Telemarketing Software Featured Article

Disappointed in your recruiting search for the next telemarketing superstar? If you’ve got deep pockets you might be able to buy that superstar outright, and you won’t have to worry about scheduling issues, vacation time or bonuses. And even better, the superstar is already famous, and everyone knows celebrities are great product movers.

So who is this genius? It’s Watson, of course. Who could forget IBM (News - Alert) Watson, the IBM supercomputer that challenged Dan Jennings on the knowledge-themed game show Jeopardy! this year? Now it turns out that IBM wants to sell Watson, DailyTech has reported.

Sure, IBM is undoubtedly looking to cash in on its “prodigy,” but when you think about it, this supercomputer would be great at answering sales question. It’s paired with DeepQA software and according to ExtremeTech, it uses 10 server racks with Power 750 servers, 2,880 processor cores, and 15TB of RAM (News - Alert).

Because IBM Watson is proficient at answering any question as long as the data exist in its database and because it has no problem addressing questions presented in natural language, IBM reportedly sees the market for Watson including the areas of sales, telemarketing. Say goodbye to those uncomfortable questions that stump salespeople and end up killing the sale when the rep doesn’t’ have the answer quickly enough or can’t come up with a reply at all. To that end, Watson would also be a natural fit for e-commerce companies that employ a chat feature. Who better to answer the ubiquitous “Does that come in XXXL” and “What does the warranty cover” questions in a chat session? Of course, in the telemarketing applications some modifications would probably need to be made to Watson’s robotic tone to keep customers from jumping out of their seats when Watson replies to their questions or launches into a sales pitch when a customer answers the phone.

The sound of Watson’s voice might not be the only barrier to Watson becoming your next telemarketing superstar, however. The initial cost of Watson could certainly put the brakes on such an acquisition. According to ExtremeTech, “The exact cost of Watson isn’t known, but considering a 32-core Power 750 server costs around $350,000, and Watson used 90 of these servers, the cost to install your own Watson would be around $32 million.”

Could Watson possibly pay for itself over time as a replacement for human telemarketers? It’s certainly something to think about.

In other news, TMCnet reported, “Birst, a provider of software-as-a-service solutions for business intelligence (SaaS (News - Alert) BI) and SaaS analytics, is providing reporting and analysis for Internap to optimize the allocation of its marketing and sales resources and create a shared foundation for employee decision making.”