Contextualised Speech Recognition ready for prime time

Nice thought. Would like to differ a bit though.

Speech recognition technology (at different maturity levels) has been around for a long time now. However, I have not heard it as a mainstream success in any retail business. The key challenges that hurdle its widespread growth are consistency & security.

From a m-banking perspective it is very risky to leverage speech recognition for key functionalites like login, payments initiation, payments authorization and change of personal details. Further, I doubt very much if banking regulations will accomodate this. For non-transactional functionalites in m-banking, speech recognition can mitigate the risks of 'fat finger' typo errors. However, the cost associated to adopt speech recognition only for this few set of m-banking features (that does not generate direct revenue)  may not prove to be a valid business case for banks.

Seeva, thanks for your comment.

I should clarify – I wasn’t implying that speech recognition directly impacts the bottom line – it clearly does not, but I would argue that indirectly, it does. There are plenty of industries where speech recognition has been successfully deployed, primarily as a “value-add” to improve usability and convenience, particularly so on mobile devices. Healthcare, in-vehicle navigation, government, education... the list goes on. The size and success of Nuance is testimony to the success of speech recognition, and why it’s a key part of Apple’s and Google’s strategies.

As for security, there are two points: first, in any well designed speech app that involves a financial transaction or modification of personal data, or a payment initiation, the final execution step has to be a touch or click so the user can review and verify what’s on the screen before confirming. So, I don’t think it need impact “banking regulations” at all. Second, with regard to login or other types of authorisation or authentication, voice biometrics has now advanced to the point that it is actually more secure than a password or PIN. E.g. see http://goo.gl/spceU .

So my argument is that speech recognition is an additional modality that represents a significant value-add in the form of simplicity, speed and convenience. No other modality can reduce a lengthy multi-level navigation/search into a single step. As I’m in the business of speech recognition, I know customers value this enough to want to pay for it. Here’s a practical example: think of in-play sports betting. Mobile sports betting apps are complex and offer many hundreds of markets and within each market sometimes hundreds of possible options. Navigating to a particular market to view odds or place a bet can be a lengthy process and usability is one of the more common gripes of users of betting apps. Voice input offers a tremendous improvement in convenience and speed, and that, in turn, can mean increased customer loyalty. You can view a speech-enabled sports betting app prototype in action in this short youtube video: http://goo.gl/cFV4S . It's easy to see how the voice feature offers a significant user benefit.

You're probably right about the relevance of voice recognition in healthcare, government education, sports gambling and other apps. But, the functionality set currently offered in many mobile banking apps - a/c balance, last 5 transactions, mini statement, fund transfer, etc. - is so sparse that the icons are located comfortably apart on the screen, even in relatively small (2-3") screens, so fat finger is not a big problem. Of course, all that could change in the next generation of mobile banking apps and voice recognition could become important for them.