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ANALYTICS MONTH: From enhanced customer insights to better QA – How AI and machine learning are impacting contact centre analytics

960 640 Stuart O'Brien

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are pioneering a significant analytics revolution for contact centres. These advanced technologies are transforming the way contact centres operate, offering unprecedented insights into customer behaviour, enhancing service quality, and driving operational efficiency. Here’s an exploration of how AI and ML are at the forefront of the analytics revolution in contact centres…

Enhanced Customer Insights: At the heart of AI and ML capabilities is the ability to process and analyse vast amounts of data at incredible speeds. Contact centers generate a wealth of data from every interaction, whether it’s through voice calls, chat, email, or social media. AI and ML algorithms can sift through this data to extract valuable insights about customer preferences, behavior patterns, and sentiment. This deep understanding enables contact centers to tailor their services to meet customer needs more effectively, improving satisfaction and loyalty.

Predictive Analytics for Personalised Experiences: One of the most powerful applications of AI and ML in contact centres is predictive analytics. By analyzing past interactions and outcomes, these technologies can predict future customer inquiries or issues before they arise. This predictive capability allows contact centres to proactively address customer needs, personalise interactions, and even anticipate and prevent potential problems. The result is a more seamless, efficient, and personalised customer experience.

Optimising Workforce Management: AI and ML are also revolutionising workforce management in contact centres. These technologies can analyze patterns in call volumes, chat traffic, and other interactions to predict peak periods and optimal staffing levels. This enables contact centers to allocate resources more efficiently, ensuring that they have the right number of agents available at the right times. Additionally, AI-driven training programs can identify skill gaps among agents and customize training content to address these needs, enhancing overall performance.

Improving Quality Assurance: Traditional quality assurance in contact centres has been labor-intensive, with managers manually reviewing a small sample of interactions. AI and ML have changed the game by enabling the automated analysis of every interaction. This comprehensive approach ensures consistent quality and compliance, identifies areas for improvement, and highlights exemplary interactions for training purposes. Moreover, real-time feedback from AI systems can guide agents during interactions, helping them to meet quality standards consistently.

Future Trends: Looking ahead, the integration of AI and ML in contact centers is set to deepen. We can expect to see more advanced natural language processing capabilities, enabling even more nuanced understanding of customer sentiment and intent. Additionally, the integration of AI and ML with other technologies, such as Internet of Things (IoT) devices, could open up new avenues for customer support and engagement.

AI and ML are at the forefront of the analytics revolution in contact centres, driving enhancements in customer insights, personalised experiences, workforce management, and quality assurance. As these technologies continue to evolve, they promise to further transform the contact centre landscape, setting new standards for customer service excellence.

Are you looking for Analytics solutions for your contact centres? The Contact Centre & Customer Services Summit can help!

Photo by Kevin Ku on Unsplash

ANALYTICS MONTH: Leveraging insights from AI and Ml while protecting privacy

960 640 Stuart O'Brien

As businesses strive to enhance customer service, drive efficiency, and gain competitive advantage, the application of analytics within contact centres has become increasingly sophisticated. Here’s a look at the key trends shaping the use of analytics tools in the UK’s contact centre industry.

Real-time Analytics for Immediate Insights: One of the most significant trends is the shift towards real-time analytics. Contact centres are now leveraging tools that provide immediate insights into customer interactions as they happen. This real-time analysis allows agents to adapt their approach on the fly, resolving issues more efficiently and improving the customer experience. Real-time analytics also enable supervisors to monitor call quality and agent performance, intervening promptly when necessary.

Predictive Analytics for Enhanced Customer Experience: Predictive analytics is another trend gaining momentum. By analysing historical data, contact centers can predict future customer behaviour and trends. This predictive insight allows for more personalised customer interactions, as agents can anticipate needs and offer tailored solutions before the customer even articulates them. Predictive analytics also helps in optimising workforce management, ensuring that the right number of agents with the appropriate skills are available at peak times.

Speech and Text Analytics for Deeper Understanding: The application of speech and text analytics has revolutionised how contact centers interpret customer interactions. These tools analyse voice calls and written communications to identify sentiment, tone, and specific keywords, providing a deeper understanding of customer emotions and intentions. This analysis can uncover trends and issues that might not be apparent from numerical data alone, offering valuable insights that can inform service improvements and product development.

