Rounding up some of the top IVR news for the week, TMC noted that Tensilica (News - Alert) joined with Sensory to enable both companies to introduce Sensory's TrulyHandsfree Voice Control to Tensilica's HiFi Audio DSPs (digital signal processors) for SOC (system-on-chip) designs.

This merger will allow users to employ Sensory's TrulyHandsfree Voice Control, which claims to offer the most accurate speech activation, a real challenge in noisy environments. The solution can even be used in a car, allowing commands to be delivered from as far as 20 feet away or in high noise conditions.

It provides a voice trigger capability on a local device that can communicate via the cloud to enable complex voice searches and text-to-speech for data retrieval. It allows Siri-like applications but does not require a button press to use, which is more convenient in the car and throughout the home.

TMC also reported that The U.K.-based contact center magazine, Call Centre Helper, recently conducted an IVR survey that revealed that speech recognition technology has not been able to win over the contact center industry.

The survey found that only 18 percent of contact centers have combined speech recognition technology with their services. These contact centers reportedly forwarded their calls with an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system.

The IVR survey, which involved 425 respondents, asked the users how well they thought the speech recognition software performed. Even the respondents who maintained that they found speech recognition technology to be accurate admitted that the technology is not foolproof when it comes to detecting certain accents.

And TMC (News - Alert) had the news that as a provider of software for home medical care, Fastrack has forged a strategic alliance with CMB Solutions, a provider of patient contact IVR system.

Under the alliance, the companies will collaborate to develop and deliver solutions that would assist HME providers to deploy patient contact solutions for their entire patient population. As a result of the alliance, the industry will get a solution that combines Fastrack's expertise in billing, operations and patient management technology and CMB's expertise in IVR technology. In other words, the alliance will lead to the development of a fully automated Patient Contact Solution, which is fully integrated with the Billing/Management Software.