According to The Global CX Wakeup Call report by SDL, 45% of customers can’t remember having a recent successful customer experience. Most failures were related to disappointing customer service:
• 35% of the survey respondents experienced poor response times
• 30% said the employee they contacted was poorly trained
• 31% said the employee they spoke to wasn’t empowered to help
• 29% of customers received inaccurate or conflicting information when they did talk to customer service representatives
As you can see, these numbers are quite high! So what can a company do to improve their customer service offerings? Since the majority of customer service interactions occur over the telephone, a customer service call center must invest in modern technology, such as speech analytics, to obtain voice of the customer data that provides insights into what’s working and what’s not. Speech analytics software extracts the following call center metrics:
Response times
Audio mining recorded conversations with customers provides the data and context around key performance metrics that focus on call handling and response times, including call handling times, call abandon rates (when a customer hangs up before the issue is resolved), call wait times, and first call resolution rates. Looking at the call data and voice analytics, the company is able to piece together what might be the root cause of these response time issues and work towards fixing them.
Call transfer rates
If calls are being transferred, it means that the customer is initially being connected with someone who can’t help them, which causes frustration. A better system needs to be put into place to improve the chances that someone is connected with the right person on the first try. Using key phrases, a speech analytics solution can help identify triggers for transfers of calls, and provide the context necessary for a company to modify their script, and retrain agents so that the number of transfers are reduced.
Agent productivity and performance
A call center is only as strong as its agents. Agents are at the front line of customer service and customer experience. Agents must be trained properly and their performance should be monitored on a regular basis. Speech analytics software makes it easier to evaluate and improve the point of contact between the customer and the call center agent. Management is able to monitor script compliance, identify process issues and knowledge gaps in various business units, and identify agents or areas of process that need further training. Unique employee tracking codes can be used to segment calls by specific employee or department. Armed with this data, a company can enhance its training programs to ensure that agents are confident in their roles and providing a positive candidate experience.
The features of speech analytics software provide data and insights that are directly related to some of customers’ biggest customer service disappointments as outlined above. Basing business decisions on the data extracted from speech analytics allows a company to be more efficient and provide a better overall customer service experience.
