All -- On the ASKJ conference call, General Magic was mentioned five or six times. ASKJ’s Pres. Adam Klein spoke very highly of GMGC. He said they were the leader in creating the personality and "richness" of the voice interface experience. He called NUAN "unquestionably the leader" in VR and that ASKJ’s voice technology will be driven by NUAN. He termed the partnership "very exciting" and a logical and natural extension of where ASKJ has been and where they’re going.
In the partnership, what ASKJ brings to the party is a large set of clients (over 125 corporate customers in the U.S. currently), their proprietary natural language technology (which offers a superior experience for the caller who can type/talk in normal, full sentences), and a "deep statistical understanding of how people ask questions" and how to efficiently and accurately answer the questions. What differentiates ASKJ from others in their space is the "confirming questions" asked by their system (they handle 35 million queries per day) to make sure of the intent of the question and the accuracy of the answer. For example, if someone was inquiring about CDs, confirming questions would determine if the customer was interested in music CDs, CD-ROMS, certificates of deposit, etc., rather than the system responding with time-wasting, nonsensical/irrelevant answers.
He described the eCRM space as a huge market, with market-size estimates in the $30 billion - $80 billion annual range, depending on how it is being defined and by whom. ASKJ is focusing on the B2B market via assisting their corporate clients in interacting with their end-market customers over the Internet via PC, and soon using voice via phone given the GMGC/NUAN partnership. Klein stated that the cost benefits to the corporate customer and the impact on the client’s bottom line are "huge": The cost to a corporation to handle the 800 or 888 phone calls from customers with questions (where the customer goes through the menu item of numbers to push and eventually winds up with a “live” customer-service rep) ranges from $28 to $45 per call (Forrester Research estimates that the average cost is $33/call). But if ASKJ builds the system and the customer comes in via the Internet, the cost to the corporation is $1.00 to $1.20 per call, and the customer experience is much better.
The GMGC/NUAN/ASKJ system is now in beta test with an actual customer, will be offered in the first quarter of next year, and will be priced similar to ASKJ’s existing B2B business ($200,000 to $250,000 per initial contract).
ASKJ is just scratching the surface in international markets, where they see good opportunities. They have joint ventures in the U.K. (characterized as a huge success, with ASKJ being the 8th most visited web site), in Japan (where their JV partner has strong B2B relationships with such companies as Microsoft, Sony and Apple), and for Spanish-speaking countries.
Asked about the GMGC/NUAN/ASKJ alliance from the standpoint of competitors, he said that companies in the consumer space such as Tellme weren’t really considered competition since ASKJ is focusing on B2B. In the B2B area, of the other IVR solution vendors such as InterVoice-Brite, none are dealing with natural language applications and hence are not considered direct competitors since their offerings mostly deal with "keyword" recognition which he termed as "restrictive" versus ASKJ’s natural language which allows for "expansive" applications.
Lastly, he said they were very confident in the rapid growth potential over the next year as the product rolls out, and that a very focused and aggressive marketing campaign around the new voice service will be launched in the near term.
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