Happy New Year!

I know I’m not alone in telling 2011 a happy goodbye, and welcoming in a2012 with all of its promise. 2011 was a tough year for many individuals, companies and countries and also a big year of change, which is tough in itself. Within the contact center industry we saw more change and consolidation, and acceleration of certain trends, such as moving applications to the cloud, spurred in part by the down economy.

At the end of the year I started reading what some of my colleagues viewed as far as what went on in 2011 and trends to watch in 2012. Two blogs I enjoyed were Ray Wang’s Musings on 10 mega-business trends to watch for in 2012, and Jon Arnold’s blog on 2011 UC Takeaways – Disruption and Uncertainty. In the spirit of saying goodbye to 2011 I thought I would also add my own short bit on what I think 2012 holds for the contact center.

My initial take on 2012 trends, in no particular order include:

• More vendors providing applications in the cloud, and more companies moving to the cloud, with a critical component being choice. Interactive Intelligence’s recent Quick Spin Cloud Communications Trial Program is an example of a vendor making it easy to trial the cloud, and in the company’s case, they also allow customers to move easily between premise and the cloud and back, to begin with. 2012 will be all about choice.
• Speech technologies remain big in many areas including the increase in speech-enabling mobile customer service applications, as well as deploying speech analytics in the contact center. Along with this is an increase in multi-modal applications for customer service.
• Speaking of analytics, we will see a continued push to integrate different forms of analytics together in the contact center, and throughout the enterprise in support of the contact center. What I consider to be “the holy grail of analytics”; end-to-end reporting from the first contact with the customer, combined with real-time analytics, back office analytics, and customer history, and then use that combination to improve the customer experience, will be a primary focus across all contact center segments.
• More application interoperability across all segments not just in the contact center, as with different forms of analytics, but also between technology segments, for example, UC/collaboration and the contact center. This will be the case whether vendors focus on integrating a core product with another, or whether they are building out “suites”.  We will also see continual efforts to integrate multiple customer interaction channels.
• Speaking of adding channels, social networking integration will get a lot of attention, scrutiny and eventual adoption. It certainly got attention the last two years, and was purchased by many companies. But successfully deploying it, figuring out who owns it, overcoming organizational barriers to deployment remains to be seen. “Best practices” in social media integration will move from infant to toddler stage in 2012.
• Greater adoption of the use of remote agents as a supplement to or a replacement for brick and mortar contact centers. The ability to attract talent from anywhere, rather than just locally, pressure to reduce costs fueled by the down economy, and continued backlash of offshore outsourcing will continue to drive this trend in 2012.
• Continued migration to IP and SIP by customers who still haven’t gotten around to making the move.
• More companies focusing on proactive customer contact, and doing so in a way that helps to shed the age old image of the “Robocall”. Vendors will help this by further developing more user-friendly and customer-attuned, combined inbound/outbound applications.

That’s it for now. I also start the year off on a positive change  by joining the team at Frost & Sullivan as a Principal Analyst in contact centers. I’ll still be blogging on this site as well, so stay tuned as 2012 trends develop.

This morning it was announced that Nuance was acquiring competitor, Vlingo, for an undisclosed sum. I’m going to cite my colleague, Michele Masterson, at Speech Technology Magazine, who said in her blog post, “In a surprise move, Nuance Communications today announced plans to acquire rival speech company Vlingo.” Founded by former employees of Nuance (who became part of Nuance through a prior acquisition of SpeechWorks ), Vlingo has long been a takeover target of Nuance because their vision so coincided in a key focal area (mobility) for Nuance, and because they were a significant vendor in that space.  The two companies have also very publicly bashing each other in the press and in court for several years now, initially started when Nuance tried to acquire Vlingo to begin with back in 2009. So I have to say that this announcement doesn’t surprise me at all, merely the timing of it. If I had been a betting person, with several pending lawsuits, prior to today, on the docket, I would have thought an acquisition would have come at a later date. This is why I’m not a betting person.

I’m also not going to rehash the history of their legal battles as Michele covered it so well in her blog.  I could instead conjecture that despite the nice wording around “we are stronger together than apart” – true, and “we share the same vision” – true again, that some of the counters to those are also true. Continuing to fight makes them financially weaker, it distracts them and takes resources away from innovation and development.

Of course there are also those inevitable hard feelings. Who knows what the people fall out will be from this, as it was born out of something tense, more so than other acquisitions. Time will tell.  In any case, whether you like Nuance’s acquisition strategy or not, it works for them.

