Below are links to fifteen articles that I hope will meet your needs.
I've posted brief excerpts from each; for more depth, you'll want to
read the entire article.
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An interesting article about the use of artificial intelligence in
customer relationship management:
"Anne Milley, director of analytics strategy at SAS, said AI speeds up
the analytics process and points users to deep logical patterns that
algorithms alone might not pick up.
'Neural networks go after patterns that might be significant
indicators of fraud,' Milley told CRMDaily. It holds particular
promise for alerting insurance companies to false claims, for
example...
High-tech data mining can give companies a precise view of how
particular segments of the customer base react to a product or service
and propose changes consistent with those findings... While current
data-mining technology uses a rules-induction process to establish
patterns, AI-boosted mining can make deeper logical conclusions about
affinity by further extrapolating the findings uncovered by the
algorithms."
CRM Daily: How Artificial Intelligence Decodes Customer Behavior
http://crm-daily.newsfactor.com/perl/story/18001.html#story-start
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Here's a great article about customer service 'bots'. You'll have to
fill out a brief registration form in order to read the article, but I
think it will be worth your time:
"Technology providers and their corporate clients are pushing toward a
future in which an increasing percentage of customer inquiries can be
handled automatically and, hopefully, with better results. They aim to
build so-called "service bots" - software-hardware hybrid systems that
understand spoken or written English (or any other dialect or language
preferred by the customer), interpret vague or broad queries, possess
a thorough understanding of both the company's products and the
customer's past interactions, and speak or write answers in an
intelligible, context- and emotion-sensitive fashion. The necessary
skill set for the perfect service bot demands several interdependent
layers of technology: voice recognition modules, natural language
understanding engines, artificial intelligence for data extraction and
text-to-speech synthesizers...
It may sound absurdly far-fetched to expect service bots to offer
emotional support to customers. But that's the point of Dr. Rosalind
Picard's research into what she calls affective computing. Inspired by
the findings of a 1996 study by Stanford University professors
Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves, which quantified the nature and
differences between human and computer interactions, She has performed
a number of studies with computers that were programmed with
empathetic responses to customer complaints."
Technology Review: Are You Being Served?
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_nickell031502.asp
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Although this article is mainly about the Internal Revenue Service
(the agency of the U.S. Government which handles our federal income
tax), there may be some useful info here for you:
"As one of the IRS's partners in its Business System Modernization,
MITRE's Center for Enterprise Modernization (CEM) has created a
specialized laboratory to bolster research of contact center
infrastructures. This research is key to discovering worthwhile ways
government agencies can implement automation to improve customer
service and reduce operations costs...
Using a combination of advanced telephone system hardware and
software, the lab acts as a testbed for experiments and
demonstrations... MITRE experts believe that converging call centers
onto an open, standards-based infrastructure may offer improvement
opportunities for agencies such as the IRS. To demonstrate this, we
built the CCOF lab using open, standards-based technology, such as
Voice-over IP (VoIP) and VoiceXML ? short for Voice Extensible Markup
Language. VOIP enables a phone call to be handled on a standard
all-purpose data network. VoiceXML is a standard language for creating
voice-user interfaces, which can support phone calls. It uses
approaches and structures similar to those for Web development...
An advanced call center's systems would funnel all incoming message
traffic ?whether voice or text ? into a common digital network, which
would then sort out the caller's intent and leverage automation to
answer inquiries or conduct transactions. Intent identification is one
of the key factors in properly routing a question to the correct
customer-service representative or automated system. To the extent
possible, an efficient system would recognize the customer's intent
without a human in the loop."
The MITRE Digest: Testing the Future of IRS Customer Contact
http://www.mitre.org/news/digest/enterprise_modernization/03_03/m_irs_call.html
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More on VoIP:
"According to a Yankee Group report released earlier this year,
contact center managers are looking to implement voiceover IP over the
next 12 months. In fact, 23 percent of contact center managers polled
in the report, called 'Web-Based Customer Care: The Gradual Move to
Second- and Third-Generation Solutions,' cited a growing interest in
VoIP.
