Understanding the Nature of Speech Analytics

There’s a digital solution to almost every problem nowadays. One of those solutions that have proven to be imperative to any business that wants to focus on excellent customer service is through speech analytics transcription.

In this article, we take a look at exactly what speech analytics is, what it does, how to use it and the benefits of investing in a speech analytics tool.

Table of Contents

What Is Speech Analytics Software?

Speech analytics is a form of speech recognition software that is primarily used within call centres. Despite emails, social media and live chat bots being increasingly popular with the public, customer service phone calls are still the most popular form of communication between customers and their providers.

With the use of a speech recognition tool, such as speech analytics, it can quickly produce reports on customer interactions and provide supervisors and other senior staff with extensive data in a comprehensive format that can be turned into actionable insights to improve the experience for both customers and agents.

How Does Speech Analytics Work?

Every provider of speech analytics will have slightly different features, however, there are some simple basics that every package should come with.

Firstly is the speech to text tool. This software will transcribe conversations between agents and customers and create readable documents, it can even recognise who is speaking, even when one party may be speaking over another.

The other basis of all speech analytics is based on grammar. Predetermined words and phrases can be programmed into speech analytics software and when these are spoken by any party, it can be grouped, flagged and reported to managers.

This could be anything from ensuring compliance methods to finding out what customers are currently needing or demanding.

How To Use Speech Analytics

How to use speech analytics all depends on the results you are expecting from it. If quality assurance and compliance are top of the list, then the main focus should be on fine-tuning and accuracy of the software before implementing it.

Once this is mastered, the software should easily flag any call agents who may not be following the correct procedures and managers can take steps to increase training.

In the initial stages of this, there may be errors within the results, but by taking the time to accurately declare these as false positives and putting the time in to analyse everything, within a few months, you’ll be confident that the system will produce exactly what you want.

If you are wanting speech analytics to help improve the business processes, such as understanding why customers are calling and any recurring issues or queries, this is more an ad-hoc task.

Using an in-house analyst, you can programme speech analytics to query language within the software and tailor it to the exact nature of the business and results you are looking for.

Any good speech analytics software vendor will help you get set up with your new systems and can show you exactly how to programme and use these tools to get the exact results you want, so if you are a complete novice with these kinds of tools, you don’t have to be concerned.

The Benefits of Speech Analytics

There are many benefits of speech analytics software and these all vary between sectors and their own personal needs, however, there are some common themes within the reasons to make the investment.

Firstly, managers can identify agents who are struggling, this could be staff providing the wrong information to not being able to handle irate customers appropriately.

This allows managers to take the right steps before quality is badly impacted and even reduce staff churn. The most confident an agent is, the most likely they are to stay in the role.

Secondly, customer insights can be extensively reported on. This could be a wide range of requirements such as products or services not currently on offer but have high demand, to issues with current services and products that are frequently being experienced.

Action can be swiftly taken to provide customers with what they want and need, help to increase revenue and reduce customer attrition.

Lastly, businesses can identify process, product and service issues much easier and even identify certain aspects that could lead to the defect of the competition.

Do You Need Speech Analytics?

This is a simple element to analyse. If you want to know why your customers are calling your agents, are your agents performing to the best of their ability and do you need to know the impact of these calls on customer satisfaction and relationship?

If so, then speech analytics is the tool you need for your business.

Any good contact centre should be seeking every avenue to improve their customer satisfaction levels and analytics software that recognises speech patterns is one of the best ways to do so.