Conversationware

When I see CRM, a sometimes debateable technology, aligned with VoIP for the greater good, it has me snorting into my morning coffee. A good job I’m on my own this morning.

“A perfect fit” indeed.

Most industry people know that VoIP itself isn’t needed to integrate telephony into a CRM system, and this has been possible for many years.

There has to be another reason for this sort of technology bundling (and marketing)

Whatever, the lure of simplicity is just too great sometimes. When it gets difficult to decide, just go for the easy option (technology or marketing)

Getting dressed for example, it sometimes can take ages to work out what goes with what.

Deep down of course you know that you’ll pay in the end.

With technology, the cost can be time and money taken up, and the work you have to put in justifying the original decision. Still, as the article quotes, the cool factor can be worth it, just look at the cool dude above. (it’s not me) 

Personally, I didn’t go the shellsuit route. But, I’ve just resigned myself to going back to a proper mobile phone.

I’ve tried the qtek Windows mobile device, and I have to say the experience was dire. If the phone isn’t any good, it matters little that I can access my gmail whilst on the move.

One size fits all didn’t work. I realised I wasn’t using the damn phone as often as I should, because the experience was painful - how useless is that?

I like technology from people who specialise. The motorola Z8 enables me to hear people properly when I call them.

Luckily, with telephone systems these days, we can now enjoy open systems and choose the best of breed and still choose the best handsets, the best voice messaging system, the best call recording platform, the best fax solution, the best stats package, the best call centre software, the best CRM system, and not have it cost a fortune.

Any other decision might be construed as a symptom of not trusting your communications suppliers to dress themselves properly.

Paul Sweeney’s blog, “you’ve been noticed”, is a good resource for looking at what the UC technology industry calls “Communication enabled business processes” - or as Paul puts it more succinctly, customer interaction.

There is a great double win to be had

Through being proactive (and automated) interacting with customers, not only can you reduce direct costs by, for example, reducing inbound calls and removing duplication of effort. You also increase customer service levels at the same time - for increased sales.

The original article at Service Untitled is also a good read and argues for more multimedia and self service options.

My experience of friends and family is that they as customers really don’t want to be calling anyone help either! It’s not always easy asking for help, you can feel stupid.  Customers expect you to anticipate their need and deliver information before they know they need it. As competition gets tougher, then not doing anything won’t be an option.

Because maybe they just buy from someone who makes it easier next time.

I really think that an inbound telephone call is often your last chance to keep a customer, and if your people are overwhelmed with calls, that can be a really bad sign.

Shoot first and save lives.

Come on people - more sales for less costs, ….a no brainer.

So, delivery and service industries would benefit most from automation, and Paul links to the UPS desktop widget - really very cool. I wonder if RSS is at the heart of it.

I can personally think of a number of wasted days off that might have been saved if the industry norm were to text, email or phonecall confirmations the day before.

It’s not often I plug the company I work for, but Avanquest Text Message Server - has a SMS delivery receipt capability, that can update the host database, so you even know who didn’t get the message. My favourite feature of a great product - which is an end to end solution also available oem. OK, plug over. You can open your eyes again.

I still have mine closed, as I’ve upgraded and put some plugins on the site. I’m sure this will explode when I press the button.

It’s a safe bet that most technology people that read this blog will be interested in the popular mechanics awards for breakthrough technology for 2007.

Scroll down through to the products section and although there is precious little software listed, the iPhone does make it in. Even if the description talks about visual voicemail as the most important of the breakthroughs! (demo here)

Green technology for vehicles and wind power are to be expected, but a few things I had no idea existed. Such as the make anything machine which is a kind of 3d printer that uses silicon plastic to make whatever is modelled on your screen - early days methinks.

Microsoft surface computing of course, but flash memory of up to 64GB was a nice surprise and we can thus expect laptops to be getting greener and quieter. A bit like seating your girlfriend next to a superior specimen, or so goes one of the email jokes lately.

The most career minded of chemists at just 18, is cleaning up the water supply.

But, I think they missed one - to certain caffeine addicts then the new kettle I found from Magimix (who?) is just one of my favourite new objects. It has mauve neon, and is made up of stainless steel…..with a three year guarantee. Making tea was never so much fun? It looks like it should be orbiting mars or something.

Oh, and my wife wants someone to put the following into production.  I don’t know if she thinks podcasts will tempt me into volunteering more often.

And, I may as well use up my only other joke learned this month. If the leaning tower of piza had a clock at the top, it would have both the time and the inclination.

This video covers a couple of typical questions plus gives a legal company’s view of Unified Communications and VOIP deployment (two very different things in my view….)

Courtesy of You Tube

If you want to know how to simply embed videos in your wordpress blog, whether from You Tube or any other system by the look of it, go here and download the plugin.

