Catalog ordering, with mobile speech recognition!

 

 France Loisirs, the French version of a mini-Amazon.com, has now selected Atos Worldline to host and operate a new automated telephone order service, based on speech recognition. The service is named “Commande Flash” & both smooths out / combines the different purchasing channels already available and reduces human-handled calls.

 

 Thanks to speech recognition technology powered by Nuance, the caller speaks key words, a membership number and the products they wish to order.

 Marc Duteil, customer relations General Manager at France Loisirs noted “The members quickly adopted the ‘Commande Flash’ tool which provides real comfort, especially for mobile phone users."

 Founded in the early 1970s, France Loisirs, a 100%-owned subsidiary of the Bertelsmann group (50% owner of Sony BMG Music Entertainment), now has 3.5 million members in France, one household out of five. With 24 million books sold per year, France Loisirs accounts for 8% of the French publishing market. The brand uses a multi-channel distribution network and has 208 shops in France.

 Now, imagine a speech-powered ordering system for, say Amazon.com...