The message is a familiar one for anyone calling a bank, health insurance company or retailer this call may be recorded for quality assurance. More likely than not “is” replaces “may” because a better way of doing business and retaining customers can be found within that conversation between the caller and a customer service agent. Extracting that information is where VPI Inc. enters the picture with its software applications to improve workforce development and the customer experience. “We are trying to enhance the value of the recorded call,” said Patrick Botz, director of marketing for the Camarillo-based company. Founded in 1994, the privately-held VPI a name adopted last year from Voice Print International splits its customers between the commercial sector, recording phone calls for quality control, and the public safety sector which is required to record incoming calls. The company started out providing the equipment to make and monitor calls but VPI sets itself apart as an innovative company by taking it to the analytical level. The call center industry has taken notice of what VPI offers. In April, the company received a Rising Star Award from the editors of CRM Magazine, a trade publication for the customer relations management industry. The magazine lauded VPI for expanding its product offering and positioning itself as a serious player in a competitive market. In August the company was named best in show in the category of Best Call Monitoring/Recording Systems at the International Call Center Management (ICCM) Conference & Exposition. In September 2005, the company opened a headquarters in London as the central location to handle sales and service for European customers and strengthen its partnership with Speakerbus, Inc., a provider of voice and video communications applications. The following year, VPI acquired Syntora, Inc., maker of applications to improve employee performance. As a business in a mature industry going up against large competitors, VPI stands out in the crowded marketplace through resourceful, aggressive and innovative marketing, said Richard Bucci, an analyst with The Pelorus Group. Their products fall under the general description of workforce optimization recording systems, scheduling, data analysis, caller surveys and performance measurement and through its own internal development and working with other companies, VPI offers solutions for every one of those areas, Bucci said. “For a company their size, they are the only one with a complete product offering in every workforce optimization category,” Bucci added. Phones still popular Even with the rise of e-mail, Web sites and online chats, most communication continues to be done by telephone. Within those phone calls lay the means of a more efficient operation. A call center employs hundreds, if not thousands, of people and so companies want to turn a cost center draining dollars into a profit center adding value. Using speech analytics, sophisticated VPI software processes the voices and turns their conversation into phonetics. The user has the ability to search for specific spoken words. “Now we are able to find out why customers are leaving or why marketing campaigns aren’t doing as well as they should be because we are able to extract intelligence from that call,” Botz said. Another VPI application provides real-time information to both agents and supervisors about the number of calls an agent makes, their number of sales for the day and the amount of time spent on each call. The individual agent’s numbers are also compared with the numbers of an entire sales group. If an agent is falling below established goals for the number of calls or sales, another application allows for customized training right at their workstation, Botz said.