An excellent post, as usual, linked here from mike Gotta, on the his view of the likely progress of Microsoft OCS and the status of key components.

A balanced view which adds value to whatever else we’ve seen in the last week.

   It feels like the calm before the carnage.

This week, Microsoft aimed at the Enterprise market with OCS, and Microsoft Admins over the world pricked up their ears.

To be able to apply their hard earned Active Directory and networking skills to telephony, and not to mention finding a new use for all that spare rack space, it must have felt like heaven.

At the other end, the SMB’s also got something. For those who have never heard of Active Directory in other words, 3 Com announced it’s support for the open source Asterisk PBX. This aimed squarely at those interested in a good deal for their telephone plumbing. 

Open source lacks credibility? Well, here’s some  - and an excellent article from Dan York indicates some traction. Comparing Asterisk to the rise of Linux is probably spot on from what I’ve seen recently.

Trixbox had a stand at IP07 - (I thought it was VOIP for business show, my mistake), and it looked like theirs was one of the busiest stands. A cool colour scheme must be the reason.

Anyone who says Asterisk won’t be a player, well, that’s like saying no corporate would ever install linux based applications.

Back in May we saw $6.5B of linux server sales in a quarter. That’s only 7 or 8 years worth of activity, without credibility.

Genesys supporting Asterisk is somewhat of a suprise given who they’re owned by,  but hedging bets was never a bad thing. 

So - two potentially massively impactful solutions gain traction on a crowded staid technology market. The neighbourhood just isn’t the same any more - that banging sound must be the ‘for sale’ signs going up.

At the moment, presence is a bit like opening a christmas package to find some bits and a pot of glue.

And, there are pieces missing. Even when you’ve been using presence for a while, something just doesn’t feel right.

Here’s the thing -

I don’t care who you are (sorry mother), there are times when I don’t want to talk to you, at that moment.

Conversely, it might vary, depending on why you need to talk to me….I’m becoming a master of the obvious.

IF THEN EQUALS

So - presence ’status’ should be conditional upon what you want to talk to me about

Send an invitation to converse (I know that’s what a ringing phone is), but send it with the subject - and if you get an affirmative response, ‘WE’ can then go about deciding on the best method and time to do it.

By WE, of course I mean clever software that AUTOMATICALLY detects when we both can and would do it.

The only additional fluff could be with the level of urgency, or importance - I’m not sure which, but probably the latter -  to be attached by both the invitee and respondee to the subject, and that should be 1,2,3 or maybe 4.

The final requirement is that when we do get to speak, all of the items we’ve hitherto agreed to speak about are listed on a screen, which means we can make notes and either tick them off or agree to invite someone else into the subject.

The lower the combined importance numbers, the higher in the list the subject goes.

You know what, it makes much more sense than ‘ringing’ someone without knowing beforehand whether its a good subject, or time.

I do have deja vu at this point. So maybe this is something I’ve already seen - but if so, then it needs more publicity so that I can remember it better…..so link back here.

I’m minded of the following.

Albert Einstein quote - If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y plus Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut

This linked article at eweek about Microsoft UC wasn’t astounding in any way apart from the claim that

“In fact, Microsoft has replaced its old voice mail system with Exchange Server 2007 unified messaging, a move that is saving the company $5 million a year through lowered hardware and maintenance costs, he said.”

Bill Gates talking, apparently.

I understand that Microsoft doesn’t have to pay 29% for it’s own software renewal scheme, and therefore probably isn’t inidicative of the available savings for everyone else, but even so. $5 million saving in costs. For voicemail.

A few questions spring to mind

How many people does Microsoft have? 

Are there any employees left in America for any other companies?

Did the diamond embedded voicemail company ever need to sell any other systems?

With that account lost, does the salesman now have to come back out of retirement, and can he show his face after that last lease agreement?

And, do journalists ever ask for details to back up major sponsor’s claims, and is it necessary?

It has been on my mind for a while that communications professionals aren’t communicating very well. How many Communications people and companies in the UK are using RSS, and may heaven forbid Blogs - or am I not looking hard enough?

Appropriate notification is a serious communications issue, as is information overload. RSS is relevant to people and companies. So, can you be interested, and work in, communications without considering new technology? Are your clients wondering how committed you are to keeping their business at the forefront.

I picked up on this, being reminded by the linked post, that communications technology companies aren’t using communications technology. It’s not just me then.

Times are changing, and it looks like its a variable as to how quickly people and companies are trying to keep up.

I suppose it is a question of critical mass adoption, as when Text Messaging only really took off in the UK once networks linked to each other. It meant that you could be confident that whoever you sent the message to would receive it.

Presumably when RSS readers outnumber non-readers we’ll see the adoption speeding up. Is there a tipping point, and when might that be?

