Communications and Technology Blog - Tehrani.com - Call Center Archives

SysAid's Lifshitz: The Cloud Will Dominate ITSM Market

2013-05-16T20:01:04Z

Cloud computing has really become a household word with mainstream media outlets running stories on television about the growth in the space as recently as today. In the tech world, we are no stranger to this move as it has been taking place steadily for over a decade but with an extremely accelerated pace these last few years. The IT service management market is no exception and one vendor in the space, SysAid has made an aggressive prediction about the intersection of cloud and ITSM.

SysAid’s Founder and Chairman, Israel Lifshitz says his company is leading the push to cloud-based ITSM with over 1,000 customers using their solution as a service. Other important stats – the company’s customers have chosen the cloud 3x more often QoQ and currently 40% of the company’s customers are using it.

I recently sat down with company representatives Oleg Sin and Dena Wieder-Freiden recently who told me the company’s SysAid solutions are a fit for SMBs as well as Fortune 500 companies and supports 42 languages. The company integrates its service desk solution with asset management, MDM, online chat support and the ability to manage the help desk and assets from all popular mobile operating systems.

The graphic below shows a typical asset management screen.

Moreover, they explained the system supports an integrated monitoring model for network devices and integrated password services for resets and to unlock accounts. This is in addition to integrated task and project management as well as calendar and scheduling features.

There is SLA management as well and utilizing the ITIL CMDB performance benchmark you can compare your company’s performance to other SysAid customers around the globe.

The company certainly touts its integrated solution as a differentiator, pointing out that competitors require you to glue separate software of varying costs together.

They also showed me a demo pressing the F11 key which allows rapid service desk submission – a screen shot is taken instantly and the user has to choose a problem category and add a description. Since the screen shot is sent automatically, users do not need to report the specific error message they receive. Other nifty features include remote-control based on HTML5 and the ability to have users submit requests for things like gaining access to resources such as files, printers, scanners or storage devices.

You can further configure the solution to require manager approval for the installation of freeware and the system also allows a user to request budget to purchase software.

Another area of differentiation is the customization of the software allowing a form to be prepopulated with choices. The system is flexible enough in fact to allow it to be used for hiring by HR. The company’s category driven templates come with the system and comply with ITIL best practices.

Another challenge the company helps customers with is minimizing traffic over the WAN. This is done through the use of the its RDS software which the company says is the next generation of remote discovery services functioning like a proxy server in order to optimize the communications between devices and the cloud. The system can even integrate with LDAP behind the firewall without opening ports.

Oleg mentioned that the MDM functionality was added recently at no charge for customers. In separate conversations, MDM vendors acknowledge the threat from ITSM companies and generally believe their increased feature-sets are a reason to pay for a standalone MDM solution. Customers of course will make the final decision on the matter.

In the future we can expect a SysAid patch management module with automated control via policies as well as a manual option.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of the meeting was the focus on MDM support as this space is turning into a huge opportunity for standalone players. Sure, this story lead with cloud growth but at this point, many of us aren't too surprised to hear this news. The question of more interest perhaps is whether we will begin to see the ITSM and MDM markets merging and if there will be acquisitions in the space as a result.

As companies are faced with managing an ever-increasing amount of devices and software systems, having more automation in their ITSM makes a lot of sense and this is where SysAid continues to invest with its goal being to become the ITSM company providing superior value for your organization.

How a Call Center Translation Service Went Mainstream

2013-04-24T18:24:08Z

Virtually everything in our lives has gotten more expensive over the years such as housing, cars, postage stamps, food and energy and yet telecommunications and broadband service costs continue to plummet. This state of affairs is in-part due to Moore’s Law and a side benefit of the declining connectivity costs has been bringing the world closer together. In the nineties you could bankrupt yourself quite easily if you direct-dialed from one country to another yet today IP communications has lowered the price of such calls to zero or a few pennies a minute depending on your location and device.

In 1982 a company called LanguageLine Solutions was founded to focus on helping translate conversations via telephone and since then, the company has grown to 6,000 interpreters who speak 98.6% of the 6,809 languages spoken in the world today. In this same year, TMC launched a magazine focusing on the call center market (now called Customer) and wrote about this company frequently in the subsequent decades.

I recently caught up with LanguageLine representative Linda Taffy who walked me through many of the new services the company offers such as Language Line University which measures the proficiency of multilingual agents. LanguageLine Direct Response is a service which allows your customer who speaks limited English to hear your message when they call in. From there, they first speak with an interpreter who greets them and then changes from being the greeter to an interpreter again. The company also offers a localization and translation service which helps companies keep their websites and documents accurate in other other countries and languages.

