Case Study: Continental Airlines-This Call Is Being Monitored

Q.1 What are the business benefits of the CallMiner system? Provide some additional examples beyond those discussed in the case.

Answer: There are several business benefits of the CallMiner system in various areas, such as Sales & Marketing, Customer Service, and Operations. The system enables Continental to understand why customers contact them, the value of those communications, and how effectively its service representatives address customer needs. Additionally, it allows for a significant reduction in human resources needed and improves efficiency by allowing more time to analyze data to build customer loyalty. The data can also be used to improve business decisions.

Benefits of the CallMiner system:

1. This helps to determine what customers really want and whether the right actions were taken.

2. Crafting marketing plans and shaping overall strategy are aided by it.

3. The CallMining software provided Continental Airlines with the opportunity to monitor agents’ responses to customers, revealing areas in which agents needed more training. By better educating agents, they became more effective and efficient employees.

4. By reducing the number of calls made by agents to the support desk, Continental Airlines was able to decrease the number of reconfirmation calls, resulting in an annual savings of over $1 million.

5. To measure the response to a new offer or destination, it is important to review both the amount and timing of calls inquiring about it, relative to the announcement.

6. Providing data to support new initiatives is essential, whether it’s to solve issues currently being presented or justify new investments.

7. It improves customer service efficiency and increases customer satisfaction.

8. Reduced Labor Costs

9. Competitive advantage – CallMiner has the ability to recognize root problems within the reservation system, which fosters better and more effective customer service. This promotes Continental’s ability to be a leader within the airline industry.

Call-mining technology combines speech recognition, speech analysis, and data-mining capabilities. This makes it easy for companies to find specific information in audio archives and spot service gaps, sales opportunities, and emerging customer trends.

11. Call-mining software can also search for phrases that agents did not say, but should have been said for legal reasons.

Airlines have struggled for years to keep customers happy. Issues such as missed or delayed flights and overbookings have haunted airlines for some time, making customer loyalty crucial. If customers find a few things they like about an airline, they are more likely to stick with them. CallMiner has helped Continental address some of the root issues with its core systems, such as registration and confirmations, enabling them to provide a better overall experience for their customers. Continental is fixing these problems and can be assured that many of these customers will continue to fly with them. Systems like CallMiner are a boon for businesses claiming to be available 24/7 at their customers’ doorsteps. Data collected by data mining systems can be used to train employees, enhance feedback from customer responses, and reshape marketing decisions in order to generate more loyal customers – only 20% of loyal customers generate almost 70% of profits.

Q.2 How can new technologies like CallMiner help companies improve their customer service and gain a competitive edge in the marketplace? Explain.

Businesses exist to make profits, and they continuously strive to increase revenues. One way to achieve this is by increasing automation, such as using the CallMiner system, which reduces human interface and the number of employees needed for efficient business operations. Data mining systems like CallMiner also help companies become more customer-friendly and customer-focused, leading to better customer loyalty – an essential factor for businesses to survive in today’s competitive market.

Technologies like CallMiner also aid in retaining existing customers by providing better service. Beyond basic revenues, this software enables companies to identify common flaws and complaints about their services. Nowadays, almost all service-related companies are implementing automation systems like CallMiner.

Technology can help a company be competitive in several ways:

1. By reducing labor costs
2. By reducing service time

2. Accurately capturing the concerns and needs of customers is crucial for any business.
3. Technologies like this one can improve response time by eliminating manual processes and reducing human interaction.

4. By comparing the reason for the call with the representative’s actions, it is possible to determine the effectiveness of the response and identify areas where further training may be needed.

5. Identifying calls that can be pre-emptively solved or routed appropriately frees up agents to focus on taking reservations and making sales.

6. Increased efficiency not only benefits the business but also leads to increased customer satisfaction, which in turn fosters customer loyalty.

Q.3 Andre Harris refers to calls to reconfirm a flight as “quite frankly, low-value calls.” Why are they classified as low value? Why do you think so many customers are making such calls?

Andre Harris most likely refers to flight reconfirmation calls as “low value” because they repeat processed information and are unnecessary. Additionally, these calls consume employees’ valuable time when they could be addressing other customer queries or providing useful information. An automated system would be a much more cost-effective choice for providing this type of information. Continental Airlines was not benefiting from these calls and was only wasting precious resources.

