We are pleased to share this very good article by John Stepp from InsideCTI about The Future of Video in the Contact Center. There’s very few contents about video contact centers but technology is ready for the next big thing for human communications and businesses.

By John Stepp, InsideCTI

When I was on the phone recently with my website provider, I really would have liked to have had a video connection. I am certain that I could have gotten more out of the call if it was video. At least it was a real time call and not through e-mail. The voice inflections gave me enough doubt to go ahead and pursue an alternate provider. Then again, video might have given my web site provider the ability to instill the confidence necessary for me not to pursue and alternative provider. And that is the point. Sometimes the best way to communicate is through video.

Someday our one on one communications will be mostly video. Pinpointing that exact time is difficult, but my proposition is that it will be sooner rather than later. Once the transition is in full swing, contact centers will already be fully video operable. Even today, there are some trends that will make video communications between callers and agents viable for many.

Some of the trends are:

• Inexpensive Video Services Available on any Computer
• Smartphones and Tablets with Front and Rear Cameras
• Push Technologies to Computers and Mobile devices
• A Growing Comfort Level with Video Communications
• The Greater Collaborative Experience with Video

Inexpensive Video Services Available on any Computer

With free, freemium and low cost access to video communications, more and more people are taking the plunge and communicating with friends and family over video. The new adoption of video within social media makes video calling extremely easy, eliminating the need for users to download and configure software. So just about anyone that wants to can join a service and start seeing the person on the other side. It might not be the “immersive” HD experience that expensive telepresence units have, but it sure beats voice only. And many of the “immersive” HD providers are beginning to offer extremely low cost personal clients for the home and office which could be expanded to handle video sessions for contact centers and important clients.

Smartphones with Front and Rear Cameras

Do you ever with you could just show someone your problem versus trying to describe it over the phone? This is where the smartphone can be your anytime, anywhere portal to your balky device, or stalled lawnmower or your impossible to understand assembly instructions. The shortage of strong reliable 3G and 4G/LTE signals plus the growing bandwidth charges and the throttling of bandwidth by mobility providers are potential roadblocks. But video from mobile devices is already happening and will grow to the point that it is as inexpensive as today’s voice only charges. If I can show you what is going on or what I want by pulling a smartphone out of my pocket, it just makes things easier for everybody. Customer satisfaction, first call resolution rates and speed of resolution will all be enhanced as mobile video integrates into the contact center.

Push Technologies to Computers and Mobile Devices

Mobile Push is already being used by contact centers for a variety of needs. Callers can download apps for specific contact center applications and the contact center agents can push interactive screens to the caller. Applications such as technical assistance for high end automotive mechanics and wholesale to retail product help are just two of the many applications that mobile push is doing right now. Interactive screens are easier for callers to deal with than traditional IVR’s and agents can provide greater interaction with the caller enabling them to solve issues quicker. Videos for a variety of purposes like instructional videos can be sent to mobile devices with or without agent interaction.
A video client compatible with the contact center could be utilized as a future offering for contact centers using mobile push technology. Video conference providers are beginning to offer low cost licenses for use by individuals beyond the enterprise network that are dynamic. These licenses can be used and reused repeatedly as long as you have enough to satisfy demand for them. In the future, agents may be able to send links to callers that integrate with video cloud providers to speed up the process of converting a voice only call to a collaborative video call.

A Growing Comfort Level with Video Communications

One of the factors slowing the adoption of video is the fact that many people are naturally camera shy. It is easy to meet with people and engage in a dialogue, but stick a camera in the mix and it gets to be daunting. This applies to contact center agents as well as the general public. With a little training, though, everyone can get over the first time video jitters and begin to work the camera like a pro. Plus, so many people are taking the plunge at home and in company conference rooms, that it is beginning to become second nature for a lot of people. As evidenced by the popularity of video sharing services, there is no shortage of people that are willing to use video to communicate. And the numbers are growing rapidly.
Evidence of video going mainstream is abundant in popular culture as well. Even Wendy’s encouraged people to shoot videos about Wendy’s sweet potato fries for their commercials. I must admit, I am more comfortable with video than with sweet potato fries. Then again, I have not tried sweet potato fries yet. Of course, product placements of desktop video and telepresence systems have been around for years. But, Lisa Kudrow’s hit Web Therapy takes it to a new level. Web Therapy is ninety percent shown as a computer screen video conference. And the show’s popularity as a web only offering prompted Showtime to pick it up and broadcast it with additional content. These are just a few examples of the growing acceptance of video communications.

