After answering more than 5.5 billion questions in the past four years, Ask Jeeves Inc.’s online question answering service is finally learning to talk.
The talking capabilities come from an alliance formed with Nuance, a developer of voice interface software platforms, and General Magic, a provider of customized voice applications platforms, allowing Ask Jeeves to provide a voice-recognition service enabling corporations to deliver information to their customers via the telephone using a conversational, question-answer format.
“We know how people ask questions,” said Paul Wehrley, manager of business development for Ask Jeeves. “We have collected a lot of data over the years on how people ask questions.”
Ask Jeeves said this multiplatform network will allow it to gain access to growing market opportunities in voice communications, including wired and wireless, in addition to its current wired Internet market. The company noted that the potential for wireless is staggering considering the number of cellular phone users is expected to top 1.1 billion subscribers by 2003.
Ask Jeeves began as a wired Web site allowing Internet surfers to search for subjects on the Web using common questions instead of using key words. The service quickly expanded with Ask Jeeves currently answering 4 million questions per day for 20 million unique visitors per month and 125 corporations. The company said it is this wealth of experience with answering questions that has allowed it to compile a massive data repository of how people ask questions.
Two years ago the company branched out to provide technical and customized services for businesses, with Dell Computers as its first corporate customer.
“75 percent of customer relations questions were on the same 200 or 300 topics,” Wehrley said. “We were able to integrate the answers to these common questions into an [interactive voice response] system for Dell. This saved them money on customer relations costs.”
Ask Jeeves said the ability to voice-enable corporate Web sites and combine natural language processing with IVR systems presents an enormous opportunity for companies to rely less on phone trees and reduce customer dependence on more costly, human agent-operated call centers.
The planned service, which Ask Jeeves expects will be made available to companies during the first quarter of next year, will allows corporations to provide an intuitive, voice-driven customer support service using the content they already have invested in and developed.
The company noted this market is forecasted to increase substantially during the next several years, with telecom analyst firm IDC predicting the worldwide call center services market will increase from $23 billion in revenues in 1998 to $58.6 billion by 2003.
“As we discovered with Ask.com and with our more than 125 corporate customers, people prefer to ask for the information, products and services they are looking for in full sentences, not key words,” said Rob Wrubel, chief executive officer of Ask Jeeves. “By creating one knowledge base of questions and answers for corporations and enabling multiple modes of access to it-through the [personal computer], handheld devices and telephones, we efficiently link an enterprise’s employees, customers and suppliers with the information they seek anytime, anywhere.”
Ask Jeeves has also agreed to ally with its partners Nuance and General Magic to co-market the voice applications they develop for Fortune 1000 corporations including telecommunications carriers and voice portals worldwide.
Even though the voice recognition market has made strides recently in improving service, the main issue of improving accuracy of voice-enabled systems is still being worked on. Some companies providing voice-enabled services claim to have a 90-percent accuracy rate that many analysts question.
“The services that these companies are providing are more robust and more accurate, but they still cannot replace humans in identifying the meaning of words,” said Anna Karampahtsis, wireless analyst at Allied Business Intelligence Inc. “Machines cannot replace a human 100 percent. They are improving every day, but completely accurate services are still between one and two years away.”
While the question of accuracy will continue to surround voice recognition services, Ask Jeeves is confident its service will prove beneficial for its corporate customers and answer the accuracy questions in its own voice.
Ask Jeeves also announced a deal with Nextel Communications Inc. to provide e-commerce support services for Nextel’s customers. Nextel will use Jeeves Advisor, Ask Jeeves’ decision support technology, to provide product recommendations tailored to customers’ needs.
“Ask Jeeves will help us improve our online shopping experience by empowering our customers to make smarter purchasing decisions through an interactive, question answering dialog,” said Terri Falconer, director of Nextel.com. “This dynamic question answering solution will help us further simplify the online shopping process and deliver an intuitive online experience for our customers.”
Nextel will also use Jeeves Insight, Ask Jeeves’ analysis and reporting tool, to provide information detailing customer usage and product preferences, helping Nextel better understand its customers, enhance site content, direct product development and improve marketing efforts.
