Ticker Talk

THE CHALLENGE

You want convenient, real-time quotes for your favorite stocks and mutual funds. Your brokerage house implemented an automated touchtone system because having a broker handle quotes is expensive and time consuming. But the system is cumbersome: you have to press two digits for each letter in the stock symbol, and it cannot perform many standard account management functions.

THE SOLUTION

TickerTalk, from Nuance Communications, a supplier of automatic speech recognition (ASR) technologies. allows you to speak the name of the stock or mutual fund for which you want a quote. After using ASR to determine the stock or mutual fund, TickerTalk looks up the price and plays back the quote using a recorded voice. It offers all the benefits of automation without the inconvenience of a clumsy touchtone interface.

In addition to stock quotes, TickerTalk also supports trades and account management activities such as queries and updates to a brokerage account. Queries can include the cash balance, status of pending orders, or position in specific equities. You might ask, "how much Infosys stock do I own?" and a friendly voice will indicate the number of shares and their portfolio value. With TickerTalk, you can maintain your own unique stock list, and add or drop regularly quoted equities from the list.

TickerTalk is just one application that uses Nuance's Conversational Transactions, a technology that is revolutionizing interactive voice response (IVR) systems. Callers can now get stock quotes, place trades, pay bills, and get account information using simple conversational commands. Phrases like "pay Visa $250 tomorrow," or "buy 200 shares of Infosys at the market price" make automated transactions easy.

The Nuance technology is speaker independent, can handle large grammars, and understands natural spoken language. But most importantly, it's extremely accurate; 95% accuracy recognizing stock quotes on a nationally deployed system. Nuance's Conversational Transaction Technology is now available on the CT platform.