Bharti airtel, a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 19 countries across Asia and Africa, and Nuance Communications today announced the launch of an innovative voice service titled ?One Number, One Voice? ? which will allow airtel mobile customers across India to access major voice based services offered by the company (like Hello Tunes, airtel Radio, News, Sports, Jokes etc) by dialing a single number ? 54321. Powered by Nuance Recognizer 9.0, the world’s leading automated speech recognition technology, ?One Number, One Voice? is now available for airtel customers across Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Chennai, Kerala, Chandigarh and Uttar Pradesh (East & West). The service currently supports English, Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam and will be rolled out in other languages subsequently.
Commenting on the launch of the new service, Shireesh Joshi, Chief Marketing Officer-Mobile Services, Bharti airtel said, ?At Bharti airtel, we are constantly looking for ways of delivering the best user experience for our 150 million plus customers across the country and accounting for their diverse preferences in language and relative comfort in interacting by voice or text. Our ?One Number, One Voice? service provides our customers with the dual benefit of a single number of access for VAS services and the ease of voice recognition with multiple language options ? giving him a simple and improved service experience.? He added, ?Today, as we join hands with Nuance Communications for the launch of our ?One Number, One Voice? service ? we look forward to leveraging their expertise towards delivering an improved ?search and discover content? experience for airtel mobile customers across India.?
The ?One Number, One Voice? initiative covers all major voice services on airtel like Hello Tunes, airtel Radio, News, Sports, Devotional, Astrology and Jokes. Customers need to simply dial 54321 and speak to access the desired content, thus making search and discovery of content much simpler and easier. ?One Number, One Voice? is available at a charge of Rs.2 per minute.
?We?re experiencing an unprecedented demand for voice services, as they provide consumers with a fast and intuitive way to access a broad range of content,? said Michael Thompson, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Mobile Division, Nuance Communications. ?Bharti airtel?s One Number, One Voice service is an incredibly innovative initiative that brings the power of voice to millions of consumers across India, providing access to exciting content-driven voice services through a single number and simple voice commands.?
Bharti airtel and Nuance had jointly undertaken an extensive pilot project in the Kerala circle for over a year to comprehensively test and refine the service. The menu for the ?One Number, One Voice? service has been designed basis the inputs of a comprehensive customer research exercise on the usability aspects of value added service (VAS) voice applications, making navigation more intuitive and simpler. This the first application to incorporate the user interface guidelines and framework developed for airtel by Nuance, which incorporates Nuance?s global best practices and rigorous customer testing. The service is intuitive enough to distinguish between regular callers and first-time callers, offering a customized caller experience wherein novice callers get more hand-holding whereas frequent callers are offered short-cuts.
