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A Digital Transformation Strategy that Utilizes Speech Analytics Enhances the Customer Experience
Today’s digital transformation environment offers seemingly endless opportunities to empower individuals and improve outcomes. A digital ecosystem that includes speech analytics is one way to harness technology to create transformative customer service experiences that build brand loyalty. In this post, we delve into the benefits of using customizable speech analytics to improve all aspects of the customer experience.
Even though big data has been a part of the business lexicon for over a decade, many companies do not take advantage of the data-driven insights that could give them a competitive edge. Much of the richest data points are only available in an unstructured format. Unlike structured data, unstructured data aren’t readily available in a searchable configuration like a database. Because they are not easily accessible, unstructured data require more effort to extract and analyze.
Unstructured data comprise between 80% and 90% of all data produced, making them an incredibly valuable asset for improving performance in all areas. This is particularly true in call centers. The ubiquitous recording of calls for quality assurance is essential, but it must be accompanied by effective data analysis to make sense of the interactions and inform recommendations for improvement.
That’s where digital transformation comes in with access to customer experience insights using advanced data analytics. When brands have access to interaction and predictive analytics, they can truly lead from a customer-centric standpoint. They gain a complete view of the entire customer journey, as well as the capacity to retrieve deep, granular insights into what is influencing the customer experience, why it’s happening, and how to improve outcomes.
Manual data extraction is generally cost-prohibitive and inefficient. Fortunately, business process outsourcing (BPO) companies like iQor with a vast digital ecosystem harness advances in artificial intelligence (AI)-powered solutions to analyze copious amounts of data and put them to good use. Speech analytics, like iQor’s cutting-edge proprietary platform (VALDI) developed by our in-house data scientists, can mine all recorded contact center calls and turn their content into actionable data. We, in turn, use this data to elevate employee and customer experiences while improving outcomes for clients to create smiles throughout the customer service journey.
What Is Speech Analytics in Customer Service?
Speech analytics is a type of digital technology based on machine learning that excavates human speech and text. As a managed services provider of customer engagement and technology-enabled BPO solutions, iQor has developed a proprietary speech analytics platform that uses cloud computing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to mine every available recorded omnichannel interaction between agents and customers.
As part of iQor’s digital technology ecosystem for CX solutions, our speech analytics platform is delivered as a service uniquely tailored to each client’s individual and evolving needs. We convert treasure troves of information into usable data to drive important decisions throughout the customer journey. Our customizations include features such as:
- Personalized speech analytics queries that empower our teams to deep-dive on each call.
- Capabilities to identify agents in need of support.
- Pinpointing recurring topics.
- Determining necessary adjustments to scripts, protocols, and coaching interventions.
In contrast, commercial off-the-shelf speech analytics tools offer standard analytics capabilities marketed to a general audience; personalizing these tools can be impossible, costly, and/or time-consuming. While helpful, a one-size-fits-all approach to speech analytics doesn’t produce the same level of interaction analyses personalized to the individual needs of a business.
iQor’s custom CX solutions include omnichannel customer interaction analytics that equips call center teams to uncover the trends driving customer calls, which can provide significant value for the client and augment the customer experience. Additionally, custom speech analytics facilitates the identification of potential friction points or bottlenecks in the customer experience and helps teams evaluate contact center agent compliance and performance across all avenues of omnichannel engagement.
Best Uses of Speech Analytics in Call Centers
Voice analytics has numerous use cases in customer service. A catalyst that inspires data-driven decision-making to improve training techniques for individual agents, speech analytics provides actionable insights that increase business value. The following are common use cases for speech analytics in call centers.
Increased customer satisfaction
The customer experience reigns supreme in a contact center. Customer interaction analytics can clarify what customers want when they call, the reasons for repeat calls, how agents can better meet customer needs, and what factors lead to fantastic interactions with customers. In addition, natural language processing can analyze customer sentiment and help call center agents anticipate when customers are likely to abandon a brand and what measures they can take to prevent that.
Individualized agent training
A speech analytics tool can help quantify the performance of individual agents and identify any gaps in their customer support training. Supervisors can then provide targeted coaching and training that hones in on specific issues, eliminating the need to spend time and money on unnecessary training.
