Speech analytics is a tool that allows you to analyze the contents of a call, enabling you to monitor and improve agent performance and customer satisfaction. In this article, we’re going to explore the best practices for using speech analytics in call centers.

With only around 11% of businesses currently using speech analytics capabilities, a large percentage of businesses have not taken the opportunity to implement a technology that can play an important role in optimizing contact center and sales operations.

For those that have already implemented speech analytics, or for those considering it, here are 10 best practices to help you get the most out of the technology.

10 Best Practices to Get the Most Out of Speech Analytics

1. Monitor and score every call 

Speech analytics tools allow you to monitor and score 100% of calls regardless of agent location. By analyzing every call, your business can make data-driven decisions to inform agent operations, sales processes and more. You can monitor the quality of the calls and assess how agents interact with customers. You can then set standards to improve contact center KPIs, such as reducing handle time and increasing customer satisfaction. 

2. Set keywords and phrases to recognize customer sentiment

Tag keywords and phrases to help you track and identify when a customer is satisfied or dissatisfied with an interaction. By tagging words like “frustrating” or “problem with X channel”, you are able to identify common pain points, and make the relevant improvements. It is also valuable to understand when and why customers are satisfied. Based on those findings, you can try to replicate those experiences to create better interactions for all customers.

3. Create structured data points from speech to inform your operations

Speech analytics allows you to automatically create structured data points from free form speech to inform operations and determine how to best communicate with customers. These data points can then be used by different parts of the business to understand product or service issues and advise changes in processes across the company.

4. Utilize speech analytics for training and quality management 

On average 98% of contact center interactions go unmonitored or unreviewed. You can use speech analytics to transcribe and score 100% of calls to increase your ability to screen for quality and compliance, giving you an unbiased and holistic understanding of performance. Through these insights, you can learn where agents may be falling short or where they’re excelling. Contact center managers can pinpoint the challenges and use the successful interactions to train and improve execution. Speech analytics can help inform training strategies to ensure consistent quality across all customer calls. 

5. Use the data to engage agents 

In addition to utilizing the insights for training and quality, you can use the data to better engage your employees. What’s the difference? Engaging your employees is more about providing them with the opportunities to grow professionally, execute consistently, and feel empowered in their work. 

Speech analytics overcomes employees’ concerns about an unfair evaluation process by automatically scoring 100% of conversations that provide objective feedback. The information is made available immediately and allows the agents to feel like they’ll be evaluated fairly and consistently. This consistency can give agents the confidence that good work will be recognized and rewarded.

6. Manage performance in real time 

Speech analytics tools allow you to analyze your agents’ performance in real time. Our SpeechIQ tool, for example, has automatic and customizable agent scorecards. These scorecards give you the ability to understand how your entire team is dealing with the delivery of key business requirements like legal statements, policy adherence, and on-brand communication standards. If things aren’t going well, you can get notified promptly and handle accordingly. 

7. Recognize sales leads

You can use the data provided by speech analytics to inform upsell and cross-sell opportunities with your sales team. Speech analytics can also be used to gather customers’ suggestions, which can be shared to make product or service improvements or influence marketing campaigns to drive sales leads.

8. Reduce agent effort on tedious stuff 

Speech analytics reduces the post-call effort normally required of human agents. The accurate speech transcription not only minimizes post-call work, but is often more accurate. You can also free up your quality managers’ time to be more strategic. They’ll be able to manually review the most important or high-risk calls and provide targeted coaching to agents.

9. Manage compliance

By monitoring, analyzing, and scoring 100% of interactions in your contact center, you can be promptly notified of regulatory risk and take action. You can also have sensitive data automatically redacted by the AI technology. 

Utilize the scorecards mentioned above to track compliance keywords to ensure agents are speaking about these sensitive topics appropriately. 

You can also use the call recordings to capture consent. 

10. Unlock potential across your teams with data-driven processes

With speech analytics reporting tools you can understand and address broader customer and agent experience trends in your business. Reduce risk, empower your agents, and scale your business with the insights provided by a speech analytics tool.

Top 3 customer service speech analytics tools

When it comes to providing excellent customer service, speech analytics is a powerful tool that can help you identify and address issues in real time. By analyzing phone conversations, you can quickly identify emerging trends and problem areas so you can take action to improve the customer experience.

There are a number of different speech analytics tools on the market, so how do you know which one is right for your business? To help you make the best decision, here’s a list of the top three customer service speech analytics tools:

Sentiment analysis

Go beyond just words and phrases by using advanced AI to understand both the agent and customer sentiment for every call. This type of speech analytics tool can help you understand the emotions expressed in customer phone calls. By analyzing the sentiment of callers, you can identify areas where customers are feeling frustrated or angry so you can take steps to address their concerns.

Automated scoring

Another useful speech analytics tool is automated scoring. By using automated scorecards, you can leverage the power of speech analytics to evaluate 100 percent of an agent’s interactions. 

Unlike spreadsheet templates, automated scorecards offer considerable time savings for contact center managers by allowing them to zero in on relevant conversations. Data and feedback can then be pulled into a dashboard for a more comprehensive view of agent performance, allowing managers to quickly assess the quality of customer service calls and identify areas for improvement.

Contact center analytics

This type of speech analytics tool provides a comprehensive view of your contact center operations. By analyzing data from all customer calls, you can identify trends and issues so you can make changes to improve the customer experience.

Choosing the right speech analytics tool for your business can be a challenge, but it’s worth taking the time to find the right one.

How to start using speech analytics in your call/contact center

If you’re not already using speech analytics in your call center, there are a few things you need to do to get started. Consider these speech analytics best practices when it comes to tool implementation.

Step 1: Choose the right speech analytics tool.

As we mentioned above, there are a number of different options on the market, so take some time to research the different features and find the one that’s right for your business. Consider the size of your contact center including how many agents you have and what your call volume is.

Step 2: Integrate the speech analytics tool with your call center software.

This process will vary depending on the tool you choose, so be sure to consult the documentation or contact the vendor for help. If the speech analytics tool you choose doesn’t integrate well with your existing systems, it’ll actually waste your contact center’s time and resources instead of providing value.

Step 3: Train your staff on how to use the speech analytics tool.

Speech analytics training is the key to ensuring that your team is able to get the most out of the tool and identify issues in customer conversations. Again, if you invest in a tool that doesn’t get utilized, you’re ultimately just wasting money. Providing agents with the tools they need to succeed includes training them properly. Whichever software provider you choose to work with, inquire about their product training or eLearning program.

By following these steps, you can start using speech analytics in your call center and improve the customer experience.