Speech Analytics Gains Traction with Avaya's Purchase of Aurix

Constellation Orbits
Constellation Research, Inc.

Elizabeth is a well-recognized industry-leading analyst. She was previously Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.  Prior to Constellation, Elizabeth spent eleven years at Forrester Research as vice president and principal analyst.  She has managed large consulting projects for business and government organizations and provides technical insight and guidance to business and government organizations on their communication issues. Prior to her role as an industry analyst with Communication Initiatives and Forrester Research, Elizabeth held senior management positions with IBM, ROLM and Siemens ICN where she was a senior manager for strategic planning and alliances. Expertise Elizabeth’s expertise includes in-depth knowledge of unified communications,…...

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Avaya announced its purchase of speech analytics firm Aurix to support its UC and contact center solutions. This acquisition indicates the growing need for companies to mine, analyze and understand their customers’ conversations. For too long contact center metrics focused on the agent’s conversation but were unable to categorize voice interactions of their customers to assess their concerns and attitudes. I believe it is an important shift for customer service organization to use speech analytics to better understand customers’ attitudes and improve their experience through analysis and interpretation of what they are saying. Speech analytics is ready for prime time and is an important tool to gain valuable customer insight. Benefits of speech analytics allow you to:

Strategy for Successful Video Rollout

Constellation Orbits
Constellation Research, Inc.

Elizabeth is a well-recognized industry-leading analyst. She was previously Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.  Prior to Constellation, Elizabeth spent eleven years at Forrester Research as vice president and principal analyst.  She has managed large consulting projects for business and government organizations and provides technical insight and guidance to business and government organizations on their communication issues. Prior to her role as an industry analyst with Communication Initiatives and Forrester Research, Elizabeth held senior management positions with IBM, ROLM and Siemens ICN where she was a senior manager for strategic planning and alliances. Expertise Elizabeth’s expertise includes in-depth knowledge of unified communications,…...

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Enterprises are actively expanding their use of video and consider it an essential component of their overall communication initiatives. Video conferencing has become pervasive, as technical improvements make it easier to use, less expensive and more manageable. Today’s diverse workforce creates a high demand for personalized contact with external locations and video conferencing promotes more intimate meetings. Sales managers also find video conferencing creates a closer relationship with prospective and existing customers. However, video conferencing expansion should not be left to sporadic upgrades across departments but part of a well thought out plan to ensure maximum usage without sacrificing quality and the user’s experience. Consider the following steps when developing your enterprise videoconferencing strategy. Picture your end state. Video conferencing should not be considered a solution where one size fits all. There are many practical options for using video and it is important that you prioritize which types of solutions will deliver the results needed. Solutions may range from high level global meetings to internal training classes. Develop end users’ requirements. Classify different work groups according to their job functions and communication responsibilities. Knowledge workers may consider frequent video conferencing sessions as essential to their job performance, while other employees may be an occasional attendee of a video conferencing meeting. Additionally, determine if the videoconferencing sessions will be mostly for internal communications or for external meetings with customers and partners. Identify what type of experience users’ require. Most video conferencing today takes place in a room equipped with a video conferencing camera and speakers. However, desktop video is growing quickly and enables users participate in video conferencing sessions through their PC or a video phone. Tablets and smart phones are also growing in importance especially for remote and mobile workers. Executive level meetings may favor high quality immersive experience of telepresence. Also, note limitations to some types of video conferencing sessions. An employee who sits in a cubicle may disturb others using desktop video requiring video endpoints be set up in convenient break out rooms. Manage the quality of the uses’ experience. Video conferencing requires real time connectivity for high resolution. When expanding video conferencing, it is critical to ensure there is adequate bandwidth and that packet loss is less than 0.1% in any five minute period. It is also necessary to support QoS on the LAN and WAN for uninterrupted traffic flow. Include special-use applications. As tablet adoption increases, mobile video will expand as businesses use tablets for multiple business purposes. Using the video capabilities of tablets, organizations can capture and record real time events to remote sites. For example, a healthcare organization may equip its doctors and nurses with tablets to provide face to face meetings with distant patients or a manufacturer can use tablets to see inside remote facilities to observe workers and conditions. Consider real time video support. As video adoption becomes viral, it is important to measure its effect on the overall capacity of the network. When planning for video conferencing adoption determine the number of simultaneous sessions you plan to support and additional network equipment, such as gateways or session border controllers, that may be needed. It is also essential to address video’s security requirements, such as NAT/Firewall traversal or HTTP tunneling, etc. Highlight its ease of use. Although video calls have become very simple to set up, there is still some reluctance on users who may not feel confident in setting up a video conference. For those groups who plan to participate in video conferencing, set up training sessions to ensure widespread adoption. Determine purchase method. Video conferencing solutions are available as premise based and cloud solutions. The purchase option depends somewhat on the company’s network capabilities to support video and its implementation of security and management tools. If the network is video ready, then the premise based solution may offer a lower cost. Cloud solutions reduce management time and are faster to implement and many consider cloud solutions as an operational expense, which appeals to some companies. Integrate with overall UC plan. Video should be considered a part of a company’s overall communication strategy and be included in its Unified Communications upgrade plan. This enables users to have a common interface for video and integrate more fully into the overall communication infrastructure. Interoperability is also important criteria and you need to understand how vendors support other vendors’ video endpoints.

