Hope you had a nice weekend! It’s raining here, and pretty miserable. We’ve been out for awhile due to an issue close, but should be back in action this week. Based on some news from RSS feeds, it looks like the day is getting off to a nice start, news-wise. And yes, that is a picture of William Shatner in his Star Trek days. And yes, this post mentions William Shatner as he relates to voice biometrics.

* BlackBerry announced its new BlackBerry Bold 9000, a new smartphone equipped with 3G capabilities. BlackBerry is one of a line of companies that have beat the new iPhone to the 3G finish line. Apple’s new version of the iPhone is expected to see a release this summer. The Bold phone is, “banking on the … sleek appearance to win over executives and field workers who’ve grown tired of sacrificing style for functionality.” I think that’s PR-speak for, “Please buy this instead of the iPhone. We made it look cooler.” [CRN]

* My favorite British pharmacy, Boots, announced it has chosen Intervoice to develop its natural language self-service application. [TMC]

* Another woman has joined the high ranks in the speech technology field — Susan Almeida will serve as vice president of global services for speech analytics provider CallMiner. You go, girl. [EarthTimes]

* Speech technology for Danish people. Yay! [PR.com]

* Sensory’s BlueGenie Lite = speech synthesis for Bluetooth devices. Todd Mozer, Sensory’s CEO, says in the article: “We’re able to replace all these awkward presses and beeping with speech.” Awkward presses and beeps - GONE. [Wireless Week]

* Every employee’s worst nightmare: Companies’ HR departments using voice biometrics to detect lying about sick days. Don’t ask me what ’skivers’ are; but it’s another funny British word to say. [Birmingham Post]

* Mother’s Day was yesterday, but I just found this article today. It’s about cool presents to buy your mom. My favorite is the ‘SmartShopper’, which uses voice recognition to store grocery lists. Great - groceries! Just what every mom wants to be reminded of on her special day. I’m also imagining the totally awesome possibilities regarding how this device could seriously mess up utterances. [The Sudbury Star]

* When I was growing up, my mom’s idea of enhancing my cognitive abilities was reading to me, and letting me watch PBS. Today? “Smart toys.” Experts say the toys, “contain technological enhancements that enable a child to form dynamic, emotional relationships. Smart toys incorporate microchips, voice recognition and wireless capability so that toy and child can spend quality time together.” This is so incredibly sad. Another ‘Baby Einstein’? I hope not, because it has been proven that ‘Baby Einstein’ does absolutely nothing that would make your child more intelligent. [The Telegraph]

* Umm…apparently William Shatner has an award called ‘William Shatner’s Heartbeat of America’ that he gives away. This year it went to a voice biometrics company. Voice biometrics: the heartbeat of America. [PR Web]

At last year’s G-Force in San Diego, the company unveiled its Dynamic Contact Center (DCC), bringing the contact center beyond the phone to include customer contacts that come in from the Web, email, chat, fax, text message, and any other mode imaginable. Not to be outdone, this year, its big launch is the Intelligent Customer Front Door (ICFD), taking DCC a step further to bring a level of personalization to those interactions and tying them all together through front- and back-end business processes.
In just a week or two since first announcing the solution, it has already attracted big-name partners like Nuance, TuVox, and Voxify, all lending technologies to the effort. Interest has already built among the user base as well, with Air France, Belgacom, and T-Mobile among the first to sign on.
What makes ICFD so special is that it promises to make customer service convenient, consistent, personalized, responsive, and proactive; something badly needed in an age when customers have rising expectations from their company interactions, are super-empowered with information, and have the propensity to tell the world about good or bad experiences through things like blogs (Ed: See our user reviews for proof), and social networks. Companies have no less of a responsibility to learn and know as much as they can about their customers, and can leverage that through the ICFD.
As Brian Bischoff, Genesys’ vice president of voice platform sales and solutions told me, it’s all about eliminating customer frustrations in an age when 44 percent of customers who stopped doing business with a company did so because of a bad customer contact center experience.
Gone are the days when an IVR can contain a caller. Do that, and it¹s not just ‘Click’, but ‘Click and I’m gone’. ICFD could be a just the shot in the arm I need as a customer to not only continue doing business with a company, but to also walk in the front door and do more business with the company.

San Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States, and the cultural gateway to the American Southwest. It’s also home to this year’s G-Force, Genesys Telecommunications’ annual customer conference. As the first day of the conference comes to a close, I can’t help but feel a sense of novelty. Compliments of Genesys, I have my first metal belt buckle (with the Genesys logo emblazoned on the front, of course), a cowboy hat, and bandana, none of which I have any idea how I’m going to get on a plane. (Ed: Wear it on the plane!)

I also took in a bullriding competition, armadillo races, and a real Texas BBQ, and probably ate more ribs in one night than I will all year. But all the cool stuff aside, there’s much more to the conference than Texas-style fun. There’s a lot of work going on as well.

With more than 1,300 attendees from all over the world, it’s the largest G-Force ever, according to the Genesys people. This year’s event has seen a large number of Latin American customers (nearly doubled from last year), indicating just how large the call center industry is growing in that part of the world. In Brazil, Internet service provider UOL is taking more than 1 million calls a month from the country’s 33.1 million Internet users, and its biggest challenge is dealing with rapid growth using outdated technologies and poor system design. It turned to Genesys to bring all its customer-facing applications (phone, email, Web chat, etc…) together, and has achieved staggering first-call resolution, proper call routing, cost reductions, worker productivity, and sales growth as a result. Unibanco, a Brazilian bank, is handling 10 million calls a month with just 6,000 agents using Genesys systems.
G-Force is an international event, and American, Canadian, European, Australian, and Asian companies are also represented in full force. The one lesson from all this: No matter where in the world it may be, call center technologies are alive, well, and thriving. From Panama to the Philippines, Rio de Janeiro to the Rio Grande, may the G-Force be with them.

