Ever wondered what the benefits of speech analytics might be in areas of your business other than just risk and compliance? In this post, we’re going to cover how AI-driven speech analytics is currently being used, and more specifically, the impact it can have across multiple business functions, to transform operating models and materially reduce cost to serve.
The challenges of call monitoring
Typically, only 1% of calls are ever assessed. This means businesses are missing 99% of the picture. In a day, a bank may take up to 20k hours of customer calls. These calls will range from general enquiries to more complex questions which may involve a vulnerable customer. One thing these calls have in common is that they contain a vast amount of valuable material. You hear directly from the customers about what they are looking for and what challenges they are facing. You can also determine where an agent has been compliant or if a customer needs to be classified as vulnerable.
In the past, firms have had to review these calls by spending hours listening and assessing them manually. This is highly inefficient and very often an inconsistent way of dealing with data, allowing valuable information to slip through their fingers becomes a significant cost for FS firms. In addition, More2life reported, 87% of advisors feel it’s hard to identify vulnerability. But there is a solution to this. By introducing new technology, agents and advisors can monitor 100% of customer calls and better identify potential vulnerabilities.
Monitoring at scale with Speech Analytics
The introduction of Natural Language Processing (NLP) based speech analytics has transformed the way firms can monitor and access their customers’ calls. This revolutionary technology is fine-tuned to a firm’s specific needs by training the software on their domain-specific data. Every call – recorded or live – can be uploaded to a speech analytics platform, is automatically transcribed from voice-to-text, analysed and presented on a dashboard for teams to understand. This software not only provides data on a dashboard, but it also offers up actionable insights that can be implemented and will have a real impact on the business. By analysing 100% of calls, both recorded and live, firms can uncover patterns and trends across their population. For example, it could be identified that amongst those deemed vulnerable due to lack of financial resilience, 70% prefer to deal with agents on the phone vs. digitally. Therefore, customer experience is improved when unnecessary processes are removed such as repetition of security data.
Benefits of speech analytics for risk and compliance teams
NLP-based speech analytics technologies allow companies to monitor and access 100% of their customer calls. You can learn more about this if you read Dr Barry Haddow’s article on ‘What’s BERT and how does it benefit Financial Services’. For risk and compliance, this may include the ability to.
- Flag risks in the conversation such as a customer with depression
- Ability to classify a customer as vulnerable based on their health or age.
- Highlight complaints and conduct so an assessor can pinpoint the exact place the call needs to be accessed.
For agent performance and training teams this may include;
- The level of empathy, tone and clarity in calls
- Call length – ability to highlight shorter calls.
- Knowledge gaps from excessive frequency or the length of holds as well as the type of calls associated with this (sales, complaints etc.)
This data is incredibly useful, however, the way in which it is used, is the most valuable and will have the biggest impact on a firm’s bottom line. Ultimately, speech analytics allows you to listen to customers more effectively at scale, this gives you richer insights across your customer base. By identifying customer patterns earlier, firms can take quicker action and make decisions that will improve profitability.
Agent Performance
Our Agent Performance solution not only helps agents to identify vulnerable customers but can also align multiple metrics to agent interaction to ultimately surface specific traits of conversational excellence. This means vulnerable customers will not only be identified at a significantly greater rate, but the experience they’ll have will also be improved. Furthermore, connecting machine driven assessment of what vulnerability looks like with Learning & Development can significantly drive agent performance.
Beyond risk management and agent performance
We’ve demonstrated the implications of speech analytics for risk and compliance as well as agent performance. But what about the rest of the firm? What value can NLP solutions add to marketing, customer experience, sales and operations? We’ll save the suspense. It’s a lot.
The great thing about speech analytics is that it can be used anywhere a conversation is happening with a consumer. It provides additional information from interactions from several different channels such as email, chatbots, online chat as well as other back-end databases. The benefits of automatically capturing all this data and having the ability to analyse it is a marketer’s and customer experience manager’s dream. So, we’ll start there.
Marketing
The foundation for any successful marketing team is fully understanding your customer. Find out what motivates them, and what their challenges are. So, it would only make sense for a marketing function to embed voice analytics into day-to-day operations. Every conversation with a customer offers valuable insight and it’s crucial for marketing to use this data to create effective marketing campaigns, improve social engagement and implement marketing strategies that are fit for the customer they are talking to.
By using the “voice of the customer”, it allows marketers to improve customer experiences as well as build brand loyalty. Customer retention is improved, and it can help drive customer lifetime value which profits the company long term.
Customer Experience (CX)
A key performance metric used by CX teams is net promoter score (NPS). The NPS is the percentage that a customer is likely to recommend a company, product/service to a colleague on a scale of 1-10. CX teams are always looking for ways to improve this score and one of the main ways this is done is by looking to reduce customer friction. Customer friction is referred to as actions such as being provided with generic information, having to repeat information etc. Without a doubt, this has a direct impact on revenue as Gartner discovered that 96% of customers with a high effort score were more likely to be disloyal than only 9% with a low effort score.
Sales/Operations
Speech Analytics provides a huge advantage when it comes to sales. Imagine having the ability to take a live call, then being prompted to offer a tailor product based on details the customers have provided you with about their current financial position as well as their projected future position. An agent can then specify their approach based on the customer’s sentiment (which may be positive, negative or neutral), if they have been classed as vulnerable or they have shown interest in a product or service in a previous conversation. This gives sales teams the opportunity to identify missed opportunities or reconnect with high quality leads. This will give team members some light on how to overcome objections and use this information to train the team on the best techniques to gain long term.
A key advantage of AI solutions is the ability to automate processes of monitoring calls. Manually monitoring calls is extremely labour intensive and there is a high probability of human error.
Through using speech analytics, it becomes possible to automate other processes. For example, you can start to standardise forms, create fact finds as well as easily update CRM systems and efficiently generate post-call reports. This will save agents and managers time and will allow them to spend more time on higher value activities such as improving customer service.
The power of voice across all business functions
We’ve given you the lowdown on how voice analytics offers undeniable value across all business functions. But it’s important to mention that every NLP solution is bespoke and that a personalised system must be implemented in order to make sure each model fits the purpose of the department.
It can be overwhelming to implement a new technology, but we all must start somewhere. The sooner you use the technology the better it gets. This is because the solution continuously trains itself through machine learning and works with agents to manage improvements. The more information you can provide, it can help you to analyse conversations and provide better outcomes for you and your customers. You’ll start to unravel invaluable information which will push new boundaries and set you apart from your competitors.
To learn more about the power of voice, check out our whitepaper: the value of voice
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