Strategic Social Media Engagement Lowers Contact Center Costs

Constellation Orbits
Constellation Research, Inc.

Elizabeth is a well-recognized industry-leading analyst. She was previously Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.  Prior to Constellation, Elizabeth spent eleven years at Forrester Research as vice president and principal analyst.  She has managed large consulting projects for business and government organizations and provides technical insight and guidance to business and government organizations on their communication issues. Prior to her role as an industry analyst with Communication Initiatives and Forrester Research, Elizabeth held senior management positions with IBM, ROLM and Siemens ICN where she was a senior manager for strategic planning and alliances. Expertise Elizabeth’s expertise includes in-depth knowledge of unified communications,…...

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Many companies support social media sites to reach the millions of customers who actively network on their sites to communicate, publish comments and seek information. However, a major opportunity is often overlooked, which is to proactively use social media to reduce costs in their contact centers. Customer support centers are primarily reactive and rely heavily on expensive inbound telephone calls to support the needs of its customers. However, strategic use of social media sites can reach out to customers before they need to make a call and deliver value-added support for their customers.

What's Behind Contact Center Job Repatriation?

Constellation Orbits
Constellation Research, Inc.

Elizabeth is a well-recognized industry-leading analyst. She was previously Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.  Prior to Constellation, Elizabeth spent eleven years at Forrester Research as vice president and principal analyst.  She has managed large consulting projects for business and government organizations and provides technical insight and guidance to business and government organizations on their communication issues. Prior to her role as an industry analyst with Communication Initiatives and Forrester Research, Elizabeth held senior management positions with IBM, ROLM and Siemens ICN where she was a senior manager for strategic planning and alliances. Expertise Elizabeth’s expertise includes in-depth knowledge of unified communications,…...

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After many years of moving contact center operations off-shore, either directly or through outsourcers, several companies have changed direction and are repatriating agents to onshore locations.

Lower salaries and improved profit margins drove companies to off-shore locations, such as India and the Philippines but now a growing number of companies are reconsidering their decision. Bringing agents back onshore is not based on any new spirit of nationalism but on the fact that many customers complain about the quality of services received from off-shore agents. For routine questions, customers seem satisfied working with off-shore agents who offer a simple direct response. However, for more complex interactions, customers much prefer a live agent and one who can quickly provide the information needed. Customer satisfaction ratings often fall short with non-native English speakers who rely heavily on scripted conversations and perform poorly when they need to deviate from their script. This results in agent’s lack of contextual understanding of the issue, fewer first call resolutions, longer hold times and multiple transfers. Callers’ dissatisfaction may ultimately result in customer defections.

