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Speech Analytics: Top Uses

Speech analytics has crossed into the realm of must-have technology for a growing number of contact centers. This application is still fighting to capture the attention of enterprise executives, who should be using it to gauge many aspects of the customer journey, but adoption will grow over time because of the solution’s unique ability to analyze and share the voice of the customer.

Below is a list of the top uses of speech analytics, most of which pertain to historical analysis and apply to contact centers. Each of these uses provides measureable benefits to contact centers, agents and the company’s customers, when speech analytics is properly implemented and managed. Many organizations are still struggling to realize the expected return on investment because they lack experienced speech analytics resources and best practices. The primary challenge with speech analytics remains the implementation and ongoing use of the application, particularly figuring out how to share and apply the findings. For these reasons, prospects should take give consideration to the technology, breadth of functionality and ease of use, as well as the implementation and ongoing management of the solution, when selecting a solution.

Top Speech Analytics Uses in 2016

1. Identifying and understanding call drivers – Speech analytics can help uncover the reasons why people call, and track ongoing trends.
2. Script adherence and regulatory compliance – A speech analytics solution can identify opportunities for agents to improve compliance with internal and external regulations when they interact with customers.
3. Reducing call transfers, holds, silence, callbacks and unproductive time – Processes and activities that generate caller dissatisfaction, which is costly for the organization, can be identified with speech analytics.
4. Identifying agent coaching opportunities – Speech analytics can help spot deficiencies and find ways to improve agent performance, including offering automated next-best action recommendations while an interaction is in progress.
5. Improving the customer experience and increasing first contact resolution – The issues that cause customer dissatisfaction, including the reasons why calls are not being resolved during the first contact, can be identified with speech analytics.
6. Automating the quality assurance (QA) process –Analytics-enabled QA can be used to automate, enhance and improve the QA process, freeing supervisors to devote more time to training and coaching agents.
7. Improving customer retention – At-risk customers can be identified, allowing a company to reach out to them on a timely basis to resolve their concerns and retain them. When real-time speech analytics is used along with desktop analytics automation, an agent can be notified of an at-risk customer while they are still on the line, and the solution can provide recommendations to retain them.
8. Increasing sales/collections effectiveness – Real-time speech analytics can be used together with desktop analytics automation to guide agents to improve their sales and collections rates.
9. Complaint management/sentiment and emotion detection – A speech analytics application can notify agents or supervisors when a call is going badly, so that they can make the necessary actions to alter the outcome.
10. Improving operational efficiency and effectiveness throughout the enterprise – Speech analytics can identify enterprise-wide issues, opportunities and trends so that they can be addressed, in order to improve the company’s bottom line.

To realize the expected benefits from speech analytics, companies need to dedicate resources to oversee the solution. Most importantly, they must establish a change management process to apply the findings.

DMG Consulting LLC is a leading independent research, advisory and consulting firm specializing in unified communications, contact centers, back-office and real-time analytics. Learn more at www.dmgconsult.com.