Recently in Call Center and CRM Category

I just received this story pitch for Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine discussing how their technology has an "emotion detection" capability, so if an agent raises his voice or swears at a customer, a call center supervisor can be notified.

Scary concept considering how monitored the agents already are. I would NOT want to be a call center agent, I'll tell you that. If you have the ability to make personal calls, you'd better not start any arguments with your spouse or else have your conversation flagged for playback by the supervisor. It was an intriguing concept that I thought was worth sharing.

Here was the pitch:
Ever wonder what the person on the other end of the line is doing? Are they really focused on helping you? Or, are they saying "uh, huh…uh huh…yeah…yeah" while playing solitaire - or instant messaging - or (shudder to gasp) surfing the web for, er, for diplomatic purposes, let's just say "explicit sites". Just when you raise your voice they start to pay attention.

Customer service is very important - No matter what industry you are in.

NICE Systems recognizes this concept and has redefined the call center and addressed the concepts to taking customer service and consumers requests to the next level.

Basically - a call that comes into a call center (using NICE Systems technology), prints out like a lie detector! If a caller is angry or upset, the manager of the call center can see it immediately on screen!!!

Next time you call your bank, cable or phone company or any other call center and lose your cool, a manager on the other end will know about it before your anger hits its peak. And your call will be not only recorded, but saved for training purposes and corporate analysis. Emotion detection is the latest technology from NICE Systems www.nice.com (NASDAQ: NICE), the world leader in telephone call digital recording systems, serving 67 of the Fortune 100, including 10 of the top 10 banks, capturing 50 million customer calls per day. (Anytime you hear "This call is being recorded for quality assurance purposes," chances are NICE is recording that call.)

When your voice hits a certain decibel level or if you use harsh or foul language (or the name of a competitor), NICE's call monitoring system will issue an alert to call center managers that there's a problem. This can bring speedier intervention by a manager -- and swifter resolution of your issue. Why? Companies spend a fortune to acquire customers, and they'll do everything they can to hold onto them.

Like all recorded calls, your angry call will be digitized and stored on a server, where it can be batched with other angry calls, searched by keyword and emailed as a sound file among company managers. The idea? Find out what makes callers angry -- and address it system wide. The results can have great influence in changing business practices, learning about what is working and what isn't and to get a sense of quality of operations.

HEAT 8.3 now integrates with FrontRange ITSM and supports .NET. I was informed about this news last week, but I have been busily preparing for my speaking session at Internet Telephony Expo and trying to complete some reviews. In any event, considering FrontRange has several leading CRM solutions (GoldMine is another one besides HEAT), I thought this news was blog-worthy. So let me share what Frontrange shared with me. First, Frontrange told me that this is the first HEAT product based on the .NET platform. It enables ITSM solutions/modules to tacked right on.

FrontRange Solutions HEAT 8.3 is the latest version of their Service Management solution. Frontrange stated, "HEAT 8.3 allows customers to provide top quality stand-alone service management and to integrate easily with modules from the new IT Service Management product (ITSM). Both HEAT 8.3 and ITSM 5.01 from FrontRange are designed to improve the performance of IT and support organizations by providing functionality fully compatible with ITIL, a standard for service management best practices. HEAT 8.3 is available to current users and new customers immediately."

Further, their website states, "Since it is built on the Microsoft .NET platform, the solution offers advanced technology capabilities, and is designed to become the most integrated ITIL standards-based solution in the marketplace. The new FrontRange IT Service Management Solution allows all applications to work from a single database and easily exchange information - simplifying reporting across all levels of business."

I've always been fascinated with word spotting analysis. -- You know, the ability for the NSA to overhear you say, "Let's kill the president" on the telephone and then mysteriously three hours later the Secret Service shows up at your door. Not that that has ever happened to me. : )

Ok, maybe that scenario is a bit mythical, but the NSA & CIA do have some interesting technology to eavesdrop on conversations and perform wordspotting.

Reading this email and press release below about a private firm's wordspotting technology has me wonding how many years ahead the NSA is technology-wise. Definitely food for thought...

Here's the email/release.

As you know, call centers record hundreds, sometimes thousands of calls each day. There is a great treasure trove of information contained within these calls that can potentially impact every thing from customer service to the company's overall business strategy. Unfortunately, companies often struggle to extract the specific information they are looking for in a cost-efficient manner, and this knowledge often remains untapped.

