Insight from Interactions

I decided to buy a new TV. Not that I really needed one, but my 32’’ set seemed awfully small next to my neighbor’s slick 50’’ panel. I had done my necessary online homework, went through the dazzling selection of brands, then narrowed it down through display sizes, high-definition (HD) technologies, resolution, contrast and a dozen other terms I’ve since forgotten. Of course, I researched price as well.

Happy with my final selection, I went to purchase the TV, only to find a bunch of other costs completely neglected during the selection process. Basic service, subscription to my cable provider’s HD service, upgrade to my audio system.… My budget was quickly surpassed. And that was a simple commodity purchase. When it comes to companies purchasing an enterprise-grade call recording system, it’s no surprise to find 100+ page RFPs, covering the bits and bytes of every technical and functional component. Yet I ask, have you considered the entire big picture? Or was the long-term total cost of ownership (TCO) cliché brushed aside in favor of getting the best price today?

When it comes to call recording systems, there are many soft or hidden ownership costs that, if neglected, will lead to greater IT costs or unmet business requirements down the road. These can include server-related costs such as maintenance, power, cooling and floor space; the IT personnel needed to manage your call recording system; future needs for higher-capacity recording or changing telephony technology and architecture design, to name a few.

Industry best practices suggest that there are five key initiatives that can lower the TCO of IT systems:

• Standardization – imposing a standard, consistent operating environment and procedures for infrastructure resources
• Centralization – concentrating servers, data, applications and other infrastructure resources within a single location or a single point of access
• Consolidation – merging multiple infrastructure resources such as servers, storage, applications and databases into fewer systems
• Virtualization – running multiple physical resources such as servers or storage devices on a single, physical resource as virtual services
• Downtime Minimization – reducing costs associated with restoring IT services after failure, lost revenue and lost employee productivity due to outages

If a call recording system you’re considering can enable even one of these capabilities—for example, if it enables you to record calls across branch locations from one central server—the big-picture cost over the life of that system may be substantially lower than the price tag might suggest.

In the recently published paper “Reducing TCO of Call Recording Systems”, we elaborate on applying these five concepts. The conclusion? When comparing two systems, don’t settle for the easy-to-measure metrics that apply only to your recording environment as it is today. Try as much as possible to explore the less tangible cost factors and how the capabilities of the system you purchase impact your IT ecosystem over time. Whether it’s a TV or a call recording system, the results might surprise you.

A few months back, as I went through my credit card statement, I found to my surprise a $1,500 charge for a MacBook I couldn’t recall purchasing. My wife looked puzzled as well. We both stared suspiciously at our two-year-old daughter. She stared back, but didn’t crack. I called the credit card company. The customer service rep I spoke to immediately credited my account and said the company would take care of everything (again, to my surprise). The company traced back all of my recent purchases and found an online store that I never purchased from before. The rep who followed up said it seemed that my credit card number and personal information were stolen after I’d made a purchase there. The MacBook was purchased from another site just a few days later. With the emergence of e-commerce over the last couple of decades, you can purchase just about anything online using a credit card. When something is so easy and so widely used, it unfortunately attracts the wrong crowd. Credit card-based e-commerce is a good example. Here are just a few frightening facts and figures:

• Credit and debit card fraud reached $7.82 billion worldwide in 2006 and is expected to climb to $15.3 billion by the end of 2009. (Frost & Sullivan)
• Loss or theft of personal and financial information is the number-one concern among consumers worldwide (64%), surpassing terrorism, job loss, disease epidemics and natural disasters. (Visa survey)

PCI DSS and call centers to the rescue

Knowing this, banks have taken action. Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover and JCB each began programs to protect card security, sowing the seeds of what would become the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Each company’s intentions were similar: to create an additional level of protection for card issuers by ensuring that merchants meet minimum levels of security when they store, process and transmit cardholder data. In September 2006, the PCI Security Standards Council was formed as an open global forum for the ongoing development, enhancement, storage, dissemination and implementation of security standards for account data protection. As of September 2009, more than 600 organizations participate worldwide. 

At its core, PCI DSS is comprised of the “Digital Dozen,” six goals and twelve requirements that revolve around maintaining a secure environment for cardholder data, restricting access to data stored there and ongoing monitoring to ensure this environment has not been breached. If you examine the Digital Dozen, you can see the important role that call centers play in PCI DSS. From protecting cardholder data, to restricting access and constantly monitoring who is accessing it, the contact center can be considered one of the main gatekeepers for credit card security.

