News

SpeechTEK liveblog/crowdblog via Google Wave

Skype to put on suit and tie with help from Cisco and ShoreTel

Not content with over 500 million users using its voice and video chat, Skype now looks to make inroads into the corporate market and are in talks with Cisco and ShoreTel to sell its software. Why these two? Because their primary focus has been in corporate IP communications. Skype doesn’t want to deal with any TDM baggage often carried by Big Telecom.

The corporate communications market is obviously a very lucrative one. IDC pegs it at $203 billion. Even capturing 1% of that market is quite significant.

According to this BusinessWeek report, there are certainly challenges to come:

Persuading corporations to ditch their traditional carriers won’t be easy. “There are some major roadblocks to growing this in the large enterprise space,” says Jayanth Angl, an analyst at Info-Tech Research Group in London, Ont. Chief among them: giving IT managers more control. In industries such as health care and finance, companies need to track and monitor calls—something Skype doesn’t allow for. Skype also needs to convince potential customers that its service, which is sometimes criticized for poor quality, is reliable and secure enough for important business calls.

Well, that’s on top of some internal challenges, too:

To reorient the company, Chief Executive Officer Josh Silverman has replaced five people on his executive staff this year and cracked down on distracting side projects, which had some employees spending their time building 3D chess software. “Skype is serious about providing our business customers the tools and features that put them in control,” says David Gurle, who left Thomson Reuters in January to run Skype’s business division, where he’s doubling head count, to about 100 people.

Now that Skype is privatized by Silver Lake (eBay sold most of its stake for $2 billion), which interestingly also touts Avaya in its portfolio, it’s time to get serious about business. Yes, no more fooling around with 3D chess software (too bad, I wouldn’t mind seeing what they may have come up with). Skype executives are on a new mission to trim fat and boost sales resources in order to conquer the corporate world.

A conversation with Mike, Tom, and Lucy(Phone)

There are many famous Lucys we’re all quite familiar with. There’s Lucy Ricardo, the main character from I Love Lucy, known for her penchant for getting into trouble. Actresses Lucy Liu (Ally McBeal, Charlie’s Angels) and Lucy Lawless (Xena: Warrior Princess). The bossy and cynical Lucy van Pelt of the classic comic strip Peanuts, Charlie Brown’s worst enemy on the football field.

It’s not common to find a Lucy in the names of contact center technologies. I know that IVR and voice prompt vendors would personify system voices — referring to “the Sally greeting” or “the Albert on-hold prompt.” A speech-enabled IVR may even introduce itself (himself? herself?) upon answering, “Hello, I am Alfred. How may I assist you?” but not many systems do.

The personification of technology seems a natural way to reach the widest spectrum of users from a branding as well as usability perspective. Score one for LucyPhone.

I’d stumbled upon this service several days ago, complete with a website and iPhone app (Android and Blackberry versions to come soon) to save you time by staying in queue for you. Yes, no more annoying ads, jittery prompts, and music aimed at hypnotizing on-hold callers! Thank God for Lucy and her tremendous patience…

When you first use the service, you’ll hear a greeting from Lucy, then it’s just pressing a button and waiting for her to call you back once an agent is reached. It’s not a new technology by any means as virtual queuing and callback features have existed for years in the contact center. However, how many contact centers have implemented this? Sadly, not a lot.

And if the number of tweets and Facebook fans is an indication of how much people love Lucy, then contact centers ought to take note. This is a feature that your customers want because nobody likes waiting in line — even if it’s a virtual line, complete with soothing music and calming voices. In essence, customers want contact centers to respect their time.

Surprisingly, founders Mike and Tom Oristian do not come from a contact center technology background. (I shouldn’t be shocked, which contact center developer uses Rails?!) They saw a big opportunity to empower the customer to drive increased customer satisfaction, instead of leaving it to the companies to decide whether to offer a callback feature. So far it’s working well as loyal users have entered hundreds of company toll-free numbers into LucyPhone’s website. (In fact, just the other day I found the unpublished toll-free number of a major online company through LucyPhone’s site. Crowdsourcing is a beautiful thing.)