Perhaps the most exciting service is Language UC which is a video chat solution which runs on Macs, PCs and tablets. I had a chance to see a demonstration of sign language via an iPad and it was quite fascinating. What I learned was the sign for coffee which is an arm churning looks more to me like butter. But I digress. With this service you could be a traveling salesperson who could go to any country and communicate effectively in meetings by connecting to LanguageLine UC as needed.

Some of the benefits of LanguageLine’s services are you don’t have to hire full-time people on staff and can instead pay as you go. It is worth noting the video service has a license fee as well.

There aren’t too many companies still focusing on the same core business for over 30 years but LanguageLine is certainly one of them. With their new app/video service, they have certainly elevated their offerings and brought themselves current with the times and made their solutions something the mainstream market can use. You might even say the company is now a bit ahead of the times.

Interactive Intelligence Explores Small Call Center Roots

2013-03-18T13:00:00Z

Interactive Intelligence is an example of a disruptor which went mainstream and in the process changed the way contact centers operated. Soon after launching in the mid-nineties the company would attract huge crowds to its booths at trade shows as it showed off all-in-one solutions which combined the dialer, ACD, PBX and more into a complete solution which operated seamlessly together. The company was first to espouse the concept and is responsible for getting the competition to emulate them.

In a recent meeting with Joe Staples, CMO and Senior VP of Marketing he told me the company has successfully acted upon its growth strategy from 2006 which was designed to increase its sales to large companies such as Rolex, BMW, Crutchfield, Sony Honda and many others. Their average deal-size in 2005 was in fact $87k and it is now $306 with its number of deals over $1m increasing from just one to 49 on a comparative basis over these seven years.

Interactive Intelligence hasn’t lost track of the companies that helped it get started as evidenced by the launch today of its new CaaS Small Center solution, which gives small contact centers with up to 50 contact center agents many of the same features the vendor has offered for years to the most sophisticated contact centers in the world. Pricing for CaaS Small Center starts at a flat fee of $99 per agent, per month. Included in the offer is the ability to add the company’s cloud-based PBX features for up to 100 non-contact center users.

Joe was sure to point out how mature the company’s offering features recording, UC, real-time speech analytics, quality management, multichannel communications including voice, web chat and social media, routing and real-time speech analytics with keyword spotting. There is also integration with Salesforce and other services out of the box. Finally there are guaranteed service levels, geo-redundancy from 11 global data centers, security, compliance including JITC, and customer isolation through virtualization.

He further explained the company focused on keeping the offering easy to use with limited set-up options and deployment within 15 days instead of months. Other areas of note are the ability to sign a one-year contract to lock in your price – a dedicated implementation manager, Quick Spin which allows you to try before you buy and of course a month-to-month commitment if you prefer this option

Interestingly Interactive Intelligence has gone from a disruptive new entrant in the market to an established player. By offering much of the power of its full contact center solutions in a simple, cost-effective, no-commitment way, it has to some degree slowed the disruption it could see from a new breed of cloud-based solutions providers. Moreover, the benefit Interactive brings to the table is stability as well as scalability – companies want a system that grows with them.

Staples says 65% of contact centers in the world have less than 50 agents but they are often underserved because they buy from a startup or just go with an add-on solution provided by a PBX vendor. In fact, one of the company’s newest customers for this new offering switched from another solution which didn’t allow them to see how many calls were waiting in the queue.

The purpose of CaaS Small Center is to allow these call centers who have the same needs as their larger brethren to access the same features and functions they have on a pay-as-you-go or should I say pay-as-you-grow-basis.

NICE Systems at MWC2013

2013-02-28T16:39:42Z

At Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona NICE had a very compelling story regarding its multiple product lines which are generally analytics, security, financial and the contact center. In a conversation with Yaniv Zukerman and Eyal Kirshner I learned the company will be focusing more on its multi-channel analytics solutions across its product lines. Moreover, we will see more cloud solutions from them as well - including in the anti-fraud space. This technology will be rolled out across product lines - and used to allow for CFPB compliance. The solution tells agents what they can and can't say including disclaimers. In fact the company showed this product at the show - complete with providing an activity trail which can be provided to regulators in case of an audit. Speaking of the back office, Zukerman tells me there are increasing threats in this area and the company's anti-fraud technology tracks patterns and can help determine malicious activity and fraudsters.

