IBM'S INDIA RESEARCH LABORATORY (IRL) boffins claim to have developed software which uses algorithms to dig up business insights and perceptions from within vast masses of information gathered during customer service calls.

Instead of the regular practice of asking customers to rate the call centre’s service, the new software takes a data mining approach, which aims to improve the overall quality of information a company can use as feedback from its customers. The new software, called ProAct, can allegedly enable a company to not only garner feedback from structured information sources like agent and product databases, but also from a clients’ phone call transcripts and emails to the call centre. So go easy on the invective next time you call, Charlie.

Without making the customer put lots of information into evaluation forms, the IRL’s software can supposedly still tell whether or not clients were satisfied (and why), what frequent problems occur with products and how agents dealt with the customer’s queries. µ

L'Inq
PCworld