Cisco could call time on spin doctors

Net Results: Cisco has come out with a new product that I think has endless scope and utility. It is designed for the enterprise market, but already I am pondering the personal and social applications for this software as the possibilities are truly endless.

So, what is it, you ask? Called the Customer Interaction Analyzer, it's a program that analyses the emotional content of phone calls. Yes, really. It's intended for the call centre market.

According to the Cisco bumpf, "it uses information from customer interactions, including self service and agent-assisted interactions, to determine things like customer distress, agent distress, silence and word patterns".

Agent distress! That's an interesting concept and not one that I've encountered so far, although I accept that they must get distressed, given the many distressed customers agents routinely deal with: most people aren't ringing a call centre to report their delight with a product, but to try and solve a problem or express outrage.

But let's look at the overall product, which is rather ingenious.

According to Cisco Ireland system engineering manager Karl McDermott, the application uses voice recognition technology "and applies some clever algorithms to the back of it".

The result is a program intended - as Cisco hastened to point out at a recent press briefing - not to pinpoint agents that perform poorly and get rid of them, but to "give the conversations business context" and "help a business to coach and train agents, make changes to processes and service scripts based upon findings".

The goal? "Ultimately, creating better customer relationships and growth for the business." Forget call centres, this product should be on every home phone!

Imagine, if the Government funded a mass rollout of this product, Ireland could be the first truly happy-clappy, touchy-feely, genuinely sensitive nation on earth.

Yes, California wears the crown in this regard right now, but I think we are in with a chance, lads, if we mass install.

By carefully dissecting our personal conversations with family, friends, businesses, we'd know what to say to produce the best possible effect without alienating the listener.

We could modulate our anger, lower our stress levels, and always be polite. In short, we could all become Daniel O'Donnell.

But wait, as they say on the TV advertisements, there's more! Cisco is particularly excited by the fact that the Customer Interaction Analyzer can measure and analyse silence. Silence!

Women all over the country would gain a new insight into what men really think, for as we know, silences, especially during phone calls, are an integral part of male communication.

According to Cisco Ireland chief technology officer John Stone: "You traditionally couldn't measure silence periods. But silence can actually indicate a bigger problem."

John, any woman could have told you that, although it is true we also choose to constructively ignore this fact.

Which is probably what "creating better customer relationships" is based upon in the first place - politely ignoring what you know to be the truth in order to maintain a relationship.

This only confirms my hunch that the industry really does need more women programmers to save the fellows years of coming to such conclusions.

Indeed, I suspect a woman might have been working on this product to bring just such a breakthrough.

Whatever the wonderful uses this product could be put to in the home or business, I think the place it would really shine is in the houses of the Oireachtas.

I personally would give part of my taxes - say the part currently going to those regular TD salary increases - to place analyser software on all the Dáil microphones and at all press briefings by our public representatives (heck, let's include county and city councillors too).

At last, we would gain real insight into what, drawing on Cisco's phrasing, might be termed "TD distress, silence and word patterns" (we already know all about customer or rather, constituent and citizen, distress).

On the other hand, perhaps analysing "silence" would not be the same as analysing "avoiding saying anything", which means the Customer Interaction Analyzer would not have the effectiveness on the Taoiseach's speeches that we might desire.

It might also be the case that with the Taoiseach's speeches and occasional utterances, the word patterns could not be correctly analysed, due to many words existing only for the Taoiseach and further, only in the context of the Taoiseach's speeches.

To date, no person has been found who speaks or comprehensively understands these special words and linguistic contexts so I fear the Analyzer will come up short too in this regard. This would be disappointing.

Still, so much could be gained from a widespread use of the Analyzer that I encourage our Ministers to look into this application more thoroughly.

Journalists' phones excepted, of course.

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