New "Voice of Customer" Mines Diverse Data Sources to Deliver Consolidated View Into Customer Satisfaction Issues

IBM today announced a subscription-based analytics offering called IBM Voice of the Customer Analytics (VOCA) that leverages new technology pioneered by IBM Research.  Through advanced business analytics, IBM VOCA mines diverse data sources from routine customer service interactions - including audio recordings, call transcripts, emails, survey results and demographic data - to deliver a single, integrated view of customer sentiment to improve marketing effectiveness, enhance customer service and grow customer loyalty.

IBM VOCA is designed to help enable businesses to better identify and manage factors critical to customer satisfaction by pinpointing the root causes of negative service experiences.  Through a dynamic analysis process that maintains strict customer confidentiality, IBM VOCA can identify overall trends and highlight a specific product or service-related problem, as well as reveal issues in the dialog between customers and the customer care representatives.  With these insights, businesses can rapidly take actions such as adjusting call scripts or providing staff with new information before customer issues become widespread.

"IBM's clients operate in a very competitive environment and are constantly evaluating how they can improve customer loyalty, while maintaining their profitability," said John Lutz, general manager, IBM Managed Business Process Services. "Traditional customer analytics is limited to the static analysis of factors like call handling time and hold times.  Now, by harnessing innovation from IBM Research in our Analytics Business Process Services offering, we can deliver a level of insight that enables clients to operate smarter, more responsive businesses."

"VOCA draws on IBM's expertise in analytics, predictive modeling, information management, and deep industry knowledge," said Robert Morris, vice president, services research, IBM Research.  "The solution combines text analytics with traditional data mining tasks to deliver actionable insights based on information inherent in customer interactions. It helps clients improve both the speed and quality of business decisions, while better understanding the consequences and outcomes of those decisions."

IBM VOCA is one of the advanced analytics solutions that comprise IBM's Analytics Business Process Services (ABPS) offering.  IBM's ABPS Customer Management portfolio is designed to quickly and accurately deliver fact-based business insights to decision makers. Insights and recommendations from these solutions help clients to develop programs to increase customer satisfaction, reduce customer churn, drive operational savings and improve service quality.