Technology
**VUX World**

Interviews with the best brains in AI, sharing how to improve customer experience and business operations using emerging AI technologies such as voice AI, conversational AI, NLP, Large Language Models (LLMs), generative AI and more.

We educate business leaders and teams on why and how AI technologies are revolutionising the way consumers engage with businesses and the internet, why that matters and how to implement it properly.

*“One of the most consistently insightful and deeply respected podcasts in the industry”*

*Bradley Metrock, Score Publishing*

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Latest Episodes:

Bringing human-like performance to AI custom voices with Zohaib Ahmed Feb 01, 2021

Show notes

Resemble.ai is a cutting edge synthetic voice (text-to-speech) provider that allows anyone or any brand to create their own, customer TTS solution to use across any and all channels. From IVR, Alexa and Google Assistant to narrating videos and marketing materials and even voicing game characters. With just 50 lines of speech, you could have your own dedicated brand voice that brings a consistent and elevated customer experience to your conversational applications. With quicker-than-real-time processing, the low latency capabilities makes having a conversation with a Resemble.ai-voiced assistant as natural as can be.

In this episode of VUX World, we're joined by founder and CEO, Zohaib Ahmed, to discuss the work Resemble is doing to help brands create stand-out conversational experiences. We discuss what Resemble is and how it works, the value of having your own custom voice, the use cases and applications it's being used for, the process for creating, the editing and publishing tools for customising intonation and emotion, as well as the ethical considerations around voice cloning, fraud and deep fakes.

00:00 Intro

02:55 About Zohaib Ahmed and Resemble.ai

04:47 What are people using Resemble.ai for today?

07:37 How much dialogue is needed to create a TTS voice?

08:27 Voice Talent Pool: what's that?

11:50 Bondad: How far off are we from high quality rendering at run time with low latency?

14:00 What's the process for creating a custom brand voice?

17:00 Are call centres cloning staff voices?

19:00 An alternative approach from a branded assistant

21:10 Ethics of voice cloning

24:20 Resemblyzer and tackling speaker verification

27:40 Matthew James-Dewstowe: Can you tweak the voice once its created?

31:40 Jay Ruparel: How do you handle dynamic speech and keep the voice integrity?

37:40 Sean Thornton: Predicting emotion

41:00 Heidi Cohen: Regionalisation and localisation

44:45 Real time translation of speech

48:20 Jay Ruparel: Thoughts on filler words like 'um', 'ah' etc

51:37 Proving the value and ROI

01:00:40 Where can people find out more about Resemble.ai

Links

Visit Resemble.ai

Follow Resemble.ai on Twitter

Zohaib Ahmed on Twitter and LinkedIn

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How we built the HeyMercedes Voice Assistant with Mihai Antonescu Jan 27, 2021

Show notes

Mihai Antonescu joins us to discuss the history of voice at Mercedes, the origins of the HeyMercedes voice assistant and the process for building it.

You'll also learn tips and tricks that'll help you put together your approach to creating your own assistant, as well as how to understand and measure the business value voice assistants can bring.

Mihai asked us before the show to challenge him with our questions, and we certainly hope we did.

Links

Connect with Mihai Antonescu on LinkedIn or Twitter

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Integrating DialogFlow into your contact centre with Justin Randall Jan 25, 2021

Show notes

Justin Randall, Chief Innovation Officer at Comwave, one of Canada's largest independent telco companies, joins us to share his experiences of designing, building and implementing a Google DialogFlow agent in the contact centre.

We'll cover the drivers for doing it, the process he followed, the things he learned and advice for doing the same.

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

04:30 About Justin Randall and Comwave

10:30 Replacing the IVR

12:23 What can 'Penny' do?

13:39 How do you determine success for your conversational AI

19:30 Understanding where you should start

21:50 Who manages the updates and maintenance?

23:20 Glen Ritchie: What KPIs do you use for your conversational AI?

26:15 How much time is spent defining requirements?

27:44 Heidi Cohen: What books and resources would you recommend?

29:29 John Novak: Do you use a tree structure like in IVR?

32:23 Deymi Campos: How fast can you deploy a change in your conversational AI?

35:50 What does your automated testing set up look like?

40:24 Andrew Francis: Are you using the DialogFlow Telephone Gateway?

43:45 Deymi Campos: Sometimes different TFNs need different config, do you have this feature?

45:15 Georgios Tserdanelis: Did you design a persona for Penny or use a custom voice?

48:37 jusfc: Is Penny available as a chatbot as well?

51:10 Advice for people starting out in their conversational AI journey

56:00 Closing thoughts from Justin

Links/books

Connect with Justin Randall

Cognitive Virtual Assistants Using Google Dialogflow

Voice Applications for Alexa and Google Assistant (Manning)

Designing Voice User Interfaces (O'Reilly)

Designing Bots (O'Reilly)

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AI and the future of customer service with Noam Fine, Vonage AI Jan 18, 2021

Show notes

With almost all call centres looking to us AI to automate an increasing number of conversations with customers, what does the future of customer service look like? And what's the future of work going to look like for your staff? What can you do today to prepare for an AI-first future, both from a customer experience and staffing perspective?

Lots of big questions will need answering in 2021, and to get you started, we're joined by Head of Vonage AI, Noam Fine, to answer those questions and more about the future of customer service, the future of customer experience and the future of work for CS agents and managers.

Links

Vonage AI

Connect with Noam Fine on LinkedIn

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Voice AI in the contact centre: 2021 trends, with Dan Miller, Opus Research Jan 11, 2021

Show notes

Dan joins us to share his insights on the most important recent developments in voice AI technology and how it's enabling business transformation, as well as some of the emerging trends we're likely to see unfold in 2021.

