Contact centres rely on analytics to understand customer interactions and improve service.
Different types of analytics provide different insights, helping contact centres optimise performance, enhance customer experience, and identify opportunities for improvement.
While both conversational analytics and interaction analytics analyse customer interactions, they serve distinct purposes and cover different areas of the customer journey.
Understanding these differences is key to using analytics effectively in a contact centre environment.
To find out more, we spoke to Frank Sherlock, VP of International, CallMiner, to discover how conversational and interaction analytics differ.
Video: What is the Difference Between Interaction Analytics and Conversational Analytics
Watch the video below to hear Franks explain the difference between conversational and interaction analytics:
With thanks to Frank Sherlock, VP of International, CallMiner, for contributing to this video.
Three Key Differences Between Interaction and Conversational Analytics
To help contact centres choose the right analytics approach, we’ve outlined three key differences between conversational analytics and interaction analytics:
1. Scope of Analysis
“If you think about conversational analytics as being the scope of the contact centre. Interaction analytics broadens the scope of the analysis to include interactions and experiences that go beyond the contact centre.
So really the source of the interactions can then include anything – website interactions, social media interactions.”
This means that the key differences between the scope of them are:
Conversational Analytics
Conversational analytics focuses on interactions within the contact centre. It examines conversations across multiple channels such as calls, chats, and emails to help improve customer service.
Interaction Analytics
Interaction analytics takes a broader approach, extending beyond the contact centre to include customer interactions on websites, social media, and other digital platforms. This provides a more complete view of the customer experience.
2. Use of AI and Machine Learning
“With artificial intelligence and machine learning, we can now understand many aspects of the overall customer experience.
But also, things like sales opportunities, identification for upsell, cross-sell, product and service enhancements, fraud, customer retention and more.”
As both conversational and interaction analytics use artificial intelligence and machine learning to extract insights, the main difference is their uses:
Conversational Analytics
Conversational analytics helps contact centres understand customer behaviour and improve service quality.
Interaction Analytics
Interaction analytics applies these technologies to a wider range of interactions, identifying trends in customer experience, sales opportunities, fraud detection, customer retention, and product improvements.
3. Who Uses the Data
“Both interaction analytics and conversational analytics both use tools designed to be best employed by data scientists and business analysts, to really get those use-cases and capabilities to help a business improve its overall performance.
Conversation analytics is contact centre based and really looks across channels versus speech analytics, which just looks at speech.
And then interaction analytics is the broadening of those use-cases and capabilities across a business as opposed to just within the contact centre.”
As both types of analytics are used by data scientists and business analysts to improve decision-making, the difference is in who uses them and how:
Conversational Analytics
Conversational analytics helps contact centres optimise operations by analysing customer interactions across different communication channels.
Interaction Analytics
Interaction analytics supports broader business strategies by examining a wider range of customer interactions, helping businesses make more informed decisions across multiple departments.
If you are looking for more great video insights from the experts, check out these videos next:
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Author: Frank Sherlock
Reviewed by: Robyn Coppell
Published On: 21st Feb 2023 - Last modified: 30th Apr 2025
Read more about - Video, Analytics, CallMiner, Frank Sherlock, Videos
