Speech Technology Magazine Honors Verizon Business With 'Star Performers Award' for Open Hosted Speech Services

Speech Technology magazine has honored Verizon Business with a Star Performers Award for its Open Hosted Speech Services (OHSS).

At the SpeechTek 2009 trade show in New York City, the magazine cited Verizon Business' excellence in innovation and execution.  This is the second time the company has received a Star Performers Award.  In 2007, it was recognized for its Hosted Interactive Voice Response (IVR) suite of services.

Launched last year, OHSS empowers business customers to control and host their speech applications while still gaining the benefits of Verizon's hosted speech platform.

"OHSS combines the best features of a premises-based environment and the value of hosted services into one package: a solution that offers our customers ownership of speech applications and the underlying code without the large capital costs typically associated with CPE," said Jim Tyrrell, vice president for global business voice solutions at Verizon.  "The level of control that OHSS provides has been particularly appealing to our customers."

One customer that is taking advantage of the benefits of OHSS is a leading health benefits company that deployed the solution last year to help reduce caller hold times by implementing a voice response system to assist with call routing and to automate routine inquiries.  The company was seeking a service that would not require large up-front costs and would reduce total cost of ownership, while also providing high performance through scalability, diverse routing and disaster recovery capabilities.  The company now enjoys more efficient agent utilization and an improved caller experience.

OHSS is based on the VoiceXML industry standard, and customers maintain ownership of VoiceXML-based applications. Customers can run these options on Verizon Business' Hosted IVR platform or connect the applications to an alternate platform of their choice.

Verizon Business' expert professional services team can assist customers in developing and deploying applications that they can host themselves.  That team can also help customers integrate OHSS with Verizon Business' other contact center solutions.

"This award underscores Verizon Business' commitment to doing business in a flexible way that supports the individual requirements of our business and government customers," said Blair Crump, group president of worldwide sales for Verizon Business.  "We are continuing to invest in innovative contact center solutions like OHSS that help our enterprise customers better serve their customers."

Speech Technology's Star Performers Award recognizes speech technology vendors that have contributed to industry growth over the past twelve months through innovative product or service launches, a heightened focus on speech technologies through alliances, mergers and acquisitions, or an exceptional execution of existing products or services.

About Verizon Business
Verizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ), is a global leader in communications and IT solutions. We combine professional expertise with the world's most connected IP network to deliver award-winning communications, IT, information security and network solutions. We securely connect today's extended enterprises of widespread and mobile customers, partners, suppliers and employees - enabling them to increase productivity and efficiency and help preserve the environment.  Many of the world's largest businesses and governments - including 96 percent of the Fortune 1000 and thousands of government agencies and educational institutions - rely on our professional and managed services and network technologies to accelerate their business. Find out more at www.verizonbusiness.com.

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