Yaniv Zukerman and Eyal Kirshner of NICE at Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona

In addition, the company's Voice of the Customer solution allows an innovative way of using text messaging to allow free-form survey responses via text post interaction which can be live, via phone, visit to website etc. Again, this is free-form text messaging allowing a customer to respond however they want and the analytics kicks in to respond accordingly. They could say for example, I really think the agent I just spoke with, "Jim Smith" is atrocious.The information supplied by the customer is then used to alter training of the particular agent if needed. It can further be used to modify products or product training. The idea is acting in real-time to business challenges. In one example a survey after a flight allowed the crew manager to get the results immediately and then call a meeting to adjust before the next flight took off.

The product also is able to determine which interactions could be used as an upsell opportunity. Speaking of which, the company's Service-to-Sales solution in conjunction with IBM the uses analytics to determine if an upsell opportunity exists on a service call. At this point, the agent is guided through the process of selling the customer in a seamless manner which Zukerman tells me shortens the sales cycle.

The company also discussed its Mobile Network Optimization solution designed to help wireless carriers see a 3D view of a city's wireless coverage based upon its deployment of base stations, small cells and femtocells. The system does its best to approximate what real-world coverage will be indoors where most of large-city traffic emanates from.

NICE also showed a real-time-authentication solution using voice-biometrics. It auto-enrolls customers based on past conversations and shows the agent if the person is verified or not. If there is a doubt about the caller's identity, an authentication process can be launched.

Another product designed to lubricate the sales and service process is Mobile Reach which the company tells me integrates with mobile apps and allows a user to instantly connect with a call center if there is a problem with a transaction. At this point the agent is able to follow the exact context of what the user is doing and they can subsequently push information back and forth. For example an agent can push the specifics of a special plan the prospect could be eligible for and the caller could send a photo of their ID to prove who they are.

Its interesting to see the numerous product lines NICE has - they seem to overlap more and more as time progresses. For example, security which once was needed primarily in financial services is now needed more broadly as threats have become more common. Biometrics - once used primarily by the military is being rolled out to call centers across all sorts of companies looking to reduce the amount of time agents spend on the phone and to improve customer service and retention.

The silos which once existed seem to be eroding and as this continues, it seem NICE is well-positioned to provide solutions across a wide range of markets.

ITEXPO Miami 2013 and Startup Camp7, Waiting for Sculley

2013-01-31T22:16:15Z

It's the second day of ITEXPO - I am at StartUp Camp7 listening to startups pitch the audience and panel on why their applications are the best. The founder of ProtegGO is speaking right now - he seems to have the audience interested. The idea behind the app is tthat a few minutes can save lives in an emergency. the app alerts 15 people in the event of an emergency.

Here are some pictures of the room and the Show Daily from today which has news about Battle for the Cloud, Telefonica, NSN, SBCs, Genesys, Trufone and more. John Sculley takes the stage very soon - I can't wait. He is one of the most interesting people I can imagine meeting in the tech space and we are very fortunate he chose to speak here.

Tomorrow's Cloud, Optimized by Plantronics

2012-12-19T22:52:49Z

Most people think of the cloud as being removed from the local environment because, after all, it requires the addition of a browser to access. But thanks to innovation from the people at Plantronics, the cloud can now reach through the browser and be closer to the user than ever before. In fact, the company has an SDK, which for the first time bridges the worlds of mobile and enterprise communications as well as computing. While CTI or computer-telephony integration is not a new concept, Plantronics uses its Spokes software as communications middleware to seamlessly connect mobile telephony with cloud-based or on-premise enterprise software.

Moreover, the headset can now provide contextual information to applications such as the mobile call state, mobile Caller ID, proximity, presence and wearing state. One of the more compelling new apps that uses this interface is Popcorn from ThreeWill; it integrates with a PC/laptop, Chatter, Salesforce.com and mobile devices while monitoring incoming phone calls. When one comes in, it pops a screen based on caller information in corporate databases. The problem being solved is mobile workers have work calls coming to their cell phones which don’t necessarily provide complete details regarding the caller.

How this differs from a traditional screen pop, in this case, is the call is coming over the mobile network so the enterprise PBX is out of the loop. Instead, the caller ID information is transmitted over Bluetooth to the Spokes software by Plantronics, which gives other applications access and these apps can in-turn query corporate databases in the cloud and in the data center.