AI and Machine Learning for Smarter Analytics: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are at the forefront of the analytics revolution in contact centers. These technologies enhance the capabilities of analytics tools, enabling more sophisticated data analysis. AI and ML can identify patterns and correlations within large datasets that human analysts might miss, leading to more accurate predictions and actionable insights. Furthermore, these technologies can automate routine tasks, allowing agents to focus on more complex customer needs.

Data Security and Privacy Considerations: With the increased use of analytics tools, data security and privacy have become paramount concerns. Contact centers are investing in secure analytics platforms that comply with data protection regulations such as the GDPR. Ensuring the privacy and security of customer data is not only a legal requirement but also crucial for maintaining customer trust.

The application of analytics tools within the UK’s contact centres is evolving rapidly, driven by advances in real-time analytics, predictive analytics, speech and text analysis, AI, and ML. These trends are enabling contact centers to deliver a more personalised, efficient, and data-driven customer service experience. As these technologies continue to develop, their application in contact centres is set to become even more integral to achieving operational excellence and customer satisfaction.

Are you looking for Analytics tools for your contact centre business? The Contact Centre & Customer Services Summit can help!

Photo by Choong Deng Xiang on Unsplash

If you specialise in Analytics for contact centres we want to hear from you!

960 640 Stuart O'Brien

Each month on Contact Centres Briefing we’re shining the spotlight on a different part of the customer care market – and in February we’re focusing on Analytics.

It’s all part of our ‘Recommended’ editorial feature, designed to help customer care industry buyers find the best products and services available today.

So, if you’re a supplier of Analytics solutions and would like to be included as part of this exciting new shop window, we’d love to hear from you – for more info, contact Mark Connell on m.connell@forumevents.co.uk.

Here are the areas we’ll be covering, month by month:

Feb – Analytics
Mar – Call Centre Technology
Apr – Automated Customer Satisfaction
May – Social Media
Jun – Artificial Intelligence
Jul – Virtual Call/Contact Centres
Aug – Training & Development
Sep – Knowledge Management
Oct – Web Self Service/Chat
Nov – Display Boards
Dec – CRM
Jan – Agent Coaching & Monitoring

For more information on any of the above, contact Mark Connell on m.connell@forumevents.co.uk.

Do you specialise in Analytics for contact centres? We want to hear from you!

960 640 Stuart O'Brien

Each month on Contact Centres Briefing we’re shining the spotlight on a different part of the customer care market – and in February we’re focusing on Analytics.

It’s all part of our ‘Recommended’ editorial feature, designed to help customer care industry buyers find the best products and services available today.

So, if you’re a supplier of Analytics solutions and would like to be included as part of this exciting new shop window, we’d love to hear from you – for more info, contact Mark Connell on m.connell@forumevents.co.uk.

Here are the areas we’ll be covering, month by month:

Feb – Analytics
Mar – Call Centre Technology
Apr – Automated Customer Satisfaction
May – Social Media
Jun – Artificial Intelligence
Jul – Virtual Call/Contact Centres
Aug – Training & Development
Sep – Knowledge Management
Oct – Web Self Service/Chat
Nov – Display Boards
Dec – CRM
Jan – Agent Coaching & Monitoring

For more information on any of the above, contact Mark Connell on m.connell@forumevents.co.uk.

Do you specialise in contact centre Analytics? We want to hear from you!

960 640 Stuart O'Brien

Each month on Contact Centres Briefing we’re shining the spotlight on a different part of the customer care market – and in February we’re focusing on Analytics.

It’s all part of our ‘Recommended’ editorial feature, designed to help customer care industry buyers find the best products and services available today.

So, if you’re a supplier of Analytics solutions and would like to be included as part of this exciting new shop window, we’d love to hear from you – for more info, contact Carly Walker on c.walker@forumevents.co.uk.

Here are the areas we’ll be covering, month by month:

Feb – Analytics
Mar – Call Centre Technology
Apr – Automated Customer Satisfaction
May – Social Media
Jun – Artificial Intelligence
Jul – Virtual Call/Contact Centres
Aug – Training & Development
Sep – Knowledge Management
Oct – Web Self Service/Chat
Nov – Display Boards
Dec – CRM

For more information on any of the above, contact Carly Walker on c.walker@forumevents.co.uk.

