Below is a copy of a recent article we wrote, and as published on RabidOfficeMonkey.com on November 21st. The premise is that you have the data you need in order to improve the way you serve and provide for your customers. It’s right within the conversations your agents/employees are having with them. You just need the right technology to automatically find, categorize and analyze the data. The right speech analytics solution will do 90% of the work for you – all you have to do is either implement the necessary changes inside each department, or share the knowledge with the person who can implement change.
Enjoy the article.
Extract Insights from Recorded Conversations and Leverage Customer Sentiment to Improve the Customer Experience
According to a recent study from American Express, 63% of Americans continue to prefer direct contact through live conversations over the phone, or face to face1, to resolve customer service related issues, like returning products or assistance with a product, versus contacting a company through email, social media or chat. The number jumps to 76% for more complex, difficult issues.
With companies experiencing hundreds to tens of thousands of phone conversations with their customers each day, the questions arise:
- Do they know what their customers really want and need?
- Are their customers happy or dissatisfied with their service?
- Are their employees delivering an exceptional customer experience?
The study also concludes that two thirds of consumers are willing to spend more money with a company that they believe provides excellent customer service – up to 13%1 more, on average.
Monitor Conversations – Extract Valuable Customer Feedback
Realizing the critical nature of delivering positive experiences to customers, and how quality customer care contributes directly to a company’s bottom line, innovation is taking place to provide companies with the tools they need to precisely and efficiently monitor customer conversations to gain business insights.
Monitoring conversations over the phone can happen in one of two ways; manually or automatically. While call recording is a very important tool for businesses to have, monitoring, analyzing and reporting on the content of those recorded calls using the manual technique can be time consuming, and a drain on valuable employee resources. To keep an edge on their customer relationships and the competition, companies need effective and efficient techniques to easily assess overall trends and insights into their customer satisfaction levels. This need for more automated solutions is why the field of speech analytics and voice of the customer programs has burgeoned over the past few years.
Close Knowledge Gaps with Call Analytics
Extracting insights from customer conversations helps businesses assess how they’re doing in the area of customer service, compliance, and overall operations. The benefits and knowledge gained is endless. Accessing the content of conversations allows a company to monitor employee and agent productivity and performance, measure average handling times, monitor call abandon and conversion rates, monitor call wait times, measure script compliance, and measure up-sell activity.
Often call monitoring and quality assurance is thought of as relevant only to call and contact center operations. However, keeping a pulse on the customer experience flows though all departments; from sales and marketing, to customer service, even accounting, and IT.
Improve Operations and Customer Experience
Most company departments can benefit from monitoring calls and gaining insights into the customer experience, which can be amassed, analyzed and used as the change agent to making improvements in all areas. For example, the compliance department at a healthcare company may want to monitor which agents are adhering to a company-mandated script to ensure they are delivering the appropriate information to their customers, where as the marketing department may want to monitor the company’s calls for mentions of a specific promotion they may be running. And, the customer service department may want to track calls that specifically reference payment and billing issues versus the calls from customers who may just be looking for a provider in their area.
Knowing exactly how customers perceive your business, extracting the metrics, and using that knowledge to make informed strategic business decisions will improve company procedures, reduce costs, and enhance the customer experience.
For more information on capturing the voice of your customers to extract business insights, explore call recording and speech analytics solutions with CallFinder.
Source: American Express 2012 Global Customer Service Barometer; Findings in the United States
About the Author
Jeanne Landau has nine years of experience leading the public relations, social media, and content marketing programs for 800response and CallFinder; delivering telecommunications solutions and marketing technology tools including call routing platforms, call tracking and recording, and phonetics-based speech analytics services to business of all sizes. Contact Jeanne at [email protected] or 1-800-317-8060.
