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How A Quality Team Uses Speech Analytics To Deliver Business Insights

by Matt Rocco, President, Etech Global Services - July 24, 2017

How a Quality Team Uses Speech Analytics to Deliver Business Insights

 
Always an integral part of any business model, improved customer service is gaining increasing importance as a factor affecting customer retention rates. Most customers are no longer willing to overlook an unsatisfactory interaction in favor of other reasons to stay with the company. The instant availability of both product and information via the internet facilitates the migration of customers to companies that build a reputation for delivering a stellar customer experience.
 
As companies strive to perfect their service levels, speech analytics can be the key to understanding the way forward. Analyzing customer interaction patterns can allow your business to identify customer needs and issues.
 
Customer Interaction Data Is a Valuable Resource
 
Today, most companies primarily interact with their customers through their contact center, where representatives take orders, provide updates and deal with customers’ problems and complaints. Capturing and analyzing the content of these conversations can provide a large range of insights to help businesses refine and adapt customer service techniques.
 
Honing Your Representatives’ Technique
 
Analyzing data from contact centers can help managers understand how current techniques and scripts affect customer satisfaction. Scrutinizing customer responses can lead to identifying which parts are effective and which could benefit from changes. In turn, this information can trigger improvements on two fronts: representative training and relevant standard operating procedure.
 
Speech analysis can reveal that some representatives fail to adhere to scripts or procedures. It can also show which agents consistently perform better than others in providing satisfactory resolutions and retaining customers. If the latter results from going off-script, managers may consider adopting standard protocols. On the other hand, if representatives show a pattern of deviating from effective scripts, it may be time to consider upgrading the training approach.
 
Refining Your Procedures
 
Conversely, having a complete data set of customer interactions at your fingertips can help you adjust scripts and standard operating protocol. You can identify the most successful agents with the highest rates of satisfied customers. An analysis of these interactions can show you what these agents are doing differently from everyone else.
 
Analytics Deliver Precise and Complete Data
 
The completeness of the data also allows you to pinpoint exactly the juncture when a customer with a complaint became placated or when a customer became upset. While certainly there exists plenty of advice on handling customers and even particular customer demographics, speech analytics offers a new opportunity for developing an intensely fact-based approach.
 
Understanding the Problem
 
Sometimes the problem lies with the script or the company policy agents must follow. Analyzing interactions can help you see if customers, for example, are becoming frustrated with frequent transfers or any other aspects of the experience. Sometimes you may learn that a perfectly valid approach you used does not play well with many of your customers. For example, while some customers may appreciate a lengthy expression of regret for their problem, others may feel annoyed and just want a solution.
 
Tracking agent performance via analytics can help supervisors understand problem areas as well as reasons for success. With this technology, they can also provide instant feedback to agents and potentially salvage a difficult conversation.
 
Expanding and Targeting Up-sells and Cross-sells
 
Upselling and cross-selling techniques can also improve through an effective use of speech analytics. Understanding trends in customer responses to a range of techniques can allow businesses to develop an optimal approach. This presents a serious advantage, as using the wrong technique in this context is not neutral. An upselling approach that annoys the customer can cause him or her never to return.
 
Conversations with customers can also put you on the track to developing new opportunities for upselling and cross-selling. You can better understand whether your customers could benefit from a specific product or upgrade. You can also get ideas as to what type of promotional event would be most effective for your base.
 
Personalizing Interactions
 
Tracking customer data, including interactions with company agents, can help businesses develop personalized approaches. In an age where the ads in your browser target recent searches and purchase patterns, a one-size-fits-all approach in person-to-person interactions often fall short in delivering customer loyalty and satisfaction. Being able to see a customer’s data profile can help agents tailor their responses and offer upsells and cross-sells based on the individual customer’s needs.
 
Getting it Right the First Time
 
Repeat calls are another area where speech data can improve efficiency and satisfaction. Handling multiple calls to resolve one issue takes up representatives’ time and results in increased costs for the business. At the same time, having to make repeat calls to deal with the same issue understandably increases customers’ frustration and detracts from their experience, decreasing the chances of retention. Businesses can use analytics to develop optimally effective resolution protocols, cutting down on repeat calls that waste resources. Providing easy ways for customers to get resolution for their issues can increase satisfaction and cement your company’s reputation for great service.
 
Satisfied Customers Are Loyal Customers
 
Today, many companies rely more than ever on reputation, which spreads at the speed of light. Customers share their experiences not just with friends and family, but with the whole internet via a plethora of review sites. Thus, customer satisfaction is a key not just retaining customers but also expanding a company’s base.
 
Satisfied customers represent not just an increased revenue stream but also a serious reduction in cost. Generally, it is far more expensive to attract new customers than to retain existing ones. Speech analytics technology further cuts the cost of both these actions.
 
Analytics as Effective, Low-Cost Market Research
 
In addition to improving customer interactions, an analytics tool can be invaluable in suggesting your product’s further direction. Often, businesses allocate serious spending to efforts such as focus groups, surveys and other types of market research. The problem with these methods is not just their cost and involved logistics. The data you collect this way is representative information that you extrapolate to the rest of your customer base. Thus, the ultimate results can be hit-or-miss.
 
Simply using technology to track and analyze every customer interaction can provide valuable feedback for your product. You can learn what customers like about it, what they would wish to improve, what they feel is unnecessary. This approach has the advantage of representing a complete set of customers who bought and used the product. Marketing and production departments can use this information as a guide for further product development and placement.
 
Customizing Your Technology
 
Analytics software packages should be customized to your business needs for the highest effectiveness. Understanding the full range of benefits this technology can deliver should help you get the most out of it. In addition, it can be helpful to formulate your goals for its use and the questions you want it to answer for you.
 
An effective deployment of analytics can help you train representatives better and improve your scripts and protocols. This technology offers several methods to increase customer loyalty by raising the level of satisfaction from each interaction. You can tailor conversations to an individual customer’s history and preferences and offer targeted up-sells and cross-sells. The data you capture and analyze can also aid in guiding the development of future product modifications and innovations by identifying precisely your customer base’s needs, preferences and problems.
 
Satisfaction with the product you sell and with interactions with your representatives generally determine whether or not customers will stay with you. Incorporating speech analytics into your business operations can render substantial benefits in improving and customizing both of these aspects.
 
 
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