Moreover, Popcorn allows the user to quickly type in notes, which are automatically placed in the appropriate customer record saving time and effort.

Another company using the Plantronics APIs is Datahug, they have solution that looks at a person you are in contact with at a company and ascertains via social networks and emails which other people in the company has contacts in your organization. Until now, Datahug could not sift through telephony data but it now can, thanks to the middleware-nature of the new Spokes APIs.

Continue reading on the Cloud Computing Magazine website. Free registration may be required for new readers.

Acme Packet Getting Ready for WebRTC's Second Wave

2012-11-28T23:12:01Z

At the inaugural WebRTC Conference & Expo in San Francisco, much of the crowd was focused on demos of WebRTC working in a production environment. In one example at a luncheon keynote Mozilla showed how WebRTC communications could take place between two browsers on the same laptop. This one of the first demonstrations of the technology much of the audience had ever seen.

The event has brought together a wide swath of technology companies like Google, Plantronics, Oracle, Sangoma and Ericsson who are all very optimistic about the potential for WebRTC to be as some describe it, “A once in a lifetime opportunity in telecom.”

One speaker at a standards panel today mentioned perhaps the biggest challenge to WebRTC is overhyping. And he is partially correct. A bigger challenge to this emerging new space may be security.

Patrick McNeil and Chad Hart of Acme Packet

This is where a player like session border control maker Acme Packet comes in. I spoke at length with Chad Hart, Director of Product Marketing and Patrick McNeil, Senior Security Engineer, CISP from the company earlier today at the show and the takeaway is they are getting ready for the second wave of WebRTC… When it gets deployed in the real-world, across network borders.

The point is that past technologies like VoIP and SIP had to deal with major regulatory issues once the technologies reached critical mass. The FCC for example put onerous 911 regulations on the VoIP market as a result of a death related to a VoIP line which didn’t support E911.

Hart says you need to get ahead of these situations as we leave phase one of adoption and head to phase 2.

Moreover, he pointed out that call centers will be some of the earliest adopters of WebRTC and will benefit from the technology a great deal and as a result they need to be ready to deal with recording and compliance issues which will have to now apply to WebRTC customer interactions.

This is where an SBC company shines and explains why the company was here and moreover, why there was so much interest in their booth.

As you might imagine, the company is evangelizing WebRTC as they stand to benefit greatly if the technology fulfills its role as a major enabler of the communications of the future. A simple way to think of WebRTC is basically open Skype which lives in the browser and doesn’t require a plugin. In other words, WebRTC could easily eliminate the need for Skype over time. I am not saying it will – after all, Skype provides many useful services such as acting an address book but you get the idea.

Acme showed an interesting demo called a “happy button” which allows a user on a website to click an icon to immediately connect with an agent while in context. Coincidentally, I recently was in the market for an SUV and none of the automobile websites allowed me to calculate my precise lease payments online. In each case I had to wait for the dealer to reach out to me. It seems they wanted me to speak with someone directly before I got a quote. As it turns out, I made a purchase before half of the dealers responded.

The “happy button” in contrast allows a user to click a button on a website during a transaction in order to be connected with an agent who is aware of the issue at hand based upon user’s browsing information. The alternative says Hart is to leave the screen, do a search for the company’s contact information, traverse an IVR tree, find an agent and potentially have to re-authenticate a second time.

All of this adds cost to the company providing the call center service when you consider the cost of the IVR, programming the IVR, the 800 number minutes and the time the agent needs to authenticate users.

Moreover, in my case at least – half the companies contacted, lost the opportunity for me to purchase from them because of spam filters or they called me back while I was busy. Keeping a buyer waiting to get a price is never a smart thing to do.

At this event Acme Packet also announced the first WebRTC to multivendor IMS interworking capability where they enabled a major tier one network operator to deploy what amounts to a WebRTC to IMS SIP gateway.

On a separate but related note, the company also discussed the release of their 6300 SBC which can scale to 200k sessions and 1M subscribers in a 3U chassis. They explain that as VoLTE rolls out and VoIP providers mature, the demand for higher capacity systems has grown. Moreover, this new platform can be 70% cheaper than purchasing multiple 4500s and supports simultaneous transcoding of 64k sessions and 32k sessions of simultaneous encryption.

McNeil will speak tomorrow on security in the world of WebRTC and it seems fairly obvious that corporations and carriers will need to be paying close attention to what he and others in the SBC space have to say about security. These companies have learned a great deal in the VoIP and SIP space and as WebRTC gets ready for its second wave, it will have to deal with some of these same issues as well.

