With face-to-face customer service put on hold for the foreseeable future within many businesses, it is more important than ever for call centers to have every tool available to them. Ensuring high levels of customer satisfaction, while also easing pressure on agents should be a top priority during these high levels of calls.
This is why contact centers need to take advantage of the technology now more than ever. Voice analytics software is proving to be one of the most invaluable resources for both agents and managers, helping to streamline processes and improve customer satisfaction.
With the impending economic downturn, businesses are valuing their contact centers even more highly than before. Customer retention is crucial and without a good experience, the public will soon be quick to cancel services with providers in order to save cash.
However, these businesses will likely be looking to cut their own costs as well, whilst hoping to still maintain the same standards and simultaneously handling higher call volumes.
Without implementing newer systems, this could cause dramatic failure during these times.
Voice analytics allows organizations to gain a comprehensive insight into their services in much speedier ways than generating these reports manually and aid in improving service overall.
What Is Voice Analytics?
Voice analytics is software that quickly analyses the speech and tone of voice of a caller. This can be during a live call or previously recorded sessions.
It can pick up patterns to determine the emotion of the caller, while also detecting certain words and phrases that can flag difficulties within the experience or even elation from customers who have been provided excellent service.
We discuss how this can benefit call centers below.
1. Reduce AHT
Average handling time is one of the most important metrics to know in a call center and this should be reduced as much as possible.
Not only does this provide a quicker and easier customer experience, but it also frees up more time for agents to deal with other calls, therefore reducing wait times and minimizing disgruntled callers.
High call volumes can often be predicted, such as the release of a new product, procedures or changes in costs. Staffing can be adjusted accordingly during these times.
However, there are occasions when call volumes rise unexpectedly and without immediate reason. Voice analytics can help to interpret these calls and flag any discrepancies to managers. For example, websites of mobile apps may have crashed or a breaking news story could be the cause for individuals calling in for reassurance.
Managers can then create actions around this to help alleviate these large numbers of callers.
2. Increase Efficiency
With the use of word recognition, callers can voice the nature of their call and be directed accordingly. This prevents the often tedious task of having to wait for recorded voices reeling options and the many different options available to be put through to the correct department.
This also provides the opportunity to completely eradicate the need for agents for certain call types. This software can recognize repeating queries and categorize them for management to review.
Many of these phone calls could be resolved with pre-recorded information or notifying these callers they can find what they are looking for on websites or apps instead. Therefore allowing agents to take calls from other individuals and leaving customers satisfied by not having to wait on hold for what they need.
3. Improves Training
Any employee who has worked in customer service has experienced training where previous interactions between staff and customers are demonstrated and analyzed.
By providing real-life examples, this can give a real insight into the handlings of daily phone calls. However, these examples can quickly become dated and irrelevant.
Agents will not always alert management to phone calls they have had that could be used for training opportunities, this is where voice analytics come in. It can detect emotions in callers' voices and be placed into categories.
Management can then easily locate calls where a caller is portrayed as angry or upset or, in turn, if they finished the call satisfied. Therefore quickly pulling these examples in only a fraction of the time it would take to find these manually.
It can also notify management if a particular agent is experiencing higher levels of angered customers. This can then lead to further training and support to these employees which will help to provide the best customer experience and also help to reduce stress within these agents.
4. Maintain Compliance
Many call centers are within sectors that must abide by government regulations and strict compliance is imperative.
Agents providing the wrong advice or not following correct procedures can not only lead to unsatisfied customers but any breach could result in a detrimental impact of the business reputation and hefty fines.
Managers sampling phone calls to monitor this can be time-consuming and these calls are often missed.
Voice analytics can pick up phrases and words used within a conversation that may not be following the rules and regulations in place and quickly inform management.
Management can then listen to these and determine if errors need to be rectified and agents provided with retraining.
5. Employee Retention
It isn’t just about customer satisfaction, it is just as important to retain staff and reduce turnover. Call centers can be repetitive for staff and making sure the role remains interesting is crucial to keeping those top agents in the business.
Voice analytics provides the means for management by creating gamification within the call center.
Using real-time software can create live scoreboards of calls and can lead to games created with incentives, such as higher customer satisfaction and more positively expressed phone calls.
This keeps the working environment fun and fresh, whilst also introducing some healthy competition to drive standards.
These are just some of the benefits of using voice analytics and there are even more to be discovered. With the current climate, this software is too essential to ignore, call centers will quickly see the benefits of making this investment.
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