Loquendo, the global market leader in speech technology, and H-Care, the leader in developing user-friendly platforms for multi-channel self-service and customer care systems, announce a new initiative that provides a real breakthrough in CRM applications.

Loquendo offers a complete line of innovative solutions for developing interactive speech applications that run on desktops, servers and embedded systems, guaranteeing the best solutions in speech synthesis, automatic speech recognition, voice recognition, and service creation tools.

Loquendo's advanced speech technology has been integrated within the H-Care's innovative digital-assistant platform; in particular, Loquendo's TTS engine will enable H-Care's product, Human Digital Assistant, to interact with the client using the best quality speech synthesis available on the market.

Thanks to this partnership, H-Care will help companies adopting the Human Digital Assistant to improve their online assistance: they will achieve higher levels of user satisfaction and cost savings in their customer support operations, as well as improving their image as innovators in the marketplace. Umberto Basso, Vice-President of Sales and Marketing, noted that: "The use of interfaces that appear human will continue to find applications in the various interactive channels such as the web, IPTV, and video communication through the latest generation of mobile telephones. Loquendo's technology was chosen to guarantee the best speech synthesis for all of the principle languages"

"We have high expectations of the partnership with H-care, in that the digital-assistant solution is right at the cutting edge of speech technology," says Rosanna Duce, VP of Loquendo. "The virtual assistant is the perfect complement for voice synthesis, a user interface able to communicate in a really natural way, and a truly effective way of reaching the mass market."

H-Care will present its platform, the Human Digital Assistant version 2.0, together with Loquendo at SpeechTEK West, the technology conference held in San Francisco, California from January 30 to February 1.

About H-care
H-care develops innovative technical solutions for customer care services in self-service and multimodal terms. H-care researches and develops different aspects of multimodal self-service studying interactions between users and systems, assistance automation, knowledge and experience management, the applicability of digital assistance models, the 3d projecting and animation and multichannel capacity of planned solutions.

H-care is one of H-Farm's initiative, the centre of research and innovation in technology and design, started by a team that has had an experience for over 10 years with development and marketing of technological solutions based on internet.

For more information, visit www.h-care.it.

About Loquendo - Vocal Technology and Services
With over 30 years of R&D expertise, Loquendo is at the forefront of the global speech technologies market. Its high-quality, high-performance technologies (Loquendo TTS - text to speech, Loquendo ASR - automatic speech recognition, Loquendo Speech Server, Loquendo Speaker Verification) and platforms guarantee systems integrators the best solutions in 17 languages and 39 voices.

Currently available languages include U.S. and U.K. English, Castilian, Catalan, Mexican, Chilean, Argentinean and American Spanish, Italian, German, French, Greek, Mandarin Chinese, Dutch, Brazilian, Portuguese and Swedish - in both male and female voices. Many more are under development to give customers expanded reach in today's global marketplace.

From its headquarters in Turin, Italy, Loquendo deploys technologies that power millions of calls every day in the telecommunications and enterprise markets throughout the world.

For more information, visit www.loquendo.com.