For businesses looking to give customers what they want, speech recognition has clearly become the self-service channel of choice. But new research shows that, when it comes to self-service, customers also prefer speech-recognition systems over other channels, including the traditional IVR system. And more than that, they're highly satisfied with the experience.

The research was conducted in 2007 by independent Australian research firm callcentres.net and used data collected from 262 Australian end users of speech recognition technology. The participants were asked to comment on a specific speech recognition application they had recently used and evaluate their experience versus other modes of customer service.

The results of the callcentres.net survey prove that sometimes there is a gulf between perception and reality when it comes to speech recognition. A common perception is that speech recognition technology can undermine customer satisfaction on some level. But the research found that more than 75 percent of customers are satisfied or highly satisfied with their customer experience using speech recognition. This was an 11 percent increase in satisfaction from replica research conducted by callcentres.net in 2005.