We are excited to announce a new Speech-to-Text (STT) API that works with AudioCodes VoiceAI Connect*. AudioCodes VoiceAI Connect (VAIC) enables enterprises to connect a bot framework and speech services, such as text-to-speech (TTS) and speech-to-text (STT), to the enterprises’ voice and telephony channels to power Voice Bots, conversational IVRs and Agent Assist use-cases.

With this new API, enterprises and NLU/Conversational AI platform companies can leverage the capabilities of AudioCodes VAIC with Voicegain as the ASR or STT engine for their contact center AI initiatives.

The two main use-cases in Contact Centers are (1) building Voice Bots (or voice-enabling a chatbot) and (2) building real-time Agent Assist.

While AudioCodes supports Cloud STT options from large players Microsoft, Google and Amazon, introducing Voicegain as an additional ASR option offers three key benefits to prospective customers. These benefits can be summarized as the 3 As - Accuracy, Affordability and Accessibility.

1. Accuracy:

To get very high STT accuracy, companies now understand the importance of training the underlying acoustic models on application specific audio data. While it is necessary to have a reasonable out-of-the-box accuracy, building voice bots or extracting high quality analytics from voice data requires more than what is offered. Voicegain offers  a full fledged training data pipeline and easy-to-use APIs to help speed up the building of custom acoustic models. We have demonstrated significant reduction in Word Error Rates even with a few hundred hours of client specific audio files.

Because AudioCodes VAIC makes it very easy two switch between various STT services, you can easily compare performance of Voicegain STT to any of the other STT providers supported on AudioCodes.

2. Affordability:

Voicegain offers disruptive pricing compared to the big 3 STT providers at essentially the same out-of-the-box accuracy. Our  pricing is 40%-75% lower than the big 3 Cloud Speech-to-Text providers. This is especially important for real-time analytics (real-time agent assist) use case in contact centers as the audio/transcription volumes are very large. In addition to APIs, we also provide a white-label reference UI that contact centers can use to reduce the cost and time-to-market associated with deploying AI apps.

3. Accessibility:

In addition to accessing STT as a cloud service, Voicegain can be deployed onto a Kubernetes cluster in a client's datacenter or in a dedicated VPC with any of the major cloud providers. This addresses applications where compliance, privacy and data control concerns prevent use of STT engines on public cloud infrastructure.

Setting up the Integration

Connecting AudioCodes VAIC to Voicegain is done in 3 simple steps. They are:

1) Add Voicegain as the ASR/STT provider on VAIC. This is done through an API (provided by Audiocodes).  In this step, you would need to enter a JWT token from Voicegain web console for authentication (instructions provided below).

2) Enter the web-socket entry URL for Voicegain ASR on VAIC.  You can get this URL from Voicegain Web Console (instructions provided below)

3) Configure the Speech Recognition engine settings. This includes picking the right model and having the correct timeout and model sensitivity settings.  This is done on the Voicegain Web Console (instructions to sign up provided below)

Please contact your Audiocodes customer success contact for Steps 1 & 2.

Voicegain Web Console signup

You would need to sign up for a developer account on Voicegain Web Console. Voicegain offers an open developer platform and there is no need to enter your credit card. We provide 300 minutes of free Speech-to-Text APIs access every month. You can test out our APIs and check out our accuracy.

After you sign up, please go to Settings-> API Security. The JWT Token required for Step 1 and the API entry URL for Step 2 are provided here.

Also you would need to pick the right acoustic model, set the complete timeout & sensitivity specified in Step 3. Please navigate Settings-> Speech Recognition -> ASR Transcription settings.

If you have any questions please email us at support@voicegain.ai  

* VoiceAI connect is a product and trademark owned by AudioCodes.

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