Have you ever wished you could hit “replay” on a conversation? To have the opportunity to recapture some critical detail or comment that would be extremely useful for you right now but that your memory failed to hold onto in the hours, weeks or months since the chat ended?
When people talk, data is exchanged. A lot of data. But converting that raw information into actionable intelligence isn’t always easy, especially as scale increases.
Consider an automotive retail chain, for example. One with more than 5,000 store locations. And each day, each site receives dozens of phone calls that might contain useful details regarding buying trends, consumer attitudes or even inventory shortfalls.
By listening in, you might learn what shoppers think of the brands you offer. Or you could discover why your workers in California have more job satisfaction than those in New Jersey. You could unlock what your next big business move should be — or shouldn’t be.
Huge Capacity
Minutes of conversation supported each month over 40 million
Accelerated Performance
Can deliver AI-driven transcription in < 1 minute
Conversations, particularly those held over phone or video, are of particular interest for Steve McGovern, Chief Executive Officer at Dubber Corporation Ltd., which is part of the IBM partner ecosystem. As one of the world’s largest call recording services, his business processes over 40 million minutes of verbal exchanges each month. Or as McGovern might consider it, 40 million minutes of data.
“With this data, you can not only understand what was said, but you can gain insights into the context of what was said,” notes McGovern. “Conversations are content rich, but you have to capture it. You have to get it into something usable, which means transcribing it and analyzing it.”
With Watson AI at the core, Dubber AI automatically translates phone calls and video conferences into text, assigning each conversation with a positive, neutral or negative rating depending on the tone and type of language used on the call. Users of the platform, in turn, can then mine through this data using simple keyword searches or feed relevant content into custom dashboards.
The solution can even set up automated notifications for keywords that might demand immediate action. Imagine a call system for a bank — or other business demanding zero downtime — that will automatically notify supervisors if the word “offline” shows up in a conversation with a customer. And by analyzing the frequency of terms being used, other important details might emerge.
“We were working with a major automotive company in the UK,” recalls McGovern, “and within weeks of turning on Dubber, they identified a number of compliance gaps with regard to cash transactions which could have had a profound impact on the business. When noncompliant phrases like ‘let’s take that offline’ or ‘let me message you separately’ show up as patterns, it’s easy to see where employee and customer behavior is breaching company and compliance policies.”
IBM Watson® Speech to Text oversees the transcription duties of the service, while IBM Watson Tone Analyzer and IBM Watson Natural Language Understanding deliver additional visibility into the underlying data contained within these conversations.
“We wanted to marry Dubber call recording, embedded with Watson AI, with the infrastructure of a telco network or UC [unified communications] solution — all at the price-point of a utility,” explains McGovern. “At a price enterprises and governments value.”
To deliver Dubber AI, the business coordinates with telecommunications providers across the globe, allowing users to activate the tool as a feature of their call or video conferencing plan. And to streamline this global service delivery — along with the underlying IBM technology — Dubber uses an IBM® Embedded Solution Agreement (ESA). “The ESA makes my life easier,” adds McGovern. “From a simplicity standpoint, I have one contract for the entire world. If I go into a new country, I’m not starting over.”
By harnessing the power of AI and making it available under a service-based model, Dubber is helping users of its transcription solution drive new efficiencies and rein in spending. “One regional law enforcement group we work with used to spend millions just on call transcription,” recalls McGovern. “With Dubber AI, we helped them decrease that by around 50%.”
Similarly, having access to call metrics and conversation keywords mapped out in real time helps accelerate reporting, planning and decision-making. And businesses can gain access to this value in just seconds.
“One of the unique value propositions that Dubber AI offers is that we’re integrated into the telco network or UC solution,” adds McGovern. “We can be switched on at a moment’s notice. For example, we’re dealing with a bank here in Australia that has a contact center of some 5,000 people. To put in a traditional call-recording system, that’s probably a three-year project. But with Dubber AI, there was no scoping. No planning. No deployment. The telco just turned them on.”
Embedding IBM technology helps Dubber to differentiate in the market and encourages customer confidence when choosing its transcription platform.
“It allows us to deliver a solution that has IBM at the core, which commercially is a great thing for us,” clarifies McGovern. “If we had gone to anyone else for transcription, I don’t think that we’d have been able to put together as compelling a product that can handle the disparate nature of the businesses we touch.”
Dubber (link resides outside of ibm.com), an IBM Partner, is a leading, global call recording service that operates through a network of over 110 service providers and telecommunications companies in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. Founded in 2011, the business is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia.
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