Having been the victim of credit card fraud, I take some comfort in the idea that companies—particularly their call centers—are working to protect me. And personally, I’d be more inclined to do business with a company that is taking PCI DSS seriously, as part of its responsibility, not only to credit issuers but to customers.

What measures is your call center taking to comply with PCI DSS?

Simple call recording in today’s small to medium contact center (SMCC) is regarded as a standard vanilla-flavored ice cream. It’s a no-brainer commodity solution supplied today by a number of vendors which, all in all, don’t differ that much from one another (the working ones, that is…). The tricky part is that tasty chocolate topping: namely, the more advanced call recording solutions that can really advance the SMCC.

CRM magazines are full of articles discussing how call recording today is not intended merely for compliance purposes, but for tangible business benefits such as operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. Although usually directed at the enterprise call center, this same trend can be seen in the SMCC, which can also benefit greatly from the sophisticated business applications available at the enterprise level.

Obviously, we can’t expect SMCC’s to spend as much on their call recording applications as the big players spend. Nor can these smaller contact centers accommodate the footprint or deployment complexity.  Still, the most common question I hear from NICE SMCC customers is, “How can we do more with less?” Is it fair to expect that SMCC entry-level call recording solutions will provide most if not all the business capabilities of the high-end enterprise solutions at much lower price points? Personally, I believe there is a middle ground. As SMCC’s push for the chocolate topping on their vanilla call recording applications (examples can include sophisticated retention rules, meta business data attachment to interactions, Quality Management and ‘Delete on Demand’ Capabilities), SMCC solutions are bound to become more and more similar to enterprise solutions in their capabilities, without sacrificing their simplicity and ease of deployment.

Would be glad to get your thoughts…

Speech analytics is among the most useful innovations in call center technology, ever. If you already have speech analytics software in place, you don’t need me to tell you all the cool things it can do. But there are several things you’ll want to keep in mind in order to get the biggest bang for your buck.

Choose your words carefully. Speech analytics software can analyze every call that comes into the contact center, identifying words and phrases said during calls, and automatically categorizing calls into topics. Having your system find whole phrases can be very effective, but remember you need to cover all variations. “How may I help you?” means the same as “How can I help you,” but because it doesn’t sound the same, won’t necessarily be categorized together. Similarly, your speech analytics software should be smart enough to know that “agree,” “agreed,” “agreement” and so on have similar meanings. Avoid common phrases like “I want,” “very much,” etc., as these would yield too many false positives. And keep in mind that many words sound the same. You may be looking for “confirmation” and find references to “information” instead. Fine-tuning the lexicons of each call category is crucial to achieving high-quality analytic results.

Whose line is it anyway? It’s not enough to know what was said during a call. It’s imperative to also take into account who said what–agent or customer. Let’s take the word “cancel” as an example. You could set up your speech analytics solution so that all calls in which the word “cancel” is said are categorized for further analysis and follow up. Sure, it will find all the calls where the customer said, “I want to cancel my service.” But unless you implement speaker separation, it will also find calls where the agent said, “Thanks for signing up. Remember, you can cancel any time.”

Read between the lines. Any decent speech analytics package can uncover dissatisfaction by identifying negative words and phrases such as “this is unacceptable.” Still, many calls will fall through the cracks—and the insights they could yield with them. Some people can be very polite and choose their words carefully even when they are extremely dissatisfied. In such scenarios, you need to augment word-spotting analysis with emotion detection. Take advantage of speech analytics to identify when emotions are running high, not only by spoken words, but also by subtle variations of pitch and tone.

Finally, let me fill you in on a little secret: speech analytics will not improve your operational efficiency. It will not improve your customer satisfaction, nor will it increase your revenues. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Speech analytics can only show you the way. It will tell you what drives your repeat calls. It will identify agent knowledge gaps that, once addressed, will optimize average handle time and increase customer satisfaction. It will predict which of your customers are at high risk to churn. But it is up to you to take the next step. Leverage your speech analytics insights and then take action.

What other speech analytics best practices are you using at your contact center? Share your comments.