Abstract: 2012-2013 Speech Analytics Market Report

DMG Consulting’s seventh annual Speech Analytics Product and Market Report delivers analysis and insights into leading and emerging solutions, trends and challenges, market share and best practices. The 360-page Report is designed to give end-user organizations the comprehensive information they need about vendors, products, functionality, technology, competitive landscape, benefits, return on investment (ROI) and pricing to select the right solution for their operating environment.

Since speech analytics made its debut in the commercial world in 2004, DMG has lauded the power of these solutions to help organizations realize significant tangible business benefits. Having seen increasing adoption and product innovation over the last several years, despite the Great Recession, speech analytics applications are now recognized as game changers for companies that are willing to invest the time to use them properly. This market is still relatively new but maturing rapidly.

Back in 2004, there were a mere 25 traceable speech analytics implementations with minimal seats in use. Actual seats increased from 176,825 in 2006 to 1,940,121 in August 2012, a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 54.6%. While seat expansion rates have slowed from 48.4% in 2008-2009 to 19.9% in 2010-2011, the market remains an outstanding performer. Speech analytics is now accepted as a mainstream contact center application rather than a risky investment. These applications are compelling because they:

• Address a real and measurable need, and deliver quantifiable benefits
• Are unique, and do something that has never been done before
• Can be used in conjunction with other solutions to improve their performance
• Deliver benefits to the entire enterprise, not just the contact center

There is nothing else like speech analytics available in the market. This makes these solutions highly desirable and useful, but also causes some angst among end users, who are struggling to figure out how to utilize speech analytics to yield the greatest benefit and return on investment. The key to succeeding with speech analytics is to apply best practices.  The best speech analytics implementations have dedicated analysts to identify trends and other important issues, and to take immediate remedial action to correct problems. This team of analysts reports to managers outside the contact center, and is empowered to address all business, operational, or technical issues anywhere in the company. Speech analytics is an enterprise change agent, and the companies that are realizing the greatest return from these solutions are those that act immediately on the findings.

Real-time speech analytics solutions have emerged in the past year. While new and clearly in their infancy, these applications are already empowering contact center supervisors to alter the outcomes of customer conversations. This is essential in today’s social-media-driven world where consumers voice their opinions openly and loudly when things do not go their way. Real-time speech analytics is expected to play an increasingly important role in the future of this sector.

Real-time speech analytics is also attracting investments from verticals like collections and healthcare, which must adhere to strict regulatory guidelines. DMG expects real-time coaching prompts and process guidance to be key areas of research and development (R&D) in the next few years, as vendors strive to help customers meet regulatory, compliance, servicing and sales goals.  Additionally, as speech analytics matures, it will become part of broader analytics suites dedicated to addressing the voice of the customer in all channels. Emerging multi-channel analytics suites will contain speech analytics, text analytics, desktop analytics, surveying and quality assurance. These suites are expected to play an increasingly important role in organizations over the next five to eight years, as companies figure out how to take action on customer feedback.

While growth rates may drop from their all-time highs, DMG still expects speech analytics to continue to outperform most IT sectors, as more best practices emerge to help companies succeed with their initiatives.DMG projects the speech analytics market will enjoy steady growth over the next several years, with projected growth rates of 22% in 2012, 20% in 2013, 18% in 2014, and 16% in 2015. If adoption of real-time speech analytics catches on quickly and the economy recovers, this sector’s growth could be more rapid. While speech analytics has historically been sold primarily to contact centers, these are enterprise applications that can deliver benefits to any and all customer-focused departments that use them. DMG expects to see the use of speech analytics expand outside of the contact center in the coming years.

Report Highlights

• Social media is forcing organizations to take their customers more seriously: Customers today are speaking louder and more frequently on all kinds of social platforms across the cyber-universe. This dynamic is forcing companies to re-think how they handle customer conversations; they have to resolve issues on a timely basis or risk seeing them go viral.
• Real-time speech analytics solutions are changing contact center dynamics: Managers and supervisors now have tools to alter the outcome of calls while the customer is still on the line. This is an unprecedented benefit for enterprises and their customers. 
• The key to success are best practices, not technology alone: For companies to get the most from their speech analytics implementations, they need to build an organization of analysts, and empower them to make changes throughout the enterprise. Speech analytics is useful for contact centers, but its contributions and benefits grow as it is rolled out and applied enterprise-wide.
• Speech analytics will see continued growth: DMG projects the speech analytics market will grow 22% in 2012, 20% in 2013, 18% in 2014, and 16% in 2015.

Key Reasons to Buy this Report

• Analyzes past performance and projects the future of the speech analytics market; includes,  market activity, market share, adoption rate, and four-year projections for 2012-2015
• Explains how speech analytics works, reviews the underlying speech engines, presents the functional building blocks and gives best practices for successfully implementing speech analytics
• Explores market trends and challenges, and provides the top uses and benefits and the ROI of speech analytics for contact centers and other enterprise departments
• Provides detailed technical and functional comparisons of leading and emerging speech analytics solutions, including product features, recent innovation and what vendors plan to deliver in the next 12-18 months
• Assesses the speech analytics competitive landscape, providing in-depth company reports for the 11 leading, contending and emerging vendors, with detailed information on their products, packages, service delivery models and pricing
• Analyzes several paradigm-shifting trends, including how emerging real-time speech analytics solutions facilitate real-time intelligence, agent guidance and process automation; how the new multi-channel voice of the customer concept empowers companies with mission-critical information; the process changes brought about by analytics-enabled quality assurance (QA); and the synergies between speech analytics, desktop capabilities and performance management
• Presents customer satisfaction survey data for the six leading speech analytics vendors
• Speech Analytics Vendor Directory

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Order Information
To order a copy of the 2012-2013 Speech Analytics Product and Market Report, contact Deborah Navarra at 516-628-1098 or deborah.navarra@dmgconsult.com. You may also purchase the Report online at www.dmgconsult.com.

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