The Global Association for Contact Center Best Practices & Networking

Speech analytics has become the next step for contact centers looking to supplement their quality monitoring solutions with more powerful technology. In today’s economy, contact centers provide an essential differentiation point for competitive industries as customers decide between companies with similar products based on the level of customer service and the ability to resolve seemingly intractable problems in one interaction.

As customer expectations increase, speech analytics helps meet them by increasing awareness of agent interactions and resolving potential problem areas before they spread and create lasting damage.

The power of speech analytics can be evaluated in two major areas: the breadth of its impact on contact center operations and the nature of its implementation.

Scope of Speech Analytics

Speech analytics increases knowledge and control of contact center operations for larger organizations by helping to analyze an otherwise unmanageable number of conversations. It can address critical issues such as script adherence, achievement of campaign goals and agent skills. Management can set key performance indicators (KPIs) for agents and use speech analytics to evaluate their fulfilment.

In addition to improving measurement of agent output, speech analytics can also evaluate customer input such as opinions of the company’s products, frequently asked questions and other reoccurring issues. Speech analytics can also help to evaluate the overall success of a campaign and help management make adjustments in a timely manner.

The powerful nature of speech analytics derives from its ability to automate categorization of calls, but its overall capability varies depending on the form of speech analytics used.

Types of Speech Analytics

Speech analytics systems can be divided into the three technologies used to categorize calls. The most fundamental, keyword spotting, is dependent on the words or phrases selected by contact center managers as essential to evaluating customer interactions. These words can be used to find relevant calls for best practices training or to evaluate almost any issue spotted by certain specific phrases. Configuration and set up of keyword spotting is generally affordable for medium-sized contact centers and will quickly generate a positive return on investment.

Phonetic indexing provides a more powerful form of speech analytics, but it requires more detailed processing to create a database of phonemes. It uses much more disk space, but it allows faster and more extensive searches once the translations have been compiled.

Finally, speech-to-text transcription represents the most sophisticated type of speech analytics. The system must be trained to recognize specific words, and it requires a high level of accuracy. This makes for an expensive set-up period, but once the technology has been implemented, it allows ongoing text mining as your needs evolve.

Conclusion

One day, speech analytics will include even more powerful features such as age or gender spotting. But for many organizations, it is essential today to streamline customer service and provide a competitive edge.

About Katrin Henkel:
Katrin Henkel has worked for ASC telecom AG since 2002 at senior positions in international sales and marketing. Prior to that, she spent eight years at Siemens and served in their call center department as a controller for international sales. She received a business degree from the University of Applied Science in Zurich, Switzerland.

About ASC:
ASC is a global provider of solutions to record, analyze and evaluate multimedia-based communications. ASC’s solutions reveal vital information, enabling organizations to considerably improve their value creation: contact centers enhance customer service, efficiently deploy staff and increase productivity. Financial institutions fulfill documentation requirements, achieve a higher level of legal security and reduce costs. First responders and public safety organizations enhance reactivity in emergency situations; therefore, ASC provides an important contribution to public safety.