Our 2 minute masterpiece utilises some rather clever CGI techniques, which are well worth watching and will be revealled in an upcoming ‘making of’ blog entry. However, there’s more to the video than special effects as we hope to raise £1,000 for The Stroke Association by donating £1 for every person that takes a look via our website. So help us to put something back, while learning more about tacking the communication challenge, simply by visiting this link.

You can find out more about the excellent work of The Stroke Association here or post your messages of support via this blog story. Happy viewing.

Entitled ‘Learning to Improve e-mail Classification with numero interactive’, the paper describes how the numero interactive platform uses a small number of manually classified messages to create a sophisticated statistical model from which to classify new messages.  Whilst the paper focuses on e-mail communication, the same approach is used for all message forms, including those submitted by phone, fax, letter and web form.

Copies of the paper – which contains both a high level and detailed technical overview – are available from numero, free of charge.  To request the paper in electronic format please use the contact form opposite or contact us here.

From an Artificial Intelligence perspective, the statistical classification service detailed in the paper represents just one of numero’s capabilities, as we have a number of NLP services that deliver some rather clever functionality including:

• Entity extraction: identifies names, addresses, phone numbers, order numbers etc contained within messages
• Language identifier: identifies the language used within a message, with support for 40 languages as standard
• CMS/knowledgebase: identifies content from a knowledgebase that is relevant to the content of an inbound message
• Spell-checker:  through the use of smart algorithms we can support large dictionaries without a significant drain on system resources and ensure no delay in look-up time
• Profanity checker: identifies profanities within messages (typically applied to restrict outbound misuse), including all variants and derivatives

A well defined development roadmap exploits the reuseability of our proprietary AI technology and algorithms to bring fresh functionality for customers. Developments include:

• A sentiment analysis service that establishes whether a message is positive or negative
• An FAQ service that establishes whether a message can be automatically answered by information within a knowledgebase
• A content-sensitive spell checker

The numero paper presented at AI-2009 is a great place to find out more – request your copy using the form opposite.

However, despite all the furore, Buzz joins a growing band of Social Media tools that are changing the way that consumers communicate. Some staggering figures from one of the best known communities (Facebook), shows just how dominant the channel has become for many:

Facebook has:

• More than 400 million active users – 50% of whom log-on everyday
• Doubled the number of users over the last two years alone
• More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) that is shared each week
• More than 20 million people that become fans of pages each day

The change in communication behaviour is further evidenced by the the fact that more than 100 million users currently access Facebook through their mobile devices.  These mobile users are more than twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users. So, it’s clearly not a case of a change is gonna come but rather that the new world is here.

Social media was a major topic of conversation when we spoke at the CCA Global Customer Contact Centre in November. It was clear that many customer service professionals were trying to establish exactly how they could capitalise on the opportunities and address the challenges created by the Social Media platform. Keep a watch on our blog as we will shortly publish further details of the gateway we have devised to enable businesses to do exactly that.

In the meantime, try and keep pace with the news on Social Media – last week alone Twitter passed the landmark figure of 50 million tweets being sent each day – more than 20 times the traffic the microblogging service was experiencing a year ago. In the process, it has overtaken Myspace in terms of activity levels, having experienced an annual growth rate of a staggering 1,400% during the past 12 months.  Read more here>.

Whilst visiting customers during the ’start-up’ period, I’ve found their feedback fascinating, especially as a consistent theme is captured by comments like: “you cannot underestimate the positive impact that numero has had on our business”.

Report now available to download

I think the business is at a great stage in its development, having expanded the original version of the numero interactive platform with lots of new functionality. The ROI we can deliver to clients and prospects as a consequence is very strong indeed. On top of this, we have a thought provoking marketing strategy as captured by the video content available on the website and the research findings we publish.

Our latest solution demonstrations are fantastic and clearly show the implications of introducing the voice channel into our workflow engines alongside, Web Chat, Web Forms, Email, SMS and White mail.

In short, our mantra of presenting ‘the right information, to the right person at the right time, to enable them to do the right thing’ is especially compelling given the global trends in multi-channel communication.

Teleperformance use the numero software platform to streamline all inbound email in relation to this Home Office service. With the help of our solution, Teleperformance agents at the Contact Centre have improved productivity by 200%.  To achieve and exceed service levels targets, the numero solution:

• Makes it easy for agents to use standard paragraphs to respond to email enquiries – saving a significant amount of time when compiling responses and ensuring a high-quality response
• Integrates with a back office database to automatically identify the correct agency for each enquiry – dramatically reducing a process that would otherwise require agents to search for the information within an Intranet system
• Checks all email enquiries received and automatically requests any required information if it has not been supplied – including the postcode of the person making the enquiry – streamlining the process for both the enquirer and the agent
• Provides a host of additional functionality that the numero team can demonstrate on request

It is great to see Teleperformance receiving recognition for providing world-class customer service with the help of numero.

Philip Michell, Consulting Director at Vertex Business Services, authored the article and provides a number of facinating insights while highlighting the importance of numero to their own approach:

“Smart retailers are well aware of this trend and are now focusing on the importance of customer management outside of the store environment. Generating real value from a customer management program requires an understanding of the retailer’s and the caller’s drivers and the operational ability to respond to them. This capability requirement is encouraging a growing number of retailers to use external experts in the field. Providers with specialties in engaging customers outside of the store environment bring valuable experience in setting metrics that can be used to focus the program. In Vertex’s contact centers, a system called “numero” that enables contact centers to handle any form of inbound communication, including email, white mail, call logging, Web forms and SMS, is being used that allows emails to be analyzed and the responses pre-populated with information and links that the customer service agents can build on. This allows a much richer response to be generated for the customer in a much faster time.”

