Tuning

VEXIS takes the mystery out of tuning

The first step towards healthier speech interfaces is understanding why tuning is necessary, and what the logical steps are in the process.

VEXIS has created a comprehensive interface optimization program that includes performance assessment, and five different types of tuning activities. In designing a robust, repeatable, and quantifiable process, we were inspired by Six Sigma™, the total quality management methodology, and applied our deep experience in tuning and optimizing speech interfaces to create the industry’s leading independent tuning service.

Why Tune?

Optimizing Performance Through Tuning

In order to optimize the interface’s performance, tuning is a necessary activity throughout the entire speech interface life cycle. While some applications have suffered sub-optimal performance from day one, most suffer chronic performance degradation from a variety of factors including:

• New caller populations — Different accents, language usage, demographics, and even vocabulary impact engine and interface performance.
• Proficiency curve — Callers become adept at using the speech interface and begin taking shortcuts that the interface can’t handle.
• Changing business context — Callers stay the same but expectations and intent change
• Prompt changes – Innocuous changes to prompts can have unintended recognition consequences.
• Back-end data updates — Dynamically generated data elements and updates that impact grammars can create confusability.
• Process re-engineering — New business process may not be reflected in self-service applications.

Individually or in aggregate, these factors all contribute to interface degradation.  Review our Tuning Case Studies for industry examples of how tuning can significantly improve application performance and customer satisfaction.

VEXIS Tuning Services

Our Complete Range of Tuning Services

Every interface is unique, and to optimize performance requires a different mix of activities. With the results of an AlphaCheck in hand, we can quickly and easily determine the types of tuning necessary to optimize performance.

Our tuning toolkit includes:

• Prompt Tuning — Always start with the questions. If they are not asked with a clear intent in mind, then callers can’t give clear responses.
• Dialog Tuning — The structure of the interface, also known as call flow, is generally addressed in initial design, but can often be tweaked to improve usability.
• Grammar Tuning — A good grammar not only includes every relevant response to a question, but does so in a way that minimizes computing resources and confusability.
• Recognition Tuning — Core engine parameters, such as confidence scores and pruning levels should be adjusted to assure optimal recognition performance.
• Pronunciation Tuning — For dialers and other application with common names, it is necessary to adjust the pronunciation dictionary to accommodate name pronunciations. We offer a service that turns around new name pronunciations in less than 48 hours.