The Greater Collaborative Experience with Video

A video call to the contact center can make a dramatic difference in customer and agent satisfaction. For the caller, you can see who you are talking to and get a better sense that your need is being addressed properly. If a caller is video enabled they can show a video enabled agent the reason they are calling and give an indication of what might need to be done for call resolution. The agent can benefit by quickly resolving issues and could gauge the possibility of up selling their caller. Plus, it is harder to yell at someone that you are looking at than it is on a voice only call. Instances of rudeness would be dramatically cut using video.

The millennial generation and upscale consumers of all generations have been using video for years now. These same demographics are also demanding quick resolution to their questions and issues. Many, perhaps most will change their buying habits after one poor experience with a contact center. So if you are company “A” and you have the capability to upgrade your contact center to include video to gain a competitive advantage against company “B”, it makes sense to do so before company “B” does it.

Final Thoughts

Some might argue that contact centers are not equipped to handle video because there is no current way to queue video callers and that there are few people that really want to communicate through video. This is much the same positioning used relative to social media integration into the contact center just a short time ago. Now that more and more contact center providers have the capability to effectively integrate social media into the contact center, the tune has changed. Now, social media integration is a “must have” for any company wanting to protect their image and effectively communicate with the public. Amazing how that perception has changed almost overnight, isn’t it?

So if you hear from contact center manufacturers or their pundits that video is not that important or too expensive or impractical or technologically unfeasible, rest assured that the R&D labs are currently working on it with breakneck speed. And when someone is ready to introduce video integration for the contact center, it will be important, inexpensive, practical, technologically feasible and a “must have” for any company wanting to effectively communicate with the public. And they will be right. After all, except for face to face contact, there is no better way to communicate than with video.

Source: http://insidecti.com/wordpress/implementation/the-future-of-video-in-the-contact-center/

This article by University of Geneva – Switzerland (by Caroline Kähr and Martin Steinert) talk about the (non) adoption of IVR self-service technologies and use of interactive voice response (IVR) among small and medium-sized enterprises. It also explores why advancements in IVR technology are leading to a growing number of self-service options and opportunities for big corporations to boost productivity. To our opinion, IVR vendors have focused their market in large deployments for long time and now it’s time to improve SME business processes too with flexible and low cost IVR systems like VXI*/Asterisk platforms.

Executive Summary:

Typically, the penetration of interactive voice response systems (IVRs) is described as being very high especially among large companies. The paper at hand discusses the use and adoption rate of such systems among companies, especially among small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). The study conducted shows that the penetration of IVRs is far lower (about 12%) than initially thought. The main reason stated for this low penetration level seems to be the incompatibility of the company’s business model with an automated telephone answering system. However, the evaluation of results gave evidence that this reason serves as a pretext only and that the real reason(s) for not adopting an interactive voice response system might be far more complicated and profound. It is supposed that the negative historic perception of automated speech system still prevails and that IVR providers and sellers have failed to communicate the system’s progress as well as its benefits and its numerous areas of application.

Download (from the source):

• Article-explaining-non-adoption-IVR-among-SME.pdf - 126 hits

Source: http://www.springerlink.com/content/x37505335829727x/

We are pleased to share a very good report and interesting IVR figures for you summer reading from VuiCloud (Interactive Digital).

Download (from the source):

• Increasing the use of Speech in IVR Applications.N/A - 230 hits

Executive Summary:

Speech is one of the few technologies that has the potential for enhancing telephone self-service. The technology, if used properly, provides motivation for significant upgrading of existing self-service installations. That said, telephone self-service in general is one of the few technologies that is strongly disliked by the user community. This is largely because the bulk of the implementations have been done so poorly. According to ASR News, in 2010, the total self-service installed base was 8.6M ports worldwide.

Additionally, in 2010 there were:

A total of 889,640 self-service port shipments,
of which 79.54% were for the Customer Premise Equipment market.

A total of 75.9B DTMF self-service inbound call minutes worldwide
with Financial Services leading at 18.76B minutes.

A total of 14.98B Speech self-service inbound call minutes in worldwide
with Financial Services again leading with 4.16B call minutes.

