Mobile Users Want to Use Their Own Devices, Want Employers to Bring the Security
by Tim Dreyer on May 10th, 2012
A lot has been written about the influx of personal devices being used in the enterprise lately. And while there are certainly benefits to employee efficiency in allowing the use of the smartphones and tablets to help them remotely connect to the enterprise, there are clearly security risks as well.
An ITWorld piece published this week on BYOD cited some very interesting stats from a recent Juniper Networks survey of 4,000 or so mobile-using IT professionals and several points jumped out at me. 
Many of the mobile users who responded to the survey said that they depend on their network provider for their device and content security. And when they use those devices within their employer’s enterprise, they have the same expectation. In fact 90% of those surveyed felt that their employer should provide personal device security when they use on the company network. The problem is many of these employees go around their company’s device security policy anyway. So there should be no surprise then that about a third of the companies in the survey encountered some level of security issue from non-approved personal mobile devised accessing enterprise data.
Cleary BYOD is not going away so learning how to balance the benefits with the security issues is the task at hand. IT needs to adapt in order to keep up with IT consumerization in order to accommodate the skills and technologies that make employees productive and allow them to leverage enterprise resources. Intelligent, measured management that balances IT device consumerization and the security needs of legacy systems is a big and growing challenge for IT. Meeting in the middle ground is key. It is nearly impossible to construct a policy to allow every personal device onto the network so if departments can identify the phones and tablets they are able to support and employees restrict their personal device usage to conform to those policies, both security and productivity can remain high.
Better, Usable Data Key to Effective Social CRM Measurement
by Jim Foy on May 8th, 2012
Last week, ChannelBiz posted an article noting that about half of the Fortune 1,000 companies will not experience an ROI on their social CRM investment by the end of 2012. The author noted a lack of measurement and defined objectives of the companies’ social CRM activities are creating project failures. So while the global market of social CRM licenses is predicted to be over $2 billion this year, (more than double that of last year), many of the organizations don’t have defined objectives for social CRM initiatives tied into their broader business strategy.
Proper measurement is key to the justification and future success of social CRM but how is this best done?
In order for companies to truly see the ROI on Social CRM investment, better analytics are essential. Acquired customer data from the contact center must be easily obtained and visible throughout the enterprise. Of course the data alone is not enough. It must include context and interaction history in order to get a holistic and reportable view not only of the customer but of the Social CRM as well. When the silos in the enterprise are taken down and a culture of customer data collaboration exists, companies will be better able to measure the impact of their Social CRM investment.
Make Room for a More Social CIO
by Mike Sheridan on May 7th, 2012
In a recent blog post on CIO.com, Michael Hugos talked about how current economic factors, in combination with the rapid growth in social media and associated support technologies are creating an opportunity for CIOs to take a leadership role in bridging these industry trends. Hugos cites a recent Gartner report that in three years, the CMO on average may have a bigger technology budget than the CIO. He also notes that with the growth in cloud and BYOD initiatives, social technologies are quickly creeping into enterprise operations.
The convergence here is really setting the stage for social business. Extending order status, customer service, and the like to where customers are is innovative. However, this model could still end up just being another push of information if customers aren’t offered an opportunity to also engage with the company if they should so choose.
As I covered on my previous post, Social Business is not just social technology in the enterprise. It is primarily connecting the enterprise by providing employees the tools like information acquisition in real time, crowdsourcing, contextual intelligence, and knowledge sharing that they use in their personal lives, in ways that creates deeper customer engagement.
This offers opportunity for CIOs to connect these enterprise applications with the social platforms customers are using to engage the companies they do business with. Because of the growing use of social as a customer service medium and the data and engagement opportunities it presents, it is clear that social media can no longer stand alone in marketing and with the help of the CIO, it needs to be a cultural and technological part of the entire enterprise.
Everybody Wants in to the Enterprise Connect Act
by Tim Dreyer on March 29th, 2012
“Everybody wants in ta da act.”
This was the famous go-to line of vaudevillian and golden-age-of-cinema actor Jimmy Durante when some star-struck member of the audience wanted to crowd the stage with him. It seemed metaphorical for this year’s Enterprise Connect event.
