Maximizing Grammar Recognition

The Speech Platform has a built-in voice recognition engine that contains over 110,000 words, but it does have a few limitations. However, a good designer can circumvent these limitations by keeping the following guidelines in mind when setting up a Speech Application:

1. If you want to make sure that the system recognizes everything your callers says, you should try to avoid entering very short words into Grammars. The system is much more accurate when it has longer words or phrases to recognize. If you need to use short words, try to incorporate them into the phrases in which they would be used. For example, instead of entering the word "buy," you could enter in the phrase "to buy" or "want to buy."
2. For the same reason, you should also avoid using numbers: they are most often short words that are not understood as well by the Voice Recognition Engine. Keep in mind that the Speech Application is not intended for use as an order-taking device, so you may find that you don�t need to use numbers at all.
3. Similarly, you should avoid having your callers say individual letters. B, C, D, E, G, P, T, V and Z for example, all sound very similar and could be easily mistaken for one another.
4. The Call Handler will recognize any word that is in the dictionary. Proper nouns, such as names, may sometimes be a problem, since they may not be in the dictionary. Therefore, it is often a good idea to enter proper names into the Grammars phonetically to avoid confusion. For example, the name "Leah" has a silent "h, " so the system may have trouble recognizing it if it were spelled properly. It would be better to type it in phonetically: "lee ah." The name "Winterborne" should be entered as "winter born." If you are having trouble with a particular word, try spelling it differently and experiment by calling into the system and saying the name until the system can understand it.