March 2022 Summaries

It’s 2022 and Speechmatics is back on the events circuit, having attended Ai4 Finance Summit and MWC in Barcelona. The company recently showcased its technology at Enterprise Connect in Orlando, Florida, a hub for corporate IT decision-makers and a critical event for understanding the future of contact centers. Speechmatics' Autonomous Speech Recognition (ASR) can prove vital for innovation in the contact center industry, which is expected to reach $1.52 billion by 2023. The company's technology helps minimize human error and provides valuable analytics to improve customer experience, a crucial aspect of contact centers. With its ASR, Speechmatics aims to assist growing contact centers and will be attending events such as NAB in Las Vegas and Project Voice in Tennessee this April.

At Speechmatics, the company is continually working on improving its Autonomous Speech Recognition (ASR) capabilities by incorporating more nuanced understanding of emotions in speech-to-text. The team tested their ASR technology on the popular TV show Friends, analyzing 1400 dialogues and 13000 utterances from various characters, including Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe, and Joey. The results showed that fear is the most challenging emotion for ASR to recognize, with an average accuracy of 78%, compared to neutral emotions which reached 85% accuracy. However, even among other emotional states, minor differences in accuracy were found, likely due to chance. The team also discovered that certain characters, like Phoebe and Joey, have unique voices that significantly impact their ASR accuracy, especially when it comes to positive surprise and fear. To improve speech-to-text technology, Speechmatics aims to incorporate more diversity into its systems, recognizing the importance of emotions in shaping individual differences in voice and everyday life.

This year's International Women's Day campaign urges everyone to #BreakTheBias and imagine a gender-equal world where women can thrive without bias, stereotypes, and discrimination. The author, a female CEO of a high-growth tech company, feels a great sense of responsibility to make the path easier for others and has identified three key challenges to overcome: making the industry clearer, educating early, and leveling the playing field. To achieve these goals, it's essential to shift conversations to show the varied career options in tech, educate girls from an early age about technology, and provide a level playing field with proactive focus on diversity and inclusion. The author believes that positive discrimination is necessary to create long-term impact and remove bias in tech innovation. By thinking differently and taking action, individuals can make a difference and lead change in their own businesses.

Speechmatics is an organization that creates autonomous speech recognition technology and aims to understand every voice. The company's Head of Sales EMEA, Paolina White, shares her experiences as a woman in the technology sector, noting mostly positive interactions but also having to push for equal consideration in boardroom situations. She emphasizes the benefits of a gender-equal workforce, including a different dimension of thinking and nurturing gene that enables women to view and affect perspectives more often agnostic and empathetic. Despite statistics showing stalled female representation over the last 10 years, Paolina believes everyone who strives for success will flourish and be discovered regardless of their background. The company values diversity and inclusion, aiming to appreciate every voice, including those of women, to deliver a step-change in speech recognition technology.

At Speechmatics, our goal is to make voice technology accessible and inclusive for everyone, regardless of demographic or location. Our industry-leading Autonomous Speech Recognition (ASR) can understand a wide range of dialects and accents, thanks to our Global speech-to-text language pack for English and Spanish. This people-first approach puts us ahead of competitors who may prioritize technical innovation over human considerations. We're continually looking to implement this understanding every voice philosophy into every aspect of our work, from hiring to product development. Our values now reflect this focus on inclusivity, with core principles such as People First, Move Fast, Care Deeply, Be Ambitious, and Shaping the Company. As we grow from 12 to over 200 employees, we're taking a more nuanced approach to human needs and global approaches, ensuring that everyone's voice is heard in our direction. Our ASR can transcribe 31 languages now, with plans to expand further, driven by our daily work, data collection, and product releases. We believe change happens one word at a time and are committed to pushing the boundaries of inclusivity.