The timing seems right to bring some agents back on shore, as the growth in home agents by several outsourcers attracts a better educated pool of workers and increased flexibility in work hours. Although on-shore home agents receive a higher hourly wage, companies save in other areas, such a more call completions, lower travel costs, and higher agent retention, which results in lower training expenditures. Rather than viewing customer support as a commodity, several companies realize that improved service deliver is a competitive differentiator that promotes customer affinity.

The move to bring more agents on-shore will happen gradually but slow economic conditions makes organizations even more aware of the value of retaining their customers with improved support. Some examples of companies that moved some of their operations back onshore include the airlines such as Delta and US Airways manufactures such as Dell and Chrysler and retail operations such as Netflix. For companies that want to outsource on-shore agents, there are many available vendors who support both onshore and offshore outsourcing including Convergys, Sitel, and Teleperformance. Outsourcers that specialize in supporting home onshore agents include Alpine Access, LiveOps and West Communications.

UC Adoptions Increase but Future Investment Plans Stagnate

Constellation Orbits
Constellation Research, Inc.

Elizabeth is a well-recognized industry-leading analyst. She was previously Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.  Prior to Constellation, Elizabeth spent eleven years at Forrester Research as vice president and principal analyst.  She has managed large consulting projects for business and government organizations and provides technical insight and guidance to business and government organizations on their communication issues. Prior to her role as an industry analyst with Communication Initiatives and Forrester Research, Elizabeth held senior management positions with IBM, ROLM and Siemens ICN where she was a senior manager for strategic planning and alliances. Expertise Elizabeth’s expertise includes in-depth knowledge of unified communications,…...

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Unified Communications (UC) adoptions will continue to grow in NA in 2011 but future investment plans show a significant decline over the prior two years. Constellation Research partnered with Computer Economics to survey UC decision makers and found a steady growth in the adoption of UC among companies with earnings greater than fifty million dollars annually for the current year. This survey revealed a steady uptake in UC adoption from a 25% adoption rate in 2009, a 27% adoption rate in 2010 and a 34% adoption rate this year. However, the survey also found a sharp decline in short term plans to invest in UC during the next 18 months. In 2011, 18% of respondents planned short term UC investments compared to 40% in 2010 and 35% in 2009.

While the overall market outlook for UC remains positive, it is evident that the current economic slowdown has put a damper on UC investments for many organizations, where tight budgets limit spending. This same survey also revealed that the majority of companies investing in UC had a positive ROI on their investment, so decision makers understand the benefits of UC deployments. With a slow economy it is up to vendors to do more to demonstrate quantifiable savings for specific industries to help prioritize the adoption of UC solutions. Providing customers with tools to better quantify realistic savings will facilitate business case development and help organizations move forward with their UC upgrades. For full survey results see Constellation Research Group’s report, “2011 Unified Communications Adoption Trends”.

Is Chatter the Center of the Universe?

Last week at Dreamforce, Marc Benioff spent 2.5 hours of the opening keynote extolling the virtues of Chatter.  A life-size iPad showcased the ease of collaborating on sales deals and other work.  And, even more telling, a number of technology providers announced they were plugging into the Chatter way of life – including HR vendors Workday and Vana Workforce, as well as Infor (marketing), Concur (expenses), and Kenandy (supply chain).

The event sparks both a turning point and a bundle of questions …

Could chatter get any bigger?

Internal Social Networking – Reborn

Buzz aside, this event will mark a major shift in the perception of internal social networking going forward.  Benioff deemed the space “Social Enterprise” and identified “in-context social collaboration” as the business value differentiator. Truth be told, though, business leaders have accepted external social networks as a necessary business tool – for things like recruiting, prospecting, and customer service.  On the other hand, internal social networking continues to be met by raised eyebrows, headshakes, and outright skepticism.