So instead I am going to focus on what good things can come of this going forward. Given the size of Nuance’s mobility division, the combined company could combine the best of the virtual assistant technologies (SIRI components, Vlingo and Dragon Go!) and intent engines, (see my blog on Prodigy) and other mobile apps and create some serious kick-ass natural language products. The market couldn’t be any hotter. Not only is consumer awareness and expectations of the technology at an all-time high, major competitors, such as Google with its Majel project, Apple with SIRI, as well as Microsoft and perhaps even Amazon are all getting into the fray, and consumers are buying it.

It’s been more than two months since the introduction of the new Apple’s new iPhone with SIRI and the dust is starting to settle. I’ve since read a lot, talked to a lot of people and here is my latest take on SIRI. I want SIRI on my Blackberry, although I still like those little buttons rather than the touch screen, but I digress.

Most of the people I have talked to really like the new phone and SIRI in particular. Yes, we have heard complaints about battery life. Allegedly the next release of the phone corrects that. Brits have been complaining that the location-based services are US only, so they are being cheated for now.  I’ve heard one new user say that they liked their Blackberry better. But in general, they love the phone, and SIRI is a big part of it.

But besides that SIRI works and people in general like it, or love it.  In fact, it is almost like a cult following with web sites springing up all about SIRI. 4SIRI.com, for example, allows visitors to post funny things that SIRI says.

However the most important thing about SIRI is that it has helped make speech recognition a household name. There are really good commercials (yes, there really are really good commercials sometimes that you don’t have to fast forward on your DVR), on SIRI that show the power of using voice for commands. They aren’t as clever or as funny as the really cool commercials that Nuance has put out on Dragon Naturally Speaking. If you haven’t seen those you are missing some seriously entertaining (yes there are some really entertaining commercials out there too) commercials that, once again, show the power of speech. Here is one of my favorites. But this time, it shows the power of speech recognition in dictating just about anything.

So whereas some people will separate out those two applications as being different – speech commands versus dictation, – the general, and increasing in frequency advertisements and press for the use of speech technologies in everyday life are really complimenting each other and embedding a sense of familiarity into the consumer mind set. I think we have seen the tipping point of speech.

Other consumer-oriented growth areas are gaining as well. Earlier this month Microsoft announced speech enhancements to Xbox 360 and Xbox Live through Kinect as essentially a voice-enabled remote control allowing the user to search and navigate through voice.

Additionally, it’s been years since the introduction of Telematics – speech technologies in vehicles, but that is also gaining traction. Nuance’s Connected Car solution is bridging from the early infotainment solutions, such as asking for driving directions and music selections, to more natural language applications that are more SIRI-like, such as asking for dinner recommendations.

Speech applications on mobile devices are still hot. Last month Google announced the addition of 14 languages to its Google Translate application for Android phones, bringing the total up to 63 total supported for text translation, with languages available using speech recognition input and 24 for text-to-speech output. The 14 new languages are: Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Russian and Turkish. Google translate allows the user to speak into the phone, have it translated and read back rather than the user having to read the results on the screen, although that option still exists. The user can also correct any misheard words, and create their own personal dictionary.

To bring this back full circle, even though Siri does a whole lot for the user, so far, translation isn’t something that she does do, which for any Siri Android competitor will be a leg up. For example, let’s say that one of the competitors comes out with similar functionality to Siri, but also has, among any potential new functionality, translation capability. Then the user who is traveling can not only ask for directions from their phone, but if stuck or needing more information, can user translator to ask a human for help.  Currently the Google Translate function is in Alpha, but it that is only a temporary phase.

There is a lot more brewing in this arena, including Siri competitors – stay tuned….

Social media-enabled assistive technology is quite a mouthful, but I’m happy to say it. Yesterday I encountered perhaps the coolest piece of assistive technology I’ve seen since the advent of text-to-speech; on a day I was meeting up with my friend Karen Parsegian, who having gone blind a decade ago, is my go to person for input on assistive technology for the sight impaired. But more on that in a bit.

