Pronexus

LumenVox speech technology delivers quality and value to VBVoice™ Interactive Voice Response applications

Pronexus, now in its 20th year, specializes in telephony, speech and database integration technologies, and provides its customers a unique interactive voice responsive (IVR) platform including automatic speech recognition (ASR) and text-to-speech (TTS) software.

Though the company had a long relationship with another speech automation vendor, Pronexus felt it needed a new vendor that could offer a quality solution with better value and flexibility to meet the needs of its customers. Pronexus conducted a review of available ASR and TTS speech technologies evaluating price, quality, and the responsiveness of the support team backing the software.

"When we reviewed the leading speech recognition solutions, LumenVox came out on top based on price, quality and support," says Keri Fraser, Pronexus VP of Marketing and Business Development.

The flagship Pronexus product is VBVoice™, a complete IVR engine that makes it easy for developers to build and deploy their own IVR applications. It provides a drag-and-drop IVR creation environment, as well as integration with Microsoft Visual Studio for developers. VBVoice is offered as a free download so that users can try the product before purchasing anything.

A key benefit Pronexus realized in adopting the LumenVox ASR and TTS was LumenVox' willingness to work with Pronexus to meet customer needs. One such way is the LumenVox subscription licensing, which allows trial customers to access short-term licenses through the Internet without the need to install local licenses.

This makes it quick and easy for new users to deploy the LumenVox software with a new VBVoice installation. VBVoice communicates with the LumenVox speech software using the Media Resource Control Protocol (MRCP), an industry-standard protocol that made it easy for Pronexus to add LumenVox to its product offering.

In addition to the VBVoice download, Pronexus includes 10 days of complimentary technical support for all new users, which means the company had to find speech technology products that worked well and were easy to install and use.

Although Pronexus provides tier one technical support, the Pronexus support team works with LumenVox support for tier two and three requests, which meant that Pronexus had to ensure that LumenVox support was up to the challenge of responding to incidents quickly and effectively.

"Our customers expect responsive and knowledgeable technical support," says Fraser. "We were looking for a speech recognition organization that shared our philosophy of customer-first technical support."

Since Pronexus adopted LumenVox products in 2013, customers have been pleased with the price and quality of the LumenVox ASR and TTS. One such customer is Vocantas, a sister company of Pronexus that uses VBVoice to deliver complete IVR solutions to targeted vertical markets.

These solutions include Scaller, focused on higher education; Utilities OnCall, optimized for the utilities market; and CallAssure, an outbound IVR that performs automated patient interaction for the healthcare market.

All new deployments at Vocantas use LumenVox as their ASR and TTS speech engine. LumenVox' flexible licensing and pricing structures have been especially beneficial for the cost-sensitive vertical markets, where Vocantas has been able to realize cost savings for its customers with no sacrifice in quality.