ManageEngine has launched the ServiceDesk Plus iPhone app that incorporates voice-recognition technology for IT professionals so they can make commands, dictate notes and do any number of other tasks that come with managing a help desk.
The app uses Nuance Nina, a virtual assistant, to dictate, edit, reply, assign/reassign and close tickets. The app also has touch-screen capabilities to:
- Create new tickets, categorize, and edit request details
- Assign/pick up requests
- Reply to users with resolution and close tickets from the app
- Track time spent on tickets via Worklog
- Perform searches based on subject, requester or priority
- Customize the request view
- Track the time spent on tickets using Worklog
- Update the status of the requests
The app is designed for IT professionals who spend a good part of their time on their feet, fixing problems for people around the office. But while away from their desks, they still have to do everything through the help desk, the anchor of any enterprise shop. The goal is to help IT be more productive. Instead of stopping to use the laptop or peck away on an iPhone, a technician can instead use their voice to do the work that needs to get done.
According to Opus Research, Nuance has invested heavily in voice-recognition technology, making customer service apps like ServicePlus more viable.
Dan Miller of Opus writes:
At Nuance’s Customer Experience Summit held in Orlando in early December, Doug Sharp, VP of Enterprise Engineering, noted that the company has 135 engineers “dedicated to some aspect of language understanding.” His point is that the statistical language models (SLMs) that are necessary for accurate automated speech recognition are only the beginning of what comprises a natural, multi-modal, mixed initiative user interface. Much of the heavy lifting now is taking place along a continuum that spans machine learning, data driven discovery in new or evolving domains and mining the intranet and social networks to bring continuous improvement an engine’s ability to understand meaning and provide new kinds of assistance.
My colleagues have their doubts, pointing to the issues with using simple voice-recognition to issue commands for driving places as an example:
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@alexwilliams Voice recognition tech can barely understand I want to drive to my own home
— Brian McClain (@BrianMMcClain) February 21, 2013
But with the learning capabilities that come with Nuance, I am more confident that this ManageEngine app will be usable. It is designed for a specific task, not the open-ended commands that come with consumer-style applications.
