Custom Digital Voice to Engage With Passengers: Deutsche Bahn (DB) Selects Acapela to Create Its Exclusive Personalized Voice
MONS, Belgium, Feb. 26, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- DB Station&Service AG, a subsidiary of DB, one of the largest providers of passenger & freight transport services in Europe, has chosen Acapela Group, the voice solutions expert, to create its brand new German digital voice.
DB Station&Service AG is responsible for operating over 5,400 train stations on the German railway network. As a result of a tender, Acapela Group has been selected by the company to create a custom voice that will homogeneously inform DB passengers in real time and provide a pleasant unique voice experience.
The digital voice will be created with 'Acapela Voice Factory', the Acapela solution for custom voice creation and will be soon informing DB passengers in train stations through a unique, recognizable DB voice. The solution enables companies to perform their voice branding through any audio touch point with a very natural and pleasant digital voice.
Acapela's recent innovation based on Deep Neural Networks (DNN) artificial intelligence –Acapela DNN- is opening up new opportunities for the creation of personalized digital voices, adapted to the environment in which the voice is used.
Custom voices allow companies and organizations to be more relevant in their conversations with the targeted audience while providing efficient real time information, which is key for public transport. Custom voices add an audio brand identity, offer outstanding conversational user experience and increase customer satisfaction and confidence.
"The voice is the acoustic business card of DB in all railway stations. With the new voice technology from Acapela, we will provide station visitors and passengers advanced real time information," explains Daniel Labahn, Head of Travel Information for the Future of DB Station & Service AG. "Especially in cases of disruption, clear announcements are essential for good passenger information. This has a direct impact on customer satisfaction, which is a priority for us in the coming years. "
'We are very proud to accompany DB in their voice project for advanced Passenger Information. We are convinced that, as voice-first interfaces are entering our daily lives, it is the right moment for companies to seize the opportunity to go for their own voice persona. Digital voice not only delivers passengers with real-time audio information, which is mandatory to users, but also provides an advanced comfortable user experience and contributes to brand identity. Voice matters and Acapela is well known for its expertise in creating custom voices for public transport activities.' Comments Andrew Richards, who is heading the Public Transport business unit at Acapela Group.
In addition to regular custom voice development at Acapela, transport-domain recordings were made using Acapela's dedicated tools to perfectly reproduce station names and passenger information for an enhanced user-experience.
Acapela voices will deliver real time passenger information to both German-speaking and international travellers. The custom voice for the German users and an English voice from the Acapela catalogue for the non-German-speaking users.
About DB
The Deutsche Bahn Group is an international provider of mobility and logistics services operating in over 130 countries worldwide. DB employs more than 310,000 employees with almost 40 percent of them outside Germany, The DB Group transports more than 12 million passengers per day across Europe (including Germany) in its trains and buses. In the area of transport and logistics, around 300 million tonnes of goods per year are freighted by rail and around 100 million by road through the European network. Around 1.3 million tonnes of air freight and around 2.1 million TEU of sea freight are handled in the global networks.
About Acapela Group
Voice First is reinventing the way we engage with devices. Acapela creates personalized digital voices to guide end-users throughout this new experience. Acapela Group is a European leader of voice solutions with 30 years of expertise and market feedback, strong partnerships, deep rooted R&D, an enthusiastic team and a strong appetite for innovation. We invent voice solutions to inform, navigate, provide access to information, enable communication, to express thoughts and desires, participate in social conversation, preserve personal voice identity, and much more. Our voices can either speak or read content for you, in over 30 languages.
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