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Trading Places: Another Aspect of Innovation

Trading Places: Another Aspect of Innovation

/ Technology, Vendor - Management
Trading Places: Another Aspect of Innovation

Aspect is a company willing to take risks to ensure that it is ahead of the curve in developing new solutions.

Back in 1983, famed brat pack and teen movie director John Landis directed a movie called “Trading Places.” It was about two guys who were forced to trade places in life as the result of a plot by two wealthy brothers who decide to conduct an experiment and switch the lives of two people at opposite ends of the social hierarchy. The educated and successful career guy, played by Dan Aykroyd back when he was thin and had hair, had to change places with the dirt-poor street hustler played by Eddie Murphy, back when he was doing that killer James Brown Hot Tub Party skit on “Saturday Night Live.”

As the plot develops, Murphy’s character uses his street smarts to gain business success while Aykroyd’s character undergoes a downward spiral. After a handful of plot twists, the malicious scheme of the wealthy brothers is uncovered as they try to send Murphy’s character back to the street. Murphy and Aykroyd undertake a plan to exact revenge, leading to a big finale on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Not surprisingly, the movie ended with the evil wealthy brothers losing their health and wealth and the two good guys, Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy, gaining wealth and success. The movie ends with Aykroyd and Murphy vacationing with female companions on a beach somewhere in the tropics. “Trading Places” went on to earn about $90.4 million, which was big money back in 1983. In 2015, I think the trailer for the new “Star Wars” movie made more money than that.

Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like to trade places with someone else in the contact center industry. Don’t get me wrong—I think I have a pretty good job. I’ve been self-employed for over 16 years. I get to write about what interests me in one of the most dynamic segments of the global communications industry, and I’ve met some fascinating people and traveled to some intriguing places during the course of my career. Every once in a while, though, I can’t help but wonder what it might be like to have someone else’s job.

There aren’t many people I’d like to trade jobs with. If I did trade places, it would have to be with someone whose job allows them freedom to stretch their imagination, explore uncharted territory, take ownership of outcomes and have a little fun along the way. They’d have to work for a company that is forward-thinking, willing to take risks, innovative, supportive and well-managed. I guess I’d want to trade with Tobias Goebel.

Tobias Goebel is the Director of Emerging Technologies at Aspect. His job is to keep an eye on the future while keeping one foot firmly planted in the present and figure out what new technologies and solutions will resonate with the global contact center industry. He’s fortunate enough to work for a company that is equally inquisitive and pioneering.

My history with legacy Aspect goes back to almost the beginning of the company. Jim Carreker, who founded Aspect, worked at Dataquest and left to start Aspect a couple of years before I joined Dataquest. I never got to work directly with Carreker, but I did visit him many times in his office, which was right across the street from the Dataquest building in San Jose.

Today Aspect continues to be a company willing to take risks in order to ensure that it is ahead of the curve in the development of new solutions designed to not only optimize the customer experience, but to break new ground in the customer service profession. Tobias Goebel works on identifying and developing new solutions and services, presenting ideas to product management and turning ideas into reality.

“I have the unique opportunity to directly contribute to the success of Aspect in the market,” Goebel said. “Aspect is agile, flexible, open to new ideas, and I’m fortunate enough to be able to explore and productize some of these ideas, leading to new solutions and perhaps taking the market in new directions.”

One of these ideas that bubbled up from Tobias’ Aspect office is Interactive Text Response (ITR). In the case of ITR, it started with Tobias revisiting a well-established messaging solution, Short Message Service (SMS) and thinking about how it might be applicable to today’s contact center market in order to solve a business problem. ITR is essentially Interactive Voice Response (IVR) done right, giving customers an easy way to navigate self-service over a channel many people today prefer—messaging. Aspect designed ITR by combining two-way SMS with Natural Language Understanding (NLU), a field within the discipline of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and computational linguistics. Customers now have the ability to text inquiries like, “When will my order arrive?” or “What’s the status of my claim?” and get instant text responses. How 21st century cool is that!?

Supported by Aspect CXP, Aspect’s Customer Experience Platform, Interactive Text Response can become Interactive Twitter Response when applied to Twitter as a customer communications channel. Responses to a consumer tweet can be automated and intelligently routed for response at the contact center end. Aspect may have hit upon the perfect customer service solution for the millennial generation.

Tobias told me about a project he’s working on for a large hotel chain in the U.K. Aspect is building a text application for guests, applying natural language understanding so instead of picking up a room phone, guests can send text messages to a general service address regarding anything they may need relative to what the hotel provides. If a guest needs more towels, for example, he or she would simply send a text message. Aspect’s AI will extract the intent of the text and route the request to one of the hotel’s six departments responsible for guest care. The coolness factor continues to grow.

I asked Tobias what he’s looking at next for Aspect. Without giving away any secrets he did mention that he was interested in considering the potential of Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) in the contact center; a consumer-centric version of the well-known CRM model. That was all I could get out of him.

Tobias has an enviable job. He works for a visionary company that understands the value of chasing dreams as long as they are rooted in practical problem solving. He directly impacts Aspect’s success in the market, and he has management support

I’m thinking about asking Tobias if he’d like to trade places with me for a while, but I’m afraid his response wouldn’t be very encouraging. I suppose that, like the movie, trading places is best left to fantasy and imagination.

Paul Stockford

Paul Stockford

Paul Stockford served as Chief Analyst at Saddletree Research, which specialized in contact centers & customer service, from 1999-2022.
Twitter: @PaulStockford

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