About Nexidia
Nexidia is a leading provider of highly scalable, highly accurate audio mining and speech analytics software. By transforming audio data into actionable intelligence, Nexidia allows both government agencies and commercial enterprises to leverage untapped information previously locked away in audio files. Based on years of research and development, NEXminer's phonetic engine is the only tool that allows the user to search on proper names, places, industry terms and jargon without extensive training and cumbersome dictionaries. And unlike the speech-to-text and word-spotting methodologies, Nexidia's phonetic approach makes it the fastest, most accurate, and highly scalable tool for audio analytics and search on the market today.

Microsoft in an attempt to try and promote more sales of the Microsoft Office Suite, is attempting to integrate third-party CRM packages such as Siebel into Microsoft Outlook and other parts of the suite.

Check out the full Cnet story here:
Microsoft turns to Elixir for Office boost | CNET News.com

In keeping with my last blog post about Parus' speech-recognition IVR, I just got this release a few minutes ago I thought I'd share. Similar to Parus Interactive, VoiceGenie also supports SIP and the VoXML standards.

Toronto, Canada – January 17, 2005. VoiceGenie Technologies Inc., the proven performance leader in standards-based software platforms powering customer contact solutions and next-generation networks, today announced record sales results for the company’s fiscal year, ending December 31, 2004. This announcement follows VoiceGenie’s strong Q4 results, recording the highest sales volume and revenue in the company’s history, and continues VoiceGenie’s push and recognition as the leading provider of next-generation communications platforms.

VoiceGenie powers some of the largest VoiceXML and VoIP deployments in the world and successfully manages millions of customer calls daily. Our customers include leading organizations such as AIG, AT&T, Air Canada, Bell Canada, Bellsouth, Citigroup, France Telecom, Merck, Mobilkom Austria, Orange, SBC Technology, SCANA, Scotiabank, Teleperformance Interactive, Verizon, Vesta, and others. VoiceGenie partners with best-of-breed product and service providers such as AudioCodes, Audium, Brooktrout, IBM, Intel, Loquendo, Nuance, Nuasis, Oracle, ScanSoft/SpeechWorks, Sun, Telisma, TuVox, Unisys, Vicorp, VoiceObjects, Vocent and more. For more information, visit http://www.voicegenie.com.

MCI announced a new conferencing service that leverages local access numbers across the entire globe. Personally, with VoIP bringing international calls per minute pricing way down, I don't see the need for this. But I suppose a Fortune 1000 company that does a lot of international conference calls with participants in multiple countries could benefit somewhat, especially if all the participants are from your own company. If the participants are customers then all you are doing is saving your customers a buck or two for the cost of the call. I suppose that shows you care about your customers bottom line as well.

Anyway, here's the release:
MCI is introducing a conferencing service that makes conducting global business easier than ever before. The Global Meet Conferencing solution enables international particpants to use only one local number; now there's no more need for users to worry about calling cards or having to deal with multiple numbers. And because it's a local number, and not an international toll number, companies can reduce their phone bill and broaden participation.

Already the number one conferencing provider worldwide (TeleSpan), this announcement further establishes MCI global leadership in conferencing.
While other companies may also offer local numbers, none matches the simplicity and convenience of having one number, one passcode and one bridge.

Below is a press release detailing MCI's new Global Meet Conferencing capabilities. If you are interested in learning more about Global Meet Conferencing or setting up an interview with MCI or an industry analyst, feel free to call me or my colleague Kenneth Li at 312-836-2900.

MCI, Inc. (NASDAQ: MCIP) is a leading global communications provider, delivering innovative, cost-effective, advanced communications connectivity to businesses, governments and consumers. With the industry's most expansive global IP backbone, based on the number of company-owned points of presence, and wholly-owned data networks, MCI develops the converged communications products and services that are the foundation for commerce and communications in today's market. For more information, go to www.mci.com.

Salesforce.com sent me a package today containing a letter that states, "It took
four and a half years to reach 100,000 subscribers. Just 16 months later,
we are proud to tell you that we have surpassed 200,000 subscribers."

Congrats Salesforce.com!

They informed me in the letter that their subscriber numbers and financial results are scheduled for February 17th. If I remember, I'll try and post the numbers here in my blog.

To commemorate passing the 200,000 subscriber mark, Salesforce.com included 100 Grand... 100 Grand chocolate candy bars that is. Though I don't know why they just didn't send two 100 Grand candy bars. 100K + 100K = 200K, right? Instead they sent me 9 chocolate 100 Grand candy bars! Maybe they were afraid I'd think them too cheap if they only sent two?

