5 Uses of Speech Recognition Technology

Voice technology has been widely adopted by businesses to support their digital transformation projects. Businesses are harnessing its powerful capabilities to improve efficiencies and revenues. In this blog, you will learn about 5 uses of speech recognition technology. According to the Speechmatics report on Trends and Predictions for Voice Technology in 2021, industries that have benefited from speech recognition technology in the past year include media and entertainment, banking, financial services, insurance and transcription solutions.

What are the main current uses of speech recognition technology?

Survey respondents for the Speechmatics report highlighted the following main current use cases for voice technology:

1. Subtitling and closed captioning

The global captioning and subtitling solutions market is expected to be worth USD 370 million by the end of 2025, according to Valuates Reports.com.

With captioning and subtitling solutions, video and audio content is turned into a text-based format that can then be used to deliver captions automatically, quickly and at scale. This provides human transcribers/editors with the capability to review and simply tweak the output.

The pandemic led to a dramatic increase in the volume of video content created and consumed in 2020, compared with recent years. Take a look at some key stats that highlight this trend.

Global content delivery network provider CDN Akamai reports that global internet traffic has grown by as much as 30% this year July 2020 saw a rise of 10.5% in social media usage, compared with July 2019, according to a GlobalWebIndex survey In their study of how the Coronavirus pandemic has been influencing people’s digital behaviors, GlobalWebIndex has found that more than 40% of internet users have been spending more time using social media in recent months The State of Video Marketing report 2020 by Wyzowl claims 92% of marketers who use video say that it’s an important part of their marketing strategy Since early March of 2020, video marketing software provider, Wistia, saw a year-on-year increase of 120% average number of hours of video content consumed per week across all customers. A drastic increase from 2.6 million in 2019 to 4.6 million in the same period of 2020 According to HubSpot, 85% of businesses use video as a marketing tool A study by Facebook claims that people now watch over 100 million hours of video on Facebook each day. Additionally, they said that internal tests showed that captioned video ads increase video view time by an average of 12%

2. Customer experience and analytics

Contact centers have been at the forefront of adopting new developments when it comes to voice technology. By capturing, structuring, and analyzing data derived from voice, they can understand patterns in data and even predict future outcomes.

Interactions have become easier to index and search making it even quicker to find the right file. Agents are empowered to significantly reduce the time taken to resolve disputes, which improves the customer experience – and contact centers can innovate their solutions by transforming the audio from calls to a text-based format.

When in text format, call recordings can be added into natural language processing tools that already exist in contact centers to gain insight from omnichannel approaches like text bots, instant messaging, and email interactions with customers. The archives of existing call recordings in contact centers are a potential gold mine of data that speech recognition technology can transform into key insights, such as metadata and customer sentiment.

3. Web conferencing transcription

Web conferencing was already a growing industry before the pandemic – with a vast number of businesses already using the likes of Zoom, Teams, and Webex. But Zoom adapted fastest to the global emergency, focusing on the customer experience to ensure mass adoption.

Voice technology as part of web conferencing has continued to evolve and, for the most part, the platforms already have voice capabilities like speech-to-text. This means they can transcribe calls as they happen or post-call, depending on the service or the option chosen by the user.

Any new organization looking to take a piece out of this extensive and lucrative market in the wake of the pandemic needs world-class transcription as a minimum in this rapidly evolving market.

4. Education, academic, research transcription

According to Global Market Insights, the e-learning market exceeded USD 200 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow at over 8% CAGR between 2020 and 2026 to reach USD 375 billion.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant surge in the use of e-learning platforms – whether delivered through language apps, virtual tutoring, video conferencing tools, or online learning software. And the use of speech recognition technology plays an important role.

Captioning ensures that interactions/lessons can be understood in more than just a verbal medium. The means to have lessons transcribed in real time helps people track what is being said, whether hard of hearing or not. Additionally, the capability to download a transcript at the end of a lesson provides an additional learning tool to help extract as much value as possible from virtual interactions.

5. Automotive command and control

The use of voice assistants has grown in recent years. And increased concern over hygiene due to the pandemic has made voice an even more attractive interface for products – rather than touchscreens.

In addition, voice interfaces make interaction in vehicles safer on the move. Automotive applications of voice technology enable drivers to control their surroundings – from satellite navigation to turning up the volume of the stereo or interacting with a mobile device through the infotainment system built into the car.

No matter the action or the command delivered, at the root of the workflow, speech must be accurately transformed into text. This text-based output then powers all other elements in the workflow so it’s critical to get the right command.

Want to know more?

For more information – and the full survey results – download Trends and Predictions for Voice Technology in 2021.