UPDATED 07:00 EDT / JULY 16 2013

NEWS

Spy Games in the Enterprise: The Business Value of Telephony Metadata

Ever since The Guardian first published its explosive report on the wide-ranging access that the NSA has been given to Verizon’s call records, there’s been lots of discussion about this thing called “metadata” and the kinds of insights it provides. According to no less than President Obama himself, it’s this metadata that holds the most significance for his spooks – they’re not listening into your calls – but rather, just keeping tabs on who’s calling who, where they’re calling from, and how long they’re talking.

“When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” stated the President.

“That’s not what this program is about. As was indicated, what the intelligence community is doing is looking at phone numbers and durations of calls… by sifting through this so-called metadata, they may identify potential leads with respect to folks who might engage in terrorism.”

Not everyone’s comfortable with what the government’s doing with our phone records, but Obama’s statement does confirm one interesting point – that this telephony metadata can be extremely valuable stuff, if you know how to use it. But besides the spooks, who else might be able to manipulate this metadata, and what could it tell them?

Recently, SiliconANGLE sat down with Keith Nealon, President & General Manager of Cloud Division at VoIP provider ShoreTel, who showed us how businesses can learn from the NSA’s example.

SiliconANGLE: First things first, what exactly is “telephony metadata”?

Keith Nealon: When it comes to telephony, metadata is the information about phone calls. It includes information about which number placed the call, which number was dialed and the duration of the call. If you remember when companies billed per minute for long distance calls, the information on your telephone bill about each call was metadata. Metadata for mobile calls can also include information about the location of the callers.

SA: I can see why the government would be interested in this, given the sophisticated analysis software they must have at their disposal. But why would an organization want to tap into their phone call data? What kind of value could they get from it?

KN: The government is interested in this data because it’s incredibly powerful. Businesses that don’t have the systems in place or that haven’t taken advantage of available data should take this moment to think about how it might be of use to them. The first step is to make sure the data is available. Most modern VoIP or premise based IP phone systems make this fairly easy. If you use a CRM for your business data, strongly consider selecting a phone solution that offers CRM integration. Next review the tools in place to analyze the data. The phone system and CRM may come complete with some level of analytic software, or supplemental business intelligence software can be deployed. Most importantly, really think about what it is you want to understand about your business. Select a few key metrics and study them over a long enough period of time to make the information meaningful.

If you analyze the phone calls made by and to your company, critical information about the health of the business can be revealed. For example, when is your support line busiest? Does it vary by the day of the week or time of year? How many calls a day are made by your most productive sales reps? Understanding this can lead to smarter staffing decisions and result in better customer service and reduced cost. Metadata can also be helpful when reviewing the performance of individual employees. For example, a call to someone who is not in your CRM system is probably not a sales call.

SA: Businesses have been hopping onto the Big Data bandwagon in their thousands over the last couple of years, so I imagine many of these would be looking for ways to integrate telephony metadata into their wider strategy. Is this possible?

KN: Telephony metadata becomes much more interesting when analyzed along with other business data. The telephony data will tell you which number called, the CRM can tell you who it was and why they called. Knowing that you received 20 calls last month from 555-1212 isn’t that useful. Knowing that Bob Smith, the CFO of ABC Corp called 20 times and that ABC Corp is your largest client, could be very useful.

SA: So how can a company like ShoreTel enable organizations to do this easily?

KN: ShoreTel provides business intelligence reports in our online portal that make it easy for management to understand what’s going on in the business. For example, our Live Answer Service metric is a simple way to understand how many calls to your organization are answered by a live person throughout the day. We also provide integration into popular business applications, like Salesforce.com, so that call record information can be combined with the CRM data for a 20/20 view of activities related to your prospects and customers.

SA: You’ve illustrated how telephony metadata can be used to deliver business advantages, but as you know the ‘legality’ of all this data gathering has been a bit of a talking point lately. No doubt some people will have concerns about the impact of collecting telephony metadata on customer’s privacy. To put it bluntly, is it legal for your clients to do this? Do you have any safeguards in place with respect to privacy?

KN: Like with many things in our digital lives, connecting by the telephone does create a record of the event. Most businesses use this information responsibly to provide better service and more relevant product offers. Keep in mind that telephony metadata does not reveal the content of the conversation, only information about the phone calls. The federal government and many state governments have strict laws about recording telephone calls. ShoreTel encourages our clients to thoroughly understand and adhere to the laws of their jurisdiction.

SA: Thank you very much Keith, it’s been a pleasure talking with you.


A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU