Speech analytics

What is speech analytics?

The terms speech analytics and audio analytics are most commonly used to describe a range of speech technologies that can be used to discover more about audio and speech material. Audio mining is one such technology, which can automatically locate occurrences of spoken words or phrases in speech material. The term speech analytics is sometimes used to mean simply audio mining, but generally speech analytics covers a broader range of speech products.

Examples of other speech technologies that could fall under the general term speech analytics include software that can distinguish speech from non-speech (e.g. music, noise), software to identify specific speakers or software that analyses the emotional content or stress levels of speech material.

Growth in speech analytics

Speech analytics is a rapidly expanding area of speech technology and there is a growing interest in the ability to use speech analytics software to automate or speed up processes that would previously have been done as a time-consuming manual process. The rapid growth in the amount of audio and video content that is now online has mean that tools to search and process this material have become increasingly important. Speech analytics software is therefore an area of great interest to, for example, search engine companies such as Google and Yahoo, as the speech tools could allow information about the spoken content of audio or video, or perhaps the speaker identities, to be accessed and searched. Want to find a video clip of Tony Blair talking about global warming? Current technology generally requires the media file to have associated meta-data, created manually, in order to make search a search possible, but the use of speech analytics software could completely automate this process, making the vast amount of online audio and video content searchable.

Speech analytics market reports

A number of market reports have been published recently that highlight the growth oppurtunities in speech analytics technology. Some estimate the market growth will be 100% in the year 2007. Follow the links below for more information.

DMG consulting: Speech Analytics Report
DataMonitor report: The Emerging Market for Speech Analytics

Speech analytics software providers

Many companies provide speech analytics software and tools. Some of the main providers of audio mining and speech analytics include Avaya, BBN, CallMiner, Nexidia, Nuance and Witness. For more information and links to specific company pages see the separate audio mining page.

Speech analytics links

Speech analytics in the news? Try a Google news search for speech analytics
Wikipedia entry on speech analytics

Last updated: March 2013