Benioff makes a strong case that maybe the networks, to date, just haven’t been in the right place (in the middle of business activities) or connected to the right things (work products).  Though specific customer examples – such as NBC Universal’s use of chatter across all properties to collaborate on such things as marketing products – are still few, an impressive number of hands were raised in the keynote auditorium when asked “who’s using chatter?”

Who Isn’t Using Chatter?

Though a couple of HR vendors announced Chatter plug-ins, other social collaboration-oriented vendors were noticeably absent from such announcements.  Notably, Saba and SuccessFactors.  The question remains whether worker-centric applications such as these can connect to work and business activities while retaining the stream of work within their application set. Or, will they ultimately need to connect up with a business-centric social stream?  Where will the center of work gravity fall when everything shakes out?

What Will Larry Do?

With Oracle OpenWorld just weeks away, one wonders how Larry Ellison will respond to his protege and nemesis.  Though Ellison has a social platform in Webcenter Connect and ties to business application activities in Fusion Network at Work, will it come across as a “me too”?  It is hard to imagine Ellison extolling the virtues of a business application that could “enable customers and employees to rise up against corporate leadership” as Marc Benioff charged the 45,000 Dreamforce attendees, in what was certainly the most electrifying moment of the keynote. Still, it’s also hard to imagine Larry Ellison ceding the universe to Chatter.

Research Summary: Getting the Most from Your Calibration Process

Forward

With traditional performance processes under fire, but continued pressure to deliver a vehicle for measurement and feedback, leading organizations have incorporated calibration into the process. If done right, calibration can not only improve the value of reviews today, but create a foundation for business-centric performance management going forward. However, if done wrong, calibration only serves to exacerbate the complaints and frustrations of the business.  Based on interviews with more than twenty organizations, this best practice report lays out the best methods for creating and running successful calibration sessions.

A. Introduction

As HR organizations look to transform their performance management practice from an after-the-fact forced documentation to a driver of business outcomes, calibration can not only improve the perceived fairness of today’s process, but raise the value of performance management to the business by:

• Socializing expectations.
• Gaining visibility into cross-team capabilities.
• Better preparing managers to coach employees.
• Providing a natural segue to broader business conversations.

Figure 1. Incorporating Calibration into the Performance Process

B. 7 Key Steps in Running a Successful Calibration Process

In order to leverage calibration as a business value generator rather than a mechanism for further frustration, organizations must understand the key steps in running successful calibration sessions:

1. Get what matters on the table.
2. Make the conversation king.
3. Make the tough calls.
4. Own the result.
5. Broaden insight.
6. Move toward future-focused business impact.
7. Communicate “what’s in it for me” to managers and employees.

Figure 2. Structure of a Performance Calibration Session

C. Actionable Advice for HR Leaders

With few organizations satisfied with performance-appraisal results and most re-designing their process every three to five years, it is easy to incorporate a new fad and quickly become disenchanted. The calibration process is not a new fad – it has been found to be an effective practice. However, it needs to be done right or it will just lead to further frustration. Summary recommendations to get started:

• Ensure proper investment. Can your organization invest in facilitators, coaching for managers, and getting executive support for establishing what matters?  Such investment is critical in rolling out a process that positively impacts managers and their teams.
• Keep it simple. The investment in the process should center around driving better conversations – amongst managers within the meeting and between managers and employees outside of the meeting.  Meanwhile complex processes and administrative demands should be kept to a minimum.
• Look for calibrations already occurring in the organization. Since this is a business-driven activity, some business areas or teams might be conducting calibration-type sessions.  Some groups may be effectively using calibration sessions to drive useful conversations and consistent results.  Look to these pockets for initial investment and value creation; then leverage these examples throughout the organization.

D. Report Links

Get the full framework with component details on what’s different and where the business benefits lay. Find out how vendors will need to respond – and what you should expect from them.

Buy the full research report on the Constellation Research website.

Contact the Sales team to purchase this report on an a la carte basis or join the Constellation Customer Experience!

Are Check-ins The Future Nirvana of Time Tracking?

