Exactly How Important Are Call Center Speech Analytics?

The importance of an efficient customer service has increased over the past few years with the expectations of customers rising perpetually. Modern call analytics tools can even go the extra mile and determine the level of politeness of an agent during a call and that can be a very beneficial factor. According to research, agents who have higher conversion rates normally have higher politeness scores (+36%) compared to their non-converting counterparts. This is why, in addition to choosing the ideal VoIP phone service for your business, you need to also get your hands on a speech analytics tool that can help you maximize the potential of your agents and increase customer satisfaction. These analytical tools allow managers and supervisors to get a holistic overview of customer preferences, pain points and expectations. Some of the top VoIP providers (like Vonage) come with sophisticated analytical tools that provide the basic features that can help in call center performance optimization. In this article, we further describe exactly why speech analytics have become a hallmark of the leading businesses.

A Human Conversation Still Has No Substitute

Companies have opened many conduits for customers to get in touch with them including live chats and text messages but a majority of the customers still like to talk to a human being regarding their query. The preceding statement is substantiated by the research conducted by Contact center pipeline which reveals that around 79% of all consumers still like to converse with a fellow human when reaching out to companies and brands. For simple requests, customers might just send an email and don’t care about waiting for a few hours before getting a response, but when immediate support is required, a phone call is normally the way to go. These calls act as a great luxury for customers but they can also help a company in analyzing the consumer’s deeper emotions, expectations, concerns and motivations along with providing assistance. If you have a reliable VoIP phone service then you also don’t have to worry about call routing and by applying speech analytics and measuring sentiments of the customer along with other deterministic elements, you can gauge the effectiveness of the contemporary processes and see whether optimizations are necessary (and where).

Tangible Advantages Of Speech Analytics

Even though apparently it might seem like an uphill task to carry out quantification of the dynamics of a call but the sophisticated tools of today make it possible to apply analytics to voice and generate tangible insight from it. For instance, a company can predict whether a customer was satisfied by the support they got by analyzing their tone and pitch during the call. Or they can also gauge the politeness of an agent by analyzing if there were any stark rises in their tones or not. Keywords and phrases can also be defined in an analytical tool that could indicate whether the call is going in the right direction or whether a supervisory intervention is required. This analysis of ongoing calls not only yields real-time information that can prevent a potential catastrophe from happening, but it also helps a company in shortening handling time, improving first-call-resolution rates and enhancing the level of its self service offerings. In addition to enhancing the levels of customer satisfaction, call analytics also pay a huge role in making employees more efficient. For instance, by running speech analytics on all calls made by a specific agent, a manager can figure out the places where the agent is lacking and whether they need any additional training. If an agent is scoring low on the politeness score or if they are always unable to resolve the customer requests during the first call, they can be issued a warning etc. These actionable insights also aid a company in harnessing the maximum power of talented resources by routing important calls to agents that have the right kind of insight and experience to deal with cumbersome/sensitive issues. By analyzing the practices and statistics of their best performing agents, companies can also develop best practices that other team members can follow. Most of the analytics software come with customizable dashboards that a supervisor can have access to; these dashboards can be used to give real-time guidance to newer agents or for the development of operational optimization strategies that can improve the capabilities of a call center.

Adding A New Dimension To Customer Experience

Call center speech analytics help a business in comprehending the deeper needs of a customer, increasing levels of customer satisfaction and bringing about improvements in the overall performance of a call center but there is a lot more that can be achieved. Using the gained insights, businesses can ameliorate their products, services and even processes. For instance, by analyzing call data, companies can find out persistent issues in their products and fix them in the next production iteration. Trends may also indicate certain areas of the sales pipeline that can be optimized; for example, if majority of the customers call between the order finalization and order delivery stage, then the shipping procedure can be revamped. Additionally, businesses are also investing on creating an omni-channel contact center experience which integrates the calling service of a company with its chatting and email channels. This allows agents to switch between different channels with ease whenever the need arises. This approach is still relatively new but it’s set to take customer experience to the next level.

Final Word

In the modern world, call center analytics are becoming increasingly important as they can help a business in many different domains. Not only do they help in enhancing the levels of customer satisfaction, they also help supervisors and managers in gauging the performance of their agents. By using call analytics, businesses can also spot areas of concern within their sales pipelines and other processes which can play a huge role in optimizing important facets of a business. Omni-channel contact centers are yet to become very prevalent but they are set to add a new dimension to customer experience.