Call Centers Can Find Value in Speech Analytics

Millenials and younger generations spend a lot less time on the phone than my generation did. But the fact remains that voice calls are still a very important means of business communication. That includes interactions between your customer service people and end customers.

In the past, such conversations came and went in the blink of an eye. Today, many businesses record and store these interactions. Some do it to comply with regulations; others employ recording to improve operations. Whatever is driving your call recording and storage strategy, speech analytics can help increase its value.

Speech analytics detect patterns in live or recorded conversations. These patterns can highlight key words or phrases, or flag callers who exhibit signs of stress, or perform other analyses. There’s lots of value in calling out this kind of detail.

It can help your systems more quickly identify who’s calling and why, and present agents with relevant information for faster call resolution and better upselling opportunities.

It can prompt call center managers to advise agents or take over calls when customers sound agitated. That can help stem customer attrition and agent churn and more effectively address the most challenging calls.

In the longer term, analytics can help call centers with agent training and process improvement. Plus it can inform customer service process and overall product design (as businesses can get details direct from customer feedback).

However, for businesses to get the most out of the speech analytics investments they’ll want to keep a couple things in mind. First, businesses should pick solutions that index recorded content and make it easily searchable.

Organizations may also want to employ data scientists to get maximum value from speech analytics. These individuals, however, are in high demand. IBM predicts demand for data scientists will increase 28 percent by 2020.

Edited by Erik Linask

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