Score two for LucyPhone.

According to the Oristians, the company has less than 10 people and the service is run on redundant cloud servers. The business model is to offer LucyPhone as SaaS (hmmm, “Sassy Lucy”? I like it already) in order to lower cost and simplify integration. The company is actively looking into partnering with Big Telecom to tackle the integration challenges of bringing this directly into the contact centers.

Perhaps with the popularity of SIP this won’t pose as much of a challenge as pre-SIP days. LucyPhone’s enterprise and consumer offerings will work with SIP for the most cost effective integration path. I remember a long time ago having to implement a similar feature but only using proprietary Nortel technology. The solution (or hack) consisted of generating “fake” calls using phantom PBX ports once the customer chooses the callback option, thereby tricking the CTI software into thinking these are real calls in queue, then once such a call hits the agent desktop with a screen-pop, use the softphone to initiate a call to the customer callback number. Not very pretty at all…

I won’t be surprised to see similar hacks in place today to demonstrate virtual queuing and callback. As somebody who knows a thing or two about this technology, I’m glad that LucyPhone offers another option for a contact center to implement this highly desired feature.

Countdown to SpeechTEK (and CRM Evolution)

As animal herds in Africa are in search of greener pastures and water sources during the summer months, there’s also another migration to witness. However, this trek occurs in North America.

New York City, to be precise.

Droves of contact center and CRM industry analysts, vendors, executives, freelancers, and geeks converge at Times Square to satiate their thirst for neon lights, gigantic billboards, delicious foods, Broadway shows, and endless merchandising. That is, if the boss isn’t around.

Otherwise, it’s better to show up at the Marriott Marquis for the annual SpeechTEK and CRM Evolution conference. Learn a few things about speech analytics, VUI design, and the latest in speech technology. Ponder upon the reason why the majority of contact centers aren’t speech-enabled. Find words to convince the boss on purchasing and implementing speech technology. Confront speech vendors on why their implementation at your call center still sucked.

But what about CRM Evolution, the twin sister of SpeechTEK?

Do you really want to know? I can summarize it in two words: social media. CRM has evolved, and SCRM (Social CRM) is the new buzzword. Remember to keep tabs on how many times you hear “SCRM” during the conference. You might get tired of hearing it after the first day…

Yours truly will be among the geek bloggers attending this event starting Monday, August 2. Hit me up (via social media or leave a comment) if you’d like to have a beer or meal together while in the Big Apple. I may treat, depending on the outcome of this experiment…

West Interactive acquires TuVox

One day after its second quarter earnings report, West (the Interactive division) announces another major acquisition: San Jose, CA-based TuVox. Terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed, but something tells me that TuVox isn’t doing too well and its investors wanted an out. From its website, 2007 was the last time TuVox received any sort of industry recognition; its blog hasn’t been updated since June 2009. Digging through its website reveals no recent news…

It wasn’t too long ago that West scooped up Holly Connects, an IVR platform provider which I think wasn’t doing too well, either. While the Holly Connects acquisition was a platform play, today’s buyout of TuVox appears to complement it with a portfolio of on-demand IVR solutions and IVR applications.

I suppose West has done well in identifying buying opportunities, especially in this distressed economy, and using its cash wisely to expand its products and services. Could it be the Oracle of Omaha in the contact center industry?

Press release:

OMAHA, Neb., July 22, 2010 – West Interactive, a leading provider of hosted and managed automated customer contact solutions, today announced it has acquired TuVox, a premier provider of on-demand speech and IVR applications.

TuVox has pioneered a unique agile development methodology for speech applications that can yield a superior caller experience in less time and with less risk when detailed requirements are difficult to specify in advance. “TuVox collaborates closely with our clients throughout the development process,” said Mark Lazar, CEO of TuVox. “We find this allows us to better understand their fundamental business needs and respond with creative solutions that produce great results from the start.”