Walmart To Go is Webvan 2.0

2012-10-09T21:18:36Z

Have we finally broken the barrier to same day delivery?

During the dotcom boom, Webvan and Peapod were going to change the world and when things went bust and both companies had to deal with the realities of massive infrastructure and overhead with little to no sales by comparison. Peapod got picked up by Stop & Shop and Webvan imploded, and is now just a Wikipedia page.

Fast forward over a decade and Amazon has made lots of noise about same delivery service. If you are a retailer, you should be scared, very scared. In fact if you are the largest retailer like Walmart, you should be especially concerned.

This of course explains why the company is delving into the same day delivery service with a few toes with its new Walmart To Go "Beta" initiative. It is interesting to note that although the company will ship a variety of merchandise the title tags on the company's associated pages say "Walmart Groceries." Looks like it may be time to update these. Partnering with UPS you will be able to get lots of fun and exciting Walmart merchandise without leaving the couch if you live in Northern Virginia, Philadelphia, Minneapolis or Silicon Valley/San Francisco.

You know what’s missing from the list? New York, Chicago and a number of other metro areas where you would think delivery services of this type would be easier to pull off.

But regardless, New York has a service like Fresh Direct which already provides delivery of groceries – similar to PeaPod. Perhaps the thought is the large cities already have competition, making it smarter to focus on wealthy neighborhoods with limited options.

The concept of same day delivery shouldn’t be too hard to pull off. After all, it is a volume and pricing game. You can get your dry cleaning delivered in a couple of days and if you stay at a hotel you can get same day laundry delivery. Assuming a warehouse is located close enough, delivery of items should be easier to handle than cleaning clothes.

The problem of course is the long-tail nature of delivering an array of TVs within a few hours. Certainly a few pairs of socks are easier to get up a flight of stairs.

As tough as the internet has been on retailers until now, they haven’t seen anything yet.

If Walmart, Amazon and a host of delivery-only competitors like Postmates and Instacart are successful, companies like Toys R Us are going to face difficult decisions. Will they partner with these last-mile companies, build their own networks or work out a deal with UPS? The issue of course boils down to logistics and how much inventory you want to have in various locations.

The challenge for retail going forward will be how much inventory do you want to carry in various warehouses and/or how well you can connect your retail stores to the shipping company’s order processing and delivery systems.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about this news is the Internet is all about speed – we can get access to infinite information without leaving our homes or offices. But when shopping, the internet slows us down as we can wait for days or even weeks to get the items we order. Now, it seems we are going to have a future where the internet could be as fast as or even faster in delivering items than it would take us to get showered, changed, into the SUV and down to the store ourselves. I feel most comfortable calling same-day-delivery via the internet, Webvan 2.0. How about you?

One last thought – many union workers fought tooth and nail to keep Walmart out of Brooklyn, New York but all they really did is harm their local community by depriving them of the 200 net jobs. All Walmart has to do now is ship product from a nearby location and have access to the same customers!

This is just another example of how free markets disrupt business in ways you can’t anticipate and the resulting unintended consequences can often be tough to swallow.

TMC Speaking at Aspect Event This Week

2012-06-18T19:22:55Z

Erik Linask pictured below, on the left

If you are going to the Aspect Customer Experience Event in Hollywood, FL this week, be sure to check out TMC’s Erik Linask who has a keynote presentation at 9:15 on Wednesday, June 20^th, 2011. He will be speaking about Creating Your Own Vision for Unified Communications and I wish I was there to hear it for myself.

Here is Erik Linask at the recent Cable Show interviewing Adara Technologies in Boston, MA

Here is the agenda on the day which Erik is speaking:

7:30 – 8:30	Breakfast
8:30 – 8:35	Welcome
8:35 – 9:15	Differentiated Value, Delivered
9:15 - 9:45	Creating Your Own Vision for Unified Communications
9:45 - 10:15	Break
10:15 – 11:15	The Expert Agenda: Trends from the Analysts
11:15 – 12:00	The Future of Customer Contact Within Your Reach
12:00 – 1:30	Lunch & Networking
Tracks	Revolutionize the Customer Experience	Deliver Collections Best Practices	Optimize Your Workforce	Maximize Your ROI: Do More with Aspect Technology	Better Together: Do More with Microsoft & Aspect Technology
1:30 – 2:10	What's the Use? Definition and Use Cases for Next Generation Customer Contact	List Management Strategies for Collections Success	Making Customer Service Soar: Alaska Airlines	Aspect^® Unified IP^®7: The Secrets of M3 Exposed	The Keys to Unified Communications
2:20 – 3:00	The Upgrade Impact: How Bizlab Uncovered Unexpected Benefits	Strategies for Better Debt Recovery	The Suite Story: Why Integration Pays	Aspect^® Unified IP^®7: The Secrets of M3 Exposed	Using SharePoint for Agent Collaboration
3:00 – 3:30	Break
3:30 – 4:10	Making Next Generation Customer Contact Real	Aspect Mashup: Collections Case Studies	Benchmark Study: Workforce Optimization in the Contact Center	Aspect^® Unified IP^®7: Dynamic Inbound	Better Together: Integrating Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Aspect's Interaction Management Platform to Solve Data and Customer Experience Challenges
4:20 – 5:00	Take Control of Your Customer Experience
5:00 – 6:30	Cocktail Reception

A Contrarian View on The Apple/Foxconn Labor Situation

2012-04-05T18:49:17Z

A few weeks back when the New York Times wrote a story regarding workers making iPhones and other devices in China who aren’t being treated very well, I wondered, this is a story? In other words, is there a person on the planet who doesn’t know that working conditions in China are far worse than they are in the US?

And I absolutely respect the right of the New York Times to run such a story – I just think it shows a broader agenda of being anti-capitalist, and anti-business. After all, we in the US have been buying Chinese products made by people in poor working conditions for decades. Why write this story now? Let’s stop for a moment and consider that if conditions in China are so poor for workers, then why are they working? In other words, they must be worse off – likely far worse off if they don’t have their Foxconn jobs.

The end result of this piece however is that wages across the manufacturing sector – starting with Apple will increase.

The problem is if you are truly worried about Chinese workers you should be concerned to see this happen because as costs for workers rise, the cost of automating gets a better return on investment. In other words if it may have taken seven years to pay back a robotics investment just a few months ago, now it may take just four years.

And guess what… When robotics becomes more prevalent, there will be less jobs meaning many of these workers will have to go back to living in conditions they escaped by working at Foxconnin the first place.

It is worth pointing out that in the US , minimum wage laws have made the ROI on self-scanning equipment at supermarkets better so guess what… There are less people working. The same sort of thing will happen in China.

Of course the situation is not so cut and dry as more and more manufacturing is moving to China meaning workers will likely have steady work for some years.

It’s worth pointing out that what will happen as a result of higher wages in China is Mexico and other countries will become a more logical place to manufacture. As I pointed out last year call center jobs in the US have been increasing because wages in India are rising – but in that case it is the free market working.

Seeking Alpha has an article out today which describes how Apple has made a brilliant move by increasing the wages of its workers because its margins are the highest in the industry. In fact their net margin is 24% while the next highest computer makers are HP and Dell at 5.6% followed by Nokia at around 4.4% and Amazon at 1.3%.

The point they make is the rest of the industry will be squeezed by this move.

The challenge with this line of thinking is if the cost of an Apple product is about twice that of a non-Apple product (of course this isn’t always the case) then these other companies can raise prices and still be far cheaper than Apple.

So while we can applaud the fact that workers in China will be faring better, lets keep in mind that abruptly changing things like inputs costs in the manufacturing sector could have far-reaching implications like inflation for the markets where Chinese good are shipped as well as the potential for more robotics to be used to eliminate the workers altogether.

To get a sense of what I mean, see how Kiva Systems robots operate - Amazon just purchased the company.

Aito Technologies Helps Carriers Leverage Sentiment Analysis

2012-03-20T20:04:19Z

In the US, some of the most challenging times for carrier sentiment had to be when comedians and shows like SNL poked fun at the iPhone for not working properly on the AT&T network. And in such situations where the carrier’s network was slammed with traffic and the company was not able to come up with a solution quickly, there probably want much the company could do to change public sentiment.

But in many cases a reactive carrier can reduce churn due to customer dissatisfaction. And this is one of the goals of Aito Technologies a company in the customer experience analytics (CEA) space. In a meeting with CEO Anssi Tauriainen I learned the company combines business and technology allowing operators to see a comprehensive picture of customers which include devices, faults and revenue. Moreover they deliver results quickly with integration times in weeks not months.