Case in point, on day two, rather than a VP of Vendor, Inc. or a high-priced motivational speaker, Tuesday’s program began with an end-user panel of decision-makers who voiced concerns, talked about their organizational challenges and willingly shared their insight on the most pressing issues in the industry: Cloud, BYOD, and interoperability. Among them were:
- Alan Levine, CIO at The Kennedy Center
- Barry Libenson, Sr. VP and CIO at Land O’Lakes
- James Druzbik, VP of Information Systems at Group 1 Automotive
- Stuart Shirai, Manager at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Hawai‘i
- Donna Zett, CIO at AOT Bedding
They took that stage normally occupied by vendors and gave a rousing performance. End-users want in to the act because when they are, they are heard; they want contact and unified solutions that are designed with their needs in mind. They wanted in to the act. And we welcome them.
And look at everybody wanting in to the Cloud. As Sheila McGee-Smith noted on her NoJitter.com post, a good number of vendors introduced Cloud offerings at Enterprise Connect. More end-users express interest in cloud-based UC offerings in the past year, so vendors have heard the call, unveiling a variety of cloud services at the show. But too many choices make decision making difficult: Public or private? Hosted or Hybrid? And while the Cloud stage seems crowded now, audience members know the talented performers are always asked back for a curtain call.
Vendors want in to the cloud act and the industry seems to be welcoming them with rounds of applause.
And finally, look at Lync. One of the hottest performances at the show was the number of vendors making announcements for Lync-based solutions. It seems the Lync-based UC performance – once just a solo act starring Aspect – is now not only the hottest ticket in town, it’s also featuring an ensemble cast. And the stage is surely set to grow larger as the year goes by, making it big enough for multiple players. But even though everyone wants in to the Lync act, seasoned audience members know… there can only be one lead.
Diapers and Dialers: What Contact Centers Can Learn from Target’s Pregnancy Predictions
by Tim Dreyer on February 27th, 2012
Last week, Mitch Wagner, editor in Chief at The CMO Site put out a blog post on how Target Knows You’re Pregnant Before the Stork Does that I thought had some interesting relevancies to the contact center space. Not on pregnancy predictability of course, but more on customer intelligence.
In his post, Wagner notes that many pregnant women starting their second trimester make revealing purchases like unscented lotion, calcium and magnesium supplements and other scent-free soaps that indicate that they may, just may, be nearing a trip to the maternity ward. By keeping an eye on customer trends like this, the company can be, ahem, very targeted when they send out baby product offers like wipes and formula. Target knows that gaining the diaper devotion of these new-mother shoppers early can mean loyalty for years to come.
The key to this intelligence is data analytics, or specifically, predictive analytics. It is taking the huge lump of sometimes unworkable customer data and converting it into usable analysis. There are obviously privacy concerns involved here, but social consumers as a whole tend to be more receptive to providing businesses with personal information as long as it’s not misused and results in deals and offers specialized to their interests. Send them offers for World of Warcraft, and you may lose their loyalty.
The connection here is that the tighter you integrate your customer contact center with your CRM, the better able you will be able to use and convert data. Add in predictive functionality like speech and text analytics, and you can develop a workflow that will improve the decisions you make, the actions your agents take, and sometimes the direction the enterprise chooses. Without this integration, you have data that you may or may not be able to use.
You can read more on predictive analytics as a part of the Microsoft Data Platform here. I predict you will 
Guest Blogger: Mike Ginsberg on Emerging Legal and Regulatory Trends in ARM
by Aspect on February 6th, 2012
The following is a special guest post from Mike Ginsberg, CEO of Kaulkin Ginsberg. Mike spearheads the firm’s advisory business practices and leads a premier advisory team that helps industry owners and executives succeed in their growth, exit, and M&A strategies. Read more by Mike on InsideARM.
Eye on the Horizon: Key Trends Will Reshape ARM Industry in 2012
2012 ushers in many changes for the accounts receivable industry on every front. Since the start of the recession, economic, regulatory and market conditions have played a role in creating a new playing field for grantors, service providers and vendors.
Key trends reshaping the ARM industry include:
- Economic turbulence continues to impact liquidation results – Some reporters are stating that this must be a booming time for debt collectors as placement volumes increase and collectability rebounds. Not so fast. Yes, recovery rates have improved across most market segments over recent quarters as more consumers have paid down debts at increased rates. However, the collection industry is not out of the woods yet and executives should continue to operate prudently as the economy recovers.
