Does your Contact Center need a Director of Digital Media?
Jim Hughes, a Consulting Systems Engineering colleague of mine, was recently doing a bit of fatherly bragging, talking about how his son was attending Flashpoint: The Academy of Media Arts and Sciences in Chicago (and referencing how Robert DeNiro's Tribeca production company was taking a large stake in the future of the school).
As my grad school days are long behind me, he went on to explain that the focus of the school is for students that are interested in Digital Media Arts: Gaming Development, Film Production, Sound Production, and various Digital Arts.
But the real focus, he said, is in creating interactive content for a future generation of gamers and consumers.
"I still believe that the Call Centers of the future, with Video now starting to be talked about, and fantasy demonstrations of Call Center Agents as Avatars, are just the beginning of these applications. Young people that are coming out of these types of schools could be important to companies like Avaya as resources for creative content creation."
He went on to ask several key questions about Avaya and our business:
- (1) Do our customers sometimes ask us to integrate to their existing web presence? Yes they do.
- (2) Do we have to automate interactions with systems that are outside of the traditional Call Center? We do.
- (3) Are we now starting to consider how Video will impact the Call Center agent and the consumer? We are.
Having answered his own questions before I could get a word in, he added,
"What does it mean that there is growth of a class of young developers focused on digitally interactive content to an Enterprise like Wal-Mart? Or CITI? Or Wells Fargo? It could mean that companies like Avaya need to help bring more interactive content to the sales experience on-line, on-mobile, on any device and we need to consider the creative elements that make the experience more entertaining or more educational and ultimately more sticky.
Maybe someday soon it will be required that our Professional Services need to include Sound or Film Production as part of the customer service experience. Who do we hire? What do we tell our customers?"
This, in turn, got me thinking a bit more about Avaya's Web.alive immersive environment and its applicability to the future call center.
Imagine, if you will, visiting a web site for your favorite consumer electronics vendor. Click to chat live with an agent, perhaps even have a video chat. But the more impactful experiences will come when the agent invites you into their virtual demo and customer support center, where they can show you a range of fully rendered 3D product models, twisting and turning them in the hands of their virtual avatar while explaining exactly how to connect their latest product up to your existing home entertainment components.
No more wondering what they mean by the "geek speak" on the side of the packaging at your favorite electronics retailer. Or wondering if their documentation is either underwhelming or overpowering. You can see, experience and just-about-touch the product in ways like never before.
Or as Jim put it,
"What does it mean that there is growth of a class of young developers focused on digitally interactive content to an Enterprise like Wal-Mart? Or CITI? Or Wells Fargo? It could mean that companies like Avaya need to bring more interactive content to the sales experience on-line, on-mobile, on any device and we need to consider the creative elements that make the experience more entertaining or more educational and ultimately more sticky.
Maybe someday soon it will be required that our Professional Services need to include Sound or Film Production as part of the customer service experience. Who do we hire? What do we tell our customers?"
Building these experiential customer service environments isn't going to be your run of the mill corporate skill set. It's going to take a whole new type of thinking. Perhaps you too will one day have a Director of Digital Media for your contact center staff.
Then again, perhaps Jim just wanted to brag a bit... Posted 21 Apr 2010 at 04:30 PM
Tags: Contact Center
Comments
"fully rendered 3D product models"
And it'd be smart if those 3D models weren't just created as media assets, but originated from the 3D solid CAD created in order to produce the actual product.
If you recall MTV's foray into virtual worlds, there was at least one file in there that came from Pro/ENGINEER. Thus, some of the people hired will be the industrial designers building the actual product CAD files for tooling ... or direct digital manufacturing.
You might find these posts relevant and interesting:
"The Accomplice" - http://blog.rebang.com/?p=186
"Smiley Face Savvy" - http://blog.rebang.com/?p=577
Posted 22 Apr 2010 at 12:40 PMI'm a Computer Engineering student. I just would like to ask if it is best to take media as my track. I like to draw but i lack knowledge in such applications like autocad. I am working in a philippine call center and i think i want to switch tracks.
Posted 22 Apr 2010 at 10:42 PMWell, Anonymous, I'm not in a position to recommend that you specifically take Media as a comp sci track, but I certainly would have liked to have seen it as an option when I was back in school. Design can have many different elements, from understanding how users interact through application interface design (aka Human factors), to deep, algorithmic programming that delivers real-world visuals found in movies and photographs. Autocad is just a tool, as are dozens of other animation and image manipulation products. Understanding design can be an important and useful skill set, as can being able to program and design the tools used to bring those designs to practice. I personally find it an exciting field of study with tremendous opportunities for the future. Best wishes.
Posted 23 Apr 2010 at 09:47 AMJon, right on!
Posted 26 Apr 2010 at 03:26 PMHope you got a copy of Paul Dunay's new book "Social Media and the Contact Center" - you have it right.
For those interested in obtaining copies of the the "Social Media and the Contact Center" book, see http://pauldunay.com/social-media-and-the-contact-center-for-dummies-wiley/ for ordering info.
Posted 27 Apr 2010 at 01:41 PM