If speech as a means of caller input is to succeed, it is clear that something dramatic needs to be done to significantly upgrade the quality of telephone self-service implementations. It is anticipated that the industry will respond to this challenge.

Source: http://www.vuicloud.com

We are pleased to share some IVR trends for 2011 from IVRS World.

What IVR technologies or IVR applications would be hit in the year 2011 ?
Here is a list of six elements that might see high usage as well wide acceptance among people!

1. Interactive Voice & Video Response
2. IVR Payments
3. Speaker Recognition
4. Speech Recognition
5. IVR Hosting
6. Bulk Voice Call

1 – Interactive Voice & Video Response (IVVR)

With introduction of 3G technology and new smart phones with videocall (iPhone, Android…) in worlds most populous countries, India and China; IVVR should see wide application and deployment. IVRS thinks, IVVR would be used in VAS (Value Added Service) industry, customer care, virtual tour in hotel industry.

2 – IVR Payments

IVR would be increasingly used in phone banking as well as payment using phones. Recently, RBI ( Reserve Bank of India has introduced OTP ( one time password) valid for just one transaction for 30 minutes to 24 hours. So, the public confidence in payment using IVR might will increase. Many payment gateway providers are now trying to provide payment option using IVR with just a telephone call on the move.

3 – Speaker Recognition

With increasing payment using IVR, speaker recognition technology will be used more and more.
Most probably, this technology would be further developed.

4 – Speech Recognition

With increasing usage of IVR in customer care as well as ‘self-help’ complaint management system, speech recognition usage as well as accuracy may increase in 2011 too.

5 – IVR Hosting

Since many visual as well as online web-based tools are now available for IVR call flow designing, IVRS thinks, IVR hosting will see increase in 2011. Presently, Click-To-Call is one service which is a hosted IVR service used by many people.

6 – Bulk Voice Call

Bulk Voice Call should see increase as well as competition in terms of per call pricing in 2011, specially in India. Reminder Service using voice call will also be used more and more.

Source:

http://www.ivrsworld.com/ivr/ivr-predictions-for-2011/

Thanks to IVRS World!

This report by The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) surveys the adoption of self-service technologies delivered via kiosks, the Internet, mobile devices and the telephone and the many benefits to consumers, businesses and the economy. It also explores how advancements in technology such as Telephony (IVR), Internet,  Wireless networks and the availability of broadband Internet access, are leading to a growing number of self-service options and opportunities for companies to boost productivity. The report also helps makes the case for the government to embrace self-service technology to deliver services more efficiently and more conveniently to citizens.

A very good document for summer reading!

Executive Summary:

The past decade has witnessed a rapid growth in self service that allows consumers to take on the traditional role of a service worker in the provision of a service. Self service has long existed—think of placing a call by dialing a telephone instead of using a telephone operator or pressing a button in an elevator instead of using an elevator operator—but its importance has grown as advances in information technology (IT) have created many opportunities to leverage self-service technology for large gains in efficiency and convenience. Using computer kiosks, airline travelers check in to their fligths; on the Internet, consumers purchase products without speaking to a sales agent; and using a mobile phone customers check their bank balances and transfer funds. Self-service technology continues to become more efficient and more convenient, and, as a result, increasingly organizations, including businesses, non-profits and governments, are using self-service technology to operate more productively and to better serve their customers.

Download (from the source):

• Embracing the Self-Service Economy.pdf - 258 hits

Source: http://www.itif.org

Opus Research is featuring I6NET in an article by Dan Miller entitled “Version of VXI* for Asterisk Now Runs in Amazon EC2 Cloud”. Here is a brief snippet:

Earlier this month the the folks at i6Net Technologies showcased the release of a new version of its VXI* VoiceXML browser here. In a series of subsequent posts, the site offered pointers or suggestions regarding implementation of VXI* as a “plug in” for Asterisk-based IP-PBX’s including a set of virtual solutions where the browser is running in association with an instantiation of Asterisk 1.4 virtual PBX in Amazon’s EC2 (Elactic Compute Cloud) data centers [...]

Optimization of EC2 to boost the performance of Asterisk seems to have begun in earnest roughly a year ago. Adding speech-enabled IVR using i6net’s beta program for testing VXI based VoiceXML scripts in EC2 began the following August [...]