FourSquare

The technology I will be talking about encompassed the use of FourSquare, the most popular check-in service for social media, which coincidentally had an announcement of its own this morning (not related). For those of you who have not succumbed to checking yourself into places for all of the world, friends, family, colleagues, etc. to see on Facebook or Twitter; FourSquare, launched in 2009 is a geographical location-based social network.  You sign up for the free service, and then “check in” via a smartphone app or by text message. It isn’t just location sharing, but gaming as well. You get points for checking in at various locations, and can be awarded virtual badges by checking in a certain number of times, or more than other users checking into a location. If you are savvy, and I say this tongue in cheek, you check into your own house enough times so that you are mayor of your house and not someone else. J

This morning FourSquare rolled out a big redesign of its developer site (originally launched in December 2010) to make it easier for new developers to find their way around the site and find development resources they might need. FourSquare had to be doing something right to begin with before the revamp because the company claims that they are seeing nearly 2000 requests per second to its API, from a developer community that numbers over 10,000 developers, with an app store for all the resulting applications. The announcement was also about how FourSquare is moving beyond just points and check-in with the addition of several new features, including integrations with deal providers, the social recommendations via Explore and Radar, event check-ins and other improvements to make the experience more valuable for users.

Enter BlindSpot

Yesterday I encountered an article on Fastcoexist.com that had a demo video of BlindSpot, a prototype white cane for the visually impaired that uses GPS technology that not only greatly improves the user’s ability to navigate safely around with a cane, but also can improve the social experience for them.  I know from experience of talking with Karen, that she regularly uses the GPS in her phone, but the cane right now is just a navigating stick, albeit a lifesaving one.  BlindSpot is the brain child of a design student, Selene Chew, at the National University of Singapore.  As quoted in the article, “I took the approach to serve their emotional needs more than just their physical needs” and that she did in a number of ways.

From a navigation level, the stick, with built in GPS helps the user navigate. But just as importantly, it helps the user know when an object is in the person’s way at any level by using a built in ultrasonic detector.  Currently with the stick a user taps the ground in front of them, listening for differences in surfaces so they know what is around and in front of them, and for differences in elevation so they know when to walk up or down a curb or step, for example. But what happens when the stick doesn’t encounter something, yet there is something hanging down or sticking out that is not at floor level. Bam! I asked Karen how often that happens and she said, “all the time”.  The example they showed in the video of a garbage can with discarded broom handle sticking out, is a vivid example of how treacherous it can be navigating with just a stick. With BlindSpot, the stick sends out a beep when the user is about to walk into something at any level.

Before getting into the social aspects of BlindSpot, one of the designs that fall into “emotional” is ergonomic design. BlindSpot consists of a phone in the handle, a Bluetooth device and the stick. But when the user gets home, great ergonomics kick in as the phone and blue tooth can easily be detached and just placed on an inductive charging plate, rather than the user fumbling around with finding a charger and plugging it in (I know this sighted person spent 2 minutes trying to get the red charging light on her Bluetooth to come on last night and I couldn’t do that blind), and the stick folds up as usual. The phone and stick can also be used separately, as the phone acts as a regular cellphone without needing the headset, and has a tactile track ball on the back to control the menu.

Now for the cool stuff. BlindSpot harnesses GPS technology and combines it with the phone with a tactile and audio interface to let the user know when friends, who have checked into FourSquare or other location-sharing service, are around.  Imagine living in a world where you don’t know when people are around unless they say something first. And what if they don’t see you because they are busy texting or reading or simply looking the other way?  BlindSpot lets the user know when their friends are around, alerts them, and gives them the option to call that person, find them, or ignore them.  I would think that knowing how close someone was that was coming to pick me up, or knowing who was at a party, or just knowing a friend is unexpectedly close, and then walking up to them and saying hi, rather than waiting, would rock my world if I was visually impaired. Not to mention you would know who to avoid, and how many times a year do we do that?

If the user wants to call the person they are alerted about, BlindSpot dials. If the user wants to find them, then it guides them to the person using audio in the Bluetooth and a trackball on the handle that controls the menu and points which way to go.  BlindSpot gives them navigation information such as how far away they are, how many steps they will have to walk down, or other necessary information.

Chew is currently looking to find a partner to bring this design to market on an industrial level.  I sure hope that she finds the right partner. Oh, and if you want to see videos of a blind girl throwing out the first pitch at a MLB game, Google Karen Parsegian and you can see her many sports exploits too.

As analysts we continually have vendors giving us customer reference stories, but rarely do I ever go and intentionally call one of them up to see how the system, such as an IVR, really works. But I almost always wonder what vendor has supplied the systems I call into as a customer myself, and if I end up talking to an agent, I ask. Yesterday I hit a lovely example of how a self-service application should work.