Most technologists know the Rogers adoption curve, but it doesn’t show the pace vs overall penetration of technology. I’d expect the adoption to creep along a horizontal time path very low, and then a steep increase towards the right.

Where are we on the adoption curve I wonder, still in the early adopters stage?

The trouble with using bad software is, it can make you feel like an idiot.

For me, BAD software is something that

• a. ‘could’ ‘logically’ transform a task, but somehow manages to elude our using it to the fullest extent.
• b. takes longer to achieve the task than the way we’re doing it already

Whatever the software, the improvement has to be outstandingly obvious for people to adopt it.

Not knowing what is good for us then, is just a symptom of being human.

At this point, it would be easy to score some cheap points about ‘user unfriendly’ and frustrating software ruining a perfectly good product idea - sadly we’ve all used bad software, so that’s not the focus.

And, for the record, I don’t buy into the refrain that bad software workers are just blaming their tools. More often, they blame themselves.

On the flip side then, what makes good software good?

I contend that Good software makes you feel like a genius.

Without any training courses you just know how it works….and how good is THAT, being able to use software without any training.

It doesn’t take long for the feelings about how good the software is, to blend very neatly into feelings about how clever you are.

Of course, it’s only fair to share the good fortune and show other people how much of a genius they could be too. When this happens, the results can be impressive (ipod sales). Good design has a momentum all of its own.

Intuitive software is like that.

The WAY it gets to be intuitive is to think ahead, to know what the user wants to do, before they themselves know they want to do it, as well as just being tons better than the old way.

Intuition itself is based on past experiences, it’s why traffic light colours have spread into many other facets of life.

Intution then, is what you already know, applied to the new.

So, to Unified Communications.

Software has proven itself useful - a given I hope - and thus (communication) applications are being presented and are multiplying at an incredible rate.

Even websites are now interactive, and thus a brand new interface for every site and every service.

Unified Communications is completely, utterly, about the reduction of user interfaces. Nothing to do with a single box or supplier for every application.

This is in a world where the amount of software that users are being presented with is leading to their shoulders sagging under the load.

A good example of this user interface ‘reversal’ is with voicemail.

A user’s past experience of a machine that answers a phone, was an answering machine. And THAT is exactly how people used it, ignoring the 90% of functionality that was available past the first keypress, because their intuition didn’t tell them anything different.

People trust their intuition more than they do other people, and so training courses were of little value in improving the situation, a comparitively weak alternative to an intuitive interface (but better than nothing).

Enter Unified Messaging - NOW, voicemail looks like email. You get one, you click it and its just another email.

It’s simple but exceptionally powerful.

Ok, a difference is that you play voicemail - but the player looks just like a VCR…so we’re home!

Suddenly, without training, every user knows how to play, reply, forward..with or without an introduction, save, and even forward to a group of people and link it to whatever other systems they’re using. Address books are also leveraged, and users can be managed within the same environment.

This advance in software helps user’s ‘get it’ without trying, and when that happens, 90% of people suddenly gained a great deal of productivity without any instruction.

Moreover, when we get that, it’s easier for them to treat email like voicemail when calling in to their office voicemail system. When listening to an email is just like listening to a voicemail, the concept has been transmitted, wordlessly, unlike this post :-), by building on their previous experience of (unified) messaging.

And so it continues, when ‘messaging’ becomes that easy to use, the next step is to eliminate mobile voice messaging, because it’s so much less useful than it ever was.

Extend this same process of interface elimination to fax and text messaging and it goes to reverse the users feeling of being overwhelmed by yet more software to learn - in fact, the roll out could be headed….”we’re giving you less to learn”

In itself, hardly earthshattering - but, in context of a massively overly supplied PC screen, software without training and high adoption rates (that’s what we see) is more than a good thing, it is somewhat exceptional to the norm.

The next frontier

Where are we (users) with ‘real time’ communications software interfaces?

There is one area where this is already working very well, and this is by ‘communications enabling’ a user’s existing interface. Where you ‘telephone enable’ a customer database, for whatever reason, it is possible to extend the users experience, intuitively. Click to dial is a form of this, but quite limited, but another is rules based call routing based on who is calling and why.

However, for most people, personal real time communications includes,

Telephones, Instant Messaging, Audio, Web, and Video conferencing, mobiles and lots more.

And, ‘Nowhere fast’ about sums it up.

To my mind, each best of breed (realtime) company has a piece of the jigsaw, but instead of playing nicely together and just finishing the picture, they’re off constructing the other 80% of the jigsaw pieces themselves. I’m talking about IM, telephony and even public network companies. This isn’t what the users want or need, in my opinion of course.

There are some notable exceptions, but that’s for another time.

It will be interesting how it all pans out, but talk about being ripe for disruptive technology. I expect a lot of free interfaces will come to dominate, before they eventually get you by charging for the upgrades.