Speech analytics and reporting are critical for understanding the effectiveness of your customer success team. However, many organizations still don’t have a concerted plan in place for gathering and analyzing data and benchmarking success utilizing speech analytics. Check out these 5 steps below to get started with your own call center speech analytics program.
- Form Your Analytics Team: More than likely, your department isn’t the only team affected by customer satisfaction. To form an analytics team, make sure to include both experienced data analyzers and those on the “front lines” with customers every day. It’s also important to include colleagues from different levels of the company since responsibilities and goals vary by position.
- Define Information Needs: It’s impossible to draw conclusions and create a path towards a better customer experience without agreeing upon which data to track and gather. A few key contact center metrics could be: customer retention, quarterly revenue, first call resolution rates, and average call length. Work with your team to establish these data needs up front and remember: it’s always better to gather too much data than too little.
- Select the Tool That’s Best for You: Once you’ve defined your information needs, it’s important to evaluate whether or not your current speech analytics software has the capability to give you the insight that you’re looking for. Every solution varies in terms of costs, effort to deploy, and computer power needed to operate effectively. A cloud analytics platform often is a better fit than premise solution because it offers flexibility, lower implementation costs, and faster deployment.
- Determine Success Criteria: Every business and contact center is unique in terms of defining what “success” looks like. Is your business solely focused on increasing revenue? Do you have a long-term outlook where customer retention is more important? Or are things like first call resolution rates and average call lengths better indicators for the success of your customer service staff? Whatever “winning” looks like for your business, establish your KPIs up front with your team before embarking on optimizing your customer service plan.
- Define Desired Outcomes: The final step for speech analytics success is agreeing upon how you want your business to move forward. Yes your average call length is higher than industry standards, but is lowering that metric the most important outcome for your team? Agreeing upon goals such as increasing customer retention by 7% will help your team see a vision for the future and establish the success of your new initiative.
Do you have any suggestions for how your organization has established a great speech analytics program? Leave us a tip in the comments.
