Call center managers realize the value of a customer and the danger of letting a customer hang up while still angry or frustrated. So they are interested in processes and technologies that can help them identify calls that are about to go bad and escalate them before it's too late.
NICE Systems is one of the companies that make technology for this purpose. I received a pitch from their public-relations folks, and it makes a great stand-alone rationale for this kind of technology. So I thought it was worth quoting most of the pitch right here verbatim:
"Next time you call your bank, cable or phone company 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 (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 systemwide."
AB -- 11/28/05
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