Nuance’s SmartListener Technology Boosts Speech Recognition Automation and Accuracy

Based on Nuance Deployment Databank Insights, SmartListener Technology Significantly Improves Customer Call Center Experience

Boston, Mass., July 14, 2008 -- Nuance today announced Nuance’s SmartListener™ software technology offering businesses a great step forward in speech recognition accuracy. SmartListener technology gives businesses the confidence to automate more solutions in their call centers by meaningfully improving application automation and the overall caller experience. Some of the immediate benefits businesses may experience include:

• fewer automated transfers to agents



• shorter duration of automated calls



• lowered numbers of consumers who zero out



• higher numbers of satisfied callers

By helping speech solutions proficiently handle unexpected caller inputs, SmartListener technology can increase the savings from speech applications by quickly and cost-effectively achieving greater automation rates. SmartListener technology can help call centers obtain more out of their investment in legacy and new speech solutions by addressing the single biggest hurdle to flawless speech recognition: out-of-grammar inputs.

Callers don’t always provide answers to speech solutions that the system has been designed to understand. Most people have used a speech system that offers the caller choices, such as “please say yes or no” or “you can say statements, technical support, or billing.” Nuance data indicate that many times callers provide answers that sound reasonable, such as “I’d like billing please,” but that are not in the precisely modeled list of acceptable responses known as the grammar. These out-of-grammar responses are therefore not accurately recognized, causing issues such as:

• The system asks the caller to retry answering the same question



• The system transfers the caller

When callers are not recognized or who are asked to repeat themselves frequently understandably become frustrated. By using SmartListener technology, a speech-enabled automated system is able to accurately recognize many out-of-grammar inputs, meaning that callers are recognized correctly the first time more frequently. Consequently they need to repeat themselves and transfer to agents a lot less often. “Out-of-grammar error rates present a set of challenges to businesses and their customers,” said Steve Cramoysan, research director, Gartner, Inc. “Innovation that enables speech solutions to accurately interpret the meaning of the unexpected words and phrases that customers use will help drive the ease of use, quality and accuracy of automated speech solutions while improving the most important element -- the customer experience.”

By analyzing Nuance’s Deployment Databank™ – the world’s richest source of contact center interaction data – Nuance discovered that these out-of-grammar utterances are the primary cause of callers failing to stay in an automated customer service solution they have started using. In fact, out-of-grammar utterances outnumber other performance issues by a factor of up to 5:1. Such issues lead to customer frustration and business inefficiencies.

“Addressing out-of-grammar represents the greatest opportunity for a profound improvement in speech solution performance,” said Lynda Kate Smith, “Out-of-grammar utterances are the largest single challenge facing speech applications today. SmartListener technology significantly advances how the industry can improve the caller experience while providing cost savings to business.”

SmartListener technology was achieved through the combination of Nuance’s world-class research team and their access to the Nuance Deployment Databank According to the speech science analysis of the Nuance Deployment Databank - consisting of terabytes of data and metadata gleaned from hundreds of millions of real world examples from around the globe - when the caller replies with responses for which the application has been designed, accuracy is typically well above 90%. The accuracy rate when a caller inserts responses for which the application isn’t designed, drops to roughly 16 percent. SmartListener addresses this problem by enabling speech solutions to understand what the caller intended, even if their response doesn’t precisely match the application design.

About SmartListener technology

SmartListener technology takes Nuance’s real-world grammar design experiences from the Nuance Deployment Databank and applies it to the design of any existing speech solution. Armed with this information, an automated system can better focus on the concept behind the caller’s words and decipher the caller’s actual request. The resulting system adapts to a larger variety of more natural responses from callers. SmartListener technology accomplishes this feat by using Nuance’s Adaptive Grammar Engine to transform the grammars from an existing speech solution into adaptive grammars. Within just a few days, businesses can deploy a more accurate, easier to use speech solution with low effort, low cost, and rapid time-to-market. For more information on SmartListener technology, please to www.nuance.com/care/solutions/smartlistener.

About Nuance Communications, Inc.

Nuance is a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications and professional services. For more information, please visit: www.nuance.com.

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The statements in this press release, relating to future plans or future events or services, are forward-looking statements which are subject to specific risks and uncertainties. These could involve particular market trends, competition factors and other risks described in the documents submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The actual results, events and services may vary significantly from the forecasts. The reader is warned not to rely on these forward-looking statements without reservation, since these are simply reflections of the current situation.