Workforce optimization
A lot goes into staffing a contact center with trained and qualified agents based on the anticipated call volume; utilizing speech analytics is a proven way to improve operational efficiencies throughout the workforce. By classifying calls, uncovering root causes, using predictive analytics, and exposing patterns, speech analytics technology can enable streamlined customer interactions with agents to increase efficiency and optimize customer care.
How Speech Analytics Improves the Customer Experience
Purposefully utilizing speech analytics elevates the contact center as the customer experience hub. Insights gained from the contact center can improve the entire customer experience in the following ways.
Correlate cause and effect to improve interactions
Customizable speech analytics solutions like iQor’s, help connect specific reasons for various outcomes. Identifying the source of unsatisfactory outcomes facilitates changes that can eliminate them and improve the customer experience. Likewise, identifying the practices that result in positive outcomes empowers supervisors to encourage more agents to adopt them through coaching. Integrating business intelligence insights into coaching and training sessions improves performance, employee satisfaction, and retention while also providing positive outcomes throughout the customer journey.
Improve customer retention
Analyzing customer sentiment can reveal the root causes of customer dissatisfaction. Using AI-powered speech analytics, we can pinpoint which customers are most at risk for churn and how agents can effectively head it off. If a customer uses language associated with churn, the agent can employ loyalty incentives to encourage customer retention. The language associated with customer loyalty can also be identified and promoted to offer insight into customer perceptions and help create more satisfying experiences that make customers smile.
Provide insight into omnichannel experiences
Integrating the omnichannel experience into a comprehensive digital transformation strategy reduces the siloed effect associated with some customer service offerings; using speech analytics can help identify customer preferences and expectations across channels. Understanding why customers prefer specific channels allows the customer service team to provide the resources they need to engage customers in the manner they prefer. In addition, speech analytics provides actionable insight into which channels and resources produce the best ROI in terms of customer satisfaction to deliver the best customer experiences.
Give agents a framework for empathetic listening
Some customers are already unhappy by the time they place a call to a contact center. Speech analytics technology identifies words and phrases that indicate when customers are unhappy and at risk of churning. They can also identify specific words and phrases that generate a positive response in unhappy customers. When contact center agents have this insight, they can convey an empathetic response that makes the customer feel valued, reinforces their loyalty to the brand, and generates a positive outcome.
Real-time analytics can take this concept even further through predictive customer service by notifying agents when a call is heading in the wrong direction. Agents can be prompted to use the most effective measures to rescue the call and deliver a meaningful and positive customer experience.
Key Features of a Speech Analytics Platform
An interaction analytics solution like iQor’s customizable proprietary speech analytics provides insight throughout the customer journey to see the complete picture and inform best practices and improvements. Some key features of speech analytics in a digital ecosystem include the following.
Omnichannel insight
Speech analytics technology that provides advanced data processing and multidimensional analyses across channels provides the most valuable insights. iQor’s proprietary speech analytics technology, known as VALDI, delivers these insights in a single robust platform that makes collecting the data throughout the omnichannel experience quick and effective. In addition, this data provides relevant KPIs to target for optimization.
Easy integration
A customer analytics solution should easily integrate into the existing technology framework and be customizable to adapt to domain-specific language and legacy systems for each client. Additionally, the solution must be configured to help achieve current short- and long-term goals as well as respond to changing needs.
Searchable system
Automated reports are useful when trying to glean valuable insights from data. A fully customizable solution like iQor’s can readily search all customer interactions. Accurate call transcription and detailed, searchable information on all characteristics of an interaction are essential to optimizing quality assurance procedures.
Customizable tracking
Another proven invaluable aspect of customer analytics is the ability to analyze and flag interactions for topics of interest to inform protocols and reduce risk. This attribute provides insight into trends and patterns, generates reports on micro issues, and sets up automatic alerts based on evolving needs.
Experience the Best in Speech Analytics
iQor’s proprietary speech analytics platform, VALDI, uses a combination of cloud computing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to extract every customer interaction for actionable data insights delivered as a custom solution.
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.
Bartosz Golembnik is vice president of IT data sciences at iQor.
Anna Perkowska is a programmer analyst of data sciences at iQor.
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