VoiceXML Santa Claus

Three Wise Companies Help Santa Face Peak Season Using Voice Technologies and the Web

Now here’s something every kid will love. Santa Claus and his elf Pixel have been outsourced as VoiceXML applications. I guess wages for customer service reps at the North Pole have gone up too much.

Sign up at www.talktosantaclaus.com to have your children confused by a Text-To-Speech driven elf. The Santa Claus bits are all pre-recorded audio. All silly criticisms aside, I think it’s a really cool idea.

First you provide some information about your child (pet, spouse, or unsuspecting friend at work) – their name, some sage advice (Stop asking if we’re there yet; No beer until you’ve finished your breakfast), and an item they want for Xmas. If you provide an email address for the lucky victim, she will get an email address with a phone number to call and a secret code to provide. After going through the sign-up process, you can give it a trial run. Do it now. You won’t regret it. C’mon, all the lazy parents are doing it. I don’t even have kids and I did it.

French speakers are in luck. The companies that developed the application, Elix, Nü Echo, and CONCEPT S2i, are all in Quebec. They provided both French and English versions of Talk to Santa Claus.