Analyst Perspectives

Voice Print International recently announced it has selected Hewlett-Packard’s Autonomy to deliver speech and multi-channel analytics. This news means VPI joins a small group of vendors that can provide a view of customer interactions across multiple communication channels, which is of growing importance to companies. My research into the contact center in the cloud shows that companies now support an average of four to five channels of interaction with customers. Without a multi-channel view they are in danger of upsetting customers but not knowing what customers have tried before. The core challenge is that many interactions are either in the form of call recordings or text (email messages, forms, letters, chat and web scripts, and social media). Companies that cannot process all of these forms of data are left with an incomplete view.

VPI had previously worked with another partner, but wanted a solution that let them embed the partner’s product into its product and use it to process the basic data and integrate the results with its existing analysis and reporting engine. The Autonomy IDOL product fit the bill better than any other that VPI could identify.

Version 10 of IDOL is a software platform that, through a series of connectors, can extract information from unstructured data such as text and speech. It can recognize patterns within the data and so allows users to gain insight into the content beyond just extracting basic content, and it does this in multiple languages. VPI takes IDOL’s output and combines it with data from other sources, such as CRM, ERP and knowledge management software. Using other tools, such as desktop analytics, it integrates the data to provide insights into customer interactions across multiple channels.

This announcement represents HP delivering on one its promises post its acquisition of Autonomy to use the product to deliver customer sentiment analysis. HP is not known as a player in the contact center or customer management space so this announcement represents a significant step into this space. It also raises the profile of Autonomy, which has been quite quiet since the acquisition.

Multi-channel analytics has become a hot topic as companies begin using multiple channels regularly. Companies need to know what channels customers are using and how they are skipping across channels to try to resolve issues. The partnership between VPI and HP promises to deliver on these requirements, which makes it a solution companies should consider as they try to improve multi-channel customer engagement.

Regards,

Richard J. Snow

VP & Research Director