Liberate Data from Recordings: Nexidia

By: Brendan B. Read
Contact Center Solutions Analysis
Nov. 09, 2009

http://callcenterinfo.tmcnet.com/Analysis/articles/68581-liberate-data-from-recordings-nexidia.htm

All data is now integrated, right? Is there not a steady flow across the enterprise from multiple sources, tapped and directed into channels to help carry out specific tasks by those with authorized access to it?

Not when it comes to data captured by contact center recordings, reports Dr. Marsal Gavalda, vice president, incubation and principal language scientist at Nexidia.

Most other data readily flows through organizations via applications such as BI, CRM, ERP and payroll systems software. Also these other applications' vendors pride themselves on the ease of integration of their solutions and the flexibility of the import/export capabilities they provide. While internal algorithms might be proprietary, it is the customer who provides the input data and reaps the benefits from the resulting analyses and actions, while retaining data ownership.

Yet all too many recording suppliers "still cling to antediluvian practices of storing the recorded calls and associated metadata in closed databases with cumbersome and slow interfaces, making it overly difficult if not outright impossible for customers to access their own data," said Gavalda.

The Nexidia executive states that such practices fall counter to a general movement towards the liberation and atomization of data. This is a trend that emanates from a large and growing proportion of information being generated and consumed from written, aural, or pictorial artifacts to all kinds of communications and transactions is digital - or digitized. This enables the information to be easily copied, stored and sent across networks.

The atomization of information such as micro-updates on social networks or the goal to "find any moment from any film, instantly" from the startup AnyClip is also a result of the digital age. Such material can be easily quantized or segmented into discrete chunks and thus queried and retrieved independently.

Further, one of the hallmarks of Web 2.0 technologies the Nexidia executive points out are the mash-ups or combination of information from different sources using data mapping techniques that treat disparate web services or even web pages as a giant collection of facts to be discovered, syndicated, and monetized. Aiding that effort, pivotal Internet companies such as Google or Yahoo! go out of their way to provide easy-to-use APIs to programmatically access their services.

"Now, contrast these forward-looking and innovative data-sharing services with the bunker mentality espoused by certain call recording vendors," said Gavalda. "[They] apparently feel threatened when enterprise customers want to access their own recorded calls in order to, for example, apply speech analytics to gain business insights from the content of those calls."

How silly, the Nexidia official points out, would it be for a payroll management solution to deny the CFO access to the earning statements? Or for a banking application to refuse showing customers the checks they have deposited? Yet, when it comes to contact centers, many operations executives and IT managers find themselves in the absurd position of having to plea with their call logging provider to be allowed access to their own calls and associated metadata.

"Fortunately, the march towards data liberation is resolute and unstoppable," Gavalda said. "Enterprise customers will not tolerate for much longer being treated by call recording vendors the same way that certain annoying photo-sharing sites treat their users: after you upload your pictures, all you get is a thumbnail and the possibility of paying for printouts."

Brendan B. Read is TMCnet's Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan's articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Erin Harrison