This week Apple announced it will be bringing face-tracking support to its AR platform ARKit on iPhone X, its new phone launching in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the first iPhone. ARKit allows developers to easily integrate augmented reality (AR) elements into their iOS apps. However, AR has so much more potential than just games on your iPhone: the future of AR might look something like this…

The first thing I do each morning is put in my smart contact lens. At a glance, my day is set out before me with reminders for important appointments. I decide to do some exercise before work this morning, but rather than travelling all the way to the gym I select a pre-designed workout from my personal trainer. As I take my position on my mat, she is projected in front of me to demonstrate the exercises. She times each set and gives me encouragement as I struggle through the reps. After showering, I head to the kitchen for a much-needed breakfast. A reminder to take my medication hovers near the cupboard to make sure I take it with food.

Image: Raygun Studio

I say goodbye to my wife and wish her luck. She works as an architect and today she is showing her design to a client. The weather is nice so I decide to cycle to school, where I work as a teacher. My contact lenses give me details about my route, including traffic conditions and areas of heavy pollution.

Source: Tech in Asia

My class has a trip this morning to a local historic house to learn about life in the past. As we move from room to room, our contact lenses show us a reconstruction of the daily routines of the residents of centuries ago. My pupils are shocked to learn about the lives and long hours of hard working servants and the ways in which the rich passed their time before the internet.

After I have returned the children to school I make my way to the local high street to find somewhere to grab lunch. As I look at different sandwich shops and cafés, ratings and reviews are shown next to them. I choose a salad bar that has been rated highly for its varied vegan selection. On my walk back to school, a tourist asks for directions but can’t speak English. Translated subtitles appear in front of them as they speak and I’m able to reply in English and show them where they need to go.

I call my wife when I finish work to see how her presentation went. Her meeting took place at the proposed construction site so that her design, projected through smart contact lenses, could be seen against the surroundings. Her designs were very well received so I tell her I will cook her favourite meal this evening to celebrate.

Source: Virtually Here

I have to get a blood test after work and, as the appointment is in my calendar, my cycle route is shown to me through arrows that guide me along the road, giving me notice of upcoming turns. At the clinic, the phlebotomist uses an infrared scanner that projects an image of my blood vessels onto my skin to find the vein more easily.

Source: Europe Vein Center

My earlier phone call with my wife has been archived and speech analytics software identifies my cooking plans and creates a shopping list for the ingredients. On the way home my route is altered to take me via a supermarket, and my shopping list hovers over the food as I shop. When I get home I cook dinner, following a recipe projected onto the kitchen counter. The dish specifies exactly how the vegetables should be chopped and when I take out my chopping board, the cutting method is demonstrated so I get it right.

Source: CNBC

After we eat I do some outfit research in preparation for a friend’s wedding. I stand in front of the mirror and see the dresses I have been browsing to judge how they will hang on me. I do the same with makeup styles to see what will suit my face shape. My wife and I then turn our attention to the living room; we decide it needs brightening up with some art and maybe a coffee table. Using our smart contact lenses we can visualise different paintings on the walls to see if they fit with the rest of our decoration, and check that the coffee table we like is the right size for our space. We head to bed excited for the new additions.

Remote working is slowly challenging the norm of 9-5. Flexibility in working practice is replacing allocated desks and designated start and finish times, while performance is measured by results and is moving away from the culture of presenteeism. According to a report by Gallup, 43% of employed Americans said they have worked remotely at some point over the last year, with 20% working from home full-time. The report suggests that advances in technology mean that workers no longer need to be confined to set office hours and locations in order to do their job effectively. With this new approach to work now expected by millennials (see chart below), businesses need to be prepared to adapt to a flexible workforce.

Source: Forbes

The benefits of employing remote workers…

As employers begin to embrace different ways of working, they are finding they can reduce their property costs with fewer workers on the premises. Their employees also benefit from advantages that go beyond the simple convenience of flexibility in their work. Employees who work remotely are less stressed and much happier as they can decide how they prefer to work and have greater control of their work/life balance. They can choose the working environment that best suits them, whether that be a café with a plug socket or the comfort of their bed. Release from the daily commute increases employee wellbeing, gives them more time in their day, saves them money, and also reduces their carbon footprint. A survey by Microsoft found the top ten benefits reported by remote workers were as follows:

Source: Sage

…and the challenges

Allowing employees to work remotely presents a challenge to managers and executives, who want to maintain a balance between staff wellbeing and productivity. Compliance is also a key consideration, especially within industries such as finance. Recording communications is essential to comply with regulations so organisations need to employ a solution that can capture conversations made outside the office. Implementing a unified communications (UC) solution, which amalgamates all communications into one interface, alongside call recording will ensure all conversations are captured – even when users are mobile. Remote contact centre workers that take customer payment card details over the phone need to ensure they are compliant with PCI DSS. This set of regulations states that no payment card details can be stored, so a call recording solution must feature measures to prevent this.

