7 Reasons To Implement Real-Time Speech Analytics

Real-time speech analytics is an exciting new technology that can deliver great benefit to contact centers and their customers. This is a classic win-win technology, helping everyone involved conclude contact center interactions in a faster, more complete and satisfactory manner. You establish key words and phrases that could be indicative of a positive or negative interaction in progress. Supervisors get real-time notification of interactions that are potentially in trouble so they can assist the agent in addressing the issue while the caller is on the line.cognia.com Agents get automatic suggestions for how to turn around troubled calls and when upsell opportunities arise. Customer retention. If the call center can identify and resolve a customer issue during the call, there is a higher probability that the customer can be retained.


Efficiency. It is faster and cheaper to resolve customer issues in real-time than it is to review recordings, identify problems, reach out to the customer and address the issue. Add to that the higher probability of a successful outcome when issues are handled in real-time and efficiency goes even higher. Added sales. Real-time speech analytics helps agents identify upselling/cross selling opportunities while on the phone with the customer. This presents an opportunity for additional sales. Self-service improvement. Real-time speech analytics helps identify do-it-yourself callers who could not resolve their issue using the web site or IVR. This provides the input needed to improve self-service content and reduce similar calls in the future. Improved quality monitoring. Supervisors can take advantage of real-time speech analytics to identify quality issues. This automated approach targets specific problems and makes it easier for supervisors to coach their agents. Faster time-to-training. Real-time speech analytics shortens the time from a problem call to coaching and additional training. Agents are more likely to remember the call and can be better prepared sooner for similar calls. Happier agents. Real-time speech analytics can improve agent performance and reduce caller frustration. Both lead to happier agents who are more likely to have good interactions and remain with your contact center.


CallMiner, a platform provider of speech and customer engagement analytics, has updated its real-time speech analytics module, Eureka Alert. Eureka Alert combines AI-driven automated transcription, redaction, and alerting to provide real-time direction to contact center agents and supervisors to drive specific outcomes within a call as it is occurring, or alerting management of critical risk or customer experience issues. Real-time alerting is an important tool for improving or even saving customer interactions, helping to prevent customer attrition, driving sales, or mitigating serious legal, and security risk, said Bruce McMahon, senior director of product strategy at CallMiner. The solution provides critical information and reminders as the conversation is taking place rather than days or weeks later in a monthly review with the agent.


We’ve all heard the canned notifications when we call companies for customer service: "this call may be recorded for security or quality purposes." Most customer service organizations today record their phone interactions with their customers. Often those recordings just sit untouched on the digital equivalent of a dusty shelf in a storage closet. The recordings are there to ensure regulatory compliance or, in rare cases, to be pulled off the shelf in case of a major dispute with a customer. In essence, the part of the notification about security rings true; the quality part, not so much. But, as part of continuous improvement programs, companies have begun to change that by actually analyzing the recordings for quality purposes. That process of quality monitoring allows firms to select recordings for review and assessment.


In forward-thinking organizations, the tools enable managers to replay agent screen actions, allowing evaluations to include screen activity in addition to voice content. Managers use these reviews to pinpoint which agents perform well, which need further training, and to identify processes that need to be refined. Companies doing this basic form of quality monitoring, however, find they cannot change the outcome of those calls — the interactions are long since over. This is where the emerging field of real-time speech analytics comes into play. Vendors of real-time speech analytics tools promise to allow companies to intervene at the moment of truth, while the customer and the contact center agent are still talking. Customers and companies would both benefit from systems that identify which ongoing customer phone calls were going very badly or which agents were not complying with regulatory requirements. Real-time speech analytics can provide companies actionable advice on how to fix those issues. The ability to use real-time speech analytics to present agents the best upsell offer for that specific customer could also generate tangible revenues for brands.destinationcrm.com If only it were that simple. Due to the intensive processing power required to spot emergent problems or opportune cross-sell moments in a phone call, the current crop of real-time speech analytics tools is expensive when used at scale. Additionally, the tools require ongoing tuning to remain effective post-deployment.


Clearwater, FL - October 25, 2018 - CallMiner, a leading platform provider of award-winning speech and customer engagement analytics, demonstrated its updated real-time speech analytics module, Eureka Alert, at the 10th annual LISTEN customer conference. Eureka Alert combines AI-driven automated transcription, redaction, and alerting to provide real-time direction to contact center agents and supervisors to drive specific outcomes within a call as it is occurring, or alerting management of critical risk or customer experience issues. "Real-time alerting is a crucial tool for improving or even saving customer interactions, preventing customer attrition, driving sales, or mitigating serious legal and security risk," said Bruce McMahon, Senior Director of Product Strategy at CallMiner.


