Doug Ross @ Journal

The Call Center of the Future

Picture credit: http://www.claybennett.com
There's little doubt in my mind that future call centers will include polygraph-like capabilities. So... did you really make that payment, Mr. Johnson?

...A few call centers in Europe are experimenting with computers that analyze not what a caller is saying but how. Software parses dozens of parameters pertaining to the tone, volume, and frequency of the caller's voice, and the computer pings the agent when something seems unusual - say, a tone that suggests a lie on an insurance claim. A few more questions and, if things still seem fishy, the claim gets flagged for further verification. Advocates of the technology say call centers in the UK with emotion detectors installed have reduced fraudulent claims by 25 percent, and one manufacturer says its algorithms can sense and quantify a broad range of human emotion: irritation, duplicity, delight, and even sexual arousal. ...Blame cheap storage media. More often than not, calls are digitally recorded and locked away for later analysis. Tens, even hundreds, of millions of calls are archived daily and indexed by time of day, agent name, extension, and originating phone number. Many of the archives also store synchronized records of the computer screens the agent viewed and what information he or she entered during the call. All that data collection lets companies review employee performance, streamline call handling, and maintain detailed records in case they get sued.

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