Speech analytics is the practice of monitoring and analyzing audio from call center phone calls to gather information that can be useful to improve customer interactions. It often includes the use of AI to sort through large amounts of unstructured audio data, and the core objective is to find patterns in the audio that could impact call quality.
By providing a fly-on-the-wall viewpoint of what’s really happening during phone calls, speech analytics can be hugely beneficial to call centers. With any luck, it’ll not only help you spot repeat issues, but it will also uncover hidden insights into customers and their needs.
There are many different ways to use speech analytics, but an endless list of best practices can be a bit overwhelming. Instead, you may want to focus on the top three speech analytics tricks that’ll definitely make an impact on your call center.
Trick #1: Gather Information and Iterate Accordingly
One of the hardest things about maintaining call center quality is dealing with the fact that no one can be everywhere at once. Even the most dedicated human manager can’t possibly listen in on every single phone call that’s made––but speech analytics software can. This means it can always collect information on customers and agents, freeing you of the burden of doing so manually.
In terms of customer data, the information it can gather includes:
- Common issues customers have with your products
- How customers feel about your company and products
- How customers feel about your competitors
- A customer’s state of mind when they’re on the call
In terms of employee data, it can identify and track:
- Customer service gaps and failures
- Breaches of compliance or etiquette
- Missed opportunities for cross-selling or upselling
- Examples of particularly good or bad calls
Any basic speech analytics program should be able to accomplish these tasks with ease as long as you’ve got it set up to recognize key phrases related to each element of information you want to track.
That said, while having the information is one thing, using it is another.
Here are some main ways to use the data:
- To prep your call center staff to handle the most problematic customer issues
- To update your products and services so that certain issues come up less frequently
- To gain insight on how you might fare against your competition
- To discover new ways of positioning your products and services in marketing campaigns
At the end of the day, having all of this information taken care of means you no longer have to make important decisions according to best guesses, as you have the ability to let the data do the talking. For example, you know what your customers need because they’ve told you, and you know what your agents are doing because you’ve heard them. If you use even a fraction of the information you’re gathering and iterate your strategy accordingly, you’ll see a change.
Trick #2: Improve Customer and Agent Satisfaction by Heading Off Problems Proactively
Call centers have a reputation for being difficult places to work, and it takes some very good management to make sure that call center staff members remain engaged and able to perform at their best. Similarly, most (if not all) customers have been through at least one horror story of an extremely unhelpful or unprofessional customer service experience.
Call center speech analytics can help mitigate both of these issues by allowing you to head off problems proactively. You can use speech analytics to screen for customers who come into interactions already upset, then route them to your most experienced or empathetic agents. This helps keep them contained and away from staff who might not be able to handle them as well, and it increases the chances that they actually get their problem solved.
You can also set up your speech analytics software to screen for important words or phrases and then automatically trigger actions as a result. For instance, you could have the software screen for phrases like “Better Business Bureau” or “lawsuit,” and then as soon as a customer says one of those phrases, a manager or the legal department could get an alert.
Speech analytics can even be used to screen for common questions and compile them into an organized list. You can then take that list and use it to create or expand on your company’s FAQs section, or even create new scripts for your agents so they know how to answer those questions appropriately.
The more prepared your agents are, the better they’ll be able to perform—and the better they perform, the more confident and engaged they’ll feel. It’s a win-win that’s possible because of the behind-the-scenes work of speech analytics. Ultimately, if you just put in the legwork to get everything set up, the system will take care of the rest and allow you to get out in front of problems before they have a chance to exacerbate. That has business success written all over it.
Trick #3: Increase Staff Performance with Real-Time Monitoring and Feedback
When call volumes are as high as they are at some call centers, it’s almost inevitable that a few bad calls will occur here and there. At the same time, you may occasionally (or frequently) end up hiring an agent who repeatedly goes off-script, fails to spot cross-selling or upselling opportunities, or is simply rude and unprofessional.
Speech analytics can act as your ears when you’re not around to listen in, ensuring that your staff remains compliant and polite. (It can also act as your eyes if you have video analytics in the mix.)
You can set up speech analytics to monitor for things like nefarious social engineering, which means it’ll flag calls where customers ask for data about sensitive information they don’t really need to know in the context of the call. Similarly, it can also be used to screen employee conversations for privacy breaches and/or off-script phrases.
While the odd variation on a script might not be the biggest deal, saying something that could get the company in hot water is. This is another reason why it’s becoming popular to use speech analytics, as it can play a key role in defending your company against legal action and fines.
In addition to the things customers and employees say, real-time speech analytics can also be used to monitor tone, which means you can find out when an agent is being unprofessional or unpleasant, as well as when a customer is being unruly. This not only helps you avoid the nightmare scenario of an employee cursing at a customer, but it also improves overall customer experience by ensuring that no matter who picks up the phone, it’ll be someone who sounds friendly and interested in the conversation.
Finally, since speech analytics can provide ongoing performance monitoring in real time, your managers will be able to train staff on an ongoing basis rather than having to do random spot checks on their own. By getting alerts and seeing flags for issues as they happen, managers can step in earlier and improve performance faster.