Using a now oft-tested device, I will tie together multiple happenings in the contact center market in the past week in one blog. OK, so maybe it was just Dave Michels that did it, but it is summer and the themes are related. (I dismissed calling this blog Summer Social Media Notebook Part II as I was concerned Brian Riggs would rightly take it as pure theft rather than homage.)
I'll start with the most recent news first. Today, Aspect announced Social Media Channel Integration. I guess the first thing that strikes me is that Cisco really hit it out of the park with the name SocialMiner. With a double in marketing and MIS in business school, I still love and favor a branded name with some pizazz over long, descriptive names (see also Avaya Desktop Video Device).
Now let me quote myself, i.e., repeat a comment of mine that was used in Aspect's press release: "While the number of solutions in production is still low, companies are actively seeking to understand their options for adding social media as an additional media type in the contact center with pilots and trials." In speaking engagements this spring, I compared integration of social media into the contact center to the heady days of email integration in the late 1990s. Everyone was talking about it, and adding it as a requirement in RFPs, but very, very few were actually installing the solution.
Ipso facto, it is very important to have an announced social media contact center routing solution--even if it won't be a revenue producer. Aspect now allows itself to check that box in the affirmative, and gives itself a little boost over competitors by saying it will tweak its workforce optimization solutions to support social media as well.
In related news, last week was the annual hot-as-heck-in-NYC-in-August SpeechTEK event. After hearing year after year in the 1990s advocates saying, "199X will be the year of speech,” this quote I tweeted during a mobility panel is disheartening, "When will speech be a viable input alternative to the keyboard? We're not there yet."
Even if speech has not become all that we hoped it would be, SpeechTEK is still a great event for seeing the latest that vendors have to offer. In the social media vein, I was introduced to a new concept by Dan York of Voxeo: the use of automated self-service in social media. While several companies talk about various stages of social media adoption in the contact center, Voxeo's version is the first that I recall seeing that incorporates the use of voice portal technology for auto-response (see below). It is interesting to think of the possible proportion of social media queries that might be addressed via auto response. Clearly this would need to be done carefully--giving context-savvy answers to specific questions.
You may now return to your summer fun. Or to watching the rain, as I'm doing here.