Like many, we receive numerous circular emails from friends and colleagues during the course of a week. From the humourous to the bizarre, they often provide useful insight to human nature or opinion – even those urban myths whose content owes more to folklore than fact.

An infamous letter of complaint

This recent story (see full text at the end of this post) is purported to be a genuine complaint from a 98 year-old lady to her bank. It is rumoured to have struck such accord with a manager that it was sent to the Times and published. Regardless of its origins, most will relate to its content and many in the field of customer service will understand the challenge.

Whilst entertaining in its own right, there is a serious message for all within the letter. As soon as technology interferes with rather than aiding customer service, it becomes the enemy of all. Regardless of age, lifestyle or technical ability, consumers want technology to be transparent (even Gary) and the experience to be seamless.

numero has found this to be the case across endless client projects supporting the broadest possible base of clients. Take our work with GAME as an example. For many, this leading retailer’s customers are considered to be some of the most technology-savvy around and yet the company has worked incredibly hard to ensure that customer journeys are enhanced rather than interupted by technology as this video case study helps explain.

GAME is a consumer champion, but so should all organisations with a large base of customers. Failure to streamline their journeys will soon translate to dissatisfaction that can be shared as widely as this entertaining letter:

______________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Sir,

I am writing to thank you for bouncing my cheque with which I endeavoured to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations, three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the cheque and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honour it. I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my Pension, an arrangement, which, I admit, has been in place for only thirty eight years. You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account £30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank. My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my errant financial ways. I noticed that whereas I personally attend to your telephone calls and letters, when I try to contact you, I am confronted by the impersonal, overcharging, pre-recorded, faceless entity which your bank has become.

From now on, I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person. My mortgage and loan payments will therefore and hereafter no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank by cheque, addressed personally and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you must nominate. Be aware that it is an offence under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an envelope. Please find attached an Application Contact Status which I require your chosen employee to complete. I sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much abouthim or her as your bank knows about me, there is no alternative. Please note that all copies of his or her medical history must be countersigned by a Solicitor, and the mandatory details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be accompanied by documented proof.

In due course, I will issue your employee with PIN number which he/shemust quote in dealings with me. I regret that it cannot be shorter than28 digits but, again, I have modelled it on the number of button presses required of me to access my account balance on your phone bank service. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Let me level the playing field even further. When you call me, press buttons as follows:

1. To make an appointment to see me.

2. To query a missing payment.

3. To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there.

4. To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping.

5. To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature.

6. To transfer the call to my mobile phone if I am not at home.

7. To leave a message on my computer (a password to access my computer is required. (A password will be communicated to you at a later date to the Authorized Contact.)

8. To return to the main menu and to listen to options 1 through to 8.

9. To make a general complaint or inquiry,

the contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service. While this may, on occasion, involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music will play for the duration of the call. Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement. May I wish you a happy, if ever so slightly less prosperous, New Year.

Your Humble Client

An interesting article on USATODAY.com provides a quick snapshot of these generations, each of which comprises a number of customer segments, some of which we detail here. The communication challenge in relation to these segments and generations is perfectly captured by David Stillman, co-author of When Generations Collide, who comments:

“There’s not a magic age when you become a member of a generation. A tech-savvy and young-at-heart baby boomer, for example, might fit the Generation X profile, while a conservative Xer could think more like a traditionalist. But you should keep these general patterns in mind when communicating across generations”.

It is this exact approach we strive to address at numero. Recognising that customers such as Barry or Mike may be from the same generation but have vastly different characteristics, customer service expectations and communication preferences.

The latest developments within the numero uno software platform enable highly personalised communication, appropriate to the individual characteristics of customers, via any communication platform. Our work with some of the leading lights in the world of customer service, confirms how powerful such an approach can be, both in terms of customer satisfaction and organisational effectiveness.

In 2010, we invite organisations who are committed to delivering world class customer service, to investigate the potential of our solutions through numero act – a service we provide free-of-charge to clients. numero act establishes findings for the business case along with proposals that relate directly to the real world situations clients face. To find out more, just ask Guy, using the form opposite or contact any member of the numero team.

Instantly identifiable by his chosen colours of red, white and black, good old Santa shares many things with numero. However, contrary to popular opinion, we have to acknowledge that Saint Nick isn’t powered by our numero uno software platform, but magic instead. Of course, that may change in the future, with the increasing popularity of social media, SMS messaging and online chat. Should the day come when Santa’s magic needs a little helping hand, we’ll be more than happy to oblige.

For the rest of us mere mortals striving to meet the ever evolving demands of customers, remember that the best New Year’s resolution is to take a look at the latest release of our numero uno software platform. When you see what it can do with customer communication using any media, you’ll be forgiven for thinking we’ve pinched more than a few ideas from the great man himself.

Incidentally, the modern image of Father Christmas was popularised by Coca Cola (as shown here), an organisation that also shares our preference for red, black and white.