Speech Analytics Goes Visual with Autonomy etalk

Quality monitoring and analytics specialist Autonomy etalk has added more muscle to its interaction analytics catalog by releasing a refreshed installment of its Qfiniti Explore application, which is a primary component of the company's Intelligent Contact Center (ICC) product suite. ICC features recording, coaching and training, and automated survey applications, but much of the added functionality in Qfiniti Explore Version 3.5 (generally available now) centers on enhanced trend identification and clustering capabilities. In addition to Version 3.5's ability to analyze recorded phone conversations and interactions captured across other touch points such as the Web, email or chat, the new release delivers visual elements such as cluster maps and trend graphs to arm managers with a clearer picture of customer trends and issues. More specifically, clustering displays customer communication information in a two-dimensional map, which allows the visualization of similarity and differences, according to the company. Results are ranked by conceptual similarity, which is essential to locating calls or emails that share the same meaning, even when they contain different keywords. These concepts are displayed in a visual cluster map, a functionality that Autonomy etalk believes can help spot emerging trends. "We can cluster related concepts together, helping contact center managers drill into root causes," says Roger Woolley, Autonomy etalk's senior vice president and chief marketing officer. Kathy Kuehne, the company's director of marketing, adds that the product "allows organizations to uncover trends they didn't know to search for in advance." Another tool made available by Version 3.5 is sentiment-analysis functionality, enabling companies to more precisely detect customer emotion. Autonomy scooped up etalk in 2005 in a deal valued at $70 million. This latest release is a reflection of Autonomy etalk's continued efforts to leverage the native technology of its parent company, including Autonomy's patented Intelligent Data Operation Layer (IDOL) platform for deciphering unstructured data. "Autonomy's fundamental strength in this market is in text analysis, and this release clearly plays to that," says Ri Pierce-Grove, associate analyst of technology at Datamonitor. "Globally, we are seeing an enormous amount of concentration on identifying trends and patterns in customer behavior via textual analysis, and Autonomy etalk has consistently positioned [itself] on the ability to bring those capacities into the speech analytics space." Speech analytics is the fastest-growing application in the contact center market, according to DMG Consulting, which contends that the market for speech analytics will grow by 100 percent this year, and again in 2008. Speaking to CRM magazine about DMG's "2007 Speech Analytics Market Report," Donna Fluss, president of DMG Consulting and author of the report, attributed much of the market's current and predicted surge to the products' ability to deliver actionable information--information that companies can use to strengthen their operating environments and improve the customer experience. A company receiving numerous calls about a rival's new product, for example, can pinpoint that issue and craft a marketing campaign to boost customer retention. Fluss also noted other departments within the enterprise that can capitalize on the potential of speech analytics, including sales, R&D, compliance, risk management, collections, fraud, and back-office operations. "Speech analytics structures unstructured conversations," Fluss said at the time. "There is no other application in the contact center market that does that. It's giving results that you can put to work for your company."

Related articles: Speech Analytics Is the Contact Center's Fastest Growing Tech Government agencies were among the first entities to gravitate to speech analytics applications, but the technology is gaining traction in the contact center at noteworthy rates. Autonomy Plans to Acquire Etalk The provider of enterprise infrastructure software hopes to expand into the contact center; first-quarter earnings are up. The Why Factor in Speech Analytics Don't allow the customer information that lies in recorded calls to go unreported and unnoticed--incorporating speech analytics can help improve business areas enterprisewide.

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