Calls for reconfirmation are considered low value because they do not allow for interaction with the customer. Customers who want to reconfirm their flight may be in one of two positions: they either want a quick answer to their request or they are about to fly and not interested in making a new reservation. They may feel the need to reconfirm their flight if they have doubts about the accuracy of their ticket.

These calls do not involve customers asking for better service, making complaints, or requesting anything. As a result, they do not generate any income for the company. Instead, these calls cost the company money by using valuable staff time and company resources that could be used to serve other customers in need.

Customers are placing these calls due to a lack of education, but in reality, many of these calls are unnecessary. Verifying flight information by telephone is often preferred by older generations who prefer voice-to-voice communication. However, some people may also find telephoning preferable to other communication mediums, although this system can be replaced with more efficient automated systems. Some individuals do not feel comfortable communicating with an automated system. As the telephone is still widely accessible for these types of queries, most people make calls regarding reconfirmation of their flights just to get assurance from the airline company.

Reconfirmations are unnecessary older practices in the airline industry. While it is typically not necessary to reconfirm domestic flights, many airlines still require passengers to do so for international flights. Since this practice varies among companies, customers often call even those airlines that do not require reconfirmation to ensure their travel plans are in order.

Many organizations are using call monitoring and data mining technologies to improve customer service and gain a greater understanding of their customers’ needs. Various industries such as insurance companies, hospitals, telecom and call centers, banks, and even prisons are utilizing these technologies.

Some examples of companies using call monitoring technology include American Express, which uses it to monitor customer interactions for quality assurance purposes. Meanwhile, Wells Fargo uses data mining to analyze customer behavior patterns to identify potential fraud.

The real value of these technologies lies in the insights they provide about customers. By analyzing data from calls or online interactions with customers, organizations can identify trends in customer behavior and preferences. This information can then be used to make informed decisions about product development, marketing strategies, and overall business operations.

Data mining in Telecom Companies

The telecommunications industry generates and stores a tremendous amount of data. These data include call detail data – calls that traverse the telecommunication networks, network data – the state of the hardware and software components in the network, and customer data which describes telecom customers. The amount of data is so great that manual analysis is difficult if not impossible. This has led to the development of knowledge-based expert systems to handle such large volumes of information. Automated data mining systems perform important functions such as identifying fraudulent phone calls and identifying network faults.

Data Mining for Retailers

Data mining tools can be helpful in targeting new markets and crafting more attractive pitches to upsell current customers. REI, an outdoor gear retailer, uses data mining software to parse extensive customer data collected through its website, direct mailings, and 78 retail stores. When considering new store locations, REI examines order data to find areas with high concentrations of customers buying online or through the company’s catalogs. Additionally, the company tailors its stores’ product mixes to local market preferences using data mining tools and uncovers patterns that suggest future purchases by customers.

Insurance companies are also using data mining to provide better service. For example, Conseco Inc. (an insurance, annuity, and financial services company) is currently working with Verint on projects that use the vendor’s Customer Interaction Analytics tool to optimize the customer experience. The carrier uses the tool to identify customer dissatisfaction with call handling and then enhances call center staff training by teaching employees how to distinguish key phrases. During a pilot run in August, the carrier ran 10,000 calls through Verint’s speech analytics tool which mines the full context of customer interactions and measures tone and emotion levels of callers. Understanding customer psychology would be a first in the industry for an insurance company.

Call Monitoring at Prison

In the USA, there is a prison that utilizes technology from start-up CallMiner to filter out code words for contraband. The CallMiner software stores reference data about word-usage trends and can highlight when words that are not frequently used in normal conversation suddenly increase in prisoners’ phone conversations. In the past, officials would often figure out “lollipop” was a code word for a certain drug after prisoners had already started using a new code word. However, with CallMiner’s speech analytics, an atypical word can be detected within a couple of hours when it is suddenly used more frequently.

Data can be vital to law enforcement or intelligence investigations of specific targets. However, some question the usefulness of “data-mining” software that combs huge amounts of information in hopes of finding links and patterns that might pick someone out as suspicious.