With remote working comes the risk of employees feeling disconnected from their work and the rest of their team. Key to remedying this potential sense of distance is encouraging continuous and proactive communication and enabling effective sharing of information between team members. This shouldn’t be confined to work-related subjects. Without the opportunity to run into a colleague in the corridor, or to chat while making tea, remote workers can miss out on the day-to-day conversations that make a team feel connected. However, with advances in social media and other communication technology, workers can still have these catch-ups over instant messages and see each other’s faces in video conferences.

Increased engagement between colleagues is an encouraging finding from Gallup’s report (see chart below), which found that employees who worked remotely three or four days a week were actually the most likely to report that they have a best friend at work.

Source: Gallup

How Dubber can help

UC solutions are facilitating a new more flexible way of working, and increasing productivity and collaboration among the businesses that use them. Dubber is designed to be integrated with UC platforms and provides an array of solutions for call recording and communication capture, for use anywhere and on any device. By capturing communications straight from the network, when a UC solution is implemented with mobility, all user communications can be recorded even while they are mobile.

Dubber’s deployment through Amazon Web Services not only ensures a flexible solution that can be scaled alongside UC solutions to suit businesses of all sizes, but that the calls are also encrypted for added security. Dubber has also partnered with Mondago to provide an automated pause and resume function that can be integrated with their call recording solution to ensure payment card information is not included in recorded calls.

The implementation of UC can bring a culture of productivity and collaboration. UC solutions facilitate modern ways of working and a more flexible way of life. Dubber’s partnerships with UC providers such as BroadSoft allow organisations to quickly and easily deploy call recording alongside a UC solution and ensure all of their employees stay compliant, anytime, anywhere.

Dubber Selected for BroadSoft Business Unified Communications

The rise of Big Data has shown just how valuable information is to businesses today. Insight into consumers and their behaviour is showing companies how to improve their business practices in order to retain their existing customers and attract new ones. Voice data has previously been excluded from the Big Data conversation but technology is now able to interpret speech, enabling companies to mine their calls for valuable information. With customers continuing to pick up the phone for assistance, access to this data is an important breakthrough creating a new field of analytics: speech intelligence.

Speech intelligence was initially only affordable for larger enterprises that could invest the CapEx required to install proprietary solutions but the introduction of software as a service (SaaS) solutions, deployed through service providers, has democratised speech intelligence.

The advantages of speech intelligence

Speech intelligence software most commonly transcribes audio into text to enable searches, and can even go beyond the words themselves to identify the mood of the caller through tone of voice and speech patterns. The searches and automated processes that can be implemented through speech intelligence open up limitless potential for business development, particularly in customer service. By combining processing techniques used in Big Data with speech analytics, companies can uncover important insights into their customers.

Introducing Zoe

Zoe is a collection of speech intelligence modules that includes Smart Search, which will be followed by Keywords and Sentiment at the end of 2017. Zoe can analyse and evaluate recorded conversations to establish the emotion of the caller, and search calls for specific words, phrases, or characteristics. This functionality can be used to identify recurring issues and opportunities for business development, and can track trends in customer behaviour.

Zoe has democratised speech intelligence and made it accessible to small businesses, and even single users, with an affordable monthly subscription. Zoe is deployed through Dubber’s API, allowing it to be easily integrated with a variety of other applications. Through the API, users can create their own custom applications of the functionality to realise limitless use cases.

Smart Search

Smart Search allows users to search their recorded calls using a variety of metrics from date and location to specific words, phrases, or sentiment. Any calls can be searched, regardless of whether they were originally recorded with Dubber, so Smart Search can be implemented as a stand-alone service.

Keywords – due for release late 2017

Keywords enables users to track specific words and phrases across their captured communications and jump to the point in a call when the word or phrase was spoken. These words can be tagged to be automatically highlighted in future recordings and automate actions in other applications through Dubber’s open API – opening up limitless potential use cases.

Sentiment – due for release late 2017

Sentiment identifies the emotions of speakers through a recorded conversation by measuring speech characteristics such as tone of voice, speed of speech, pauses, interruptions, and certain phrases that express emotion. These indicators create a detailed understanding of a caller’s mood throughout the conversation and enable Sentiment to provide users with a report that assigns the call with a positive or negative score.

