For all the talking everyone does in the call center industry about keeping clients happy, it seems far fewer actually take the time to listen to what the customers are saying. For many businesses, this can be a fatal mistake, because an unhappy customer can quickly become an EX-customer.

Taking a broad view of the problem, Patrick Hall, chief marketing officer at Uptivity – one of the fastest-growing companies in the contact center workforce optimization and management industry – recently published a blog post on this very issue. In it, Hall outlined a number of ways call centers can improve to deliver the simple satisfaction the customer is looking for.

“Use speech analytics to determine first call resolution (FCR) by call type, drivers of repeat calls and the positive agent behaviors that reduce repeat calls,” Hall advises. By doing so, he believes such actions will improve the connection between the caller and the agent, which can then be developed into simple guidelines for callbacks. In other words, learn from experience.

Other signs to be aware of are customer “churn” signals: “You can calculate churn risk by interaction, and apply retention offers to those customers at risk,” Hall says.

On the flip side, companies should also optimize customer and prospect sales with phrase and keyword categories that relate to engaging statements. By making your people aware of the importance of such statements, they have another opportunity to positively engage.

Taking the “warning signs” to the next logical level, Hall also advises building an “at risk” voice of the customer category. These can include “key phrases and tags that have resulted in dropped calls, long average handle time (AHT) or compliance risk,” he says. “Identify high volume, long duration, repeat calls and causes or characteristics to save agents time and the company money.”

Barry Knack, director of Education at Uptivity, will also take part in an upcoming Webinar to take a closer look at how to prepare for analytics success and maxamize value in investment.

For more positive outcomes, Hall recommends identifying “agent coaching or training opportunities that reinforce the use of related keywords and phrases to those referenced by the customer.” He adds that by creating helpful filters and performance reports based on the successful use of specific language, companies can create incentives around the use of related keywords and phrases.

“This low-hanging fruit strategy will improve costs, customer satisfaction scores, staff productivity and motivate agents for quick wins,” Hall says. Interested companies can learn more about speech analytics and how to use this solution for coaching around call quality and positive feedback by downloading a free whitepaper here.