Contact Center Quality Management Featured Article

It seems that more and more call center businesses are seeing real value in implementing and using speech analytics. But why now? Why, after all these years, has this one area gained such importance?

One reason may be because the technology has taken a giant leap forward. But more important is that companies have realized there is valuable data to be gleaned from what the customer is actually saying, and how they are saying it.

In a recent blog post Christina Cowell, product marketing manager of workforce optimization at inContact – a leading provider of cloud contact center software – noted that “speech analytics allows you to understand the why in your contact center” including answering the unasked questions, Why is your customer calling?; Why are they concerned?; and Why are they happy or unhappy with your services?

Cowell notes that “Software companies are tasked with offering solutions that remain affordable, but still add the amount of muscle businesses are looking for. Every business is different but there are some key messages that you should understand about what speech analytics can do for your contact center.”

Further, she observed that the standard sample of transactions monitored in a contact center is less than one percent. “That means strategic decisions are made based on less than one percent of a complete picture,” she added, which is a small enough number to give anyone pause.

“In business, listening to customers is critical, but it doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should,” TMC (News - Alert) writer Tracey Schelmetic noted in a recent report. “In the contact center, agents are under fire to keep calls as short as possible, so they must often speak over customers in order to relay all the information they need to. This is a shame, because listening to customers is one of the best ways of acquiring the intelligence required to solve problems. It also helps agents identify cross-selling and upselling opportunities that can maximize the value of the call.”

Because of that and other reasons, Cowell says analyzing what is said by the customer takes on even greater importance.