Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

Mark III Systems Calls in Contact Center Help from Watson

May 03, 2017

Ever since the Watson system destroyed two of Jeopardy's all-time greats, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, the system has proceeded to enter into a variety of market verticals where such a system might not have been expected. The contact center is one of these less-than-expected markets, and recently, Mark III Systems turned to IBM Cloud and Watson to deliver new value in the contact center with a new product launch.


Mark III Systems—itself an IBM Business Partner—recently turned to the IBM systems to build a cognitive contact center solution, one that would help drive greater productivity at the agent level and offer said agents access to better information developed in real-time to help produce value in calling operations.

The result is a greatly refined system that allows contact centers to better access data. Most contact centers will record calls—such is announced right at the beginning of a call—but most of these recordings can only be searched by “tags” that are manually entered. If a tag is faultily entered, the end result is a potentially lost bit of information not readily available. 

That information could make the difference between a satisfied and unsatisfied customer, and may drop agent productivity with it. The time lost to manually enter tags is time that could be used in selling activities or the like, and actually generating reports from this information can take, by some measures, weeks. With the Mark III Systems platform, it becomes easier to classify calls, and the resulting information can be better routed to the agents for use on calls. Response times are dropped from weeks to minutes in some cases, and the end result is better and more efficient overall.

We know that data science is shaping a lot of business today, and making significant changes in the field as we know it. Marketers are increasingly using this technology as a means to figure out what merchandise to buy and how to arrange it in stores, among a variety of other points. That's just for starters; data has only branched out from there. We're seeing some of that effect here, as the contact center is increasingly turning to data to speed up call volumes and provide a more personalized experience. That means better customer service, and ultimately, better chances of repeat business.

Watson and the IBM Cloud have delivered no shortage of value of late, and Mark III Systems' move represents just the latest initiative in a growing string of such cases. We'll likely see more such events before all is said and done, and Watson—for good or ill—will likely be at the front of it all.

If you’d like to learn more about AI, be sure to check out TMC and Crossfire Media’s newest conference and expo, Communications 20/20, happening July 18-20 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The event will focus on the next wave of technology and innovations that will transcend the importance of person to person contact, disrupting the future of the entire communications industry. Find out more HERE.




Edited by Alicia Young



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