- The landscape of credit card/bank card agencies is changing. – Loan origination reductions have severely impacted placement volumes, resulting in bank card/credit card collection agency vendor networks being downsized as much as 60% in 2010 and 2011 and collection law firm networks following suit over recent quarters. Top performers across most asset classes have actually seen an uptick in placement volumes as a result of contractions. As we look forward into 2012, we anticipate further placement volume reductions coupled with more compliance “asks” from credit card issuers and increased regulatory scrutiny. Strong agencies focused on performance without sacrificing compliance will benefit significantly as banks and issuers extend credit at increased rates.
- Substantial changes are looming on the regulatory and regulatory fronts – New laws and regulations will result in significant changes to workflow, technology, compliance and day-to-day operations among debt buyers and collection agencies. It is highly unlikely lawsuits against collection agencies and debt buyers will decline in 2012. We examined the trends. Establishing reasonable compliance programs, increasing the time and resources spent on collector training and using technology that is designed to prevent law violations is critical to successful navigation of the legal, legislative and regulatory environment we predict for 2012.
- Job creation, while starting to show signs of improving, remains hovering at lowest levels in 30 years. The number of layoffs is down as we head into 2012. Unemployment continues to rank as the most significant trend impacting collection efforts.
- Collection agencies are resilient – According to a recent survey conducted by InsideARM, 60% of agencies plan to increase staff levels over the next 12 months and more than 75% are projecting increased revenue a year from now in spite of economic conditions. Most agency executives are forward thinking and are positioning their agency to be the beneficiary of increased outsourcing and collectability across numerous market segments including healthcare, government, student lending, mortgages and other financial deficiencies.
For every company involved in any facet of collections and accounts receivable management, new laws and regulations—even proposed versions—will involve significant changes to workflow, technology and day-to-day operational policy. Rozanne Andersen, Vice President and Chief Compliance Officer of Ontario Systems LLC and former CEO and Vice President of Government Affairs at ACA International, is a good friend of our firm and the leading authority on this front. As Rozanne has taken stock of thousands of regulations, case law decisions and recent legislation, she successfully encapsulated the most critical trends for our industry in her full report. These trends include:
- Lawsuits against collection industry companies
- State attorneys general file lawsuits and take action
- What’s happening at the Federal and state level?
- How the new CFPB will impact ARM
- A look forward at what to expect
Rozanne and I agree that it is unlikely lawsuits against collection agencies and asset purchasers will abate in 2012. Negative press, high levels of consumer complaint filings, ambiguous laws and regulations and the resolve state and federal regulators have to fill the coffers with money extracted from the industry in the form of fines and penalties does not bode well for the industry. Establishing reasonable compliance programs, increasing the time and resources spent on collector training and using technology that is designed to prevent law violations is critical to any agency or asset buyer’s successful navigation of the legal, legislative and regulatory environment we predict for 2012.
At Kaulkin Ginsberg, we have been tracking M&A market activities and macro-level trends impacting the ARM industry for 20 years. We cover these and additional market conditions in our latest Q4 report which is available without cost on insideARM. I am happy to discuss these market conditions and how they may impact your business.
Speech Analytics is Talking; the Industry is Listening
by Tim Dreyer on February 3rd, 2012
In my first post on this topic, I covered at a high level the basics of how speech analytics can bring deeper customer engagement to the contact center. In this follow-up, we’ll look at why the industry is starting to take notice.
A lot of the industry interest in speech analytics is being driven by a heightened focus on the customer experience. In today’s hyper-competitive economy where there the meager opportunity for product differentiation and operational efficiency has been squeezed as much as possible, customer experience, driven by customer service, has emerged as a primary area of differentiation. There is a realization that a lot of learning is needed to before an organization is ready to deliver differentiated customer service. Organizations are looking at their existing data such a recording
that they already have, to see if they can extrapolate more value out it and turn it into a true enterprise asset.
Customer interactions are becoming increasingly complex. With so many customers seeking self-service routes before they engage with the enterprise, agent-customer phone interactions are more complex than they used to be. Because of this, organizations are trying to figure out if they can better understand those interactions, some of which are using speech analytics to do so.
