is based on Australia Post’s addressing scheme and updated every three months.

“In addition to name and address capture, DiData’s speech application will handle the payment component, sending data to ANZ’s payment gateway for processing.”

Staff from Dimension Data will also be volunteering their time to follow up on donation calls received during the show, said Villani.