Call centers are a nexus of data and insights for brands, as they are the front line of customer experience capturing the voice of the customer– and voice of the employee. All the interactions and words flowing through call centers provide rich information for companies, but to truly see value, the key is context.
Without context, call recordings and transcriptions are merely pictures of conversations from a moment in time—adding no value to your business’s efficiencies, products and services, and overall bottom line. However, with the right technology, recordings are no longer just unstructured data. They become a data package, sharing hidden insights that enterprises can operate on.
Speech analytics technology takes intelligence to a different level by uncovering the critical insights that are commonly left in the dark. Through a combination of contextual and sentiment analysis, calls become more than words—they become feelings, emotions, situations, a real exchange.
Too often, enterprises limit themselves to the walls of traditional call recording for quality assurance (QA) purposes and compliance regulations, only really listening to a mere 1 – 3% of their customer interactions. With an estimated nine million calls to U.S. contact centers daily, these companies are missing out on a lot of valuable data. However, with artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled speech analytics technology, organizations can capture and analyze 100% of these interactions from both an agent and customer perspective to reach a true understanding of what is going on in the business at all times.
There are many different elements that go into creating a good customer interaction—but it’d be impossible to compare the different approaches by only manually listening to a random selection of calls. When correctly implemented, speech and text analytics works to configure the relationships between words, categories, acoustics and semantics—as well as the standard KPIs that your agents are already being measured against, such as average handle time and first-call resolution rate—to provide a holistic view of the exchange.
And by leveraging AI and machine learning, interaction analytics reveals insight through automated performance and sentiment scoring. Think of it as a puzzle, and the only way to solve it is by combining the words spoken with how they’re conveyed. Now with speech analytics, an automatic score generates better awareness by converting both factors into a comprehensive score to optimize performance.
Not only do these solutions make it possible to then manage and respond to critical situations in real-time, the compilation of the historical insights gathered then allows you to make valuable business decisions to drive performance based on a holistic and accurate view of the perception of your brand, products, and customer service.
Enter: A whole new world of business insight
Sure, you’re likely to have a survey or NPS system already implemented, but even with post-interaction assessments, you’re still missing out on 85 – 95% of the conversation because you’re not being able to ask the “how” or “why” behind it.
With speech analytics, you have a full view into both sides of the conversation—why the customer was calling, their frustration (or hopefully, lack thereof) throughout the call, their overall satisfaction of the outcome, and more. On the opposite side, you can tell whether the agent followed script to avoid compliance violations, how knowledgeable they were about solving the customer’s problem for training purposes, as well as whether they delivered a positive experience for customer satisfaction—all without having to analyze survey results.
From there, organizations can track behaviors over time. From a customer perspective, this effectively manages risks by measuring how likely they are to commit fraud and avoids customer churn by estimating brand loyalty. Companies also benefit internally by analyzing agent performance over time to make actionable recommendations for improvement.
The bottom line is, enterprises are missing out on a world of opportunity by letting their call recordings sit in the server and collect dust. The right technology can unlock a world of opportunity for business and operational intelligence. Speech analytics does that by uncovering the truth behind each customer interaction.