Customers have changed. They are more connected, they are more informed, and due in part to the increasing use of social media, they have a voice like they never did before. And while the customers have changed, what they want from their service provider has changed as well. Speech analytics can help an organization get a quantified view into those changes.
At the same time, technology has evolved such that the actual recordings are easier and cheaper to capture and store. Unified communication has contributed to that by reducing the reliance on hardware and shifting it to software which, due to falling storage costs, is easier to configure and maintain. And speech analytics options have also increased such as text-to-speech and even phonetic-based approaches. Plus, speech analytics solutions are increasingly more open, enabling data to be extracted and integrated easier than in the past.
In some ways, it’s a perfect conversational storm: the drive for service differentiation, the need to understand the new customer and their new needs, and technology evolution.
Tim
Big Data and the Contact Center
by Michael Ely on February 1st, 2012
Watch any new phone advertisement, and you’ll see the focus has shifted from connectivity and call quality to data, lots and lots of data―from connectivity to your favorite sites to watching the game live and video connections. Data has become so consuming that a report from the University of California, San Diego entitled “How Much Information?” reveals in 2008 the average American consumed 34 gigabytes per day―before 4G was even available to the average customer.
With this much data, not to mention the amount of information available to the consumer, when someone makes the decision to reach out to a contact center, in most cases they will have as much information as the agent they reach. This isn’t saying the days of “Did you check if it’s plugged in?” responses are gone, but the contact center needs the ability to raise its game to keep up with the volume of data available to the informed consumer.
According to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, “Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003. That’s something like five exabytes (1018 characters) of data.” While the vast majority of this information is user-generated content (pictures, tweets, IMs, posts) there is still a massive amount of data collected on each individual. Your cell phone, car, and other devices can report your location along with any time you connect to any data network. Unified communications and other presence applications track what you’re doing and your availability nearly around the clock. Purchases get tracked by credit card, store and of course browser “cookies,” to say nothing of security cameras (a recent study found the average big-city resident walks into the view of a camera 75 times a day) and other devices designed to monitor access.
How much data does a contact center agent need? While only a small fraction of this information might be pertinent to why the consumer reached out to the contact center, access to the right information at the right time―especially to support cross-selling, collections, and even simply consumer relations―becomes even more critical. This is the foundation of “Big Data”―analyzing the huge volume of available customer information to determine what’s important to know.
Technologies such as Hadoop are considered foundational for data-intensive distributed applications such as business intelligence (BI). Microsoft SQL Server 2012 recently announced support for Hadoop integration to extend its BI functionality to the vast quantity of data available in social network and retail platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and eBay.
Imagine a consumer tweeting about an issue they had with a recent purchase. The contact center monitoring the social networks correlates the post to a recent purchase made by the consumer and sends a text message or email with a “click to talk” link. The consumer uses the link and the agent is supplied with the information on the purchase, the tweet, and a list of knowledge base search results on the issue. The agent can resolve the issue and, when alerted to the consumer’s upcoming birthday, offers a coupon for a related item. Big Data within the contact center enables this kind of proactive customer service.
Does your contact center have the functionality to take advantage of all of the customer information it collects?
Role Reversal: Microsoft’s Skype Acquisition Will Transform the Contact Center
by Mike Butts on January 25th, 2012
About this time last year, I wrote a blog titled “Will video transform the contact center? Don’t believe the hype.” I was very skeptical that video is everything and stated emphatically that it would not replace voice in the contact center. While video may not replace voice in the contact center, my thoughts were radically changed last May.
Little did I know at the time that Microsoft was in the midst of making an $8.5 billion investment acquisition of Skype. No company makes that kind of an investment unless they are playing to win and win big.
(Skype’s revenue was only $860 million at the end of 2010.) This acquisition brings Microsoft 700 million consumers that use Skype technology for their voice and video calls. As we know Microsoft has not officially released details on how it plans to integrate Skype into its product stack, but we do know that Skype will play a key role in Microsoft Lync, Office including Outlook, Windows Phone, and Xbox.
