In a consumer landscape filled with fleeting and anonymous touchpoints, calls are one of the most direct engagements you’ll have with your customer. Speech analytics enables you to take calls one step further, by analysing inbound and outbound calls to extract valuable insights that improve business performance.
In this blog, we’ll explore the future of speech analytics. By defining speech analytics and outlining its benefits, we can start to understand how speech analytics transforms contact centre operations and boosts your bottom line.
What is speech analytics?
Before we discuss the future of speech analytics, what exactly is it? Speech analytics involves monitoring, analysing, and extracting data from inbound and outbound customer calls, using a specific type of software. They help you answer questions such as:
- What did they call about?
- How do they feel about your product?
- Did they make a payment?
- Was a competitor mentioned?
- Were they happier at the end of the call than at the beginning?
- How to predict the outcome of a call in the future?
For contact centres, implementing call monitoring and speech analytics into your operations helps you unlock insights at scale, tracking every call in and out effortlessly.
What are the benefits of speech analytics?
Speech analytics software helps you track specific keywords, identify conversational trends, and analyse customer sentiment, all with a view to providing a better experience for your customers and maximising revenue generation.
Call centre businesses using speech analytics can also massively reduce manual tasks related to call reviews and outcomes. In fact, manual analysis of calls captures just 2% of all customer interactions. This is far from a meaningful sample and prevents you from making data-driven decisions.
The benefits of adding speech analytics to your tech stack include:
- Perfect agent scripts and upskill your contact centre agents faster.
- Reduce handling and wait times without compromising on call quality.
- Understand the keywords that are more likely to drive conversions.
- Monitor, record, and assign value to call outcomes in real-time.
- Identify pain points that can be solved before they even occur.
What is the future of speech analytics?
Speech analytics is predicted to be one of the main growth drivers for businesses and it’s one of the fastest-growing segments in call centre management technology. The global speech analytics market is set to reach US$5.9 BN by 2027, which represents a CAGR of over 22% in the forecast period.
What does this mean in real terms? If businesses are starting to buy in to the power of speech analytics and the relevant technology, they can start to respond in real-time to customer needs. Most sectors are likely to adopt speech analytics software, and it’s already widely used across industries such as healthcare, FSI, utilities, automotive and travel.
If you’re not yet using speech analytics, and they’re not on your roadmap for the next 12 months, you’re at risk of being left behind.
What are the latest trends in speech recognition technology?
1. Increased use of AI and machine learning
Speech analytics technology has benefitted from the advances in AI and machine learning. Speech reaction is increasingly capable of being able to identify consumer trends that might otherwise be difficult to detect without a scalable solution. This will provide better insights for contact centre leaders to prepare their teams and provide greater customer experiences.
2. Integration with other data sources
No tech stack is an island. Speech analytics technology is increasingly able to integrate with other sources, such as social media and CRM systems. With seamless integration, contact centres will be able to provide more personalised customer experiences and more effective customer service. Improved customer satisfaction also leads to faster conversions and a stronger sales pipeline.
3. Greater emphasis on real-time analytics
With real-time call monitoring, you can listen to customer calls as they happen. This gives you access to real-time keywords, speech patterns, and even sentiment. Real-time call monitoring enables you to be more responsive to customer needs by identifying them in the moment, which in turn leads to more high-quality calls and happier customers.
4. Expansion of use cases
As speech recognition technology improves, it’s likely its uses will go beyond the contact centre into your marketing and product development teams. Insights gathered at contact centre level can help you identify pain points and forecast needs, enabling you to develop campaigns and products aligned with what your customers really want.
5. Focus on ethical and responsible use
Call centres will need to ensure they are complying with data privacy regulations and taking steps to protect customer data, as speech analytics software advances. This will give customers reassurance and help you to build trust, by proving you are compliant and adhering to data regulations.
Speech analytics trends and the future of call centres
The future is now. While there is plenty of technology available on the market that can analyse conversations to extract insight, the human connection is irreplaceable. Contact centres that make intelligent use of speech analytics now are future-proofing their business for years to come. Speech analytics enable you to be truly responsive, reacting to customers in real-time and making truly data-driven decisions.
How Pendragon used speech analytics to drive more sales
Speech analytics can make your customers happier and reduce your acquisition costs. Pendragon wanted to drive significant change across their business by truly understanding what their customers wanted. Every day, they received thousands of calls. At this scale, every improvement on these conversations is significant, but without knowing what happens on those calls, it’s difficult to make improvements.
Using Conversation Analytics, they were able to pinpoint every call where key terms were used, along with additional clarifiers like where in the call they were spoken, or their proximity to other terms. Working with Infinity, Pendragon were able to drive a 63% reduction in cost per acquisition, increase sales and service calls by 12%, and reduce common friction points across their major branches by 66%.
Keen to learn more about what powerful speech analytics capabilities could mean for your contact centre? Start a conversation with us today.