Integration

At the core of Dubber is an open API, which allows Zoe’s features to be managed through the Dubber portal, a custom portal, or directly through the API. Zoe’s deployment through Dubber’s open API allows it to integrate easily with other applications, such as CRM systems, enabling data to be automatically transferred to third party applications such as Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics.

Zoe has democratised speech intelligence with its open API and availability as a subscription-based service. Where once only large enterprises would be able to invest in speech intelligence, businesses of any size can now benefit from the insight that Zoe can provide. Zoe’s deployment as native cloud SaaS makes it a flexible solution that can adapt to businesses of any size, without the need for any additional hardware or software installation. With calls stored in the cloud, they can be quickly and easily processed.

Previously excluded from the Big Data conversation, Zoe’s analysis of voice data opens up a world of insight that can be gained from the study of recorded calls. Now companies can truly listen to their customers.

Dubber Connect On-Net Recording for End Users

Dubber Signs Agreement with AT&T

VoIP calling has been steadily replacing traditional telephony due to its reliability and efficiency, achieved through its use of data connection instead of fixed lines. The chart below shows the reasons for moving to VoIP from landlines given by SMBs. The data connection that enables VoIP calls is quicker and cheaper as it takes advantage of the existing IP infrastructure of interconnected routers. Recording VoIP calls presents a challenge due to the difference in the way audio is transmitted in VoIP calls compared to traditional telephony. VoIP call recording requires data to be ‘sniffed’, which is a process of real-time monitoring of data flow through a computer network by a software program or a hardware device containing this sniffing software or firmware. Sniffers copy the data without altering it and can only intercept data from networks that their host computer is connected to.

Survey by Software Advice

Depending on your requirements for call recording, and how you intend to use the captured conversations, and your business telephony network (or lack thereof), the VoIP call recording solution that is right for you may vary.

What will you use your recorded calls for?

When deciding on the call recording solution that is best for you, it is important to consider how you will be using your recorded calls. If you are a journalist who records their phone interviews, you will need calls to be stored in a format that can be easily replayed, but you might not need to keep the calls for years after you have filed your copy. You might have a podcast and need to be able to access your calls as files that can be edited to form part of a finished episode. A solution such as Dubber’s Playback, designed for individuals, is an easy-to-use communication capture service that allows you to decide which of your calls are saved and allows you to download and share them as easy-to-edit audio files.

Financial institutions require their communication with customers to be recorded in order to stay compliant with the latest regulations. Call records are generally required to be stored for up to five years, so businesses will need to ensure the solution they choose has the flexibility and security needed to safely archive their conversations. A cloud-based solution, such as Dubber, has the scalability required to hold unlimited calls and is not restricted by the storage hardware limitations of legacy solutions. True cloud storage also has the added security of encryption and the redundancy that accompanies multiple storage locations, for added reassurance.

Businesses that require call recording for compliance will most often need call recording that is compatible with a unified communications (UC) solution. Modern working life spans multiple methods of communication and our mobile phones allow us to make traditional calls as well as VoIP calls, send text messages, and have conversations over instant messenger. To ensure that all of these communications are captured accurately, call recording must be able to integrate with UC solutions.

Larger businesses that have contact centres often use call recording in order to improve their customer service and business practices through analysing their captured conversations. A solution that offers speech intelligence, such as Dubber’s Zoe, will allows a business to search their calls and automate processes to make their business more efficient and gain a detailed insight into their customers. Recording with Dubber can also record conversations between extensions, ensuring recording continues if a call is transferred internally.

When considering VoIP recording options, it is important to plan for the future as well as the present. Choosing a flexible call recording solution that can adapt as your business grows and changes is vital. Expansion into different locations, sudden changes in call volume, and regulation reforms could affect your call recording needs so the solution you choose must offer you the reassurance that these eventualities can be accommodated.

Redcentric Records with Dubber

As the big telecom providers phase out traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN) functionality, businesses are looking for a modern solution to their telephony needs. A SIP trunk allows business telephone systems to operate using an internet connection rather than a traditional phone line. Session initiation protocol (SIP) is essentially a language that allows phones and other telephony devices to talk to each other. It is a standard communications protocol for initiating interactive multimedia sessions across a data network. This protocol is used for creating, modifying, and terminating sessions. A trunk is a line or connection that is able to transmit multiple signals simultaneously. A SIP trunk is able to combine data, voice, and video in one connection.

With Verizon planning to shut down its integrated services digital network (ISDN) in the USA and Germany also phasing out ISDN by 2018, and BT announcing that from 2020 ISDN and PSTN circuits will no longer be available to purchase, moving to an internet telephony service will soon be essential. Instead of traditional PSTN, calls operate through voice over internet protocol (VoIP) through one point of entry – the internet connection. SIP trunking occurs between a private domain, connected to your network, and the public domain, which is the responsibility of your internet telephony service provider (ITSP). This interconnection allows for VoIP and media streaming to take place.