Once Microsoft integrates Skype video technology into its product and hardware (phones and Xbox) stack, it will bring consumers even closer to companies. Forward-thinking organizations will have new opportunities to seize customer loyalty and wallet share. In the near future, consumers will use Skype via the Web, Windows Phone, or Xbox to communicate with businesses. As a result, companies that deploy a Microsoft Lync unified communications infrastructure will have the right tools to collaborate with customers across the same Skype video stream.
All B2C companies have a short window of opportunity to prepare their organizations to use video as a service differentiator, productivity booster, and revenue generator. Companies need to act now to gain a leadership position in customer service before their competitors leap onto this emerging communications channel. Doing so will allow your company to take customer service, communication, and collaboration to the next level because people who use Skype (850 million and growing fast) will want to communicate via video.
Microsoft Lync will provide the perfect integrated platform to allow your contact center (and the rest of the enterprise) to collaborate using Skype video and the rest of the UC capabilities such as presence, instant messaging, screen sharing, remote desktop access and more. These 850 million consumers are opening a new frontier for your organization.
Here are a few thoughts for how video can be used in the contact center:
Create a personal relationship with your agents and company. I don’t know about you, but I always feel like my challenges are going to be resolved faster if I can see and make a personal connection with someone who is taking my order or assisting me in some other way. Video allows this to happen without traveling from location to location.
Increase collections. I wonder how much collections would increase if you can look a debtor in the eye when he makes a payment promise? I have to think that collections would increase significantly because of this direct, more personal interaction. This goes back to creating a more intimate relationship.
Enable opportunities to up-sell. Have a new product or campaign? Use an on-hold video to inform customers about additional products and services. Get really creative by pushing a relevant video based on a caller’s purchase history. The potential here to drive revenue is unlimited. Your marketing department is going to love this.
Facilitate troubleshooting. Push a video to a caller that instructs them how solve their current challenge. Video can also help reduce call volume by allowing your contact center to push visual installation or assembly instructions to callers.
Support learning and agent development. Record and capture videos in your contact center to educate current and new agents on best practices and supervisor to agent training.
So how do companies prepare? At a recent conference, Microsoft proclaimed that “60 percent of enterprises are going to make a unified communications decision in 2012.” I encourage all CIOs and customer experience decision makers to investigate and deploy the Microsoft Lync platform now. Get your contact center and enterprise personnel comfortable using the vast array of unified communications capabilities now so video becomes a natural extension once Skype is incorporated. Implementing Lync in your organization is not that difficult, and in many cases you can recover your investment within six months. And last but not least, your employees will absolutely love the new capabilities.
Till next time.
Mike
Want Deeper Customer Engagement? Let’s Talk Speech Analytics
by Jane Hendricks on January 19th, 2012
What you can learn through your recordings is a huge, untapped amount of customer understanding. When you can integrate that data with your overall analytical plan, you get deeper, holistic view into how you’re engaging with your customers.
Speech analytics looks at call recordings and is able to extract relevant concepts and convert them into usable data. The data can then be integrated with customer records (CRM), attached to transaction history, and persisted in any number of ways. The advantage of applying speech analytics to customer interactions that occur within the
contact center is that you are also able to preserve the context of the interaction as part of that data record. This gives you the knowledge of who the agent was, who the customer was, when they called, and what their inquiry was. You can also get metrics around the non-verbal pieces of the recording – how much silence was there? What kind of tempo? And even metrics that correspond to sentiment such as agitation or confusion can be captured.
A comprehensive analytical plan will encompass the many ways data is used within an organization to understand customers: who they are, what they do, what they prefer, and even predict what they are likely to do next. This is why it’s important that a contact center isn’t silo-ed, especially the data that the contact center is capturing. This is vital because when the data that speech analytics creates is integrated with broader enterprise data analysis, your customers’ behavior can be shared within the broader service department. This sharing creates deeper customer comprehension but it can also improve future customer outcomes and anticipate emerging customer needs.
More and more the contact center is becoming the hub of customer engagement. As speech analytics can provide richer data to that engagement, it can augment and even drive a deeper understanding on what enterprise knows about its customers as a whole creating a more proactive, predictive customer experience.
See more on Aspect’s speech analytics here.
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Improving the way companies communicate internally and externally with their customers is an important objective for all organizations. This blog is focused on levaraging the collective knowledge withing Aspect.