Overcoming challenges with Speech Analytics

Sean Murphy looks at how Speech Analytics can help overcome contact centre challenges and improve agent performance.

Evaluating agent performance and the customer experience is much more than sampling a few calls – traditional quality management programmes often rely on human intervention, are time consuming, and therefore usually inefficient and ineffective. And given the number of different channels which consumers now use to contact a single company, this process will only get more complex.

Speech Analytics provides increased insight for contact centre managers by automatically identifying key issues which are hindering agent performance. By eliminating manual processes and small sample sizes in analysing performance, Speech Analytics can provide contact centre managers with a full overview of service levels being delivered by agents at all times.

Just how does Speech Analytics work better than traditional approaches?

The Genesys Speech Analytics solution was deployed at The Healthcare Revenue Recovery Group (HRRG), a division of TeamHealth. One of the challenges they faced was to identify which agent skills were crucial to increasing collections revenue and to measure usage of those key skills.

Speech Analytics helped to focus training for contact centre agents on those key skills and automatically monitored skills usage across the contact centre.

In the first few months after agent training, key skill usage improved over 13%, prompting 32.5% more phone payments. This contributed to a dramatic increase in collections revenue which exceeded expected revenue by 20%.

The data received through using Speech Analytics enabled the Group to change some of its business rules and processes. It refocused training, coaching, and self-learning programmes on the skills that Speech Analytics had identified as critical to success.

The skills were not just taught but also practised in role plays and evaluated with real customer calls during training, coaching and self-learning sessions enabled by Speech Analytics until the agents became very proficient with them. Speech Analytics then continuously monitored agents’ usage of those key skills.

How Speech Analytics works

By automatically classifying and monitoring 100% of calls, a holistic Speech Analytics solution eliminates the concern about small sample size, as every agent’s use of key skills during each customer conversation is analysed.

An optimal solution can identify key phrases used by an individual agent and assess whether these are in line with training advice, helpful to the customer experience or facilitate additional sales, for example.

Some of the specific benefits seen by implementing Speech Analytics are:

• Reducing Costs by Maximising Operational Efficiency: Once all calls are classified by call reason and specific agent skills used within the call, business process or agent training issues that are causing high call volumes or long average handle times are identified, and the underlying issues can be corrected to maximise efficiency and minimise costs.
• Improving the Customer Experience: Customer experience delivery is significantly improved by maximising First Call Resolution rates and then correcting the root causes of customer dissatisfaction.
• Boost Revenue: By identifying the agent skills that are most important for successfully selling your product or service – or collecting a particular type of debt – and then facilitating training and coaching targeted on those key skills, it’s possible to automatically monitor usage of agent skills on an ongoing basis, thereby increasing sales and/or collections revenue, as the HRRG example above illustrates.

Automatically discover opportunities for improvement

Speech Analytics can provide a lot of insight for contact centre managers into agent performance, by analysing call content to reveal how processes can be improved and the customer experience can be enhanced.

By identifying potential threats as well as opportunities, it’s possible to uncover the root causes of issues as well as the keys to success, and subsequently direct agent training accordingly.

By doing so, it’s possible to see a significant return on investment, as witnessed at HRRG. By automatically analysing agent performance during every interaction with customers and prospects, contact centres can discover and capitalise upon the enormous opportunities hidden within conversations.

With thanks to Sean Murphy, Director of Product Marketing at Genesys