The Economy, Social Media, Mobility Receive Focus on Day One

Today at the opening day of the Nuance Conversations 2008 event, there was much talk about the economy, the empowered consumer and mobility. Agent productivity, improved speech recognition, outbound messaging and caller authentication were mentioned by Steve Chambers (President of Nuance Mobility Division) in his address to customers as a means to drive both efficiency and customer satisfaction goals simultaneously. Josh Bernoff (of Forrester and Groundswell fame) then shared insights on increased role social media will play in business. Yankee Group confirmed what we already know - that the consumer wants mobile care interactions. But Sheryl Kingstone, the Yankee analyst presenting went further to spell out some first steps call center managers in the enterprise should take in beginning to tackle mobile care device strategies. Dan Miller of Opus Research shared data on how widespread biometrics already is - while his co-presenter Chuck Buffum (Nuance VP of Caller Authentication) shared Harris Research that points to consumer readiness to adopt. Tom Hammond of Hartford Financial, and Sheryl Kingstone from Yankee - both shared that customer care and marketing need to become more collaborative. (and tomorrow we have a session on how Care is the New Marketing…) VLOGS from today are coming…..as soon as I can get them downloaded and uploaded. Isn’t there a simple voice command for that? Alas, I’m trying to get the USB cable to connect……..stay tuned and be watching. Tomorrow should be just as “action packed.”