Nexidia

The 2007 Market Leaders

By: Lauren Shopp
Speech Technology Magazine
Sep. 04, 2007

http://www.speechtechmag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=37415

Perhaps the fastest-growing field within the industry, speech analytics developments within the past several years exemplify the widening perspective of how speech technology can gather new types of data about customer needs and wants, all while increasing business productivity. Despite rapid growth, however, speech analytics still exists as first-generation technology, and thus faces significant challenges ahead. “The fur is still up in the air, and you can’t really see clearly what is and isn’t going on. It’s very new, it’s hot stuff, and some [vendors] are going in directions that are interesting, to differentiate themselves,” says Judith Markowitz, president of J. Markowitz Consultants.

Read More in Speech Technology Magazine September 2007 Issue
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The Winner
While speaking with analysts, however, a common voting pattern emerged, and a consensus vote declared Nexidia as the leading company within the speech analytics field. The Atlanta-based company provides applications for both commercial and government use. The Language Assessor application, which the company released in June, creates a new means of using speech analytics in call center training. The application uses automation in the hiring and training of employees at off-shore call centers, allowing companies to select agents with the most adept English language skills. Agents can also continue developing their understanding of English through the use of Nexidia’s analytics, which is able to pick up on mispronunciations and provide feedback.

Analysts gave the company especially higher scores in the areas of depth of functionality, ease of use, and ease of implementation. In addition, one analyst praised Nexida’s use of phonetic-based searching, as opposed to large-vocabulary continuous speech recognition (LVCSR). “Many of the LVCSR vendors have made significant progress in simplifying the installation process for their applications, but the inherent challenges of LVCSR make them a more time-consuming effort at this point in time,”, says Donna Fluss, president of DMG Consulting.