Who are we?

Prosodica President and CEO, Mariano, started working in the call center space in 1995. By 2009, working for a large business process outsourcer, Mariano was in charge of the largest virtual contact center platform certified for use by the US Federal Government.

In July 2010, The White House passed Executive Order 13548 to increase federal employment for individuals with disabilities, and Mariano saw a opportunity to use a virtual contact center in support of this goal. He began meeting with leaders from government agencies such as the FCC, the Department of Commerce, the CFPB, and the OMB in order to match them with needed call center services. Simultaneously, Mariano worked to develop partnerships with national disability organizations such as the NIB and NISH to recruit people with disabilities for these meaningful call center jobs.

However, these organizations were skeptical about call center roles, viewing them as monotonous, sporadically stressful, and potentially harmful to emotional well-being. They demanded a way to identify and address any negative experiences employees might encounter, an enormous challenge in a remote work environment lacking line-of-sight supervisory support. This technological gap halted Mariano’s efforts, as there was no method to monitor employee distress through voice analysis alone.

As Mariano processed his frustration around this unsuccessful initiative, a blazing bright light was being shined on a massive problem within call centers. Call center quality assurance monitoring was mainly focused on the customer experience and was pretty black and white. Was the customer’s question answered? Were they happy with the service? But what about the experience and emotional well-being of the representative? There were humans on both sides of the call that deserved equal attention and consideration.

This led to a pivotal conversation with Jim, the founder of Vail Systems. Jim suggested that Mariano should develop a new technology with provided funding and technical resources from Vail. This collaboration resulted in the creation of several patented game-changing technologies for analyzing emotional nuances in speech, focusing on prosody. They named this innovation "prosodic analytics," which led to the founding of Prosodica.

Prosodica has since advanced its mission beyond call centers, aiming to improve jobs involving human communication with their voice and conversational analysis technology. This evolution reflects their commitment to enhancing workplace well-being through innovative solutions.