Remember Dave Carroll? The musician responsible for shaming United Air Lines with a simple but popular (approx. 11.5 million views to date) song “United Breaks Guitars” after getting no customer service from the airline after it destroyed his band’s instruments.

Since the success of that YouTube video Carroll has been invited to speak and headline many conferences about customer service, many of them by contact center technology vendors. For example, he was invited to the RightNow Customer Summit 2009:

He also showed up at Genesys GForce Melbourne:

Carroll is now a co-founder of Gripevine, a “customer service platform” startup hoping to better connect the customer with the company by automatically alerting the company about your online complaint.

Others will be able to comment on the gripe as well, and you can rate the customer service experience after a complaint’s been resolved.

Sounds like a pretty cool idea. However, the success of Gripevine seems to be in the hands of companies. Yes, although Gripevine gives the customer another channel to engage a company, it remains to be seen how likely a company will respond. Currently there doesn’t appear to be much activity on the site even when it’s received several high-profile media coverages (e.g. Mashable, Chicago Tribune) — the most commented gripe to date is one about H&R Block with just four comments. A search of the usual “complaint-prone” businesses such as major airlines, mobile carriers, and cable providers resulted in zero finds. I understand that the site is currently billed as a “beta” service, but still…

Of course, the success also depends on users — lots and lots of them. More users can definitely give Gripevine a greater voice which will garner the attention of companies. But it’s kind of a chicken and egg problem: why would companies spend the time and effort to respond to Gripevine complaints when hardly anyone uses it? Especially now when companies are already busy enough worrying about the existing social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.) and review sites (Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc.)… Who can really blame them for feeling a bit overwhelmed and reluctant to jump on yet another channel of engagement? Plus, Gripevine For Business may cost the company money — yes, it makes perfect sense to dish out additional cash (on top of operating a contact center, paying for a social media monitor tool, and all the contact center infrastructure) to read more customer gripes, doesn’t it?

Here’s the problem with Gripevine… People will almost always prefer to contact a company directly, even if it’s going through an IVR, a web form, or on social networks if available. If no response is received, people will try again. Yes, as funny as that sounds, it is the behavior norm. But this time people will attempt to ask for a supervisor, manager, or for the bold, dig out the contact info for a VP or higher executive. Because when it comes to getting service, people will be proactive about it.

Besides, how do users know that Gripevine actually alerted “decision makers” in the company? From its “About” page:

…We’ll ensure that it gets to the right people – the decision makers at the company who have the power to set things right. Our automated response technology will notify the company and invite them to the site to review your gripe, giving you both a second opportunity to work towards a positive resolution.

If the company doesn’t respond right away, you can invite your social network friends and followers to provide support, which they can do by clicking the simple “support member” link on your public gripe. The more times your gripe is viewed and the more people you share it with, the more the company will be motivated to work with you to resolve your issue.

There’s no details on how a gripe may reach these “decision makers.” The FAQ offers no insight, either. So it’s an “automated response technology” but exactly what happens? Does the gripe get automatically printed on paper and a clerk mails it to the company address? Does the gripe generate an automatic email delivered to info@company.com? Does the gripe end up as a private message sent to the company’s Twitter account? Does the gripe generate an automated phone call to the CEO’s office? Does the gripe end up as a text message to the executive’s BlackBerry?

In other words, how can the user trust Gripevine to do its bidding as advertised? Do we really need another platform or engagement channel, if all it does is add another layer of potential runarounds with vague technology?

I’d rather see more focus and maturity in leveraging existing technologies and integrating existing channels. And I’m encouraged to see several companies already making or improving their products in this regard or making adjustments in their workforce to focus on the customer experience. I wish Carroll and Gripevine all the success in the world, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the site doesn’t reach the mass adoption it targets to be effective.

First, RIP Steve Jobs. The world will miss you dearly. It was only the day before his death that relatively new Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled the iPhone 4S.

So while many speculated and hoped for an iPhone 5 to be announced, it was only an iPhone 4S being the grand finale in the “Let’s Talk iPhone” event. Yet it was fitting that Apple chose that name for the event because the real star of the show was Siri, the new voice-capable assistant available exclusively on the iPhone 4S (thanks to its powerful dual-core A5 CPU).

The live Siri demo went without a hitch — Apple indeed risked a lot to publicly demonstrate its features right in front of journalists and bloggers. Although Siri’s still slapped with a “beta” sticker, it seemed solid enough during the demo.

The question on a lot of speech geeks’ minds is, of couse, does Siri use Nuance technology, considering all the rumors of an Apple/Nuance partnership? Even MG Siegler from TechCrunch wonders the same thing and based on the timing of an oddly worded Nuance press release, he seems to think so:

Hmm. Nuance seemed to be going out of their way to not say that they were powering the awesome new Siri feature of the iPhone 4S. In fact, it almost reads like a company that just got its hat handed to it by Apple, and wanted to give the “it’s great to see a massive company validate the space” statement.

So I decided to ask the representative directly: is Nuance powering the new Siri feature? The only thing said in response: “Apple licenses Nuance’s voice technology for use in some of its products.” Followed by, ”The company is not authorized to comment on specific capabilities or devices.”

Heh.

In other words, yes, Nuance is powering Siri. But Apple clearly struck a deal with Nuance which precludes them from talking about it. This is Apple technology, this is not about Nuance, is how I imagine Apple may put it. Apparently, Nuance is happy enough with Apple’s undoubtedly large check for this licensing agreement that they are willing to keep quiet.

(Side note: What’s also interesting from Siegler’s article is that Siri tried Vlingo first before settling on Nuance.)

In the past Apple hasn’t been shy to invite partners and developers on stage to toot horns, so why not Nuance in this case?

OpenVBX is an open source Web-based business phone system that’s powered by Twilio. It’s just like a lightweight PBX with typical features such as menus, voicemail, messaging, etc. except there’s one catch: it requires Twilio as the cloud telephony provider.

Not cool, right?

That requirement translates to OpenVBX having some limitations such as no international numbers or international SMS, along with some, shall we say, “speech impediments.” The good folks at Disruptive Technologies kindly released OpenVBX 2.0 that incorporates bug fixes, Tropo compatibility and features, and VoiceVault biometrics API.

Or as Chris Matthieu of Voxeo (backers of Tropo) puts it, OpenVBX has been “jailbroken“:

The coders at Disruptive Technologies added full support for the the Tropo API and Phono SIP-based VoIP web phone to the communications layer of the OpenVBX project. Of course, when selecting the Tropo API, users will now get access to all of the more advanced features of the Tropo network: speech recognition and text-to-speech in 24 languages, phone numbers in over 40 countries, international SMS, in/outbound SIP VoIP support, inbound Skype support, multiple phone numbers per callflow script, improved conferencing.

Disruptive Technologies also extended OpenVBX with the VoiceVault API to support Voice Biometrics in password resets. After adding VoiceVault credentials on the API Accounts Tab, the password reset dialog will provide an option to request a phone call to reset your OpenVBX account password.

Giving users more choices is always awesome especially in the exciting world of Web telephony. It’s also interesting to note that Tropo is Twilio’s biggest competitor and each command a loyal following of developers.

Now I cannot wait to see the next iteration of OpenVBX…

John Stepp, President of Free Tech Consultants, is in Austin, TX for the ITEXPO West conference. He caught up with hoot.me, the winner of last year’s StartupCamp, started by students from the University of Texas at Austin. If you have an interesting product or industry tip to share during the conference, you may reach John via Twitter @FreeTechConsult.

Entrepreneurial spirit and innovation will be on display at StartupCamp 4 tonight at the ITEXPO show in Austin, Texas.  There is nothing more fun to me than checking out new and innovative tech products, especially those in the communications space. I thought it would be interesting to follow up with Michael Koetting of hoot.me, the winner of StartupCamp 3 seven months ago, to see the progress that hoot.me has made since their win.

Born and developed at UT Austin, hoot.me is currently rolling out at five universities.  The hoot.me application allows students to use Facebook in “study” mode.  So a student that is stumped by a biology question can seek out other students who are also in study mode to get help by clicking on a person logged into the biology study group or checking archives on biology to see if their issues has been addressed.  If the issues a student is having with a particular subject cannot be easily solved, then they can hit a tutor button to access the tutor marketplace.  There they can view the tutors Facebook picture, their bio, their craft score rating and the cost per time frame to choose the tutor that is best for them.  They also may see a designation like the “House of Tutors” at the University of Texas that would lend credibility to the tutor.  The monetization for hoot.me comes from taking a cut from the student-to-tutor transactions.  Koetting said that they were currently working to ensure that the five universities where they are rolling out (including schools like UT Austin and Ohio State) attracted the tutors they needed to secure positive cash flow before expanding at the beginning of 2012.

Some of the value-added features of hoot.me for students are 8-party video embedded in Facebook, smart chat, and screen sharing. Professors can also communicate with students using hoot.me. Koetting and the hoot.me crew have been busy working with DreamIt Ventures, a startup incubator that provided additional seed capital, office space, and mentoring in New York City along with 13 other startups this summer. Following the Bill Gates model they are leaving school early to work full-time on growing and promoting hoot.me.

Koetting and his team have stayed consistent with the message that was delivered to potential investors attending StartupCamp3 and has methodically laid the groundwork for a successful company. Hoot.me has demonstrated that they were a deserving winner. It will be great to see a new set of entrepreneurs pitch their concepts at StartupCamp4.

Web 2.0 could mean so many things to so many people (for a lot of us it’s the exciting developments in Web telephony). Why not attend the Web 2.0 Expo in NYC, Oct. 10-13, to learn and share from other Web-minded individuals? The event is produced by O’Reilly Media and UBM TechWeb.

Use discount code WEBNY11AP1 during registration to receive 20% off any conference package.

If you do attend please come back and share your thoughts with us!

WARNING: Minor adult language contained in this post. If you are easily offended by vulgar slang then you may not have worked in the industry long enough… Look away now and hope for a better post in the next few days. My apologies.

It’s no surprise that I’m a Google fan. I log into Gmail daily, use Google Voice extensively, and actually dislike having to log into Facebook and Twitter separately to attain social media nirvana. Why didn’t Google buy Facebook and/or Twitter years back when these companies didn’t have astronomical valuations? Talk about having to deal with multichannel interactions…

Then Google throws in Google+ into the mix! Lovely, now it’s three social media outlets I have to spend time with. While most folks are still cautiously navigating the Streams, Circles, Huddles, and Hangouts, some brave adopters are already championing Google+ as the next frontier in customer service channels.

CEO Michael Dell (okay, should I link to Twitter or Google+?) pondered on July 17:

I am thinking about hangouts for business. Would you like to be able to connect with your Dell service and sale teams via video directly from Dell.com?

BOOM! Nearly 400 comments, +712, and 180 shares later, Mr. Dell lit up the blogosphere and got on customer service gurus’ radars. Most followers had positive feedback about the idea, and for a couple of days Mr. Dell was seen as the Customer Service Pioneer.

But I urge executives such as Dell to slow down. Not every new social media channel should be considered for business immediately. In the case of Google+:

• It’s so new. There will be bugs. There will be privacy concerns. Have your service and sale teams figured it out already?
• According to Google, company accounts or team accounts are not yet available on Google+ although many have already created an account and started interacting as a business. In fact, Google is shutting down these “non-user entities” on its social network.
• For paid Google Apps subscribers, unfortunately Google+ isn’t available yet. It’s in the works, of course, but Google will definitely take its time in rolling this out to Apps customers. Google takes no chances with paid customers.
• Hangouts multi-party videoconference has value in collaboration and even sales meetings, but customer service? Remember the sensational Chatroulette? Too many dicks ruined it (literally), but we all know it only takes one dick to send a video meeting into a tailspin.
• Google has not published an API to suck data out of Google+. No API means no consistent method of third-party access. In turn this means the thousands of dollars you’d invested in social media monitoring tools won’t be able to pluck anything from Google+.

If your company still operates contact centers, just try to make them better. Believe me, you will find room for improvements. As I’ve written before, social media can become a distraction from keeping the fundamentals in check.

For now, Google+ has the cool “shiny toy” factor. Oh, and it’s already full of dicks. Execs beware!

On Tuesday the tech blogosphere had leak after leak about Google+ (“Google Plus” not “Google Add”), Big G’s offense against Facebook’s social media domination. Google has no qualms picking fights against other giants and has already entrenched in several fronts: enterprise apps (vs. Microsoft), mobile OS (vs. Apple), and communications (vs. mobile carriers).

Now it’s ready to take on Facebook. Although Google+ is not yet generally available to the masses, the lucky few (e.g. prominent journalists, bloggers, techies, etc.) that’s had the chance to take a sneak peek seemed to like it. Google, of course, is well aware of its past Wave launch blunder, and the company is definitely taking a more cautious path with Plus.

I think Google realizes that Plus will be a “now or never” project to compete with Facebook. If Plus fails to gain traction, Google might as well wave the white flag in the Great Social Media War.

But Google has some advantages: 1) It learned from the Wave lesson; 2) It has had time to learn from its competition, namely Facebook; 3) It has complete control over the user experience; and 4) It already has several enterprise customers.

Google+’s cool factor may or may not wow the typical user, but what about rolling it into the enterprise along with other Google services, specifically applied in unified communications?

Contact management, enhanced? Check (Google+ Circles feature).

Email management? Check (Gmail).

Document management? Check (Google Docs).

Voice (over IP) communications? Check (Google Voice).

Instant messenging? Check (Gtalk).

Videoconferencing, even with a group? Check (Google+ Hangouts feature).

Mobile chat? Check (Google+ Huddle feature).

Better yet, all of these products from Google are free or cost significantly less than getting your own servers.

