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Discover How a Digital BPO Provides Access to Natural Language Speech Analytics Used to Enhance the Customer Experience
The modern customer experience includes digital technology with channels like email, chatbots, social media, intelligent voice response, and more.
By making all the technology within a digital ecosystem accessible and intuitive, we can empower staff to blend human and digital elements to create amazing customer experiences.
As a managed services provider of customer engagement and technology-enabled BPO solutions, iQor knows that technology must offer robust capabilities within a framework that is easy to use by customers in need of support as well as by frontline contact center employees delivering that support.
In this blog post, we reveal how a powerful and easily accessible search language puts seemingly infinite capabilities of speech analytics into the hands of frontline managers. We look at how a straightforward search language enables supervisors to analyze specific details of interest from any recorded customer interaction (voice or text) at a moment’s notice. A simple and direct query language known as T-DSL (Topic-Domain-Specific Language), explained further below, empowers them to create the search parameters themselves without involving technical staff to gain valuable insight into the customer’s experience.
This capability gives unlimited access to the information operations teams need to drill down into the details of customer interactions in no time. It can yield powerful insights that help brands better understand their customers’ experiences and help customer service teams address opportunities to improve touchpoints throughout the customer journey.
Easy Access to Speech Analytics
Speech analytics is an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered digital technology that mines human speech and text from recorded contact center interactions to reveal actionable data that helps create smiles throughout the customer experience journey. Interaction analytics is part of a comprehensive digital transformation strategy to garner customer experience insights using advanced data analytics.
At iQor, we deploy a proprietary speech analytics platform called VALDI, that uses cloud computing and artificial intelligence (especially machine learning and natural language processing) to analyze 100% of the recorded interactions between agents and the customers they support.
A digital ecosystem that includes a robust speech analytics platform such as this gives insights into the voice of your customer to help improve the overall customer experience. In doing so, we collect business intelligence that can be harnessed to make decisions to positively impact your business.
But in order for speech analytics to be effective, it must be accessible to those who are closest to your customers. Performing any type of query has to be quick and simple and needs to produce useful data that can be easily interpreted to inform actions.
5 Benefits of Customized Searches in Speech Analytics
Speech analytics technology can be used to search voice and text recordings of customer interactions for specific content based on your brand’s needs. This includes analytics on a range of topics such as script adherence, the introduction of new product lines, and the effectiveness of support during natural disasters. Utilizing speech analytics with a powerful query language to search all recorded interactions within seconds enables operations teams to drill down into any topic of interest because they don’t need to identify keywords and topics in advance. This also yields tremendous results for quality assurance and risk mitigation.
One way to accomplish this is through customizable keyword-based queries that tag customer interactions related to the topic and prompt more data analysis.
Through a simple and direct user interface based on clean UX design, operations supervisors can perform searches by keywords and natural-language data filters in response to changing needs.
This capability to home in on specific opportunities through speech analytics empowers program supervisors and leaders to make adjustments that can quickly improve the customer experience, from coaching agents on particular areas of need to adjusting scripts and updating training protocols. The results offer brands actionable insight into the customer journey at any given time to ensure optimal customer experiences.
What follows are five benefits of the powerful search language in our VALDI speech analytics platform.
- Enable Simple and Complex Searches in Seconds
Keeping UX at the forefront, iQor teams developed a powerful query language to improve analytical capabilities and more accurately identify specific events in customer interactions. With no expert knowledge required, the language equips customer service operations teams with the ability to perform any type of analysis at a moment’s notice. From words spoken to the context in which they were said, the search language can understand a multitude of search parameters all with the ability to filter out unnecessary details so operations teams can quickly find the specific conversation details they need.
The 60,000+ searches conducted at iQor each month across customer care programs extend beyond general topics in voice or text and include sentiment analysis, and other topics that illuminate all aspects of the customer experience.
