Digital transformation isn’t just a buzzword topic anymore. In a world where companies constantly strive to differentiate themselves from the competition, connect with new customers, and reduce costs, many consider digital transformation a necessity.
Indeed, 87 percent of senior executives say it is a priority for their organizations.
However, businesses don’t build winning digital transformation strategies on a whim. They’re often guided by data relevant to business goals. Speech analytics helps to unlock the most pertinent data.
For instance, many businesses dig into the conversations of happy customers to learn what is driving that satisfaction. After spotting trends, they may leverage these elements within the new digital experience to drive increased satisfaction levels.
Yet, this is only one example. Businesses may deploy speech analytics in more ways to uncover what customers want, need, and expect from them.
Indeed, the technology is often mission-critical in developing a deeper understanding of any audience.
Why Use Speech Analytics to Enhance Digital Transformation?
The good news for today’s business leaders is there are various ways to access feedback and valuable information directly from customers. However, many traditional methods rely heavily on a customer’s willingness to respond to questions and surveys.
Low survey response rates are all too familiar, meaning companies often have a limited view of their customers. Indeed, the people who respond are typically those that are either very happy or unhappy with their experience. The middle 80 percent – the vast majority - go overlooked.
Another issue with such a process is that brands often don't trust the honesty of the customer at the time they take the survey vs. when they have the interaction with the brand.
This is according to Gennadiy Bezko, CEO at MiaRec. He adds:
“Many companies have a cool-off period before a survey is sent to negate the brash comments they may receive when a customer is very angry, for example. But then, what's the point?”
Speech analytics is often the ideal alternative. It can surface insights from all customer communication, giving a complete overview of business performance.
Such an overview may include accurate insight into customer sentiment, expectations, and requirements. Meanwhile, the solution can draw data from every voice-based interaction with customers. Indeed, it provides insights into:
- Spotting Customer Pain Points: Speech analytics reveals frictions in customer journeys– such as shipping problems, product design flaws, and webisite navigation issues - that may lead to churn. Keyword analysis during conversations with low sentiment may prove particularly helpful here, allowing businesses to uncover which issues drive significant customer frustration.
- Uncovering Growth Opportunities: After identifying valuable feedback and customer pain points, contact centers can spread these insights across the operation so that the relevant department can address them. Such insights are often excellent for marketing, product design, and delivery teams. For instance, marketing can pinpoint which sales campaigns garner most interest and uncover trends in what customers say about those to inform future activities.
- Monitoring Customer Sentiment: Modern-day speech analytics tools track sentiment during each conversation to provide a snapshot of how customers feel about a brand, product, or service. It’s also possible to spot where sentiment begins to change, which may allow contact center quality analysts to pinpoint the root cause and a possible coaching opportunity. Another popular use case is monitoring feedback after a new product or service launches.
- Tracking Industry and Product Trends: Speech analytics tools detect patterns and trends in topics mentioned by customers, providing companies with competitive intelligence on how to make their solutions stand out. In the sense of digital transformation, it can also highlight how to make those products stand out from the crowd.
- Pinpointing Upsell Opportunities: When a customer seems happy during a customer conversation. The brand may leverage that goodwill by sending a proactive message to the satisfied customer with a special offer/discount on another product/service. Doing so may boost revenues, and speech analytics will guide such a strategy, identifying when a message may be most appropriate.
There are many more excellent use cases for speech analytics. For instance, it can support better employee feedback, as it monitors what agents say and the impact on customer sentiment. These pieces of insights are gold dust when creating coaching programs.
“Tracking sentiment, evaluation scores, and topics discussed can definitely help improve customer experience,” adds Bezko.
“MiaRec makes a point to track sentiment and scoring on both sides of the call, analysing the agent and the customer."
Another example is in compliance. Speech analytics can monitor whether agents make the necessary compliance statements during every possible conversation.
Nevertheless, the use cases above are perhaps the most significant in informing digital transformation initiatives.
How to Drive Most Value from Speech Analytics
As evident in the use cases above, speech analytics spotlights unique insights within customer communication that can inform digital transformation.
