As collection agencies discover the value of speech analytics in the call center, they are using this technology to improve debt collection processes. However, the use of sentiment and emotion analysis has not been utilized as much to increase payments. This is surprising, given that call center agents who express empathy on calls tend to get better results.
In fact, collections agents who have higher levels of empathy yield much higher collections rates and consistently get higher customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores on calls. There are a variety of sentiment and emotion analysis tools available to help increase Emotional Intelligence (EI) scores and improve call results. If you’re managing a collections agency or a call center with collections agents, it’s time to consider adding these emotion and sentiment analysis tools to your strategy to empower your agents to achieve success on every call.
What is Sentiment and Emotion Analysis?
Most speech analytics solutions on the market today include sentiment and emotion analysis tools. This feature is used to determine whether agents show empathy on calls, as well as evaluate the customer’s emotion throughout the call. Call sentiment analysis and emotion detection works just like it sounds. It scores customer calls using various phrases and tones of voice.
Ultimately, this feature helps managers understand how callers feel about their experience with the company, and with the agent while on the call. Given this information, it’s no surprise that showing empathy on a collections call will result in more payments or payment plans. Watch this video to learn how Methodist Health System increased the percentage of their payment plans by 25% and their self-pay collections by $150,000 per month with sentiment and emotion analysis.
Gain Emotional Intelligence Insights on Your Agents
Once you start using sentiment analysis, you can easily see which agents lack emotional intelligence and which agents excel in this area. You should be able to easily detect gaps in agent training as well (more on that below). Once you have these insights, you can begin to see the bigger picture of what’s happening on collections calls. Additionally, you can start to understand why showing empathy on these calls diffuses what’s inherently a difficult and stressful conversation.
Create Agent Teams Based on EI Insights
With the right speech analytics solution, you can track agent performance across different teams. After you have a better understanding of which agents have stronger soft skills and a better empathy profile, you can group agents according to their skill levels and communication styles. Instead of grouping agents randomly, use sentiment insights to pair agents with a stronger EI with agents who struggle with this.
Agents with stronger skill sets can serve as examples of how to handle calls, and be the leaders of those teams. This gives all of your agent teams a better chance of achieving positive results on every call.
Train New & Struggling Agents with Your Results
Call sentiment and emotion insights provide a myriad of ways to improve agent training. When given consistent feedback on their performance, agents are more likely to meet whatever goals you give them. With emotion detection, each call is evaluated by a predetermined set of sentiment metrics for both the agent and the customer. Using call scores, EI insights, and specific examples, managers can offer agents the specific training needed to make effective changes to their processes.
Get Our Sentiment and Emotion Analysis eBook
At CallFinder, we get a lot of questions about sentiment and emotion analysis, such as: How do we determine whether our agents use empathic communication? How does empathy impact the collections process? What can collections agency managers do to measure and improve empathy? Download our free eBook to get the answers and learn all you need to know about the value of empathy in your collections call center.
