"Enter companies like NICE Systems, founded 18 years ago by four Israeli army intelligence officers. Today, NICE claims to provide call-recording software to 67 of the Fortune 100 companies and says its customer-service centers capture about 40 million calls a day. That's 463 orders, reservations, and complaints every second."

"Because conversations can be analyzed as easily as a spreadsheet, they represent a potential gold mine of information about why customers buy (or why not), which competitors are stealing customers, and which agents defuse irritated callers. The system identifies the most valuable customer interactions, says Chris Files, quality development facilitator at FedEx Custom Critical, which is about to employ word spotting. One of the search terms she plans to use is "wow." "Why not?" she asks. "We want to track the customer experience."