The company touts its products as being able to help carriers increase revenue. For example, by actively targeting customer groups, a customer has seen 30% better response rates. Moreover, data mining requests have dropped as much as 95% at some carriers and churn has dropped by 1% in another example.

Recently the company added Device Insight, which includes a database of 2,200 devices with their capabilities; for example OS, screen resolution, memory and connectivity. Moreover there is also Dynamic Segmentation allowing a carrier to quickly determine top data customers facing a degraded experience or VIP customers who frequently use data.

Another new addition is social network analysis allowing carriers to see changing sentiment on major social networks. This data in turn can be linked to customer acquisition and churn to determine correlations.

Additionally there is an increased focus on profitability and revenue allowing you to see gross margin by customer and lifetime customer value. This information in turn can be compared to acquisition cost which is about 150 euros in Europe. There is also the ability to link with Google maps allowing carriers to see user behavior by geographic region.

As I wrote about in my recent Acme Packet University post, communications is becoming more complicated whether we like it or not. And this complication manifests itself as myriad and ever-expanding log files which eventually turn into databases. Aito Technology can help mine these databases for treasure.

Check out a Webinar on Telecom Visibility 2.0

2012-03-20T17:41:14Z

For over 20 years I’ve been tracking Unimax a company that has been the only pure-play moves/adds/changes solutions provider to large enterprises around the globe. Andrew Hunkins was the founder/CTO/CEO throughout the years and my most memorable meetings with him were at the Harry Newton/CMP Computer Telephony EXPOs also known as CTEXPO in Los Angeles, California. A huge accomplishment for the company Hunkins founded was lasting – it’s been around since 1985!! This is a big deal.

It is worth mentioning that Hunkins has moved on from the company but he/Unimax made national news when after the Iraq war they were featured in BusinessWeek because they lost a partnership deal in France because there was a brief spat between the US and the French over the Iraq war.

You remember, when we were briefly calling French Fries, Freedom Fries and body odor French perfume – admittedly I might have been the only one speaking the latter – but I know you were thinking it.

Unimax has evolved over the years and Minnesota-based company is sponsoring a webinar on TMCnet which will discuss how organizations can increase their telecom visibility and reporting. I would have called the webinar using big data and analytics to manage your disparate PBX and communications systems across the campus and/or globe but admittedly that is a really long headline.

But you get the idea. The webinar takes place in a couple of days and thanks for working with me during this brief commercial message from our sponsor.

Chinese Nortel Hack Unconfirmed by my Sources

2012-02-16T01:33:35Z

Although reports have been swirling regarding Chinese hackers breaking into Nortel's computers for over ten years in order to steal trade secrets, I have been unable to confirm such a breach took place. I have tapped into a few high-level sources and they were unaware of anything like this happening - the internal Nortel employees would almost certainly need to know if such an attack was taking place.

After all, reports say that even Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski had a computer which was compromised.

One of the reasons Nortel went bankrupt had to do with Chinese competitors Huawei and ZTE undercutting Nortel on price for carrier wireless and other products. So it easy to understand why many would easily believe that Nortel had been hacked.

And hacks from China are not unusual - they have happened to numerous US companies and even government agencies.

But again, would you not let your company workers know if this was the case?

Siobhan Gorman has a story in the Wall Street Journal on what happened at Nortel and it seems there is enough information to make you believe the hack was real. But still, I remain skeptical that the breach if it happened was on such a massive scale. I reached out to Siobhan in order to see if there are any public documents which would enlighten us. I will advise you if I hear of anything - please drop me a line if you know of anything as well.

Will Nimble 2.0 take Social CRM Mainstream?

2012-02-14T17:01:00Z

Recently consumer products manufacturer P&G – one of the largest advertising spenders at over $9B announced it will cut its marketing headcount in-part because advertising on Facebook and Google is more efficient. The maker of Gillette and Pantene products is not alone; in-fact the business world is focusing heavily on social media including Google+ and Twitter.

But while it is understood by many web-savvy companies that social is important – how many of them are embracing social CRM? My informal analysis shows the numbers are very low meaning there could be huge room for growth.

That is of course if you don’t ascribe to the idea that it is important for companies to help shape the dialogue about themselves online. More importantly, you don’t believe that tying social media into CRM systems can boost sales and service levels and perhaps even increase productivity.

One person who believes in the power of social CRM is Nimble founder and CEO Jon Ferrara. Around 1991 or so he told me at a dinner that his new company contact management/CRM company Goldmine has lots of potential because, “There is no Lotus in the market.” Ironically, Goldmine did in fact become a major player in the space while Lotus faded from the scene.

