Someone spotted my recent word-spotting blog entry (pun intended) and emailed me about anouther word-spotting solution. In my previous blog entry, I joked about the CIA and NSA being able to eavesdrop and perform wordspotting on conversations. Well, if I am reading the press release correctly, it appears that the CIA is using (shhh!!! don't tell anyone) CallMiner for word spotting. Actually, technically the CIA is investing in In-Q-Tel which just signed an agreement with CallMiner. But this sounds like one of those "wink wink" jobs where the CIA is indeed working with CallMiner but through a third-party (In-Q-Tel).
Anyway, here's an excerpt of his email: followed by the press release.
"CallMiner goes beyond word-spotting to understand context of the discussions.
Because 100% accurate speech-to-text at commercial-necessary speeds is still a
pipe dream, knowing context is critical to discerning what is really being
discussed…
It’s still early, but in addition to the government endorsement, CallMiner also won the key private industry partner bakeoffs. See Continental Witness Callminer Speech Analytics"
Hmmm, understands context. So it can figure out if I say "Angelie Jolie is da' bomb" vs. "I want to bomb Angelie Jolie's house"? Interesting..
He also point me to this recent release:
CallMiner Announces Agreement With In-Q-Tel for Speech
Analytics Technology
Tuesday February 8, 10:51 am
ET
FORT MYERS, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 8, 2005--CallMiner Inc., a leading provider of speech analytics software designed to uncover business intelligence from recorded calls, today announced it has signed a strategic investment and development agreement with In-Q-Tel, a private venture group funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In-Q-Tel joins existing CallMiner investors Inflexion Partners, Intersouth Partners, and Village Ventures. Financial terms of the agreement are not disclosed but include enhancements to CallMiner's speech analytics toolset.
"CallMiner's state of the art technology for mining information from recordings offers a robust set of applications to gain insight into recorded interactions," said Gilman Louie, President and CEO of In-Q-Tel. "We have tapped CallMiner's expertise in the development of speech analytics applications to serve in the United States national security interest. In-Q-Tel is excited to support CallMiner and benefit from their progress in speech analytics."
Every year, hundreds of millions of recordings are made for quality and statutory requirements. The recorded data is largely ignored since the economics of manual listening is prohibitive, or the volumes of calls render the task impossible. CallMiner's technology solves this by using state-of-the-art speech recognition and patent pending conversion technologies to listen to recorded phone conversations to create minable databases. Without CallMiner's technology, this data is inaccessible.
"We aim to create more context and more intelligence to both enterprise and government organizations from our speech analytics suite," said Jeff Gallino, CEO of CallMiner. Partnering with In-Q-Tel to bring value to the US government broadens our leadership position in the speech analytics market."
About CallMiner
CallMiner is a leading developer of solutions that assist contact centers in the analysis of recorded calls. CallMiner's core application automates the process of converting calls into searchable text and statistics for mining and gathering business intelligence. CallMiner's advanced tool set enables contact center managers and executives to conduct ad-hoc queries and analyses of agent and customer interactions, while providing insight into what customers are saying and how agents are responding. Since CallMiner's tools are easy to use, managers in marketing, sales, customer service and other organizations can now analyze mission critical information contained in recorded calls in real-time. Leading institutional investors including Inflexion Partners, Intersouth Partners, and Village Ventures backs CallMiner. For additional information about CallMiner, Inc. visit www.callminer.com, or call 239-573-9670.
About CallMiner Application Suite
The CallMiner Analytics software suite enables call centers to rapidly identify, target and report what was said in recorded calls. Without CallMiner, critical business intelligence remains inaccessible. The CallMiner suite is installed alongside existing call recording hardware and can convert any volume of recorded calls to relational databases for analysis and reporting. The CallMiner application suite enables analysis of 100% of call center recordings without the need to manually listen to calls, effectively eliminating a roadblock to synthesize potentially valuable information. CallMiner's applications provide companies with insight into to what customers are saying and provide management with visibility to potential issues and opportunities residing within existing calls data. Analysis of agent/customer interactions provides actionable intelligence for management to help reduce call center operational costs, and provide a better customer experience.
About In-Q-Tel
In-Q-Tel is a private, independent, not-for-profit venture group funded by the CIA. Launched in 1999, In-Q-Tel's mission is to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge information technologies that serve United States national security interests. Working from an evolving strategic blueprint that defines the CIA's critical information technology needs, In-Q-Tel engages with entrepreneurs, established companies, researchers and venture capitalists to deliver technologies that pay out in superior intelligence capabilities for the CIA and the larger Intelligence Community. Learn more at http://www.in-q-tel.org.