VoIP and Internet telephony have raised eyebrows for their ability to
communicate through an organization's WAN and avoid the tolls charged
by ordinary telephone service providers. Customer care centers are
beginning to understand the benefits of IP technology... particularly
in centers with 250 or fewer seats where IP deployments are starting
to gain traction...
'While the adoption rate is slow, virtually every one of our customers
has a VoIP pilot and the number of customers that plan on implementing
VoIP over next couple of years continues to grow,' [Nick Eisner, of
Plantronics] says. Despite the telecommunications industry's current
economic slump, he expects to see it bounce back with stronger
interest in VoIP by 2006."
Destination CRM: Advancements In VoIP
http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=3501
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Innovations in interactive voice response:
Welcome to the latest round in the IVR (interactive voice response)
revolution... advances in technology and standards have led to
development of IVR applications that are far more user-friendly than
the previous generation... Vendors in this self-service, voice
recognition niche all offer different strengths, different business
models and different features... Some, like NetByTel, TellMe and
BeVocal, are pure-play startup companies. Equipment vendors, such as
Avaya and Alcatel, also have entered this field, as have local
communications companies, such as Qwest and Verizon. Other vendors
that specialize in speech recognition technology and voice portal
products include Unisys, ScanSoft, Edify, SpeechWorks International
and Nuance...
Microsoft, for example, earlier this month announced a partnership
with Intervoice, a provider of converged voice and data applications.
The collaboration focuses on the development of applications for the
upcoming Microsoft .NET Speech platform, a multimodal infrastructure
that is based on SALT (speech application language tags) and designed
for multiple clients, such as PCs, telephones, PDAs and
next-generation laptops. The language tags are the alternative to
voiceXML, a standard backed by AT&T, IBM, Avaya, Motorola and Lucent."
CRM Daily: Computers, Customers and Intelligent Conversations
http://crm-daily.newsfactor.com/perl/story/20046.html
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An article about the future of call centers (focusing on those in Europe):
"The future of call centres is not yet clear. Nearly all medium-sized
and large companies in the capitalist metropoles have moved certain
tasks to in-house or external call centres. Furthermore, other fields
of office work are shifting to call centres, e.g. parts of public
administration. Some broad development towards a further division of
labour is possible with call centres taking all direct 'customer
contacts' (front office) and specialised workers analysing and making
decisions (back office). At the same time, technologies are being
further developed and introduced to intensify the work: software for
simultaneously dealing with inbound and outbound calls, integration of
different data bases, standardisation of data input masks... The
automation of certain steps in the work process - e.g. 'qualifying
customers' - will lead to lay-offs in certain fields. Elsewhere, the
combination of different media - telephone, fax, e-mail - will lead to
bigger workloads."
Kolinko: Call Centres: In the Whirlpools of Circulation
http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/kolinko/lebuk/e_buk_4.htm
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Upcoming customer service innovations:
"The best customer-service technology innovations on the horizon focus
on old-fashioned ideals -- that is, helping customers solve problems,
get answers to their questions, and have pleasant shopping experiences
-- in new ways. Advanced speech recognition and live text chat are two
such innovations that can make telephone and Internet service
interactions slicker, cheaper and more effective...
New speech-recognition applications are much more intelligent than
their bad old predecessors. Consumers can state a question or problem
directly to a computer without the menu format. The best of these
systems are 99.9 percent accurate, able even to understand heavy
accents and drown out background noise.
CRM Daily: Coolest Customer-Service Innovations
http://crm-daily.newsfactor.com/perl/story/22481.html
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More on VoIP and voice-based customer self-service:
"Interactive voice response (IVR) systems are great for corporations
-- they can save significant amounts of money by reducing the number
of calls handled by customer-service representatives in the call
center. But the customer experience leaves a lot to be desired... But
new trends in technology promise to change all that...