The straightforward yet powerful T-DSL (Topic-Domain-Specific Language) that iQor developers created addresses the need to narrow speech analytics searches by domain (voice or text) in a way that customer service supervisors can manage without needing programming skills.
This is a unique and specially designed capability that improves upon previous speech analytics processes that required special programming knowledge to develop and test search queries.
The simple and accessible T-DSL search language puts power in the hands of frontline managers so they can search customer interactions very quickly in myriad ways. This is a unique benefit of iQor’s VALDI speech analytics platform compared to commercial off-the-shelf tools that aren’t easily customizable or searchable without intervention by technical staff and additional cost.
These analytical capabilities also enable quality assurance. For example, it’s easy to verify if customer service agents are following a script by checking to make sure they resolved all of the customer’s issues before ending the call. The operations team can simply search: LAST 30: “Anything else I can help you with” to make sure the representative ended the call correctly and the customer was satisfied.
- Identify the Context Behind the Words
Before the T-DSL intuitive search language, it was easy to discover what was said during an interaction between a customer and a customer service representative. It was challenging, however, to identify the metadata behind what was said—to identify who said it, when they said it, and check the sentiment and emotion behind what they said. All this data around the words that are actually spoken provide important details that help supervisors understand what was happening on the call with this customer.
Access to metadata like this would previously involve writing complicated queries that are inaccessible to average users who aren’t data scientists. Now, with T-DSL, the average operations user can not only perform intuitive searches themselves, but they can also save their searches as bookmarks and share them with other users to help them perform the same search at any time. Users can also search each utterance on a call separately to gain further insights into the metadata and better understand the customer and employee experience.
- Use the Search Function With Ease
An intuitive and flexible user experience is important for ensuring frontline operations managers can efficiently use the search functionality of speech analytics to gain valuable insight into the customer experience. This need guided the digital CX team at iQor as they created the T-DSL UX and also led them to create intuitive directions, clear examples, and videos modeling how to use the search function. By educating contact center users on the capabilities of the speech analytics platform and the intuitive nature of how to use this search function, frontline managers can perform simple and complex searches based on their varying needs.
- Sort Interactions by Speaker: Customer or Agent
According to operations teams, one of the most useful functionalities of the intuitive and customizable T-DSL search language is the ability to divide sentences according to words spoken by the customer and words spoken by the customer service representative across any industry, whether banking, telecom, retail, or another. Because agents often repeat words spoken by customers in order to confirm the accuracy of their request, the searches now enable operations users to specify whose word utterances they want to analyze (e.g., customer or agent) so they can identify accurate results.
For example, if you want to verify customer satisfaction, operations teams can search for specific phrases that express positive customer sentiment. Previously, such searches were not precise enough because they also identified phrases spoken by agents. Now it is possible to limit the results to customer expressions as so: CLIENT: “I appreciate that” | “Thank you kindly” | “That’s awesome”. (Note: in T-DSL “client” refers to the end customer.)
This functionality is also helpful at the launch of a new promotion or program when you want to know how many customers are calling to ask about it. With the ability to limit search results to only those that occurred at the beginning of the call and were spoken by the customer, operations teams can easily and quickly provide that information by creating a simple search such as: FIRST 30: CLIENT: [promotion name].
Similarly, if you’re looking to increase sales and want to verify that customer care agents are asking customers whether they want anything else from your catalogue towards the end of the call, operations teams can simply search: LAST 180: AGENT: “Would you like to order anything else”.
The search language also enables users to see how many times the word or phrase was uttered by the customer and how many times the agent said it.
- Search for Dependent Phrases Concurrently
iQor’s speech analytics search language also enables operations staff to identify multiple sequential phrases within the same search, making it possible to find answers to questions posed during the customer interaction. For example, operations users can set up a search to find customers who indicate they don’t use a brand’s mobile app simply by typing: PRECEDE: “Do you use our mobile app” FOLLOW: “No”.
