Speech Analytics Enters Its Next Act—Maturity
A few speech analytics vendors have created packages to address specific business opportunities like customer churn identification, improving sales/collections, first-contact resolution, and other targeted uses. This is a step in the right direction, but such targeted uses are primarily intended to give users a lexicon/library of search terms and phrases to help them get started. The next step is for speech analytics to enter the world of data science and create algorithms to identify a variety of enterprise issues. DMG expects to see these types of capabilities emerge, although they won’t necessarily come from the speech analytics vendors. The point is that there is a lot more that can be done with speech and text analytics, and this sector presents substantial opportunity for both vendors and end users.
ANALYTICS-ENABLED QUALITY ASSURANCE
Analytics-enabled quality assurance solutions hold great promise for enterprises, agents, and customers. AQA solutions automate contact center quality assurance/quality management (QA/QM), a process that has not changed substantially in the past 30 years. QA is necessary for many reasons. Enterprises invest a significant amount of resources to monitor and evaluate how well their contact center agents handle interactions and adhere to internal policies and procedures. It’s essential to monitor what agents are doing and for them to know that there is always a chance that management is watching. In addition, with many contact centers, QA is the only way to gain an understanding of why people are contacting them. And QA is often the most effective method for providing timely coaching to agents to improve service quality and increase agent satisfaction and retention.
The current QA process is people-intensive, which is expensive, inherently subjective, and, with most companies, statistically irrelevant because too few interactions are evaluated. While speech analytics—the underlying technology in an AQA program—cannot understand everything agents say or write and does require some human intervention, it can deliver statistically relevant findings and is much more likely to identify issues than the current QA approach. Despite these benefits, few enterprises have adopted AQA. This is because AQA solutions are complex and considered ineffective and untrustworthy. But with the introduction of machine learning, DMG believes these solutions will improve enough that companies will feel comfortable using them.
AI AND INTERACTION ANALYTICS
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the buzziest term in the technology arena. Most IT vendors in various sectors—speech and text analytics vendors among them—are claiming to provide AI-enabled solutions. But few if any vendors offer real AI, although interaction analytics in particular will benefit greatly from it. Imagine a speech or text analytics solution that identifies and quantifies the impact of a new trend without human intervention. Machine learning is starting to be used to accomplish this task, and while these capabilities currently require human intervention, DMG expects a new round of investments in AI that will make significant contributions and improvements in speech and text analytics solutions in the next two to three years.
FINAL THOUGHTS
As always, potential customers should be aware that all speech and text analytics solutions are not equal and require careful evaluation to ensure they have the desired features and capabilities. Speech and text analytics solutions provide quantifiable benefits to companies that invest in the right solutions as well as the resources and best practices to build an effective program. These solutions are highly valuable on a stand-alone basis, and their benefits increase as the technology and findings are incorporated into third-party applications and processes.
Donna Fluss is president of DMG Consulting. For more than two decades she has helped emerging and established companies develop and deliver outstanding customer experiences. A recognized visionary author and speaker, Fluss drives strategic transformation and innovation throughout the service industry. She provides strategic and practical counsel for enterprises, solution providers, and the investment community.