From Unstructured Talk to Business Intelligence
One of the primary drivers of 21st-Century call center development is technology. More specifically, managers and customer service representatives (CSRs) wrestle with the breakneck pace of change and regulations governing call center compliance all over the world. Industry players seek to boost productivity and profit by reducing costs.
Under the Microscope
Call Recording has evolved into a software platform with multiple Quality Assurance tools, such as Screen Recording, post-call surveys, and Speech Analytics. All these Call Recording features assist call center agents and managers to most expediently serve customers and identify efficiencies.
Technology has spawned the era of “big data”: massive quantities of digital user information which can be analyzed by Call Recording and Speech Analytics features. Unorganized, big data is a humongous interstellar mess. However, Speech Analytics allows call center staff to discover business intelligence (BI): crucial pieces of user information which may subsequently aid in the enhancement of call center productivity. Gone are the days of managers listening to individual calls in hindsight. Nowadays, a call center programs Speech Analytics to hunt for competitive advantage based on the key words or phrases used by the customers themselves.
Under the microscope of Speech Analytics, business intelligence reveals a call center’s upward ascent in both productivity and profit. Essentially, Call Recording and Speech Analytics turn unstructured masses of digital gibberish into patterns of behavior exhibited by call center clients and the customer service representatives (CSRs) who serve them.
Speech Analytics of the Highest Order
In June 2013, it was revealed that the US National Security Agency had accessed the phone records of telecommunications giant Verizon Communications. The NSA was also investigating the digital communications stored by just nine major Internet services. William Binney, a former National Security Agency employee, told the Associated Press that the NSA gathers records for approximately three billion phone calls each day (Liedtke, 2013).
Speech Analytics is designed to comb through those billions of digital conversations in order to identify, verify and classify those interactions which the NSA considers a potential threat to American national security. In business, the same Speech Analytics concept applies to conversations which light call centers all over the world. While not confirmed, it is widely believed the government is well versed on the used of this technology.
The Advantage
Call Recording can be viewed as an Orwellian exercise in the control of citizen expression, but Speech Analytics is a powerful way to discover how a call center can best served its clientele.
Speech Analytics also generates other advantages. Call center managers can use SA to analyse scripts for customer service representatives (CSRs) on the front line. The analysis is then used in call center training materials. Or, Speech Analytics could simply be used to organize the collective “voice of the customer.” In the call center industry, Call Recording and Speech Analytics is a digital application with a wide horizon of possible uses.
If it’s good enough for the US government…