Alert uses high quality, speaker-separated audio captured at the source produce real-time streaming transcriptions that substantially increase alerting speed. Customer calls to cancel a service which triggers an alert with recommendations on talk down language and standard promotions to offer. The customer mentions a promotion from a competitor, which then triggers another alert with specialized options available to the agent to compete with that specific competitor pricing. At the first mention of customer dissatisfaction, an alert would be triggered with reminders to the agent on how to address the customer’s frustration. If dissatisfaction language continues, an email or alert would be sent to a supervisor to notify them of the need to potentially take proactive steps to intervene in the call. Alert is also fully integrated into the Eureka Analyze platform to provide faster post-contact analysis with AI-fueled categorization and scoring of transcribed audio.


For a data security conscious world, Alert is built to automatically redact all audio for PCI compliance by targeting credit card numbers and other sensitive data for removal from the audio and transcription text prior to calls being recorded. As an API-based module, data and notifications from Alert can be integrated not only into agent and supervisor tools, but also into tools across the wider business such as BI and CRM systems. Access to these customer insights can inform a range of business programs such as sales, marketing, compliance, and customer experience with real-time understanding of the voice of the customer. This allows businesses to pivot or amplify their strategies based on quicker access to customer intel. CallMiner empowers organizations of any size to extract and take action on intelligence from customer interactions, for improving customer experience, sales, marketing, compliance, and agent and customer engagement centre performance.


Every few years, executives realize the importance of customer service, and put great pressure on their service organization or contact center to make substantial improvements.globenewswire.com As surprising as it may seem, executives are not necessarily aware of the seriousness or magnitude of many of the service issues confronting their companies. Before there was social media, many companies were not overly concerned with customer service issues, because they generally did not impact public image and brand in such an immediate and stark fashion. But the days of treating customer service as a non-essential activity have passed. Enterprises need tools that can rapidly identify emerging trends so that they can be resolved proactively, before they result in a social media firestorm. Even better would be to identify issues or opportunities in real time, as they occur, and to respond to them immediately. This is where real-time speech analytics can make a major contribution, by altering the outcome of phone interactions while a caller is still on the line.


With a growing focus on voice applications offered via Amazon Alexa, Microsoft Cortana and Google Assistant, businesses are looking for ways to engage with consumers by voice. This shift in interface provides yet another data point for brands, businesses and bot makers to track: voice activity. In the coming year, speech analytics will become an essential metric to track in order to provide the best user experience possible. Why Use Speech Analytics? Before we delve into speech analytics benefits, let’s first go over what speech analytics measure. Speech analytics are conversational data for voice platforms. Voice analytics is used both for businesses to streamline and optimize call centers as well as improve voice-first applications. Real time speech analytics can identify tone of voice, measure periods of silence, words used, session length, error rate and more.


Together, these analytics help businesses better understand consumer behavior and identify ways that communications—from either a representative or a chatbot—can be improved. So, why are Alexa skill analytics and other speech analytics tools so important to businesses right now? Simply put, we’re quickly headed towards a ubiquity of conversational interfaces. Google states that 20% of mobile searches are made via voice. We’re already seeing how this is affecting SEO, with 80% of voice queries resulting in Google snippets. Businesses across all industries, then, will have to understand consumer behavior using voice interfaces if they want to remain relevant. Even more, the fast adoption of smart speakers are welcoming new consumers into the world of voice-enabled Internet of Things.


As users switch to voice-first platforms, businesses will need to keep up. If you’re a business that already employs a voice application, you probably already understand how real time speech analytics is necessary to improve voice-first apps and experiences. In addition to helping businesses stay relevant and up-to-date, speech analytics benefits also include saving them time and money. Even with new communication channels like direct messaging and voice platforms, many consumers still prefer calling businesses via phone when a problem needs solving. By using speech analytics, businesses can identify common call center problems to reduce calls and identify opportunities to train employees for better service. One brand that understands the benefits of Alexa voice analytics is BabyStats. This bot—available on Alexa, Google Home, Cortana and via mobile app—enables parents to easily track baby activity via voice.


Tracking stools, feeding times and more is essential (and required) medical data for new parents. BabyStats makes tracking these activities as easy and hands-free as possible. Users suggested much of the app’s functionality. BabyStats founder Cory Wixom paid special attention to Alexa skill analytics to track all actions by each user. From there, he was able to assess which features were most popular per platform. For an app that’s available on both major voice platforms and as a mobile app, studying differences in behavior is important to providing a stellar multi-platform user experience. BabyStats’ success demonstrates the importance of Alexa voice analytics for iterating based on usage.


Another example of speech analytics benefits is discovering a problem that you never knew existed. When Scryb—an app that lets users send SMS messages via voice—looked for speech analytics, they hypothesized that they had an issue with bot discovery. Once their bot was no longer featured in the Alexa directory, they noticed a huge drop off in activity. But once they compared the percentage of new users with returning ones (73% and 27%, respectively), they found that their issue sat with user retention, not discovery. From there, they could focus on where problems arose that turned users away from the voice app.


