Actionable Uses for Speech Analytics Technology

Speech analytics technology has been around since 2004, which is a pretty long time in the tech industry. Many businesses put off investing in this technology for a number of reasons. There’s always the question of whether or not the costs will generate a good ROI. In the case of speech analytics, the data weighs out that it is universally worth the investment – it pays off within a year, which is better than a great deal of the new advances companies readily invest in for their IT department.

One key reason many businesses put off investing in speech analytics is that they may not fully understand the technology. A lot of the providers of the technology explain the way their systems work in a technical way and so decision makers and the actual users of the solution might not readily understand the advantages. Another thing that might make call centers put off the advancement is the fact that the old practices work, although they are manual and time intensive. But, we all know they don’t work as effectively and the addition of automated speech analytics and call scoring, when used properly, can be a huge benefit across the spectrum of the business – from call center efficiency to improved sales. A lot of businesses look at speech analytics and realize it can be a beneficial solution but don’t necessarily view it as an immediately necessary one. What they’re doing works. They don’t want to invest a lot of time in training or understanding the new technology. And they don’t realize that this initial investment will pay off in better time management and improved efficiency overall.

Another thing that traditionally kept companies from pulling the trigger on adding speech analytics was the cost. In 2004, you were looking at a pretty large initial investment that included equipment, servers, and a lot of IS time to manage and maintain. In 2016, that story has changed dramatically. CallFinder’s cloud-based speech analytics technology is flexible and affordable without the large cost up front.

Big data currently moves every avenue of your business, from marketing to revenue cycle management. For businesses and call centers, the largest portion of your data can be cultivated through voice – which means if you’re not using speech analytics, you’re missing it. You won’t have access to these actionable data points that can help you better serve clients and improve service.

We know that speech analytics technology offers businesses and call centers the ability to curate all of the data gathered through daily interactions. What many decision makers worry over is the possibility that this data will essentially be too much. You’ll gather the information but put it to little use. With big data, this is a consideration. It’s one thing to curate all of the available information, but it’s another thing to break it down to actionable steps that improve business.

The key is in understanding the capabilities of the technology to better organize the way you use information to improve outcomes. Here are some practical and actionable uses of speech analtyics technology:

For your call center, script compliance is likely a large factor in the effectiveness of your agents and the customer experience overall. In traditional models, you might be monitoring calls manually or addressing agent performance on scheduled intervals. With speech analytics technology offered by CallFinder, script compliance is monitored automatically. This allows your call center to better oversee how agents perform and correct problems before they become habits. Your managers have the opportunity to discuss problems with an agent as they arise – it’s a better training method for employees who want to excel because they can immediately see where the customer experience was compromised. With a manual method, there might be an extensive lapse in time before a problem was brought to the manager’s attention. By that point, the agent might not even remember the exchange and the learning opportunity has lost impact.

Companies benefit from a lower cost of monitoring but the method is also far superior. Offering real time learning opportunities allows your employees to better excel, which improves employee satisfaction and reduces turnover. The overall process also allows managers and agents to better monitor customer satisfaction so that every contact point for your consumer can better engage and fulfill their needs.

With a manual method, most call centers schedule training and have yearly or quarterly reviews so that individual agents can be evaluated. Their calls are manually monitored. This way of doing things does work in an overall way, though it leaves far more room for employees to adopt practices which aren’t necessarily beneficial. For instance, a lot of call center agents routinely go off script – conversations don’t necessarily follow a stated script and many agents improvise. This can be disastrous depending on legal and other ramifications to the conversation. More commonly it just has a negative impact on customer satisfaction with the experience.

With speech analytics technology, there’s the opportunity to aid in agent performance in real time. Correlations between agent performance and customer satisfaction can readily be shown through the customer response. This real time information affords your call center easily implemented coaching opportunities for agents who are struggling and aids your managers in pinpointing the training areas which need to be improved.

One fantastic aspect of speech analytics technology is that it’s not human. Humans have biases that technology doesn’t have. In any type of interaction, our own perceptions help form our assessment of the situation but we’re often inaccurate. Speech analytics offers an unbiased scoring methodology. This makes your quality scoring far more accurate and consistent allowing your managers to better use their time in training and coaching functions.

Sales is probably the biggest driving factor for many companies to convert to speech analytics technology offered by CallFinder. Your call center has an almost immediate access to analytics that influence sales conversion rates. Your sales team can access information on customer needs and engagement in real time, improving their ability to target clients who are already interested in new products and other services. Essentially, a customer who calls in to complain about one aspect of service, with the right compliance to script and immediate engagement by agents, can be turned into a customer who’s invested in more services through the company. With the right analytics in a timely manner, customers who might be interested in further products won’t fall through the cracks.

Regulatory compliance is a big concern for many companies and speech analytics technology offers your call center the ability to better monitor these exchanges and catch any instance that might be a concern for risk mitigation immediately. The reality is that situations can arise where agents misspeak and leave their company open to liability or at risk for non-compliance to mandated regulations.

With a cloud based speech analytics, any instance that may flag as a risk can be captured on and reported immediately so that the call can be manually monitored and evaluated. This allows companies to head off any compliance issue immediately and it also gives you the ability to discuss the situation with agents and offering re-training opportunities where applicable.

Pretty much ever bit of data gathered in your business is used by your marketing department. They put together analytics based on website use, email conversion, and response to any sales and marketing initiative. However, speech analytics technology allows your marketing department to pull information from the actual voice and words of the customer. This is an invaluable tool for your marketing department because it allows them to paint a focused target demographic to tailor their messages to and better lead to conversion.

One large benefit to using speech analytics is that it allows your company to better monitor customer complaints. The reality is that there will be irate customers calling almost any business. However, you want to assess what it is that displeases each customer, what are the trigger points that make customers unhappy, and which point in the script or dialog might cause the situation to escalate rather than improve.

There are certainly people who call with an eye to complain. But this technology allows you to draw a pattern where there is one. The information is available immediately and your company can determine whether there’s a problem with your product or services by the trends in complaints and the volume. Ideally, you’ll want customers who complain to walk away from the situation even happier with your company and service.

Speech analytics technology offers your call center actionable ways to improve the customer experience, retain stellar employees, and enhance productivity in virtually every area of the business. If you’ve been putting off researching this technology, the reality is that you’re costing your call center in competency and efficiency. You might be putting off the decision because you believe that the expense is too high or that training to fully integrate this technology will slow your production. But the truth is that implementing actionable advantages through a new speech analytics system isn’t difficult and the price is probably a lot more reasonable than you’re guessing.

If you’d like information on our cloud based analytics, contact CallFinder today. We’ll be happy to help you with a free assessment so that you can learn just how valuable our system can be to fill your specific needs.

Sources:
http://www.crmsearch.com/call-center-speech-analytics.php
http://www.smartcustomerservice.com/Articles/What-Is/What-is-Speech-Analytics-Call-Center-and-Business-Applications-98113.aspx