The IVRs are used for initial call qualification and simple
transactions, but if the caller needs to talk to an agent, that's
where the trouble begins. Typically, a call goes from the IVR system
to a live agent by means of a simple switch-to-switch transfer... The
call-center agent has no means of distinguishing it from a new,
incoming call. So the customer has to provide all the same information
again... Why not combine the two systems, pooling information so the
call-center agent has the information the user already provided to the
IVR?"
CRM Daily: Latest, Greatest Customer-Service Telephone Tech
http://crm-daily.newsfactor.com/perl/story/21345.html
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Microsoft stakes a claim in the field of speech applications:
"Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Intervoice, a provider of converged
voice and data applications, have partnered to promote Microsoft's
version of open standards-based speech applications. The strategic
alliance calls for cooperation on tech development, as well as sales
and marketing, for the upcoming Microsoft .NET Speech platform, a
multimodal infrastructure that is based on Speech Application Language
Tags (SALT) and designed for multiple clients, such as PCs,
telephones, PDAs and next-generation laptops.
However, it will be companies that invest heavily in development and
deployment of large-scale enterprise telephony and multimodal
speech-enabled applications -- such as interactive voice response
(IVR), CRM and ERP (enterprise resource planning) -- that stand to
gain the most, Microsoft said.
Kai-Fu Lee, vice president of the Natural Interactive Services
Division at Microsoft, said the partnership 'is critical for making
speech technology available to a broad customer base -- including IVR
and call center vendors -- and expanding the ecosystem that will make
speech a mainstream feature of Web applications."
CRM Daily: Microsoft Goes Mainstream with Speech Tech
http://crm-daily.newsfactor.com/perl/story/19603.html
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More on Microsoft's speech applications, and why Microsoft may not set
the ultimate standards in this field:
"Microsoft is gearing up for the launch of its latest addition to the
Windows Server System. Company founder and tech luminary Bill Gates
will be unveiling Speech Server 2004 on March 24th in San Francisco at
the combined AVIOSSpeechTEK Spring 2004, VSLive, and Microsoft Mobile
Developers Conference (DevCon) 2004 events...
It is unlikely, though, that Microsoft deployments ultimately will
dominate this particular market segment. That is because its tech
offering is based on the SALT, or Speech Application Language Tags,
open standard. Ever since vendors -- reacting to the market push --
moved away from proprietary technology, two open standards moved in to
fill the breach. One is SALT; the other is VoiceXML, or VXML, which
has been championed by Avaya, Motorola, AT&T and Lucent...
In the end, though, the standards issue is secondary for many
companies considering this technology. A Yankee Group survey last year
found that managers are more likely to base purchases on the
integration capabilities of the software and financial strength of the
vendor. Indeed, 83 percent of respondents cited integration as the top
selection criterion for speech software, while 54 percent ranked
adherence to the standard as very important."
CRM Daily: Microsoft Musters Allies for Speech-Tech Wars
http://crm-daily.newsfactor.com/perl/story/23224.html
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TuVox's next-generation speech tools:
"TuVox has created what it calls'"the next generation of speech
application software' in its new release, TuVox CVR 3.0. One of the
key enhancements in CVR 3.0 is for the MADgen (machine assisted dialog
generation) tool, which automates the creation of speech dialogues.
'MADgen can significantly speed the creation of a new speech
application and reduce the development cost by a factor of 10,' TuVox
director of business development manager John Kirst told CRMDaily.
'Starting with electronically-stored data, it automates the process of
identifying subjects, topics, questions and answers to construct the
speech dialogs and grammars.' Kirst explained...
'Speech dialog generators, reusable program modules, analytics for
tuning -- the tools -- are all part of the next big area of innovation
in advanced speech,' Gartner research director Bern Elliot told
CRMDaily."
