BUSINESS MADE SIMPLE
Product Brief
Why Text-to-Speech?
The robots are gone, and amazingly natural-sounding speech has opened a whole
new horizon.
Introduction
How we speak to each other says a lot
about a relationship. You can tell if
someone is angry or pleased by his or
her tone. You can get a different
message from what the words are saying
sometimes by the intonation or pitch of
the communication. Change the volume
of certain words, and again the meaning
can be altered. The result that is
delivered is dramatically different than
what was intended or is right on target.
How do you communicate with your
customers? Do they get your sense of
appreciation for their business and the
message that you are trying to build a
loyal and supportive relationship? The
most demanding firms go to great
lengths to ensure that every customer
touch point has a unified look, feel and
personality that best projects the
corporate brand and message. But, with
such pressure on expenses, how do you
think these top performers continue to
deliver the numbers and still dazzle
customers with incredible service
delivery? One of the secrets is today's
Text-to-Speech (TTS) technology that
has achieved a level of quality and
natural tone that enables companies to
dramatically slash the costs of their
voice-driven applications, add incredible
flexibility and speed to market of
dynamic services, and still control the
branding and company persona. The
robot-sounding voices are truly gone
with the latest TTS solutions, and the
amazingly natural-sounding speech
output has opened a whole new horizon
for automated solutions.
Why Text-to-Speech
There are many situations when your
customers prefer a self-service method
of retrieving information, but certain
data is difficult to record. There might
be too much data. What if the database
is extremely large, for example, a
product listing with 50,000 entries?
Regardless of size, the database may be
too dynamic to maintain in a human-
recorded manner. If the data changes
daily or weekly, the company may not
want to spend the time and money
rehiring the voice talent or talents,
renting the studio and technicians and
so on, every week or every month. Text-
to-Speech is the answer.
Converting Text into Ordinary
Speech
Text-to-Speech (TTS)—or speech
synthesis technology, as it is sometimes
referred to has advanced a great deal in
just the last few years. TTS converts
ordinary ASCII text or other textual
information into intelligible speech that
now closely resembles a natural voice. It
brings considerable advantages over the
prerecording of prompts from a time,
cost and storage capacity requirement
perspective. Pre-recorded speech
requires strict limits to what will be
spoken based on a defined script. Often,
the larger the script, the greater the cost
to record and time needed to prepare.
Which means losing valuable time-to-
market, or worse, time-to-money
opportunity. TTS communicates
information to customers when possible
selections include large numbers of
items from databases that must be
spoken to callers, or when a list of
selections changes regularly. For
example, this technology would be
effective for an organization that needs
to confirm street addresses of callers
and whose database contains many
thousands of different addresses, or for
the reading of email, news alerts or
other dynamic content.
The Early Days
During early attempts at synthetic
speech, memory was extremely
expensive. This expense affected the
way early synthesis engines were
designed. A memory-efficient synthesis
by rule system was popular, most
commonly known as a formant engine.
A formant synthesizer created totally
digitized or synthetic speech with no
human recordings used. One advantage
of this method is that the pitch and
duration of words could be varied.
However, the sound quality is inferior.
Although this technique has been used
with some success, typically in niche
applications, most perceive this type of
Text-to-Speech engine as sounding
robotic.
A Turbo-Charged Engine
The newer, more advanced TTS engines
concatenate the speech synthesis
approach. In this procedure, waveforms
are reclaimed from a database of pre-
recorded speech. The output sounds
quite natural because the delivered
speech is essentially made up of
concatenated units of human
recordings. The resulting speech
delivered is of immense quality and
completely natural that some users
cannot tell the difference from recorded
human interaction. In addition to quality
improvements, the newer engines
require less storage space than pre-
recorded speech and can read back any
word, phrase or sentence. If you have
used an Interactive Voice Response
(IVR) system to secure information that
deploys TTS embedded in the
application, the transition from
recorded information to speech
synthesis has been choppy and obvious.
Newer solutions have found a way of
creating a seamless transition between
the prompts and text-based output to
greatly improve the sound of the
application and the user experience.
Improving the quality of a TTS
application is a rather technical and
complex undertaking. It requires
knowledge of what to say, known as
phonetics, and how to say it, known as
prosody. The end result – and its
positive acceptance by your customers –
come from the careful modeling of the
phonetics and prosody concepts. Many
new TTS engines now support the
W3C's VoiceXML and SSML
specifications, allowing application
developers to tune properties such as
prosody, speed, pitch, volume voice and
language. This high quality approach has
led the major TTS engine providers to
offer a wide variety of languages as well
as male and female voices.
User Control to set the Mood
TTS can be a complex technology to
master. The latest engines now include
extensive user controls that can be
utilized to enhance the quality of speech
output generated. Application
developers can massage raw text strings
by embedding special control characters,
known as tags, to convey emotional
qualities in the speech output. Phrases
can be adjusted by speed, pitch, volume,
pace and inflection to convey a
particular mood, urgency and/or clarity
required. This feature is one more
element that has supported the great
advance in TTS.
“Enterprises with
telephone applications
requiring the delivery
of a wide range of
information to a caller
should evaluate the
latest TTS technology,
as the quality is
significantly higher
than the previous
generations.”
—Steve Cramoysan, Gartner
There is Always an Exception
An exception dictionary is critical, since
it can define the pronunciation of
uncommon words or phrases, such as
slang references, industry terms or to
modify the default pronunciation of
certain words. The dictionary is also
most helpful with certain derivative
languages like French, Canadian English
and Mexican Spanish. Certain words are
specific to these regions and may not be
known to the TTS engine.
