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Gold Systems wins best Speech Self-Service Application award

I'm proud to announce that the Gold Systems Password Reset product was named the "Best Speech Self-Service Application" at SpeechTEK West this year.  If you work in a large company, especially one that is regulated, you know that your IT department is getting more and more strict about the passwords you use and how often you change them.  And for good reason - no one wants to be the next company in the news that got hacked and accidentally disclosed a bunch of credit card numbers.

The problem with stricter, ever-changing passwords is that it is becoming more difficult to remember all the passwords in our lives.  I've heard that as many as 25% of all calls to help desks are to request that a password be reset because the user couldn't remember the right combination of letters, numbers and special characters that is now their password.  Our product automates the resetting of passwords, using speech recognition and even voice authentication if you are really paranoid, it's more secure because the help desk agent doesn't ever know your password and - here's the best part - you don't have to be embarrassed to call up for the third time this month and admit to a person that you've forgotten your password again.

The cost of automating this is generally less than the cost of the salary of one help desk agent.  Now the people can go back to solving the really hard problems like recovering the database that was accidentally deleted last night or figuring out why the wireless network isn't working in the board room.  Help desk agents will always be needed, even if we can automate some of the more mundane, but still costly tasks that they do.  Speaking of help desk agents and IT people - try thanking them for the work that they do. When everything is working fine, they get little credit and when it isn't, they catch hell. If nothing else you'll enjoy the startled look on their faces, because their job is difficult and often thankless.

Hiring event Wednesday night

Just a quick reminder about our hiring event this Wednesday night, March 7th at the Westin in Westminster between 5:30 and 7:30 PM.  Here's my original post on the event.  I expect to be there along with a couple of other people from Gold Systems.  If you can't make it, that's OK, drop me an email.  I don't know about the other companies who are going to be there, but I'd suggest you not dress up for us - we're a Boulder software company.  Enough said?