CRM Daily: TuVox Introduces Next-Gen Speech Tools
http://crm-daily.newsfactor.com/perl/story/22438.html
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On the move toward self-service:
"For years, CRM pundits have been calling for a wholesale shift away
from telephone service and toward self-service through a variety of
channels. Much like the oft-heralded paperless office and other
technological breakthroughs, however, reality has been slow to catch
up with predictions. Still, the change may indeed be coming, according
to data compiled by AMR Research.
By 2010, B2B (business-to-business) call-center operations will shrink
by half, predicts AMR's Marc McCluskey. The same goes for call centers
in most consumer-oriented industries. Over 40 percent of companies
surveyed by AMR currently provide some form of self-service through
the Web. Another 15 percent plan to do so within the next year...
Where enterprises should not invest their I.T. dollars is in
call-related tools, such as universal queuing, said McCluskey. Rather,
they should look at systems that make more and better-organized data
available to customers, allowing them to help themselves more
efficiently."
CRM Daily: Research: Call Center May Be Endangered
http://crm-daily.newsfactor.com/perl/story/23293.html
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Neural network technology and intelligent automation:
"Content Mining, similar to data mining, intelligently deduces
patterns within large amounts of information. Combining advanced
neural network technology with patented text analysis techniques,
Content Mining enables computers to perform work comparable to an
entire staff of customer support representatives...
Neural network technology is a revolutionary new solution that
intelligently and automatically analyzes, interprets, and acts on
information without human intervention. A neural network is a virtual
work force that operates 24 hours a day, addressing the needs of
customers. Defined, a neural network is an intelligent computer
program, modeled after the human brain, that is able to make decisions
and perform complex tasks. Like good employees, neural networks learn
from experience and improve their performance the more they learn.
Unlike humans, neural networks can process significantly more
information and can do so thousands of times faster than any
individual.
Stelzner Consulting: The Next Revolution in Customer Service - Virtual
Support Teams
http://www.stelzner.com/PDF/copy.pdf
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Chat, co-browsing, instant messaging, and other live interactions in
customer service:
"Typical live Web interaction technologies include chat, instant
messaging (IM), video, voice (both voice over IP [VoIP] and initiation
of PSTN callback), co-browsing, application sharing, and remote
control. However, chat and co-browsing dominate the customer service
implementations of live Web interaction tools due to the maturity and
simplicity of the technologies relative to other live interaction
technologies...
Remote control tools - tools that enable a remote party to take
physical control of a user?s computer - have traditionally been used
by IT help desks and computer manufacturers. However, remote control
software is becoming very inexpensive, especially with the inclusion
of remote control services in Windows XP."
ZDNet: Live Web Interaction: Is It Worth It?
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2913533,00.html
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Predictions for 2004:
"For years, call centers have been adopting advanced speech
technologies to support customer self-service applications, often as
an alternative or replacement for DTMF (dual tone multifrequency, or
touch-tone) based IVR (interactive voice response) applications.
This trend will continue in 2004, Garter research director Bern Elliot
expects, but he also predicts that more than half of the organizations
implementing advanced speech-based applications in call centers will
do so on a project-by-project basis, thus missing opportunities to
combine capacity and reduce total resources required for development
and support.
There will be steady progress toward speech-application development
standards in 2004, says Gartner's Elliot. These emerging standards are
VoiceXML, SIP (session initiation protocol), and CCXML (call control
XML)."
Contact Center Today: CRM 2004: The Call Center
http://contact-center-today.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=22955
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My strategy in searching for these articles consisted of various
combinations of these keywords and phrases:
"customer service"
"eservice"
"call center OR centre"
"help desk"
"innovation"
"future"
"cutting edge"
"new technology"
"advancements"
"upcoming"
"artificial intelligence"
"automated"
"speech OR voice recognition"
"customer relationship management"
"crm"
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I hope this material will be useful. As always, I'll be glad to
refocus my search as needed; please don't hesitate to request
clarification if there's anything further that I can do for you.
Best regards,
pinkfreud |