Time tracking has always been at the forefront of the internet of things – from the early days of punch cards fed to a mainframe to more recent advancements such as interactive voice response and biometric devices.  How do advancements in SoLoMo technology open up even further possibilities?

Time tracking itself began as a compliance necessity – ensuring people were paid for the proper time worked and no one (especially the company) was getting cheated.  However, tracking time worked has generated far greater benefits than just that.  Knowing when, how many, and on what people work allows for optimized near-term scheduling and, when tied to outcomes (such as widgets sold, widgets produced, and customers satisfied), it can enable predictive planning – including hiring, scheduling, and deployment.  In other words, collecting data on what people are working on and tying that to desirable outcomes can mean big money.  Meanwhile, technology advancements – in particular, biometric devices – make this data more accurate and due to ease and speed, more specific.

For those whose paycheck is tightly tied to clocking in and out, this works great.  However, there is a huge gaping void of workers whose work activities are a complete mystery.  For this population, the act of filling out a timesheet – though often tried at companies to get a “handle on things” – leads to complaints and non-compliance, at best, and mutiny and attrition, at worst. There have also been attempts to raise things up a level – via goal tracking.  Tracking progress and completion toward goals (that could also be tied to projects and outcomes) would garner a similar level of visibility into the work activities of a more elusive population. However, getting individuals to track goals day-to-day is even less realistic than getting people to fill out a timesheet. “We would love it if people did that,” remarked an HR executive in a recent interview.  But they don’t.  It’s a burden and doesn’t help them get work done.  It sure would be great data to have though.

Enter “checking into work objects.” Just as Foursquare and Facebook Places (soon to be replaced by embedded check-ins) allow a consumer to check into a restaurant, airport, or other spot of interest – and then enables others to comment, share experiences, and make suggestions (in addition to suggestions and “offers” made by the system itself), work systems could allow workers to check into a project, customer, product, etc., forming the basis of a useful, collaborative work activity.  This is just what DoubleDutch proposes with its new Hyve product.  Such a mechanism bridges the unstructured, natural way of working of a large population of knowledge workers and structured data collection that can be used for high value visibility and decision making.  (See below)

Though check-in data cannot replace the highly granular and accurate time keeping made possible by badge swipes and biometric devices, perhaps there will be a marrying of the two for the on-the-clock crowd as well.  With mobile devices becoming more pervasive, an increased desire for social-based work environments, and increased mobile device sophistication (such as QR code readers), checking into work may become a natural and productive way to keep time.

DoubleDutch screenshots:

Check into a work object with DoubleDutch

Visibility into what people are actually working on - made possible by structured data collection

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For more on this subject, check out (DoubleDutch CEO) Lawrence Coburn’s blog post on work objects.

Consider IVR/Voice Portals for Emergency Employee Notification

Constellation Orbits
Constellation Research, Inc.

Elizabeth is a well-recognized industry-leading analyst. She was previously Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research.  Prior to Constellation, Elizabeth spent eleven years at Forrester Research as vice president and principal analyst.  She has managed large consulting projects for business and government organizations and provides technical insight and guidance to business and government organizations on their communication issues. Prior to her role as an industry analyst with Communication Initiatives and Forrester Research, Elizabeth held senior management positions with IBM, ROLM and Siemens ICN where she was a senior manager for strategic planning and alliances. Expertise Elizabeth’s expertise includes in-depth knowledge of unified communications,…...

Read more

Recent weather events, such as earthquakes, floods, and fires remind organizations that they need an effective way of reaching employees with status updates and instructions on what actions to take during an emergency. This requires that every organization include in its disaster recovery plan an automated way to reach out to its employees. Organizations can deploy automated outreach through hosted providers, such as MIR3, SoundBite and Varolii and several other providers. Recent improvements in IVRs or Voice Portals (VP) now provide organizations an effective in-house solution to send automated notifications across multiple channels. Since some communication channels may fail during emergency situations, it is best to send notifications to more than one address or number including the telephone, email, mobile device and social network sites to ensure receipt. Leading premise solutions for outbound VP multichannel notification applications include Avaya, ALU Genesys and Voxeo.

