Multiple recently published reports are predicting a steep growth in the speech analytics market over the next 4 years. According to Micro Market Monitor the North America speech analytics market is expected to grow from $241.8 M to $696.2 M by 2019. The rapid expansion of call centers is a major reason for the boom in growth. Call centers are no longer thought of as only a method to centralize calls, reduce costs, and support the sales teams. The traditional call center has evolved into a valuable hub, where analyzing interactions in real-time is quickly becoming a powerful tool for businesses to extract intelligence. This data will lead to more informed decisions and improvements in various areas, some of the biggest effects will be seen in the following disciplines.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
“This call may be recorded for quality assurance.” Quality assurance and customer service go hand-in-hand. By determining how often agents veer from the script or identifying what keywords are being said during negative phone calls, a call center can drastically lower the rate of poor calls altogether. In turn, observing trends in the most positive phone calls can also help to turn negative calls into positive ones. Armed with more information to teach and train agents, call centers have the ability to maximize their success.
CUSTOMER RETENTION
Some of the most valuable data extracted from call center recordings give insights into the customer’s mind. Not only why they canceled, but what kind of interactions led to that. Likewise, what kind of keywords led to a sale, or contract signed. Identifying these trends can improve customer retention, lower churn rate, and increase ROI.
MARKETING AND SALES
The marketing department, sales team and the customer have always been in a bit of a love triangle. Speech analytics has the ability to lessen the tension and connect the dots a little more between corners. Marketing is the first touch-point for many customers, while sales is the last. By providing marketing departments with data from calls with leads that turned to sales, companies can start marketing to customers in more effective ways.
Countless other disciplines will be affected by the rapid growth of speech analytics. In future blog posts we will discuss the effects on market research, education, and customer relationship management. Any business or department with spoken interactions can benefit from the data, whether the recording is a phone call, meeting, lecture, or interview. You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data.[1] It’s time to start collecting that data.
