It was announced just today that Calabrio (News - Alert) Inc., a provider of contact center workforce optimization (WFO) and analytics software, has officially unveiled its first Web 2.0-based Speech Analytics application to be fully integrated within a comprehensive WFO framework. I was fortunate enough to be able to sit down with Tom Goodmanson (News - Alert), Calabrio president and CEO, as well as Kristen Jacobsen, director of marketing, to discuss this revolutionary new development in full.
Right off the bat, it was made known that the overarching themes for the solution were simplicity and customer priority. As a result of explosive customer demands and trends, Calabrio set out to develop what is now the all new Web. 2.0 Speech Analytics application. Goodmanson explained how the product vision took a central turn over the course of the last two years since its humble beginnings, keeping one single thing in mind. He explained, “The big change for us was that we started thinking about the user and putting the user at the center of the experience.”
With this new solution, it’s no longer a “needle in the haystack” process, he added, by allowing every call that’s put through to be listened to for what you need, allowing businesses to gain insight and profound interaction like never before.
Sounds pretty good to me! Let’s explore this further, shall we?
Calabrio has always had its WFO products and a very elegant Web 2.0 environment, but with this latest enhancement, users will find a completely transformed version to support heightened levels of customization unprecedented by any other solution through the power of its widgets.
“Analytics enhances the everyday business practices and just makes them that much better. This speech analytics offering is showing the future of those widgets in that they will be drillable and expandable and interactive,” Goodmanson said. These widgets ultimately work to allow users to access data from one single, unified place.
Calabrio has taken something that is very heavy and complicated – usually requiring two or three week installation processes and a lot of handholding – and worked to consolidate and simplify the process, making it easier than ever while showcasing the sheer, inevitable elegance of its product.
One way of consolidating this complex yet vital information is below, where you can see a chart depicting how the system works to capture call agents’ and team activity to see who is working best and how strategies can be sharpened and practices made better.
“If you’re going to call it the WFO suite, it should act like a suite – meaning it should be single sign-on, it should have a similar look and feel throughout the application, and you should be able to tie them together to utilize the power of the different applications as often as possible,” Goodmanson said.
The call monitoring aspect of the Calabrio speech analytics works to monitor in real-time, anytime, while the call recording works to protect the business and mitigate risk. The quality assurance aspect measures efficiency and performance through tailored evaluation forms, and last, the analytics works to analyze, act and improve.
Even more, the new Calabrio Speech Analytics enables businesses to listen to every call – literally –allowing them to gain insight into customer satisfaction, trends, and contact center practices for deeper analysis than ever before. Additionally, users will enjoy increased revenue by being able to identify missed opportunities, target improvements and trends, and identify customer retention issues and immediately take action.
Businesses will also be able to improve profitability by being able to identify areas of inefficiency, thus proactively target improvements.
Check out below in a sample compliance dashboard just how the system works to track phrases spoken to identify issues, measure compliance by agent, as well as pinpoint root causes for advancing future training.
Another thing the company strives to simplify for its customer is defining how to apply the technology, which tends to be quite an obstacle for most customers, Jacobsen explained. “They understand what the tool does, they understand how it delivers data, but it’s more difficult for them to think about how to apply that to their business,” she continued.
Calabrio simplifies this understanding by categorizing it into three sections: compliance (listening to every call to determine whether or not agents are adhering to the script, whether for best practices and/or legal purposes), the basic quality assurance set (all of the reasons you’re recording for quality), and sales and marketing (where you can determine what customers are saying throughout your enterprise to figure out how to increase revenue).
Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2012, taking place Oct. 2-5, in Austin, TX. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. For more information on registering for ITEXPO click here.
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Edited by Rachel Ramsey