Voice AI is disrupting all kinds of industries and providing opportunities for almost every and any business unit. None, perhaps, has the potential to prosper more than the contact centre.

With the potential to automate front end conversations and assist live agents, conversational AI could be the underlying capability that enables organisations to both increase self-service and improve customer experience, while creating operational efficiencies and empowering staff.

Dan Miller, Lead Analyst and Founder of Opus Research, has more than his fair share of experience both with contact centre technology and speech technology on the whole. For over 30 years, Dan's been working with and covering voice AI and conversational technologies with a focus on organisational transformation.

Links

opusresearch.net

Follow Dan on Twitter

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Incorporating VUI into your UX repertoire with Stuart Silverstein Nov 27, 2020

Show notes

One of the hot topics on every UX designer's lips is conversation design. How do you do it? Is it something I can do? And what skill sets do I currently have that put me in a good position?

Stuart Silverstein, season UX and service designer, also has deep experience in designing conversational user interfaces, from messenger applications to voice bots and IVR assistants.

Stuart joins us to walk through his learning journey with voice AI and discusses how UX designers can incorporate conversation design and VUX into their existing skillsets.

We also chat about the differences and similarities between traditional UX design and VUX design, as well as the value of voice, and the potential for voice AI to revolutionise the contact centre.

Links

stuartsilverstein.com

Stuart Silverstein on Medium

Stuart on LinkedIn

Stuart on Facebook

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Voice commerce: The current state of play with James Poulter Nov 23, 2020

Show notes

Voice commerce: the state of play

We've been speaking about the potential of voice first devices to change shopping behaviour and drive sales and engagement for a while. I wrote about it in the Harvard Business Review over a year ago. Yet, we're not seeing a huge amount of use cases executed. So are people actually using their voice assistants to shop? And, if so, what can brands do about it?

Vixen Labs commissioned a unique, UK-centric consumer research report to understand the current state of play when it comes to voice shopping. What assistants are people using? What are the using them for? How are their shopping habits changing and what role is voice playing? And, crucially, what does it mean for brands and those with something to sell? Co-founder and CEO, James Poulter, returns to the podcast to share all.

SPONSORED BY THE CONVERSATION DESIGN INSTITUTE

Companies around the world are looking for conversation designers, a rare breed of people to help them advance communication between people and AI. That's where we help!

Save 25% with code CDI972VUX25OFF

FIND OUT MORE

Links

Download the Vixen Labs Voice Commerce Report

Connect with James on LinkedIn

Follow Vixen Labs on Twitter

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Creating independent voice assistants with Kavita Reddi and Sirish Reddi Nov 23, 2020

Show notes

As much as Amazon and Google dominate the voice AI headlines, one size doesn't always fit all. There's a trend within the voice industry of brands creating their own voice assistants. The BBC have created Beeb, Mercedes have My Mercedes, Capital One; Eno and plenty of others are following.

And even those who aren't creating their own high-level digital assistant to serve as the AI front-end to the companies products and services, many are wanting narrow implementations of voice AI across apps, IVR, the web and other channels where Alexa and Google .

While you can use Amazon Lex and Google DialogFlow for these instances, some companies don't want their data to be held with those companies. Some want more control or even need more control over the language model.

This is where Voxta plays: enabling the capability for brands to implement their own assistants. Co-Founders Kavita Reddi and Sirish Reddi join us to share how they do it.

We chat about the approach to creating custom voice assistants, the value of Voxta, the differences between voice AI in India and Europe and plenty more.

SPONSORED BY THE CONVERSATION DESIGN INSTITUTE

Companies around the world are looking for conversation designers, a rare breed of people to help them advance communication between people and AI. That's where we help!

Save 25% with code CDI972VUX25OFF

FIND OUT MORE

Links

Voxta.com

Voxta on Twitter

Connect with Kavita on LinkedIn

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Adding voice to screens with Hannes Heikinheimo Nov 16, 2020

Show notes

Hannes Heikinheimo is the Co-Founder and CTO of Speechly, a voice AI company that specialises in adding voice capabilities to software products, and he joins us to discuss the benefits and steps you need to follow to do this.

Hannes has deep experience in voice technologies, working with the Helsinki University of Technology, Nokia, Rovio and Apple, launching the Finnish Siri.

We chat to Hannes about the Speechly technology, the drawbacks of traditional speech to text, the difficultly of language modelling the Finnish language, the advantage of voice-enalbed software, broader voice industry trends and how to add voice to your app.

Companies around the world are looking for conversation designers, a rare breed of people to help them advance communication between people and AI. That's where we help!

Save 25% with code CDI972VUX25OFF

FIND OUT MORE

Links

Speechly

Connect with Hannes

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How voice AI is disrupting industries with Mike Zagorsek Oct 26, 2020

Show notes

VOICE AI DISTUPTION

Voice AI is disrupting industries and providing new opportunities to innovate for those companies paying attention.

Voice AI, like most technology innovations is an enabler. It enables businesses to explore new markets, unlock new value and, in some cases, reinvent themselves.

But technological capability isn't enough to grease the wheels of innovation. You need to find a place within the market that adds value, and have the tools and skills to take advantage.

One of the most exciting companies that offers those tools and skills to unlock voice AI innovation is SoundHound.

SoundHound is helping organisations reimagine their services and create differentiation and value for brands and, in some cases, where you'd least expect it.

In this episode of VUX World Live, we're joined by SoundHound VP, Product Marketing, Mike Zagorsek, to find out how SoundHound are enabling brands to disrupt using voice AI.

From automotive, to finance to hospitality and beyond, the future is being played out today.

Join us to be inspired about the potential for voice AI-enabled disruption and get some pointers on how you can approach the same initiatives with the same success.