The moral of the story? Don’t just take things at face value; speech analytics can help you delve deep into data to identify issues you might not have thought of before. If you’re not using real time speech analytics, you can react to the crisis too late. Volley, the makers of voice-enabled games for Alexa and Google Home, were thankfully prepared when they ran into a scaling issue. Having employed real time speech analytics to track the back-and-forth interactions between users and their bots, they noticed a large spike in users. Catching this influx of activity early, they were able to quickly increase server limits to avoid significant stability issues. When communicating in real time, errors can make or break the user experience. In the worst-case scenario, users might churn. What bigger wasted opportunity could there be than turning away a spike in new users with an unstable app? With Alexa skill analytics or other speech analytics, you can successfully deal with errors the moment they pop up. Are you ready to reap the rewards of speech analytics? Improve your Alexa Skill, Google Assistant Action or other voice-first app by signing up with Botanalytics today.


Eureka Alert integrates with existing workflows and agent desktops while providing automated monitoring and real-time analytics. Speech and customer engagement analytics provider CallMiner has updated its real-time speech analytics module, Eureka Alert. Eureka Alert uses AI to deliver automated transcription, alerting and redaction. This gives call center agents and supervisors real-time, actionable insights to drive outcomes from calls as they are happening as well as improve customer experience and risk management. "Real-time alerting is a crucial tool for improving or even saving customer interactions, preventing customer attrition, driving sales, or mitigating serious legal and security risk," said Bruce McMahon, Senior Director of Product Strategy at CallMiner. Eureka alert uses the core Eureka data processing engine, which itself was updated to support 10X the capacity of the previous platform. This improved the scalability of its real-time capabilities, giving the users the functionality need to monitor hundreds of thousands of agents in real-time. It’s API-based so it can seamlessly integrate with agent desktops, CRM platforms, or other live monitoring applications for automated alerting, and enables supervisors to monitor real-time alerting through the Eureka Coach interface.


CallMiner demonstrated its updated real-time speech analytics module, Eureka Alert, at the 10th annual LISTEN customer conference. Eureka Alert combines AI-driven automated transcription, redaction, and alerting to provide real-time direction to contact centre agents and supervisors to drive specific outcomes within a call as it is occurring, or alerting management of critical risk or customer experience issues. "Real-time alerting is a crucial tool for improving or even saving customer interactions, preventing customer attrition, driving sales, or mitigating serious legal and security risk," said Bruce McMahon, Senior Director of Product Strategy at CallMiner. Alert is an API-based module designed to easily integrate into existing agent desktops, CRM platforms, or other live monitoring applications for seamless alerting through a familiar interface.


In addition, supervisors using Eureka Coach can monitor real-time alerts via the Coach interface. Alert uses high quality, speaker-separated audio captured at the source produce real-time streaming transcriptions that substantially increase alerting speed. Customer calls to cancel a service which triggers an alert with recommendations on talk down language and standard promotions to offer. The customer mentions a promotion from a competitor, which then triggers another alert with specialised options available to the agent to compete with that specific competitor pricing. At the first mention of customer dissatisfaction, an alert would be triggered with reminders to the agent on how to address the customer’s frustration. If dissatisfaction language continues, an email or alert would be sent to a supervisor to notify them of the need to potentially take proactive steps to intervene in the call.


Alert is also fully integrated into the Eureka Analyze platform to provide faster post-contact analysis with AI-fuelled categorisation and scoring of transcribed audio. For a data security conscious world, Alert is built to automatically redact all audio for PCI compliance by targeting credit card numbers and other sensitive data for removal from the audio and transcription text prior to calls being recorded. As an API-based module, data and notifications from Alert can be integrated not only into agent and supervisor tools, but also into tools across the wider business such as BI and CRM systems. Access to these customer insights can inform a range of business programs such as sales, marketing, compliance, and customer experience with real-time understanding of the voice of the customer. This allows businesses to pivot or amplify their strategies based on quicker access to customer intel.


A leading international bank with operations in India and South East Asia ( SEA) was able to improve sales and address compliance issues using real-time speech analytics solution. Real-time speech analytics also enabled the agents to handle customer objections/rebuttals when a sales pitch was made. One of the asks was also to evaluate if real-time speech analytics can be used to improve customer experience by managing on-call escalations more effectively. The real-time speech analytics solution was configured to prompt agents to pitch for key features of the upsell products with an on-screen pop-up message once the customer’s eligibility was positively identified. It was also used to identify customer objections through words and phrases and then prompt the agents with relevant objection handling scripts with on-screen tips.