Source : Opus Research – VXI* for Asterisk now runs in Amazon EC2 Cloud

83% of Consumers Attribute Some Part of a Bad Customer Service Experience to Live Agent Interactions – Forrester, January 2010

Burlington, MA, January 13, 2010 – Nuance Communications, Inc. today announced the findings of a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Nuance titled, “Driving Consumer Engagement with Automated Telephone Customer Service.” The study revealed that consumers rate automated telephone customer service higher than live agents for certain straightforward interactions. In five out of ten posed scenarios, consumers preferred automated telephone customer service systems over live agent interactions for tasks like prescription refills (66% rated automation highly, compared with 52% for live agent), checking the status of a flight from a cell phone (61% versus 49%), checking account balances (59% versus 36%), store information requests (55% versus 37%), and tracking shipments (53% versus 47%).

The survey also revealed that automated telephone systems are an expected and accepted customer service channel with 82% of US online adults having used an automated touchtone or speech recognition system to contact customer service in the past 12 months. That figure trails behind only live agent interactions, with which 93% of consumers have engaged.

In the survey, consumers provided their level of interest in a variety of specific proactive notification options within five different industries. The aggregated results of the industry-specific questions show that a strong majority of consumers are interested in at least one proactive notification alert via their choice of email, voice message, or text message. Consumers were most open to notifications related to the travel industry (93%), which include such things as flight status updates and confirmation of reservations for flights, hotels, and car rentals. Eighty-eight percent of consumers were interested in notification from a financial services institution, with strong interest in transaction confirmations. With regard to health care, consumers strongly favored appointment reminders — something that could be adopted in a variety of other industries as well, such as utilities or professional services.

“The contact center plays a crucial role in retaining consumers, yet less than half of U.S. consumers report being satisfied with their customer service experiences,” said Micky Tsui, Nuance’s senior vice president and general manager, Enterprise. “As the research shows, there is a lot of room to improve customer service. Today’s enterprises have the opportunity to differentiate themselves by considering their customers’ needs and providing intuitive speech applications that improve customer loyalty at every touch point.”

Other key findings:

• Consumers’ satisfaction with customer service leaves a lot of room for improvement. Only 49% of U.S. online adults report being satisfied, very satisfied or extremely satisfied with companies’ customer service in general.
• Consumers who frequently contact customer service from a wireless phone are relatively more amenable to automated telephone customer service channels. About one-third (32%) of consumers regularly use a cell phone to contact customer service. The data indicates that in nearly all scenarios, mobile customer service users rate using automated telephone customer service systems higher than those consumers who do not regularly contact customer service using a cell phone. This is significant due to Forrester’s expectation that the number of wireless-only households will continue to grow, reaching 19% of all U.S. households by 2013.
• The 24-hour 7 days a week availability of automated telephone customer service is a key attribute in consumers’ minds. Seventy-seven percent of consumers pointed to 24-hour, seven days a week availability as a reason they value automated telephone customer service systems. Another 40% valued that they didn’t have to wait on hold for a live agent, while 31% cited the ability to obtain information quickly.
• Consumers today are overwhelmingly interested in proactive customer notifications across a variety of industries. For each of the five industries included in the survey, consumer interest in receiving some form of proactive notification was very strong, ranging from 80% (for cable television operators and telephone companies) to 93% (for travel-related companies).
• Opt-out, accurate software and logical call flows are essential components of a “great” automated speech-enabled customer interaction. Sixty-seven percent of consumers claimed that having the ability to speak to a live agent at any time is necessary in order to consider an automated speech-enabled customer service interaction a “great experience.” Systems can be enhanced by improving the accuracy of the software and employing thorough and logical call flows.

According to Forrester’s study, when it comes to evaluating a great experience with automated speech recognition customer service systems, two-thirds of consumers value having the ability to speak to a live agent at any time. Forty-two percent of consumers value the ability of the speech recognition system to understand them the first time a response is spoken, and 39% of consumers prefer not to have to repeat themselves. Similarly, when asked to identify what would improve speech recognition customer service experiences, the top choice (75%) of consumers was to offer the option of speaking with a live agent throughout the interaction. Being understood the first time (63%) and improving menus to direct callers to the appropriate destination (45%) round out the top three answer choices.

Nuance Communications, Inc.

Nuance is a leading provider of speech, imaging and customer interaction solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications, and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share, and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications. For more information, please visit www.nuance.com.