I am a United Healthcare customer. United Healthcare provides multiple self-service options for their customers, including personal website myuhc.com as well as self-service through a speech-enabled IVR application. I’ve been too busy this year to go in and set up myuhc.com, so I had a question and decided to call in and talk to someone live.

I have to say that one of the first things I noticed was that when you call the system, it greets you with “Welcome to United Healthcare” followed by a line in Spanish telling Spanish speakers to click on three if they would like to hear the application in Spanish. There has been a lot of brouhaha over the reverse lately, which for years now has been to follow the opening prompt with “For English, press one”. This is the first time I have heard it done this way.

The next prompt was “Now what type of caller are you? Member, provider, or employer?” and so on, easily guiding me through the application. I eventually did transfer to an agent because the one place that they weren’t clear on was when they asked me to say the name of the member. The previous prompt had asked what my call was about, and I had replied with coverage, because I was calling about whether or not something was covered for my son. So when they asked for member name, I kept saying my son’s name instead because that was the mental mode I was in. In this one area I would hope that they would change and provide more description as I’m sure I’m not the only one that calls up and does this, when one person is the member and others are the dependents. If they would just say “Please say the member name, even if you care calling about a dependent, they would cut down on calls transferred to the agent, or at least transferred at that point.

However, in all, I was very pleased with the application. The prompts were clear, the voice was pleasant, and I’m giving them big points for his application.

Of course once I had that agent, I had to ask the agent, who was herself really nice, informative, and quick, what equipment she was using. I asked if she just had a headset or if she had a headset and phone and she said the later. So I asked if there was a company name on the phone and she said Cisco, and with further prodding she said they just replaced an Avaya switch with the Cisco one. So hats off to Cisco too.

Yesterday Cisco announced a nice round of additions to the Cisco TelePresence portfolio, and earlier this week I got to sit in on a TelePresence webinar introducing the new products. This time it was a little personal for me because Cisco representatives also said that these announcements marked the five year birthday of TelePresence. TelePresence was the first blog I wrote on this site in 2007, and I can’t believe it has been that long since it came out. I’ve always been a big fan, of not just Cisco’s telepresence products, but the entire industry, as since its inception, video has become one of the cornerstones of UC, and has truly changed the way that companies can do business.

As for some Cisco statistics, the company claims that they have the broadest video endpoint and infrastructure in the industry, and that currently 50 million users of Cisco collaboration products are now capable of using TelePresence. That is pretty impressive.

The Telepresence announcements had three parts. The first is the extension of TelePresence into the SMB market with the introduction of the Cisco TelePresence Callway, a hosted service that is part of the Cisco Collaboration Cloud. SMB customers can purchase or lease personal endpoints to connect to the service, which Cisco is offering at affordable price points in an “all you can eat model” as Cisco put it, ($99 a month for standard, unlimited calling, data sharing, and $149 for premium that adds on support for higher res and meet-me bridging service). It is pretty plug n’ play, with set up of about five minutes. The service is being offered through 14 service providers, and is initially available only in the US.

The second part is an expansion of Cisco’s video endpoint portfolio. This includes:

•Cisco Jabber™Video for TelePresence, which is a standards-based, HD video-calling software application that allows participants to join TelePresence calls from their desktop PCs or laptops. Globally accessible through a website, the person holding the meeting can invite participants to join a TelePresence call for free. A global beta program for this is charted for Q1’12.

•Cisco TelePresence MX300 is Cisco’s newest  multi-purpose, room-based TelePresence system, supporting nine people in a room. The new system offers 1080p, 30 frames per second, high-quality video, on a 55” screen, is affordable, and can be set up in as little as 15 minutes quickly. Target GA is Q1’12 worldwide.

The third part of the announcement was a follow on to Cisco’s recent announcements around extending TelePresence to more than just meetings, by enabling customers to capture video from any TelePresence endpoint across their network, and then share that content with any user on any device. In yesterday’s announcement, they introduced a vertical market specific example of this — Cisco TelePresence VX- Clinical Assistant which is a purpose-built, mobile telemedicine cart designed for use in healthcare settings.  The VX-Clinical Assistant is a high-definition video collaboration system that will allow healthcare providers to better provide telemedicine, such as remote consultations, medical education, or virtual healthcare teams.  GA for this product is also slated for Q1’12.