And oh, by the way, this is just great!! Now how am I supposed to remain an objective journalist when ironically I am in the middle of reviewing the Salesforce.com application for an article within Customer Interaction Solution Magazine? Chocolate is the one thing that can turn a so-so review into a glowing review! I cannot resist chocolate. So if you want a positive review, just send me chocolate.

I am kidding of course. No amount of chocolate can taint my objectivity, or turn a bad product review into a good one. But it can't hurt to send me chocolate anyway, right?

FrontRange Solution's IT Service Management products is attracting new partners both in the U.S. and abroad. Detailed in the news release below, FRS has signed up UK-based Orb Data as a partner reseller. It is significant to note that Orb Data will be integrating FrontRange's ITSM suite with IBM's Tivoli enterprise management products.

here's the release:
Orb Data views FrontRange's ITSM products as being the final piece of a seamless, end-to-end service management solution for customers. This may be an indication of things to come as the channel investigates the value of FRS' modular solution, designed to improve the performance and management of the IT service desk by integrating industry best practices with processes for better management, and improving documentation of those processes.

About FrontRange Solutions
FrontRange Solutions develops award-winning software and solutions that are used by more than 130,000 companies and 1.2 million users worldwide to manage a wide variety of business relationships and provide exceptional service. FrontRange product families, designed specifically for small- to mid-sized enterprises and distributed enterprise organizations include: GoldMine® for business relationship management, team-based contact management and sales forces automation solutions; and, HEAT® for complete service management, including Help Desk, Knowledge Management, Asset Management and Service Level Management. Customers representing 44 percent of the Fortune 100 and 76 percent of the FTSE 100, include Coca-Cola, Shell Oil, Prudential Securities, Électricité de France, Mack Trucks, Campbell Soup, Avaya, Bechtel Corp, Bank of America, and Turner News Network.
For more information, call (800) 776-7889 or visit www.frontrange.com.