Source: Naunce News – Increased Automation

Interesting article from SpeechTechnology “With Hard Work Comes Prosperity”.
Published by Leonard Klie, posted Jan 10, 2010.

Sweet for Self-Service

The financial results seen by these companies are typical of the speech industry in general, which by and large weathered the financial storm much better than most other industries. And inside the speech industry, perhaps no segment fared better than the interactive voice response (IVR) market.

“2009 was a great year for self-service—both voice as well as Web-based” says Donna Fluss, president of DMG Consulting. “Even with the recession, there was a lot of investment in self-service IVR.”

Fluss expected the total IVR market to reach $2 billion by the end of the year.

Analyst firm Frost & Sullivan was also bullish on IVR. At the start of the year, when the economy seemed at its worst, the firm surveyed call center operators to gauge their interest in and plans for speech technologies during the next 12 to 18 months. At the time, 17 percent said all new applications they implemented would have speech only, 52 percent planned to adopt applications that combined speech and touch-tone, and 31 percent said they had no plans to adopt speech.

“We did that research at the beginning of the year, when things looked their darkest and the economy looked its bleakest, and there was still a significant uptake in speech planned,” says Keith Dawson, principal analyst for information and communications technologies at Frost & Sullivan. “There was a marked increase in the number of contact centers willing to front-end their customer-facing applications with speech.”

And though the final year-end numbers are not available, Dawson expects his firm’s predictions to hold true. “I do not anticipate any kind of change,” he says. “One of the results of the economic downturn will be an increase in [the use of] IVR technologies. The industry has gotten the message through that speech self-service is a real viable tool for reducing costs and improving relationships with customers.”

According to Drew Kraus, research vice president at Gartner, speech-enabled IVR vendors reaped the benefits of a major shift among their customers toward cost reductions. “It was very much a focus on how a speech IVR can reduce costs. They wanted to see how it can save them money,” he says.

Most of the money that filtered into the speech arena came in during the second half of the year, Kraus adds. “In the early going we saw a lot of planning [and] companies prioritizing what applications they would buy when they got the money. Toward the end of the year, the money started to loosen. We saw a lot more activity in speech, probably double what we saw in the first half of the year.”

A great part of that, as well, has to be from the increase in hosted offerings. Last year will go down in the annals of speech history as the time hosting took over the industry. For the first time, hosted solutions and managed services accounted for more than half of all deployments.

[...]

Source: http://www.speechtechmag.com/Articles/PrintArticle.aspx?ArticleID=60429

According to opusresearch; “Over the top” (OTT) is gaining momentum as the “term of art” for value-added Voice over IP (VoIP) transport networks. In rapid succession we’ve seen Avaya contemplating a relationship with Skype, Telefonica’s European wireless subsidiary 02 purchase JaJah and most recently Mark Plakias at Orange pointed me to this “Flash-to-VoIP” service, calling it an “OTT cocktail of Flash and Jingle-to-SIP gateway technology + carrier.”

The phrase “over-the-top” suggests a level of extravagance (think of “over the top” entertainment). Yet, during the past 10 years it has become synonymous with “cheap international calls”. In 2010, I expect OTT to return to form and refer to all sorts of value-added services and innovations, whose providers take advantage of those “cheap” or “free” minutes to take VoIP “beyond customary boundaries” (which happens to be one of the Dictionary.com definitions for “over the top”). Avaya and 02 are seeing the same trend, and we can expect a stream of acquisitions, partnerships and innovative service offerings that take incumbent carriers and traditional enterprise infrastructure providers over-the-top and outside their comfort zone. Case in point: BT with Ribbit.

By Dan Miller

Source: OpusReseach – 2010: Taking Recombinant Communications “Over The Top”

Asterisk, The Open Source PBX created by Mark Spencer from Digium has enjoyed rapid growth over the past 10 years. As a result, the company has been able to challenge larger, more established competitors to claim more of the market. With Asterisk software, companies can adopt corporate phone systems that are designed to be easier to customize and cost a fraction of traditional proprietary systems.

This is only the beginning of the change and it’s first time that Digium is reported by Gartner.  All Asterisk’s ecosystem members know that Asterisk is growing fast in the market, like other open source projects (firefox, apache, linux…) have already done.

Source: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/microsoft/vol6/article15/article15.html