In the TelePresence announcement meeting Cisco had demonstrations, as well as some customers, including P&G and Singlewire Software. Of course they would only have stellar customers on the call, but they were really interesting. For example, Laurie Heltsley, director, Global Business Services, P&G said that they started off with TelePresence from the beginning five years ago, with 43 rooms and the only thing they could have done better was to have added more. They can’t keep up with demand, even though they are now up to 80. But the most interesting part was that she said that they have saved four dollars in travel costs for every dollar they spent on TelePresence. She also spoke of new ways of using the products. P&G has had challenges growing in Africa, but using TelePresence in kiosks in malls has enabled them to have consultations on beauty products with potential customers.

From the beginnings five years ago when TelePresence was new, but very expensive with a lot of overhead in terms of setting up the rooms, to now, I really believe that Cisco has taken a lot of care in expanding the company’s portfolio so that there are solutions available to any size business, in any form of consumption whether immersive or on a small mobile device at any price point. Happy Birthday TelePresence.

It came as no surprise to anyone when we got the press release that Genesys is about to find a new home. Rumors have been brewing since January as to who would step up and buy which part of Alcatel-Lucent’s communications portfolio. The winner is Permira; a European private equity firm that has a track record of buying companies, growing them to improve their portfolio returns, and then taking them public or selling them.  Although Permira doesn’t have deep experience in software, about one third of their portfolio is telecom, media and technology, which is a fit. In an informal Q&A with ALU, Permira was very attracted to the customer service market, as well as Alcatel-Lucent/Genesys’ blue chip customer base and global brand.

For Alcatel-Lucent, divesting just the Genesys brand and keeping enterprise is a good move as it allows them to continue to provide a portfolio to the carrier market, maintain the development ties, strategic selling relationships, and go to market strategy with Genesys (details to still be worked out), yet get cash. How could you argue with that? Similarly, with Genesys they get the financial backing that they need, and have reciprocal ties with ALU.

As ALU is in their quiet period before earnings, and this deal has to go through the regulatory hoops, everything is still not cast in concrete, so plans as to which groups of employees go where, and management structure is still not known. ALU did confirm, however, that Tom Burns will remain CEO of ALUE and Paul Segre would remain CEO of Genesys.

I believe this is a win-win once it goes through. The Genesys brand remains intact and they get thrown back into the competitive battle for contact center as they used to be, yet still with a broad portfolio that will still include ALU’s offerings. The company gets to breathe a little easier with solid financial backing, with an organization that does not have a reputation for buying and flipping companies, but instead nurturing them for growth. Finally, if you are a Genesys employee you are probably breathing a sigh of relief that you weren’t bought by a competitor as an installed base move, as the disruption that occurs after that, we all have probably experienced at one time or another in our careers.

I’m sure I’ll be blogging more as the deal is finalized and more details emerge.

Every once in a while, and not often enough, I have a contact center encounter story worth talking about. This week I had one with my first encounter with Virgin America, other than a short while ago when I tweeted something about the company, and less than a minute later they were following me on Twitter. That combined with the fact that I’d heard great things about their service; and even better things about Virgin occupying the brand new, 10-years-in-the-remaking of Terminal 2 at SFO, and I was ready to fly with them. OK, I’ll admit to being hooked on United, but I wanted to try.

So this week, while booking a flight to Miami, I decided to see if there was a good one out of SFO on Virgin America. It was a great experience with just one glitch, will I’ll get to.

I logged onto their site and the whole booking process is really intuitive. I found a flight that would get me to Ft. Lauderdale (will deal with traffic later), direct, five minutes later than the flight I would have had to take with one stop, at o’dark thirty, on United into Miami. Plus it was $100 cheaper. I was sold.

Now what? And here is the good part. I figured since I was ready to book and ready to fly I shouldn’t waste getting miles so I might as well sign up for the company’s Elevate loyalty program, but how to do that without losing my place in the booking process. That is when I saw the chat button. I don’t see those nearly as often as I would like, so I clicked it and away I went.

Virgin America lets you print the transcript of the chat – and I think save it, but I didn’t, which was an added bonus for me. So here was the chat transcript.

“Welcome!

Please wait while we contact the next available agent….

You are now speaking with Teri B! (this process took just seconds)

Teri B: Hi there – I’m Teri B. How may I help you?

Nancy: (It allows you to put in your name so it addresses you in the chat) I’ve never flown Virgin, but now I have picked a flight. How do I join the FF program without losing my place?

