10 Unique Benefits of Speech Analytics in a Call Center

Call center technologies can help you elevate your call center’s efficiency and performance. And one of the most beneficial pieces of technology every call center should invest in is speech analytics.

Not convinced?

Discover 10 incredible benefits of speech analytics to help you raise the quality of your contact center. You’re going to want to read this one…

What Is Speech Analytics Software?

Speech analytics software can listen to the conversation between an agent and the customer, break it down into data, and present data you can break down into scores.

It works based on a defined set of words and terms. 

Once your speech analytics software recognizes those target words, it collects data on sentiment, tone, and topic of conversation. And it can detect emotions in the speaker’s voice as well.

There are two kinds of speech analytics software: post-call and real-time. The difference lies in the speed with which the software analyzes calls.

Post-call analytics dissects the call posthumously in greater detail. This is great for training purposes. Real-time speech analytics is a very handy tool for monitoring calls. It can also directly benefit agents by recommending cues based on the caller’s sentiment.

Speech analytics is an extremely useful tool in a call center. These 10 benefits underscore why it’s worth investing in this type of software to supercharge your customer engagement. 

1. Proactive Customer Service

For so many years, customer service was reactive. You would react to certain complaints or compliments, bring it to marketing, or finance, or product, and still, they might shoo you away. 

Now we can quantify product issues, see what percentage of callers are complaining, fix the issue, and inform customers proactively of any issues they might have. 

While it doesn’t seem like a major improvement, it definitely restores trust in your customers.

Analyzing speech analytics to predict trends can also be beneficial. Listen to NICE CEO Paul Jarman explain how the models from speech analytics data can improve your call center.

2. Rewarding Associates for Great Sentiment

You should always appreciate the hard work of your agents. But with a sentiment score attached to their performance, it’s even easier.

Speech analytics can track proper word usage, sentiment scoring, silence, and hold time to analyze to make sure a rep is treating customers properly (and vice versa!). 

Use this data to give credit where credit is due. And incentivize with raises or cash to keep morale and motivation up.

3. Generating Marketing Data

With speech analytics, collecting product and price information becomes even easier. And that translates into actionable marketing data.

With the data to back you up, you can tell marketing how the customers are reacting to the product you’re selling. And making marketing decisions based on customer’s first-hand experience in their voice is the best strategy there is.

Make surveys a thing of the past. Instead, rely on speech analytics to generate your marketing data.

4. Noting Frustration

It’s best to tackle the most common problems customers have head-on. But first, you have to know what their frustrations are.

For example, you could have a caller who’s very happy with the service that they are getting, but they’re very annoyed with a certain fee. 

While they might really like the company they purchase a product or service from, they may have small frustration points that are difficult to separate out. 

Speech analytics can help you build an entire roadmap of the customer’s journey, to continue to pinpoint trending problems with your product or service.

5. Learning What the Real SLA Variance Should Be

Every industry has its own service-level agreement (SLA) time frame when it comes to call centers. Usually, the benchmark for call centers is 80/30 (80% of calls should be answered in 30 seconds or less). However, some call centers work just as well with 80/60.

And speech analytics can show you what your ideal SLA time can be.

If the sentiment score overall is 77% (77% of callers leave with a positive sentiment) in both 80/30 and 80/60, that means that your customers don’t mind the longer wait times. Reducing staff on the floor is a good way to save money without affecting your customer service levels.

6. Tracking Silence

Using speech analytics we can determine how much silence a call contains. Maybe there is a soft skill that your associate does not have. Or, maybe they are putting people on hold or mute more often than necessary to ask questions or research a problem.

With speech analytics, we can tell if there is an issue with a specific agent. And we can use that data to find better ways to support and educate them.

7. Fraud Protection

Call center technologies doesn’t just help your call center. It can also help your customers. You can track any phrases or words you want with speech analytics. Plus, you can include fraud-related sentences to help prevent or warn agents against scams.

For example, if a customer asks for a new debit or credit card and they want to change their address at the same time, this interaction could get flagged for potential fraud. 

You can also input keywords or phrases to flag conversations for potential fraud without the agent having to look out for these indicators manually.

8. Tracking Key Words & Competitors

Speech analytics can also be used to track specific keywords and the names of competitors to drive competition. 

Using this method of analysis, you can further understand what customers want from your product or service. You can also see how your product or service might be better or worse than your competitors.

9. Better Reactions From the Agents

Certain real-time AI speech analytics software can directly help the agent do their job. It can detect the caller’s intent and sentiment, and generate responses for the agent immediately. 

This can translate into better sales, higher customer retention, and improved customer experience.

10. Data Security

Last but not least, speech analytics software is secure. It’s a software platform that breaks the call down to data and presents you with those findings. 

It doesn’t directly listen to the personal information customers share over the call. This can help your business remain more compliant. 

Get the Most out of Speech Analytics

Speech analytics is a great tool to make your call center more efficient, customer-oriented, and productive. Yet, not enough call centers use it. And if they do, many don’t utilize it to its full potential.

At Expivia, we leverage the data insights speech analytics gives us to constantly improve our customer service.

Our agents get constant support and feedback from speech analytics. And we use these insights to coach out staff to provide the best possible customer experience. 

Reach out to us to find out how we can improve your customer experience and make your call center more efficient with speech analytics.