I was really impressed by the pitch from Tellme earlier today. (Although, despite them being great voice usability experts, their web site is a pile of Flash-infested crud.) I’d assumed IVR stuff was dull. On the basis you’ll get the best insights from the session that superficially is least attractive, I selected this session. Turns out it was a good choice.

I really liked the idea as telephony as the most intimate medium — a whisper in your ear. But what Tellme really have cracked is making the IVR experience much closer to interacting with a human, and not a string of audio files tacked together with some shell scripts. They played lots of examples of really, truly awful IVR experiences. And then what they did to them.

This is important because good experiences drive real business. The customer’s impression of your business and brand is derived right from the experience they have. The example Tellme gave was UPS. Their old IVR system was very, very slow. The messages went on and on, slowly read. Do you really want UPS to be associated with “slow”? Thought not. Most of all, a good experience creates trust in your brand.

The first thing they’ve cracked is making the voice experience more seamless. They’ve created vast libraries of all sorts of clever combinations of phrases which get blended together by cognitive psycholgy and linguistics experts. And the result is super-impressive.

Their voice libraries go beyond what’s known as “single prosody”, the old-style IVR where you heard broken-up phrases glued together like “departing | Saturday. | July. | 22nd.” Instead they have multiple prosody — “departing | Saturday, | July 22nd” etc. (note the comma after Saturday.) It works. But they’ve had to record over 37000 WAV files just to read back numbers!

They’ve also cracked “points of co-articulation.” You can’t record every possible combination of terms. So record the first term followed by an example second one starting with one of the 40 phonemes in English — “Hi John”. Then record all the possble second terms: “James”, “Jim”, etc. Then splice in the right second term just in place of the example one. Again, the result is impressive.

You really can tell the difference in terms of comprehension and memory retention.

They also did a great pitch on optimising the usability of IVR systems. The phone is a linear presentation, and taxes short-term memory. You don’t have a 2D screen with bold, drop-down boxes, etc. The boundaries are also invisible. It’s not like the Web. There’s a strong “recency effect” — the last thing said (“press 0 for operator”) is first thing remembered.

So they have a bag of tricks. Personalise. For example the sports team “squeaked by” if you support that side vs. “lost a close one to” if you don’t. They “instruct as you go”, deferring navigation instructions to the time they’re needed. (Lazy evaluation always deserved a comeback…) They use “progress markers” - “First, tell us…” “Next,” “Lastly”. Adopt colloquial language, not written English. Optimise to meet user goals, not sub-tasks. And so on.

I’ve glossed over a lot of ineresting detail, and good stuff. If only they could put up a few corporate blogs and share their cool innovations and work on an everyday basis!

Martin's other tales are told on his Telepocalypse blog.

Do you want to try out "voice services"? You can Skype Tellme and try getting directions or making travel plans. All you need to do is call the Skype name "tellmeonskype". Do you want to sign up as a developer? Go here..

And for fun, you can also add "tellmeonskype" as another Skype contact, calling this buddy will connect you to Tellme's 800.555.TELL application. Calling Tellme Studio with Skype

Opinion. It's the dawn of a new pricing era. The test number above won't cost you a cent. However many services will become very disruptive when distributed for just cents, rather than the $1.25 or so for current 411 calls.

Today's announcement on Skype Voice Services is quite exciting.

It puts some real positive spin on Skype being a Global Network; not just an application sitting on my desktop. Opening up Skype Credits will bring a smile to Markus Williamson at Connectotel who proposed something like this (download the pdf) 31 July this year.

The key point of today's announcement:

Chargeable services: callers pay per minute from their Skype Credit. You receive a share of the call revenue.

Skype "minutes" becomes currency, money to trade with.

So is Skype adding to its disruptive power against the RIAA record label owners of the world? Publishers who leave artists poor and broken?

Not with a 30 percent transaction charge for Skype. Then Tellme wants 40 percent.

Such a deal.

Niklas Z seems to want Skype to replace the RIAA Label Owners. At these rates content producers can only choose one new evil over an older one. Hey, Niklas, read Courtney Love Does the Math: "Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist's work without any intention of paying for it. I'm not talking about Napster-type software. I'm talking about major label recording contracts."

Niklas' message, "We challenge the world’s most creative content providers to work with us and our partners at Tellme, Voxeo and Voxpilot to develop these new and exciting forms of Internet voice services."

The world's most creative content producers get to keep the remainders. Lucky us.

Content producers have been screwed by Hollywood, Book Publishers and RIAA Label Owners. Now we can get screwed by Skype. Content producers need a disruptive technology to unseat this tyranny. The dream we had that our saviour would be Skype and Niklas just got shattered.

I just loved this line in the press release:

"Content providers will join Skype's ecosystem of more than 400 Skype developers worldwide who are already offering hardware and software products to Skype's 53 million members."

What wasn't said was how much money these 'more than 400 Skype' developers have been raking in. No question that some hardware people like RTX are creating good revenue streams, but the majority of the 400 plus developers are into software and haven't made a dime. At least Courtenay Love did better than that with the RIAA Label owners.

Here is another great line:

Skype keeps 30% for promoting your service and connecting callers.

Inside the press release we find out what promotion to 53 million members means: "Content providers' voice services will be reviewed and the most popular will be deployed and listed on the Skype website." This is like telling Courtney Love to make her album a run away hit before we bother recording it and marketing it. At least the RIAA Label owners committed hard cash to bribe opps market the recording as it went to market.

Creating Skype Minutes as money is a brilliant move by Skype. It has the possiblities of helping Software developers monetize their efforts and of course creates a whole new set of opportunities for content producers. Especially when Skype Video ships. But I can't say anything good about the economic model Skype and Tellme propose. It is a mess.

Skype partners with three platform partners Tellme, Voxeo and VoxPilot to create a voice content delivery system.

How does it work?You bring us the content and we bring you the users. Skype promotes your service, and if you want, can charge callers per minute:

Free services: these are free for the Skype caller. You pay a small per minute fee for the operation and promotion of these services.
Chargeable services: callers pay per minute from their Skype Credit. You receive a share of the call revenue.

What kind of voice services can you offer?
Anything you can imagine! If you want to start a news service, voice auctioning, announce sports scores, track international deliveries, or if you want to help people learn how to speak Tagalog – do it! We look forward to seeing your ideas in action, amaze us!

How much can you earn from chargeable services?
You define the per minute charge for your service. The call revenue generated is split three ways:

Skype keeps 30% for promoting your service and connecting callers.
Your chosen Platform Partner keeps a share for enabling your service (see table below).
You receive the remainder.

This is a bigger news event than the rumour mill about eBay buying Skype for 4 to 5 billion dollars.