Teri B: Honestly your best option would be to complete the booking first and then sign up for the account, you can add your flight to your account once you are signed up.

Nancy: OK. I’ve wanted to fly out of Terminal 2 at SFO ever since it opened. Thanks for the chat. I’m a contact center analyst so I appreciate the multi-channel approach. Will tweet about it.

Teri B: Awesome! Thanks

Teri B: Is there anything else I can help you with?

Nancy: Not unless you have free money to give away J Have a nice night.

Teri B: Hahahaha Don’t I wish!

Teri B: Thanks for visiting Virgin America and have a nice day.”

The whole thing was nice, fast and informative. But here is the glitch. She gave me the wrong info. I’m not trying to rat her out, but she did. Because when I went to complete the booking up popped and option to either log into the elevate program, or join. And if I clicked on join then they would hold my booking for 15 minutes while I did so, so I did. And they did. So as soon as I completed the frequent flyer program set up, they gave me the option to print out my flyer card, and then plopped me right back into the booking process.

In my opinion, this is a tremendously well run option as you don’t have to book, and then go back and join, and then fill in your flight info and hope you get credit. The only glitch in the entire experience was that they should have equipped Teri B with the right answer. In all, the whole experience was what I had expected from Virgin America after hearing so many great stories about their customer service.

Off to tweet about this as I promised.

It has been a rollercoaster week for Apple. First was the announcement of the iPhone 4S, then the sad passing of Apple’s brilliant leader, Steve Jobs. One had people yawning and the other mourning, but talk about press coverage! There was a lot on Apple to cover. I can’t say anything about Steve Jobs that probably hasn’t been said already, I’ll just say that he will be sorely missed from a personal, technology, and leadership perspective.

I will comment however, on the iPhone 4S announcement. While, the general reaction across Twitter and the Blogosphere was that the iPhone announcement was a non-starter, with not a lot of innovation despite a lot of anticipation, the exception was Siri, the speech-enabled virtual assistant that comes with the product. Millions of people have been using speech recognition and text-to- speech on mobile devices for years now; sometimes in a more advanced search fashion and embedded in applications, but at a minimum for voice dialing. Those of us in the speech community have been promoting this usage for years. But who would have known that when Apple would come out with a major release of one of the most popular products of all time, that speech would be the highlight. Yes!

Siri coming to market in the iPhone has an interesting pedigree. Initially a spin-off from SRI (hmmm. Nuance started as Corona on the same campus), Siri was acquired by Apple last year, and allegedly still uses Nuance speech recognition at the core. Prior to the launch of the 4S, there was a Siri virtual assistant application for the iPhone that has been pulled now that the product is on the phone itself. The new revised Siri consists of speech on the phone and in the cloud.  

So what is so revolutionary or exciting about Siri? After all, Vlingo and Nuance also provide speech-driven assistant type of applications for mobile devices as well. One of the key differentiators is that Apple provides the phone and the application, so the speech-enabling, or integration between the speech interface, Apple OS, and the applications on the phone and in the network, can truly be integrated, or at least ones native to the iPhone. However, Siri also is integrated with web-based services too.

Because of this tight integration, Apple can add more “personalization” for the user, in that Siri has access to user-specific information on the iPhone, such as calendar items and contacts, and can learn over time user preferences. Siri also employs a more natural language component than the others, and will answer the user in a conversational fashion, applying context from knowing user preferences, GPS location, and information from applications on the phone, such as calendar; thereby acting much more like a personal assistant. This is a definite step up over more modest voice search that listens for user input and then hooks the user up with a web site and reads back an answer.

To this end Siri allows the user to ask more complex questions and commands than before. For example, hypothetically a user could say “please buy me two tickets to an evening show at such and such a movie theatre”, and Siri could open up a web site such as Fandango, check movie times, check the users calendar, etc. You get the picture. But on a more mundane level, Siri can book appointments, look up contacts, check information, such as the weather, set alarms on the phone, and a plethora of other things, using context for a more useful outcome.

So they have the phone, the apps, the network, the speech technology, but don’t count the others out.  The aforementioned Nuance and Vlingo, along with companies such as Google and Microsoft all have voice search and natural language capabilities. Google, for example, has their application for Android phones, Google Voice Actions that allows users to do things such as send texts, search the web and make calls on their mobile devices.

