Every day, we’re creating huge amounts of data.
From the 65 million messages sent on WhatsApp every day, to the 294 billion emails sent, the digital world is packed with information. For businesses, this means there are endless opportunities to learn more about your target audience and optimise your processes.
All you need to do is figure out how to leverage all the information you create.
Analytics, from call recording tools for compliance to AI analytics that determines a customer’s sentiment during a call, transform raw chunks of data into actionable insights. Here’s your guide to unlocking the power of analytics in your business.
What is Analytics?
Analytics in the UC landscape can refer to a number of things. For instance, you can assess the adoption rates of your collaboration tools or use workforce optimisation services to track the performance of your team. However, when most people talk about analytics in this space, they’re referencing “call analytics”.
Call logging systems and recording tools have been around for decades.
Known previously by terms like “call accounting tools”, they were designed mainly for keeping track of the number of conversations managed in a business.
However, we’ve come a very long way since then. Thanks to the rise of new analytics algorithms, AI tools, and machine learning, we can do a lot more than just collect data. We now have the power to translate that information into powerful strategies for business growth.
Today’s enhanced analytics strategies can deliver a host of exciting benefits to companies, including:
- Business Intelligence: Insights into how your company operates, from supply chain to staff performance. The more you know about your organisation, the easier it is to earn results.
- Compliance: Through call recording and analytics tools, companies can ensure that they’re collecting the right data, while staying in line with compliance guidelines.
- Security: Analytics tools with voice recognition and biometric technology built in can determine the authenticity of calls, reducing the risk of toll fraud.
- Enhanced customer experience: Through an analysis of things like customer sentiment, businesses can adjust the client/brand conversation to deliver better results.
- Prediction: The more information you collect about conversations that happened in the past, the easier it will be to predict the future.
Analytics Trends
Perhaps the biggest thing driving the analytics sector forward right now, is the rise of artificial intelligence. Machine learning models that train using gigantic data centres can make businesses more productive, and efficient. AI analytics help companies to gain insights by assessing bigger data stores that we could ever manage on our own.
Already, 60% of enterprises say that they use AI to help them drive better decision making strategies. When artificial intelligence and machine learning are combined with our data stores, we can uncover insights that we never recognised before. There’s even growing potential in the use of virtual assistants to pinpoint issues and create immediate resolutions to problems.
Here are some of the leading trends that are affecting the analytics world today:
- Omnichannel analytics: There’s more to a true analytics strategy than call recording and logging. Businesses need to keep track of every touchpoint in the customer journey, assessing everything from social media interactions, to video conversations. As more platforms appear in the business-to-customer environment, the demand for more advanced analytics will increase.
- Virtual assistants: Virtual assistants represent one of the best ways for businesses to leverage the data that they collect as quickly as possible. Just as in the consumer world we’re learning to feel more comfortable with things like voice-activated speakers, in the business world, virtual assistants can provide information in an instant. They could even provide real-time advice to call centre agents about how to improve a conversation based on sentiment analysis.
- Customer journey mapping: One of the biggest goals of analytics in the communication world, is finding a way to improve the customer experience. To do this, many businesses are using customer journey mapping to figure out exactly which path each client goes down. Analysing the customer journey allows companies to remove potential pain points that might stop a customer from getting the results they need.
- Speech technologies: Virtual assistants aren’t the only way that speech technologies are being used in analytics. Contact centres are using speech recognition for everything from customer self-service, to better IVR experiences. Some companies are even investing in speech technologies to assess biometric markers in a customer’s voice and improve the security of each conversation.
- Regulatory compliance: Analytics are excellent for compliance purposes. The right analytics strategy can gather non-personal data from interactions and use it to feed other strategies like machine learning tools and business intelligence. What’s more, because interaction analysis scores the touchpoints customers interact with every day, it’s much easier to track relevant details for regulatory compliance.
- Security: Many leading analytics suites and recording solutions also come with things like fraud detection alarming. This means that companies can proactively monitor their inbound and outbound call trends, accessing potential fraud alerts and reducing the risk of toll fraud. As fraud detection continues to stand out as a crucial concern for business, this is likely to be a powerful area of analytics going forward.
Analytics Events
As the world of data becomes more complex, the easiest way to ensure that you’re discovering the latest and greatest tools in the analytics landscape, is to visit local events. The leading contact centre events introduce business leaders and partners to some of the most exciting additions to the analytics stack.
Here at UC Today, we stay on the cutting edge of the event roster, constantly ensuring that we have reporters on-hand to share information from your favourite events. Whether you keep a watchful eye on our reports, or visit the events yourself, you’ll learn how to:
- Optimise customer experience
- Access deeper levels of analytics, like sentiment and predictive analysis
- Collect information without compromising on compliance
- Pull data from different environments together into a single point of truth
- Use the latest in digital assistants, artificial intelligence, and machine learning
- Protect your customers from toll fraud and other threats.
Analytics Vendors
As well as examining the latest products and services on the market, it’s also important to stay up to date with some of the market-leading vendors delivering innovative new tools. Regularly here at UC Today, we create our market guides to help you discover the latest insights from some of the most inspirational analytics companies in the industry.