Client Example: T-DSL Provides Targeted Business Insights in Retail Industry
To better understand the advantages of an accessible T-DSL, here’s one example of the direct benefits the straightforward search language provides to a client in the retail industry.
Through ongoing open communication with iQor operations leaders, the online retail company can specify targeted T-DSL searches they want the operations analysts to perform to provide specific insights into different areas of their business and customer behaviors. Likewise, as a trusted partner that knows the retailer’s priorities, the iQor team can also proactively search topics that may be of interest to the client.
For example, a new state mandate required shipping charges for purchases sent to Colorado (the client was previously able to offer free shipping to this location). To provide the best customer experience, the online retail client needed to know how often customers inquired and insisted for free shipping to Colorado. In response, an iQor operations analyst created a T-DSL query to search all calls where customers asked for free shipping to Colorado with this definition: Colorado + “free shipping”.
The query identified 16 calls out of a call volume of approximately 10,000 recordings in VALDI. After performing their analysis, the operations team confirmed that agents were compliant with their services and script adherence.
Operations shared their speech analysis findings with the online retail client who appreciated the insight that allowed them to learn if customers were requesting free shipping to Colorado. In fact, the client asked the operations team to regularly monitor calls on this topic—which is simple with the use of a saved T-DSL query, especially given that all search criteria may be preserved as a bookmark and shared with other members of the operations team.
As a result of these insights, the client updated their policy so agents can apply additional discounts to purchases made by customers shipping to Colorado, saving customers the same amount as shipping costs and enhancing the customer experience. The T-DSL query has since been updated to not only detect Colorado + “free shipping” but also IF the agent is remembering to offer the appropriate brand discount to avoid losing a sale.
“We are very satisfied with VALDI, particularly the T-DSL tool because it’s user-friendly, efficient, and effective in helping us meet the needs of the operations team, the client, and most importantly, the customers.” – iQor Quality Analyst and VALDI User
A Unified Language Makes Speech Analytics Simple
A unified and straightforward query language with a clean UX design for operations managers to search any recorded details from contacts with customers—whether calls, transcriptions, and, in the future, even chats and emails—makes it possible to identify information of interest within milliseconds. This empowers frontline supervisors with the information they need to coach agents in meaningful ways so they can create smiles throughout the customer experience. It also provides insights that improve quality assurance, reduce risk, and give brands like yours a better-informed look into the customer journey.
Experience the Best in Speech Analytics
iQor’s proprietary speech analytics platform uses a combination of cloud computing and artificial intelligence (especially machine learning and natural language processing) to extract every customer interaction for actionable data insights delivered as a custom solution with outsourced CX services.
iQor is ideally suited to help brands create amazing customer experiences. iQor provides a comprehensive suite of full-service and self-service scalable offerings that are purpose-built to deliver enterprise-quality CX.
Our award-winning CX services include:
- A global presence with 40+ contact centers across 10 countries.
- A CX private cloud that maximizes performance and scales rapidly across multiple geographies on short notice.
- A partnership approach where we deploy agents and C-level executives to help maximize your ROI.
- The perfect blend of intelligent automation for scale and performance coupled with an irresistible culture comprised of people who love to delight your customers.
- Virtual and hybrid customer support options to connect with customers seamlessly, when and where they want.
- The ability to launch a customer support program quickly, even when you need thousands of agents ready to support your customers.
- A best-in-class workforce management team and supporting technology to create a centralized organization that can better serve your entire business.
iQor helps brands deliver the world’s most sought-after customer experiences. Interested in learning more about the iQor difference? If you’re ready to start a conversation with a customer experience expert, contact us to learn about how we can help you create more smiles.
Olga Rycek is manager of information services at iQor.
Monika Starczewska is director of analytics at iQor.
Maciej Malesinski is senior manager of IT at iQor.
Irena Michalewicz is manager of information services at iQor.
They are part of the VALDI speech analytics team.
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