Nuance, even though it is providing technology to Apple, also has a vested interest in promoting DragonGo!; the company’s own virtual assistant. (For one quick comparison of Nuance, Vlingo and Siri check out PC Magazine’s take on it here.) The mobile space for Nuance is huge. You would think with the work that Nuance is doing on Prodigy, Nuance’s mobile developer program taking off, that the voice search and conversational capabilities that will come out of Nuance’s mobility arena will only make this space hotter. In addition, this week Nuance also Swype Inc., which makes an alternative keyboard that allows users to input sliding a finger on the keyboard or using as stylus. Swype technology appears on most Android phones, giving Nuance an even larger presence in the mobile market.

Additionally, right after the S4 announcement, an article came out that said that one of Google UK’s best-known senior programmers, director of engineering Dave Burke, who’s background is in speech recognition, is relocating to Google’s Mountain View headquarters to work on the company’s push to create reliable voice commands for mobile phones. Previously Burke led a team of programmers working on mobile phones and mobile commerce, and included applications such as mobile search on phones. His team was also part of the engineering effort which has enabled Google’s Android to become the world’s best-selling mobile operating system.

With everything announced this week and so much brewing, I think this space just got a whole lot more interesting.

Voice of the Customer (VoC); a catch phrase bandied about in the contact center industry, is more than customer feedback surveys. It embraces a range of data points from surveys, to what we know about the customer from customer data, to what we think we know about the customer. Executing on their vision of customer experience management, of which the voice of the customer is incredibly important, on Monday, NICE announced the acquisition of UK-based Fizzback; a move which brings some intriguing technology to their portfolio.

I have to admit that I wasn’t familiar with Fizzback before today, but the company is based in the UK, has over 100 employees, has a presence in APAC and the US, and they process over 3M feedback interactions a week. I’m not surprised that I didn’t know about them. So many of the acquisitions that are happening (and seem to be increasing in the latter half of 2011) are of niche players that provide a very strategic opportunity to other vendors, and Fizzback is one of them. Strategic this is. NICE is out to impact the customer by engaging with them during the process, and with Fizzback’s ability to provide a solution that is cross-channel in real-time, this gets NICE much closer on that goal.

Fizzback is intriguing because the solution uses real-time natural language dialogue with customers at the point of contact, on any channel the customer is engaged with, whether that is at point-of-sale (POS) in a brick and mortar retail establishment, or on the web, through social media, through text or chat, in the contact center, on a mobile device, or other channel. The solution generates an interactive feedback dialog with the customer, using natural language processing. It is an event-driven application, depending upon a customer interaction or a transaction. For example, if a customer walks into store, engages with a sales rep and provides information to the rep, but doesn’t end up getting what they are asking for, that can trigger an event that would drive an interaction – perhaps some information or something else to the customer’s mobile device.

But the solution is more than that. The Fizzback model is to engage the customer, push information to the customer, capture customer feedback, combine that feedback with back-office applications to get a broader picture, interpret the results and then kick off an action, if business rules determine there needs to be one. Applying analytics allows Fizzback to manage interactions and disseminate interactions that require follow-up throughout the business using Fizzback.

Because of the solution being immediate and event-driven, customer engagement rates for collecting actionable data can be very much higher than typical survey solutions. According to NICE, industry averages for survey engagement is typically 10%, but Fizzback claims to be near 50% (unchecked by me at this writing). However, besides providing customer feedback, the solution helps to up first call resolution, reduce churn, and increase customer loyalty, among other customer contact benchmarks.

The Fizzback solution is highly complementary to the NICE offering, and will significantly enhance NICE’s Customer Experience Management (CEM) portfolio and Workforce Optimization (WFO) offerings.

For CEM, customers will be able to capture, analyze and act on the VoC in real time, as well as drive customer-centric improvements throughout the enterprise. NICE’s cross-channel analytics analyze customer interaction content across all channels, but also extracts insights from these interactions and analyzes customer behavior. So, by adding direct customer feedback with Fizzback, they will be able to offer a complete CEM solution that delivers a holistic understanding of the customer.

By correlating customer feedback to specific interactions or transactions, customers will be able to directly improve performance with statistically-validated customer input.  Direct input can drive agent-level improvements and process redesign, so the combination of Fizzback and NICE will make the VoC an even stronger component of WFO processes. Finally, Fizzback is also a good fit for NICE as it provides flexible deployment models – SaaS or on-premise. In all, this was a NICE addition for NICE.