In today’s contact center, millions of interactions are recorded between live agents and customers, thus placing importance on the quality of customer service delivered to callers. In a time when companies are looking to cut costs and focus more on improving customer relationships, many organizations have turned to strategic methods that allow them to strike a balance between efficiency and optimized customer satisfaction.
Leading U.K. outsourcing specialist Ventura, which works with several major clients including Royal Bank of Scotland, 02 and British Gas, is dedicated to exceeding its clients’ expectations. Positioned in today’s competitive market, Ventura recently sought a solution that would offer a detailed glimpse into the interactions between customers and agents. However, Ventura’s original form of content analysis produced only numeral metrics, or basic information including the number of calls, and time and date. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by customers as well as to truly quantify its business processes, Ventura turned to Nexidia’s (News - Alert) Enterprise Speech Intelligence speech analytics solution.
Speech analytics technology provider Nexidia uses patented, phonetic technology to evaluate 100 percent of recorded calls – revealing the voice of the customer and translating customer agent interactions into valuable data that can be applied to the improvement of contact center operations. Nexidia’s ESI (News - Alert) is designed to drive improvements in quality and service; reduce average handle time; decrease the number of repeat callers; identify and remove problem processes; gain detailed insight across a high volume of calls; enhance cross/up selling; drive revenue; and most importantly, build customer satisfaction through value-added services.
“Nexidia’s ability to handle huge call volumes and deliver accurate meaningful analyses in very short timeframes proved decisive for Ventura,” stated Neil Conway, head of Operations at Ventura. “ESI has enabled the company to objectively measure and analyze large volumes of audio across customer service and sales areas.”
According to Conway, the six months it took for Nexidia’s QuickStart program – a pilot that gives companies immediate insight into the value of Nexidia’s solutions -- to analyze and act upon the 600,000 calls encompassing 51,490 hours would have taken Ventura a staggering 11 years to manually analyze that same call volume.
Using Nexidia’s call driver analysis, Ventura achieved categorization and validation of the average handling time for each call, and quantified the outliers to create a response for optimal improvement. Through targeted listening, Nexidia’s analysis solution also found that many agents were struggling to respond to complex bill inquiries and were failing to keep control of the call. Following the run of this program, Ventura discovered a 42-second call reduction coming into its system as well as a 4-second reduction in average handling time – resulting in significant cost savings.
Even further, the implementation of Nexidia’s ESI revealed an uncomfortable high level of silence time among calls, meaning many callers were being placed on hold. By the time the QuickStart program concluded, Ventura’s non-talk time was reduced by an impressive 10 percent.
Deploying Nexidia’s ESI has enabled Ventura to quantify the root of the issue and thus redirect its in-house training to focus on the appropriate core skills for handling calls. Of course, Ventura also achieved its ultimate goal – to become a value-added service. Moving forward, it plans on focusing on adherence, efficiency, the customer experience, staff development and business insight in its contact center.
“Ventura strives to offer a ‘Best in Class’ service and speech analytics is giving us that value-added ingredient that differentiates us from the rest,” said Andy McKenzie, head of IT Ventura. “Speech analytics has become an invaluable part of our arsenal, providing the insight that enables us to deliver real benefits to our clients.”
For Nexidia, this project with Ventura proved successful, with many Ventura clients opting to subsequently participate in the program, which was rolled out in a matter of time to them, thanks to flexible integration abilities.
Tammy Wolf is a TMCnet web editor. She covers a wide range of topics, including IP communications and information technology. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Rich Steeves