A manual telephone switchboard.

Often there is no physical hardware required for a SIP trunk connection although, depending on how the trunk is presented, a private branch exchange (PBX) or session border controller (SBC) may be required. Installation uses a business’s existing internet connection, removing the need for traditional phone lines and the costs associated with maintaining them. As the telephony service is not bound to a physical phone line, you can easily move offices and keep your phone number.

Multiple phone lines can be replaced by one SIP trunk, which allows for scalability that can adapt to the growth of a company. VoIP is also more reliable than traditional phone lines as the quick and easy forwarding of calls to mobile phones provides insurance in case of system failures.

When looking at SIP trunking for your business, additional benefits such as number provision and call recording should be considered as well as cost. With SIP trunking, features such as multiple phone numbers and call forwarding that aren’t available through a traditional telephone line can be added easily.

SIPREC

Traditionally, call recording through PSTN captured voice conversations as audio files on the trunk side of a network infrastructure – the telco-facing portion on the outside of the internal phone system. Session initiation protocol recording (SIPREC) is a way of allowing calls to be recorded securely, without interception. SIPREC defines the architecture of call recording, including the call flows and metadata associated with it.

The internet engineering task force IETF has created a framework for SIPREC that identifies the two parties involved in call recording: the session recording client (SRC) and the session recording server (SRS). SIPREC occurs through the session border controller, which is a device that sits between businesses and their network provider. A SIP invite contains specific metadata for processing call recording that contains information about the call and participants.

Where traditional call recording would use hardware to tap into a dedicated line in order to capture the communications, no such equipment is required for SIPREC as the devices that handle the SIP trunk can also enable recording through SIPREC. Using SIP trunks enables SIPREC to be implemented quickly and easily, allowing a call recording solution such as Dubber to capture communications.

With online interaction dominating the modern world, a phone call feels special. Phone calls are reserved for the important stuff – for the decision that needs to be made, for the question that we want answering urgently – we pick up the phone when we just need to get things done.

Listening in

We can see this idea reflected in how customers contact companies when they need assistance: research by eConsultancy found that a phone call was the most commonly chosen method of communication at 61%. When looking for online assistance, 71% of customers wanted help within 5 minutes or less (see chart below). The majority of customers looking to buy also choose to call a company rather than contacting them online. Both Google and xAd, two of the leading digital advertising networks, found that a click-to-call option on ads was highly successful – with 51-62% of users choosing this option.

Source: eConsultancy

On top of the immediacy offered by a phone call, there is science behind why verbal communication is so effective: hearing is the fastest sense, with sound taking only 10 milliseconds to reach the brain compared to 13-80 milliseconds for sight, according to researchers at MIT,

With customers 11 times more likely to complain over the phone than via the internet, according to research from Arizona State University, these phone calls are a valuable opportunity to turn a negative experience into an improved relationship. Customer interactions that take place over the phone create a much better opportunity for a meaningful connection. Your customer is right there, willing to speak to you, and you can answer any questions they might have immediately. Up-selling and cross-selling also comes much more naturally over the phone. Only a face-to-face conversation could possibly be better.

Reading between the lines

Written communication can be open to interpretation. It’s the very reason for the enduring magic of books, but it can result in misunderstandings in the corporate world of hurried emails. Without the indicators of tone and meaning, simple sentences can be misconstrued to drastic effect. When clarification is needed over the phone, you can get an answer immediately. Complex technical queries are always best discussed with a call as the instant feedback can alleviate confusion quickly, whereas a series of emails might only further complicate things.

With a phone call, you can hear the emotion of the speaker’s voice – their intonation and volume of speech can often say more than their words. Customer service agents can tell if a customer isn’t fully happy with the resolution of their complaint, while sales agents can get a better sense of how to entice a new client.

Measuring the success of phone calls

The importance of phone calls is clear, and because of this customer service agents who excel at building relationships with customers are more valuable than ever. However, contact centre workers can feel like they lack objectives and that their work can’t be measured. In order to provide customer service agents with reports on their success, a call intelligence solution such as Dubber’s Zoe can be utilised to conduct sentiment analysis of calls and measure the customer’s experience throughout the conversation. Not only does this give workers valuable feedback on their work and progress, their supervisors receive an insight into their interactions with customers and can use this information to improve their work practices and train new members of staff effectively.

The benefits of email and instant messaging are the paper trail that they leave behind. With a call recording solution, such as Dubber, that provides transcripts of your conversations, you can have all the benefits of phone calls with the reassurance that you can track and record your communications.