There are several best practices to follow when developing an outbound emergency notification process. These include the following;
• Customize messages based on different classes of employees. For example managers may require more detailed messages and a request for a call back when messages are sent.
• Reach out to multiple devices simultaneously. Allow the system to send outbound messages to all appropriate channels based on an employee’s profile.
• Enable speech response rather than DTMF commands. This makes it easier for a recipient to interact with the system and acknowledge the message was received.
• Continuously update employee’s contact data. This should include current contact information, such as mobile number, home phone number, email address, Twitter name, etc.
• Ensure messages can be modified remotely. With this capability an administrator can update messages easily from any location.
• Pretest system prior to an emergency launch. This is essential to determine success rate for outbound message receipt.

The technology exists to make employee emergency notifications simple and secure. Regardless if organizations want a hosted solution or develop a voice portal solution in-house, procedures need to be in place to support customized, relevant and instructive messages for all employees during an emergency situation.

HR Mobility Round-up

As predicted, HR technology providers are releasing mobile applications in droves.  Within the last few months Lawson/Infor, Lumesse, Peoplefluent, SuccessFactors, and Workday have all had major announcements, with more to come. Some interesting trends:

What about HTML5?

Bullish statements from Salesforce.com, Google, and Facebook, along with an enthusiastic technical community would suggest that native application builds are no longer necessary and HTML5 is the way to go.  And yet, no HR technology vendors are using HTML5.  They are all building native. Why is this?   The reality is that while HTML5 has closed some gaps with regards to local data storage and speedier caching, the user experience is still insufficient to get new users addicted to new applications.  And this is what HR technology providers need to do right now.  Until HTML5 can completely close the gap or employees/executives are so used to using mobile devices to access and leverage people information, native development (on potentially multiple operating systems and design palettes) will be the norm.

What’s the approach to native development?

There are three major camps with regards to native development strategy, ranging from generalized to specialized (see figure below).

1. Standard native applications for iOS (Apple), Android, and Blackberry (RIM).  With this approach, vendors are building applications for all major devices.  The application interface is tweaked slightly to fit into the design experience of the device, but a good portion of the development work can be re-used from device to device.  The advantage of this approach is more rapid cross-device development and the ability to reach more users with simple, straightforward tasks.

2. iOS (Apple) specific applications. With this approach, vendors are optimizing the mobile experience for the iPhone, in particular.  Plans to build out on other devices take a back burner. The advantage of this approach is a richer experience for a popular device and a quicker time-to-market with new applications.

3. iPad specific design. With this approach, vendors are optimizing design for users of a rich and roomy touch interface. Other tablet devices are not a concern yet, because no one is buying them. However, executives and senior managers are buying iPad’s by the dozen.  For HR, this is a target constituent for rolling out people planning and insight.  The advantage of this approach is an extremely rich and hopefully addictive interface for a strategic population.

As different kinds of applications emerge, vendors are sure to mix and match these approaches.

What applications are being delivered?

Employee “directories” are the most common mobile application with offerings from Lawson (Mobile Employee), Peoplefluent (Explorer), SuccessFactors (Org Chart), Ultimate (Employee Directory), Workday (Organization Swirl). In addition to look-ups, some of these applications such as Peoplefluent, SuccessFactors and Workday offer rich visualizations of organizational relationships.

Another very popular application being delivered via mobile is recruiting, with a particular emphasis on manager visibility into the recruiting process.  Lawson, Lumesse, Peoplefluent, and Successfactors all have takes on this.

Kronos covers workforce management. Saba and SumTotal cover learning. And, ADP introduced a mobile payroll RUN last year.

*See below for some public screenshots.

Your POV:

What applications and devices are most needed in your organization?  Is your vendor hitting the mark?  What are they missing?

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Workday Organization Swirl

Peoplefluent Explorer

Peoplefluent Recruiting

ADP RUN

Ultimate Employee Directory