The downshot of being a reporter new to the industry: when I write a feature, I have to research from the ground-up. That’s fine when I’m writing about a specialized area like translation/localization, or a new area like multimodality.

But when I write about contact centers, which sometimes seem like the locus of speech technology, there are occasionally stones that I don’t always manage to tip over. Pardon the tired metaphor.

I spoke with Voxify yesterday for a news story. The CEO, John Gengarella, is very confident of his technology, and his customer list is impressive.

Basically, Voxify delivers non-static applications such that call flows, for instance, vary as per the needs of individual users.

“So if one guy is writing static VXML apps, he’s got to write ridiculous amounts of code for all the potential traversals of that call flow,” says Gengarella. “If you’re dynamically generating code, you’re literally navigating the application in real time. So I may change something based on the caller experience or some awareness I have of you, and I don’t have to write new code for that. (Voxify) dynamically generates the call flow based on who I’m talking to and data I have on your personal profile.”

I have to admit, this is not something I’m familiar with. I’m chalking it up to my own inexperience. But if any of you out there have opinions or insight into this methodology, I’d welcome your comments.

Blogging has been sporadic this week; we’re closing the May issue in a few days so we’re completely slammed.

I’m finishing a feature on localization and translation for speech systems. As part of my research, I spoke with somebody about the Men’s Wearhouse IVR.

In the interests of good journalism, I pulled a list of phone numbers from the Men’s Wearhouse Web site because I wanted to listen to the Spanish language IVR. Online Shopping Customer Relations, Store Relations, Perfect Fit Program. I figured they’d all route me into an automated contact center.

Except every phone number I dialed, I got a customer service representative. I hung up after calling the first two numbers, then felt bad (these people are human after all) and apologetically told the last three reps that I’d mis-dialed.

I called the number for the store locater, certain I’d get some directory assistance application. Instead, I got a guy named Tony. “Ah,” I said. “Wrong number.”

I dialed customer relations again and a rep answered. “This is an odd request,” I said. “But can you route me to your IVR?”

“The what?”

“The interactive voice resp–the little robot contact center thingy?”

“Uh. Let me transfer you to another representative.”

The other representative answered immediately.

“I’m trying to reach your automated contact center,” I said. “Do you guys have one?”

“But, ah…why. Why would you want to do that?”

“That’s a really good question,” I said. “I just want to hear the prompts I guess.”

“The what?”

“The…I just want to hear the way it’s worded.”

“Let me transfer you to somebody in telecommunications.”

My journey ended in someone’s answering machine.

So I basically spent thirty minutes on the phone talking to real people in an effort to access a speech IVR.

I think I need a vacation.

What happens when a company kicks its call recorders to the scrap yards? Where do those quality monitoring systems go to die? The contact center cemetery! Well, most likely not. But today, a company called VirtualLogger announced a new Up-Grade Program for contact centers wishing to ditch their old systems in favor of hosted solutions. In addition to getting cash for their old gear, VirtualLogger promises it will never make its customers pony up extra cash for version upgrades of its programs. Sound too good to be true? We’re guessing it might be — why? Because we hear this is what happens when you get rid of those cherished call recording and quality monitoring systems:

Over the past month, I have been investigating agent-assisted IVRs, and working through some of the implications the technology may have on the contact center/IVR space. Today, I decided to give them a try. One company that uses the guided IVR, Spiegel, talked to me during an interview about their experience with the IVR, which is provided by a vendor named Spoken Communications. I called up Spiegel’s toll-free number (1.800.345.4500), was greeted by a standard welcome message, given the choice of four prompts, and…..was put on hold for a live agent.

I was not expecting this! Though Spiegel owns a variety of other retail companies - I tried two others, as well - I never got to experience the company’s guided IVR. According to both Spiegel and Spoken, I would be greeted by a simple How can I help you? (natural language! yay!), but no such message popped up. So, what’s the deal? Was I horribly misinformed, or did I call the wrong Spiegel Brands company?

I really wanted to test out the guided system, but have come up empty-handed. If anyone has information about how to access the guided IVR for Spiegel, let me know. When I try it out again, I’ll be sure to post with my review. Until then, see the post below for editorial assistant Ryan Joe’s recounting of his mother’s IVR nightmare.

Let’s hope the airline in question cleans up its act! Or else face the wrath of Mrs. Joe.

When my mother books a plane ticket, she’ll voluntarily get herself bumped in exchange for a later first class ticket on a later flight, plus a free flight anywhere in the nation.

So my mother swung this little scam on a United Airlines flight from JFK to San Francisco, exchanging a 5pm departing flight for a first class flight leaving at 6am and et cetera et cetera. She bussed back to my apartment to gloat.

Too bad the 6am flight got canceled and the airline put my mother on a 7pm flight, which we didn’t learn about until we got the email at 9pm. So, time to call the airline! Yes! Own that IVR!

Except automated self-service doesn’t work particularly well with the peculiar nature of my mother’s request—that is, getting onto another flight with a first class ticket that, technically, she didn’t pay for.

“So it’s not letting me speak to an operator,” my mother said. I was looking at the Gethuman website.

“You have to actually say ‘Operator,’ I think.”

“Operator,” my mother said. “The stupid thing just transferred me to another menu. Operator. Operator. Operator. Operator. Operator! OPERATOR! Oh Christ. Op. Er. Ate. Tor.” And then she did this:

Which was kind of awesome.

It’s funny how corporations with a strong interest in high customer satisfaction still seem go out of their way to commission a labyrinthine IVR system that mostly ticks people off.

Over the course of two hours, my mother spoke with three operators. None of whom, they claimed, actually had the authority to confirm a different flight.