Facebook may feel threatened by Google Plus, but what about all these UC vendors, especially those that are going after the burgeoning SMB market?

On its corporate blog Skype officially announced a new record of 30 million simultaneous users. And it still wants you to reach out and touch someone:

A few hours ago, Skype passed a new milestone. There were 30 million people, online on Skype, at the same time.

As we cut the (blue) cake at Skype HQ, it’s a good opportunity to remind you that if there’s someone in your life who doesn’t use Skype, there’s never been a better time to tell them about all the wonderful things you can do – video calling on computers, mobiles and TVs, great value calls to phones, instant messaging, sending filesand more.

All of which helps you do things with the people who matter, even when you’re on the other side of the world – or right next door.

I don’t know about you, but just about everyone I know is a Skype user. There’s nobody else for me to convert.

With all the talk about unified communications, it appears that Skype would be the first to achieve mass adoption, albeit primarily among consumers. That’s not to say its features are not enterprise-ready, however. Skype has added group video and screen sharing — two common utilities popular among workers.

In an UCC world where vendors seem obsessed with interoperability, Skype’s unprecedented popularity is noteworthy because it’s always used proprietary technology. Yet that hasn’t stopped more users from using it. Which vendor today wouldn’t want to sell 30 million seats of its UC product, right?

Also, Skype didn’t have to make a tablet to push sales, either. Chew on that for a while.

Okay, be honest: How many of you BlackBerry users have iPhone or Android (or even Palm) envy?

The BlackBerry was oh-so-cool, what? Ten years ago? It made you a lean, mean email machine. That was great when businesses get done via emails. But these days, businesses get done via applications. And the truth is, BlackBerry apps suck.

Not only that, but the BB hardware and design haven’t changed much in ages. Same ol’ keypad, same ol’ screen, same ol’ form factor. Where’s the innovation, RIM?

In a move to reinvent itself, RIM scooped up QNX Software Systems. The plan is to replace the BlackBerry OS with QNX. To generate some excitement and buzz about RIM’s future, the PlayBook tablet was announced and slated to arrive in 2011. My opinion about PlayBook fits Jon Evans’ guest blog on TechCrunch, with this intro:

Oh, Research In Motion. You never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Diehard BlackBerry fans can’t wait for the arrival of PlayBook. Finally, a tablet made by a business-oriented vendor. Who’d want an Apple iPad or Dell Streak (Android)?

All the while the iPad and Android tablets continue to sell like hotcakes. Enough to put a dent in netbook sales figures.

But the PlayBook will have cameras, tethering (only to a BB, silly!), and Flash support! For some reason fans argue the PlayBook’s superiority by touting its Flash capability. Even though this is marketed as a business-oriented machine? How does Flash support help a business user on a tablet device? And limiting tethering to BlackBerry? Makes no sense, except that RIM is too proud to free the PlayBook.

There’s also a video demonstrating the PlayBook’s impressive browser speed against the iPad. Just keep in mind that this video was produced by RIM. Nobody has played with a PlayBook yet.

RIM is marketing the PlayBook as the most powerful tablet device. Unfortunately, when it is sold in 2011 it will have a long way to go to become the most popular tablet device.

(And if the future of RIM is something like this BlackBerry Empathy mockup, somebody please just hand the CEO a non-BlackBerry phone so he can call somebody who cares.)

BT spent $105 million a couple of years ago to scoop up Ribbit, back then when Internet call management was just appearing on the radar. It was a move that put BT in the pool of a Big Telecom vendor who understood the power of Internet telephony.

But after the high-profile acquisition, we just didn’t hear about Ribbit much. Rumors started swirling around about the buy — did BT make a mistake? Paid too much? Did it really understand Ribbit?

Wander no more. BT will roll Ribbit into its Onevoice business product as a beta product and hope to launch it by the end of 2010:

Ribbit provides not only a single number for incoming and outgoing calls, integrating with existing VoIP services where necessary, but also an open API. This allows companies to create their own applications for integrating with those cloud-based systems that are so popular these days.

BT also reckons companies can save a fortune by routing calls over VoIP connections when out of the office, and get access to the full exchange functionality too. So no excuses remain for failing to dial into the conference call while travelling.

Ribbit also integrates with mobiles, offering custom applications for the iPhone, among others, and is capable of integrating with any network and handling incoming and outgoing calls on any handset (using call forwarding).

Sounds like a pretty good voice product for business. Google has also mentioned previously about offering Google Voice for businesses, so let’s see which offering captures the fancy of business customers.

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• BT trials corporate ‘Skype’ (computing.co.uk)
• BT integrates Ribbit technology with Onevoice (newstatesman.com)