Consequently, they can be added to the
user dictionary for proper articulation.
Isn't it nice to know you can make an
exception for your business?
Create a Custom Voice
Ever listen to the radio or television and
when you hear a certain voice, you
immediately identify the organization,
because of their spokesperson's voice?
Why not extend that signature to your
telephony applications. TTS can enable
this through the creation of a custom
voice. With 20 to 40 hours of voice
samples from the person whose voice is
being captured and several weeks of
tuning to create the voice model, the
voice can be ready to speak all your
automated prompts, messages, and any
other dynamic data required. A news
media company might want one of their
network anchors to support a telephone
news line. Or a Web merchant with a
telephone channel could use their
television personality to route and
handle sales calls, service requests, and
other automated services. Think of the
possibilities to extend your brand and
leverage the quality of service delivered
to every customer.
The Cost Saving Implications
Using real-time speech synthesis that
sounds incredibly like a human voice
expands the potential for commercial
applications where actual recordings are
either too costly or simply impractical
due to the dynamic changes or volume
of changes. TTS is used in applications
to provide directory assistance, account
status, theater seating availability or even
driving directions. Many organizations
are now using this high-quality method
to substitute greater proportions of their
studio-recorded prompts. Since the
sound is so good, it enables new
applications to come to market that
much sooner with the recording process
and cost eliminated. Future changes to
scripts can also be added using the same
voice to further ensure continuity.
Change the text, and the prompts are
ready—it's that simple.
The Nortel Difference
Nortel is both a pioneer in the
deployment of Text-to-Speech and a
leader in platform flexibility. With
deployments of all the latest, best-in-
breed TTS engines, each with their own
unique specialties and differences,
Nortel can assist in helping you select
the application capability that best fits
your needs and support your
requirements. The speech experts at
Nortel will match the right prompt
voice gender to pre-existing conditions.
It can be most distracting to a caller if
the voice gender changes during a call;
also, if the volume of the speech
delivered differs during playback. Some
engines may have limited genders
available (female vs. male) for certain
languages. Is there a programming
preference of UNIX or Windows? Do
you prefer VXML or other markup
languages? This is important because of
issues relating to density and cost.
Certain engines may support one or
multiple methods. Having an expert
model the variation can have a major
impact on cost structure, especially in
large deployments. Sound quality is
important because it affects customer
perception. Each engine deployed today
has differences, depending on which
language is used and the nature of the
applications. Let Nortel, with many
years of speech experience, help you
decide the best solution for your
business.
Why Text-to-Speech? You don't have to
wonder any more. With amazingly
natural-sounding speech, created in
software, a whole new horizon of
automated possibilities has come over
the horizon. Nortel can let you listen to
the difference.
Languages
Nortel's integration of speech engines
within its Media Processing Server
(MPS) platform is language
independent. Therefore, any language
the speech vendor supports is readily
available for use in a customer
deployment. Nortel has speech
recognition deployments in 22 countries
using native languages. In some cases,
multiple native languages are deployed
as part of the same application (e.g.,
French and English in Canada) for a
total of 23 languages.
Features Available in Many TTS
Engines Deployed by Nortel
> Amazingly high-quality speech right
out of the box. Nortel platforms
support a wide array of best-in-
breed TTS engines. You'll ask,
“Who is that voice?”
> Multiple voices are available
> Many languages supported in male
or female voices. Choose the one
that best suits your business.
> Nortel Speech Server environment
supports multiple languages and
Large Vocabulary Recognition
(LVR) simultaneously.
> Custom voices available for
branding and personality matching
> Understanding of word context as
they appear in a sentence and ability
to distinguish between words with
identical spelling, but different
pronunciations
> Unrestricted vocabulary
> Adjustable volume, pitch and speed
settings for increased control of
applications
> Extensive graphical dictionary and
development tools
> VoiceXML, CCXML and SCXML
support
Uses
> Email filter and reader when
connected to a Unified Messaging
product or standalone application
> News feeds and other dynamic
textual information
> Stock quotes and market indices
> Business listings, addresses,
locations and directions
> Order management, status and
logistical information
> Product information, instructions
and trouble-shooting replies
> Bill pay vendor names, status,
amounts and reject information
> Job postings, benefits
announcements and other HR-
related messages
> Theater seating options
> Appointment reminders of date
and time
Business Advantages
> Additional service offers
> New capability for automation,
including revenue-enhancing
services
> Reduced expenses via a lower cost
per call
> Increased return on call center
investment
> Increased customer satisfaction
> Better caller experience
> Opportunity for unique offerings
> Increased competitive
differentiation
Benefits of Text-to-Speech
Technology
> Cuts the costs of voice-driven
applications by reducing or
eliminating the need for pre-
recorded prompts
> Adds flexibility and speed to
service of automated applications
> Even limited vocabulary routines
like amounts, numbers and dates
can benefit from TTS because it
allows additions to the application
at a later date quickly with the same
voice, maintaining your corporate
personality
> The ability to seamlessly integrate
with pre-recorded prompts
> A more personalized interaction
that can reflect your business
persona
> Improved customer satisfaction
and acceptance of automation
> Technologically advanced for a
competitive advantage
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In Caribbean and Latin America: Nortel
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Phone: (86) 10 6510 8000
In Europe:
Nortel
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Maidenhead Berkshire SL6 3QH UK
Phone: 00800 8008 9009 or
+44 (0) 870-907-9009

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