IBM Jumps on a Bandwagon It Fell Off Earlier
January 6, 2010
Intelligent Enterprise reported that IBM is in the voice of the customer game. I thought IBM was already in the voice of the customer game. Goes to show what I know. The article “IBM Launches Voice-of-the-Customer Analytic Service” reveals all. The “all” is another of those glorious umbrella service offerings that in the 1970s made sense. Today, IBM is mostly a consulting firm with a backpack stuffed full of technology, open source programs, and consultants. In my opinion, the most interesting comment in the write up was:
VOCA has been in pilot deployment mode for nearly a year, according to English [IBM wizard], and tests have ranged from daily to monthly reporting scenarios. By year end, IBM plans to add text analytic and transcription and translation services for the major European languages and Arabic. In the first half of next year, the VOCA service will add speech-to-text technologies that will enable customers to mine customer support calls and other audio recordings.
Ah, the most recent customer support package will be forthcoming by the end of the year. To test this, I navigated to IBM.com and ran these queries:
- VOCA
- voice of the customer
- customer support systems
Here’s what I learned from these queries, but I urge you to run your own searches too:
VOCA
I received pointers to VOCA or voice of the customer analytics. The active link was to the December 16, 2009, news release which seemed to presage some of the Intelligent Enterprise comments. There were other links as well, including:
- A link to another news release
- Pointers to a “cross industry” news release here
- A link to Streamline Business Processes, which I did not understand but there was another link to a page of more news releases.
Okay, I get it. The search system indexes news releases. Not what I expected but I accept that marketing is more important than some other functions at IBM.
“Voice of the Customer” as a Bound Phrase
I got a different result set than I did from VOCA. The set was only 26 hits, and the first hit was a news release. The second and third hits were to an older news release and another link to the VOCA news release. Still not substantive content.
“Customer Support System” as a Bound Phrase
I got one hit to the Customer Support Newsletter date 2007 Q2. I thought this VOCA stuff was new. Guess I was correct when I perceived the story in Intelligent Enterprise as another marketing attempt by IBM to look relevant. Obviously the PDF newsletter did not make any sales.
Hopefully, IBM will find a way to make its actual products and services findable on its Web site. The present method of putting out a news release, getting a publication to parrot the information, and then sending a goose like me to the IBM Web site looking for concrete information is sufficient.
Stephen E. Arnold, January 4, 2010
Oyez, oyez, a freebie. I will report this sad state of affairs when Washington DC returns to work to the Bureau of Labor Statistics who cares about productivity such as that evidenced by IBM’s marketing and Web search teams.
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