Speech Analytics Help Listen for Opportunity

Adding speech analytics to your contact center can give businesses a competitive edge, according to many sources. And combining speech analytics with artificial intelligence will enable organizations to take the technology’s benefits to a whole new level.

Monet Software (News - Alert) in a March blog wrote “There was a recent study by a speech analytics provider that found 47% of users are now able to identify customer issues and resolve them quickly. More than half reported that speech analytics improved the effectiveness of their workforce optimization efforts.”

Using analytics to understand who said what when – and even when and how long there is silence in an agent-customer conversation – can all contact centers to:

• do more targeted coaching and training,

• take greater advantage of cross-sell and upsell opportunities, and

• recognize patterns in minutes instead of weeks or months later.

Speech analytics can alert contact center operators of long silences. That could signal an agent is inefficient or processes need to be tweaked for greater ease of information access.

It also can let contact centers know when agents deviate from scripts. In doing so, it can help with compliance. It also addresses compliance in other ways.

“Highly regulated industries such as financial services and healthcare can particularly benefit from speech analytics, as they have compliance requirements regarding storing and searching for customer data,” says Clarabridge (News - Alert). “They also have a pressing need for the earliest possible indication of compliance violations – and people calling with complaints or questions can definitely be a red flag. Audio mining is also a key factor in the discovery process in the event of litigation.”

As for the AI-speech analytics connection noted at the top of this conversation, TELUS (News - Alert) International has this to say about that. “Looking ahead, the capabilities of speech analytics will continue to advance at a rapid pace with the similar growth in adoption of artificial intelligence in the contact center. Together, speech analytics and AI will enable the instantaneous categorization of data from customer interactions, potentially giving agents prompts in real-time about what to say (or not) during a call. While all of the future possibilities are unknown, what is certain is that speech analytics will continue to play an important role in improving the customer experience.”

Edited by Maurice Nagle