In manufacturing companies, the current production and manufacturing environments are drowning in data and starving for information. As a result, data mining has become an area of interest for many manufacturing companies. While tons of data can be collected with relative ease, the core issue is how to obtain timely and critical information for decision-making that will eventually lead to organizational profitability. To compound the problem, customers nowadays can be described as both finicky and sophisticated. Customer demands are continually changing, and the plant floor, associated supply chains, and even the entire enterprise must keep up or close shop. Fortunately, data mining systems are helping manufacturing companies address these challenges.

Call monitoring, also known as quality monitoring, is crucial to the success of call centres. It provides an idea of how well the centre is meeting its customer service objectives. Studies show that the majority of companies perform quality monitoring with one major goal in mind: to evaluate agent performance and improve service quality. Other reasons for quality monitoring include assessing and improving scripts and processes.

2. Greater customer satisfaction

3. Increased efficiency

4. Improved training programs

5. Uncovering common customer complaints and concerns

6. General troubleshooting

However, only a few companies are currently using call monitoring and data mining systems. In most industries, the revenue advantage of technology use is still to be realized as the basic infrastructure development itself demands a lot of investment. Industry analysts suggest that companies that capture and analyze customer contacts and intelligence are better positioned to enhance customer experiences, cut costs, increase service levels, and improve quality management. By utilizing automation tools that analyze the content of voice calls or call center audio streams, organizations can proactively identify recurring themes, topics, issues, and trends to make informed decisions that benefit both customers and the company’s bottom line.

Speech recognition technology can have a significant impact on these improvements in enterprise effectiveness, ROI (return on investment), and customer satisfaction. According to one report from 2001-2006 revenue from core speech technologies will grow from $505 million to $2 billion.

Q.5 Although companies that use call monitoring tools tell the listener that their call is being monitored for quality assurance purposes,” some customers feel this is an invasion of their privacy. Break into small groups with your classmates and discuss the various reasons why some customers feel their privacy is at stake with call monitoring technologies. Discuss your thoughts on what could be done to mitigate privacy concerns while improving the value of the technology.

There are privacy and human rights concerns associated with data mining, specifically regarding the source of the data analyzed. Data mining provides information that may be difficult to obtain otherwise. When the data collected involves individual people, there are many questions concerning privacy, legality, and ethics. In particular, there are concerns about data mining government or commercial datasets for national security or law enforcement purposes.

Various types of personal information often come under privacy concerns. For various reasons, individuals may not wish for personal information such as their religion, sexual orientation, political affiliations or personal activities to be revealed. This may be to avoid discrimination, personal embarrassment or damage to one’s professional reputation.

Workers in call centres are almost always subject to call monitoring. Employers monitor different aspects of their tasks, such as the length of calls, time periods between calls, content of telephone calls, politeness towards customers, and adherence to set procedures. They argue that this is done to ensure that customers receive correct information and protect workers from false complaints from the public. It’s also used for training purposes and can even determine performance-related pay in some cases. However, this raises serious questions about privacy and human dignity.

Employees should be able to carry out their work with respect for their privacy and autonomy without fear of constant monitoring. The collection, use or disclosure of personal information requires the knowledge and consent of the individual except where inappropriate. Although customers are told that their calls are being monitored for quality assurance purposes – they fear their personal information can be abused or sold to third parties.

Technologies like identifying human emotions from voice tones and pitch levels make many people uncomfortable sharing personal feelings or emotions with a third party. There are already laws regulating these ethical issues related to call monitoring and recording technologies aimed at preventing them from being abused or misused.

The existing global privacy rights framework has been criticized as incoherent and inefficient; proposals such as the APEC Privacy Framework aim to provide a comprehensive legal framework on global data privacy issues. Therefore awareness is key when using technologies like CallMiner; consumers should be more conscious about privacy issues when companies collect or record data without consent.

References:

• Callon, J.D. (1996). Competitive Advantage through Information Technology. McGraw-Hill: Singapore. ISBN 0-07-114106-5.
• Malaga, R.A. (2004). Information System Technology. Pearson-Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458. ISBN 0-13-049750-9.
• Mohammed, A., & Goo, S.K. (June 15, 2006). Government Increasingly Turning to Data Mining [Online]. Available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/14/AR2006061402063_pf.html.
• Data mining in the telecom industry [Online]. Available at:

Data mining is a process of discovering patterns in large data sets. For more information on data mining, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_mining. You can also read this paper on the topic: http://storm.cis.fordham.edu/