I have an interesting story to tell, along with a company whose technology I recently discovered, that may help prevent the embarrassment and inconvenience I suffered as a result of my credit card being declined. It all started just the other day when I attempted to use my Sony VISA card to make a purchase at a grocery store and the clerk told me that my credit card was declined. How embarrassing is that? (Embarrassment #1) I knew I had plenty of credit available, but rather than hold up the line I simply paid with another card. My wife also told me the Sony card was declined earlier in the day. I then called Sony VISA and after entering in my account number the auto-attendant told me that I was being transferred to Sony's Security and Anti-Fraud division. "Great, what's this? Did someone steal my credit card number?" I thought to myself. The automated system spoke a few transactions to me and asked if they were valid or not and using speech recognition it determined if I said "yes" or "no". On one of the transactions, it said "SUNOCO, category Automobile Fuel for $1". Hmmm, I never charge gasoline for only $1 or make any credit card charges for $1, for that matter. I know credit card scammers often "test" credit card numbers with small amounts to see if the number is valid, so I thought for sure my credit card was stolen. Well, as it turns out that after speaking to a Sony representative, he told me that gas stations do things a little differently -- that they only charge a small amount, such as $1 to make sure the card is valid and then batch process the actual amount at the end of the month. So that $1 charge was indeed valid for a $40 gas purchase I recently made. So if it's not fraudulent activity on my card, then why was my card blocked twice? So I asked him why my card was declined and he then proceeded to ask me about several purchases, including a Dell PC (business expense), a Sony PC (personal expense), and a few others. I told him they were all valid purchases and he said, "Ok, you're all set". I said, "What do you mean I am all set? You mean my card will work now?" "Yes sir, you are all set now." Great, thanks a lot Sony VISA. Thanks for calling me to tell me you were blocking my card from any purchases! I was a little annoyed that they setup their "fraudulent activity filters" just as aggressively as I set my Outlook spam filters (inside joke). Now, I understand the need to prevent fraud, but if you're going to put a block on my card, then at least call me. I've received similar calls from other credit companies in the past wanting to verify transactions. Well, here's the problem. Credit card companies do not have the call center resources to contact every customer of theirs any time they detect fraudulent activity. It's very cost prohibitive to have enough call center agents to make those outbound calls. They have to pay for the labor of the call center agents as well as the cost of the call. I guess they're damned if they don't call me to check for fraud and damned if they do since it affects their profit margins. It seems now that some will err on the side of caution and decline your card until you contact them. Not very nice if you ask me. Now if only an automated system would make proactive outbound calls to notify me when they detect fraudulent activity on my card this would have never of happened. (Reminds me of the quote from Woody Woodpecker: "If Woody had done 'such and such' this would have never of happened") Maybe it could even try email, or SMS, if I cannot be reached by phone? Ahhh, but such a product exists! And of all people, my wife brought this company to my attention. Boy, I cover VoIP and the CRM/call center industry for a living and my wife finds this company? Embarrassment #2! Ok, I wasn't really embarrassed, since my wife is one smart cookie. Besides, even with my big Irish pride, I can't know everything, right? The really funny thing is that Adeptra is in the same town that I work in - Norwalk, CT. Boy, they were right under my nose the whole time and I never knew about them. I should just hang up my journalistic cap now in shame. (Embarrassment #3). Anyway, the company she told me about is called Adeptra. They have an automated outbound system with speech recognition technology that they like to call, "Leading the revolution in auto-resolution". If Sony had used this technology, I would have received an automated call and I could have resolved the issue immediately as opposed to waiting for my card to be declined and call my credit card company. Adeptra delivers time-sensitive information to customers not only via voice but also via text (SMS), fax, as well as e-mail, to help credit card-issuers push information out to their customers on any personal communication device. Several major bank companies have implemented Adeptra'ss two-way interactive program including Bank One, Chase, Fleet, and Wells. According to Adeptra's website, only 80 to 90 percent of the flagged-for-verification transactions are proven legitimate, according to Adeptra President Vytas Kisielius. However, it's the speed in which the verification process can be completed that makes the managed service appealing to credit card companies. Adeptra states that the process is completely automated which alleviates the credit card-holder of any possible embarrassment if/when he or she does purchase something about which they may not wish to discuss with a live operator. They even cite an example: "kind of like the way that a Playboy subscription arrives in an indiscernible brown packet by mail". On the collections side, it also saves possessors of delinquent accounts from feelings of judgment, responding to an automated voice or e-mail rather than to a live agent. This results in a reduction of collections calls hang-ups, and it limits the time spent by live employees trying to track down delinquent accounts. Instead, according to Kisielius, Adeptra will do it more quickly and more cheaply. Adeptra is a great solution not just for detecting possibly fraudulent credit card activity and contacting the credit card customer, but it has other applications as well, including payment collections, travel information (flight is delayed), or performing proactive marketing offers. Adeptra claims 65% increase in fraud found per day with the ability for card issuers to reach twice as many cardholders to verify transactions. They also quote a 900% increase in small balance collections on their home page and reduce delinquencies by 55%. A list of benefits of Adeptra’s Managed Service include: - Reduces costs associated with call center operations - Contacts customers faster, providing resolution sooner - Assures quality, compliance, and consistency of customer contacts - Increases contact rates and penetration into the portfolio - Optimizes human resources by applying them to the correct account profile - Accommodates peak load or contingency volumes effortlessly, on demand - Improves delinquency and charge-off performance, adding cash flow - Mitigates risk associated with technology acquisitions through a managed service approach - Eliminates capital investment and dependency on IT staffing or funding. Representative Applications and Key Benefits in Consumer Risk: Debt collections - Treatment within any delinquency category (based on your segmentation) - Capture of new revenue-generating opportunities (e.g. small balance, over limit) - Handling of peak-load volumes on demand - Providing capacity for contingency or business continuity planning - Handling of bad-debt recovery (first or third party) Listen to a sample collections call. Marketing - Card activation, welcome calls, returned cards, opt-in sales, or cross/up-selling Listen to a sample marketing call. Fraud prevention - Locates customers to verify fraud sooner than traditional methods - Penetrates lower score bands to stop higher-value fraudulent cases - Contacts customers upon card reissue to minimize account take-over exposure Listen to a sample fraud prevention call. According to Adeptra to get started, they will assess your operation and document the ROI and cost justification then they will suggest a pre-production routine with benchmarks and measures. Finally, they integrate your data via AdeptraLink (or you can do this yourselves). If you are the financial sector, whether it's banking, credit cards, etc. or even an outbound call center looking to leverage speech recognition technology to make outbound marketing campaigns, then you should go check out some of Adeptra's multimedia demos on Adeptra's website. You may just be able to add cost efficiencies to your call center.