TuVox constructs applications using proprietary development tools that address all aspects of the application lifecycle, from initial design through ongoing operations and tuning. The tool set includes features often sought by clients, including support for the leading VoiceXML platforms, a replaceable runtime component, and a multi-tenanted administration console for configuration and reporting. The addition of TuVox to the West Interactive Hosted IVR platform enhances the current best-in-class applications that optimize the results of our clients businesses.

“We are extremely impressed with the TuVox staff and their ability to rapidly deploy a high-quality application even when clients had difficulty articulating their precise requirements,” said Pam Mortenson, President of West Interactive. “We believe this capability combined with our best-in-class platform and scale will create a truly unique solution that will be particularly beneficial when working with clients on cutting-edge applications.”

West does not expect results from TuVox to have a material impact to its 2010 financial results.

About West Interactive:
West Interactive is a leading provider of hosted and managed automated customer contact solutions. We help our clients connect with their customers more effectively, deliver superior service and maximize the value of every customer interaction. We provide advanced technologies and a highly scalable standards-based infrastructure to help businesses more efficiently conduct multi-media transactions. We have the people, technology and experience to handle the simplest or most complex solutions. Services include custom speech applications, customer surveys, network based call routing and analytic services.

West Interactive, a subsidiary of West Corporation, is located in Omaha, Nebraska, and serves Fortune 1000 clients in nearly every vertical market. For more information, please call 1-800-841-9000 or visit www.westinteractive.com.

About West Corporation
West Corporation is a leading provider of technology-driven, voice-oriented solutions. West offers its clients a broad range of communications and infrastructure management solutions that help them manage or support critical communications. West’s customer contact solutions and conferencing services are designed to improve its clients’ cost structure and provide reliable, high-quality services. West also provides mission-critical services, such as public safety and emergency communications.

Founded in 1986 and headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, West serves Fortune 1000 companies and other clients in a variety of industries, including telecommunications, banking, retail, financial, technology and healthcare. West has sales and operations in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Latin America. For more information on West Corporation, please call 1-800-841-9000 or visit www.west.com.

About TuVox
TuVox provides mission critical IVR hosting and managed services to companies who envision voice automation as a strategic part of their customer experience. Since 2000, TuVox has become synonymous with superior caller experience. Throughout its history, TuVox has delivered IVR solutions that have both revolutionized how people use the phone and mobile devices to access information, solve problems and transact business and have achieved the expected business outcome for its clients. TuVox On Demand applications are available as configurable solutions for industries such as banking, financial services, insurance, communications, consumer electronics, technology, utilities, entertainment, healthcare, publishing, retail and travel.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as “may,” “should,” “expects,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “predicts,” “intends,” “continue” or similar terminology. These statements reflect only West’s current expectations and are not guarantees of future performance or results. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the effects of global economic trends on the businesses of West’s clients; competition in West’s highly competitive industries; West’s ability to keep pace with its clients’ needs for rapid technological change and systems availability; the loss, financial difficulties or bankruptcy of any key clients; the non-exclusive nature of West’s client contracts and the absence of revenue commitments; increases in the cost of voice and data services or significant interruptions in these services; the cost of pending and future litigation; extensive regulation affecting many of West’s businesses; security and privacy breaches of the systems West uses to protect personal data; West’s ability to protect its proprietary information or technology; the cost of defending West against intellectual property infringement claims; service interruptions to West’s data and operation centers; West’s ability to retain key personnel and attract a sufficient number of qualified employees; increases in labor costs and turnover rates; the political, economic and other conditions in the countries where West operates; and West’s ability to complete future acquisitions and integrate or achieve the objectives of its recent and future acquisitions. West is also subject to other risk factors described in documents filed by the company with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which the statements were made. West undertakes no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by applicable law.

Media Contact:
Mack McKenzie
402-963-1324