Last year Nimble rolled out its initial cloud-based social CRM solution and there are now 30,000 users and 3,000 of them spend almost half their day on the platform. The newly released Nimble 2.0 aims to increase the first if not both of these numbers. In Ferrara’s own words, “Nimble is an integration of social listening and engagement platform, internal collaboration with sales and marketing capabilities of traditional CRM and elegance and simplicity of contact manager rolled into one easy to use system.”

He contrasts the look of Nimble – which is similar to a Facebook page to Salesforce which he says looks like a mainframe screen. Additionally, he believes that while Hootsuite is useful it’s limited because it doesn’t allow you to drill down on specific contacts.

Successful salespeople have always known that information related to a certain prospect could help increase the chance of a sale. In other words, if you know where a potential customer went to college, that information could be helpful in relationship-building which in turn could give you the edge in a competitive sales situation. Although people like to believe they purchase based on objective facts, likeability and/or trust of a salesperson is a major factor in pulling the purchasing trigger.

And one of Nimble’s objectives is to boost relationships by enabling companies to get a better overall picture of their prospective customers.

Ferrara likens Nimble 2.0 to fishing in the social river where salespeople can find a needle in a haystack. By tying in traditional CRM data, a company can ascertain which people on social networks have also downloaded documents from the corporate website. Moreover, companies can also determine who in the social stream is interested in which products.

For a few years now I have swept all my Twitter follow emails into a special folder and I’m frankly amazed at the quality of the follows on this network. Not only do I find numerous related companies I never heard of and are worthy of coverage. Often these follows turn into prospects and sometimes become new customers of TMC.

Tying these follows into a CRM system makes infinite sense if for no other reason than to justify the spend companies are making on social media.

In other words if you are to put aside the passion that Jon and I share for the future of commerce being closely aligned with social CRM, then at least you should be onboard with using an integrated Social CRM tool to evaluate the ROI of the effort your company is putting into social networks.

In using the platform I am happy to report it has proper hooks into a number of social networks including Google+. A number of other social aggregation platforms don’t yet connect to Google+ for some reason. Moreover, although I am a Nimble dabbler, not a frequent user, I find its daily email digest of job changes from my social networks very useful.

Jon also feels his company’s integrated solution is better suited to the world of social-CRM than a CRM system with social bolted on. While this is a logical statement, I wouldn’t count out Oracle, Salesforce or any other CRM vendors as social integration should be straightforward. Sure, some will always do it better and Nimble is a pioneer but that doesn’t mean the CRM world won’t be watching like a hawk and emulating like a cheetah.

Nimble is free for standalone personal users and business and multi-users can sign up for $15 per user per month. At that price it is certainly worth trying.

Need a New Car? Win a Mustang at ITEXPO in Miami Next Week

2012-01-27T15:48:11Z

I think I may have one of the best jobs in the world. I admit it is a bit ADHD-inducing as I get involved in lots of areas from new media to the latest technologies in the market as I run this major media company which is TMC. Not only do I get help influence tens of millions of people online I also get to host live events where I meet many of the readers who frequent my blog and TMCnet - the main web portal of TMC where I am CEO.

But the most exciting part of my job comes twice a year when I give away a car to an unsuspecting attendee at ITEXPO. Next week - Friday Feb 3rd at 1:45 pm at the Miami Beach Convention Center, I get to give the next car away and it will be a Ford Mustang. In order to be eligible to win you need to pick up a card at registration and get it stamped by all the sponsors of the car giveaway.

Thank you sponsors for making these giveaways possible. If I were an attendee at a show I would want a mix of solid education, a chance to network with peers, see the leading exhibitors in the space but also to have some fun and that is what events like our various receptions and giveaways are supposed to provide.

The TMC team and I look forward to hosting you next week. Thank you all in advance for coming to our event and hats off to the TMC team who is managing not only ITEXPO but a host of collocated and unparallelled events such as Super WiFi Summit, MSP World, our SUITS technology patents event, M2M Evolution, Mobile LATAM, HTML5 Summit, Cloud Communications Expo, The Channel Vision Expo (CVx), Business Video, Asterisk 123, 4GWE, StartupCamp5, Avaya Tech on Tap, the Blackberry Hackathon, SIP trunking workshop, business development workshop, telecom reseller week, to name a few.

http://itexpo.tmcnet.com/sip-trunking-workshop/miami/