Skip to main content

Its not the channel, its the implementation

It seems like every other day now we get a blog post about how one technology/channel is dead and how this new thing is now the best thing since sliced bread.
First they said the phone call is dead. Not.
Then they said email is dead. Or support over email is dead. etc etc. Not
Though these may be ok to get page views, the reality of the matter is quite different. Phone calls and Email usage has not gone down(for businesses, its a different story for B2C). In fact it has increased.
And all the blog posts take some example of a bad implementation and highlight what is wrong with the old technology or channel.
Problem is even in the new channels, in app support etc there are some very bad examples. But that does not mean that the problem is with the channels.
The problem is with the implementations.
Flickr

For example, very few IVR systems use the context of the caller and provide help. Very few use speech recognition technologies which have improved by leaps and bounds. What if someone implemented a simple IVR for support where you just call and state your problem and disconnect. And within a couple of minutes either your problem is resolved or an update is given. If this happens every single time, phone would be the first point of contact for most customers.
Customers just need resolution. They are not looking at using the next big thing in tech to talk to businesses.
Similarly in email, still most systems are dependent on tickets, ticket numbers etc. Customers get confused. Its time the systems moved on to conversational mode of solving. And email is built for conversation.
Same thing with chat bots. A chat bot need not be intelligent. All it needs is to answer queries or hand over to a human.

In our experience with a lot of businesses at Ozonetel we have seen that many of them spend too much time on installing a technology for their processes(sales/support). They dont spend enough time on working on the communication flow. If they start doing that, we may have good conversational systems on all channels.

Popular posts from this blog

Cloud Telephony-History and state of the art

Well, its been 11 years since Twilio launched their voice API in November 2008. I would say that was a major turning point in the cloud telephony industry. Before that, for people to build telephony applications, you either had to depend on proprietary platforms like Avaya dialog designer or build on arcane technologies like VXML which again was supported at varying degrees by the incumbents. Enter Twilio with their voice API and the industry changed for the better. Since it's been almost 11 years now I thought now might be a good time to do a comprehensive review of the cloud telephony industry as a whole in general and in India in particular. The Beginning Twilio was undoubtedly the startup which ushered in the era of cloud telephony. They started in November 2008. At that time in India, we at Ozonetel had launched a hosted VXML platform. There were no takers. After all who coded in VXML :) So when Twilio launched and we saw them take off, we immediately realized tha...

Telugu ASR speech data collection

Image Source: IIIT-H Developing an indigenous ASR for Indian languages has been a goal for us since a long time. In that regard we have been experimenting a lot, trying out various neural network architectures.  While doing these experiments we found that there was no good dataset for Indian languages. While discussing with IIIT professors we got to know that the government of India was also exploring options to generate a good dataset. We immediately offered our help and our platform for this endeavor. So, as a starting step we have come up with a few campaigns to encourage users to donate speech data. We wanted to make it fun, so our first few campaigns are along the lines of JAMs(Just a Minute speech topics) etc. A topic will be provided and you need to speak for a minute on that topic. We have started this campaign for college students to start with. Of course anyone can participate and contribute their data. The more the merrier :) We will adding a lot more innovative ways ut...

Google's approach to business communication

 Google has been making silent moves in the business communication space. Google has mostly lost the instant messaging wars. But it does not want to lose the business communication war. WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook have been making their own moves to enable businesses to reach their customers through their channels. Its all about who has control over the communication channels. Especially communication which leads to business. That's where the money is. Currently, Google is the king of search and most online transactions start with a Google search. FB, Amazon, Apple and others want to change that. They want the search to start on their properties. And they have started making the moves. WhatsApp business allows small businesses to conduct their transactions on WhatsApp. FB and Instagram have long supported small businesses to manage their business on their channels. Apple has also made some nice moves with Apple business chat. They have integrated a whole shopping expe...