WEBINAR: How AI is delivering a new generation of CX Analytics

960 640 Stuart O'Brien

Contact centres spend significant resources evaluating agent effectiveness and customer sentiment, but don’t always know if they are capturing the right data, creating the right KPIs and sharing the available analytics to allow them to improve agent and customer metrics. Has your approach to analytics been re-evaluated to take advantage of today’s cloud and AI technology?

Join Sheila McGee-Smith, President & Principal Analyst at McGee-Smith Analytics, LLC, and Rob Peterson, Head of CX Strategy at Talkdesk, as they pull back the curtain on the analytics “black box” and introduce a vision to measure technology as a leading indicator of exceptional CX and business outcomes.

Speakers:
Sheila McGee-Smith, President & Principal Analyst at McGee-Smith Analytics
Rob Peterson, Global Head, CX Strategy and Value Consulting at Talkdesk

Date: Wednesday, July 14, 10 a.m. PT | 1 p.m. ET | 6 p.m. BST

Click Here To Register

Can’t join us at 10 a.m. PT? Sign up for our session on July 15, 10 a.m. BST

‘Game-changing’ real-time speech analytics solution boosts contact centres’ sales, service and compliance standards

700 392 Stuart O'Brien

Avoira is forecasting a sales surge for its Xdroid speech analytics solution after the AI-powered technology was hailed as a game-changer by one of the UK’s top 50 personal insurance brokers.

The technology solutions specialist – which is showcasing Xdroid at the Contact Centre & Customer Service Summit – is also expecting increased adoption of hybrid operational models to further boost the real-time analytics platform.

Principal Insurance is among a host of companies to deploy Xdroid during the pandemic as UK businesses sought to maintain sales, service and compliance standards whilst staff worked from home.

The Manchester-headquartered broker’s head of distribution, Matt Byrne commented: “For us, Xdroid is a game-changing technology, one that is bringing many benefits to our sales, service and compliance functions.

“Intelligent, real-time analytics empower staff to act in the most appropriate manner at the most appropriate time, yielding more productive and positive customer engagements.”

He added that as Xdroid captures all communications in real-time, it can control compliance and fraud protocols more swiftly and effectively.

Having canvassed its staff, Principal is among a growing number of businesses planning to adopt a hybrid model. Byrne says Xdroid will be invaluable in helping manage staff performance across office and home environments.

“Because it’s real-time and provides AI-led agent prompts, Xdroid offers both great oversight and the ability to be really responsive in supporting advisors.

“It’s a bit like having a floorwalker on demand, wherever you happen to be working.”

Xdroid’s capabilities have also been praised by life insurance broker, Protect Line. The fast-growing business is working with Avoira to build a vulnerable customers’ identification tool within a wider Xdroid implementation.

“Xdroid will empower us to quickly identify potential vulnerability and flag calls to Compliance,” explains Protect Line’s speech analytics manager, Sam Goundry.  “They can then check the conversation, confirm the customer was provided with the right duty of care, that all factors were considered and take any necessary remedial action,”

Since last year’s Summit, Xdroid, for which Avoira holds exclusive UK distribution rights, has also garnered international acclaim. In January it took the European Technology Innovation Leadership Award in the Frost & Sullivan Best Practice awards.

How – and Why – to Analyze Sentiment

960 640 Abby Monaco

By Abby Monaco, Senior Product Marketing Manager, NICE Nexidia

“I have terrible news,” your boss wrote in an email late last night. “The project has officially been delayed.”

Without any additional context, this news could be cause for joy – you’ll no longer be working all weekend to deliver on a deadline – or significant trepidation, particularly if the delay was caused by an error you made. The same word – terrible – can be used sincerely or jokingly, with very different sentiment attached to it as a result.

Sentiment is critical when it comes to customer service, and sentiment analysis is being increasingly used to measure emotion in customer and agent interactions.  After all, it’s not always about what is said but rather how it’s said and what emotions are conveyed. As important as it is to analyze the words that are spoken or written in an interaction to gain clues as to whether a customer interaction is positive or negative, it’s even more important to analyze sentiment in agent-customer interactions.

Sentiment analysis is the practice of assessing customer input to determine attitudes and opinions about brands, products, marketing campaigns and more. It relies on natural language processing, machine learning and computational linguistics to identify, extract and quantify subjective information from phone, chat, email, social media and more. Its use is increasing in part due to the widespread shift toward omnichannel customer service. With thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of interactions over a variety of channels, contact centers simply can’t rely on manual analysis of interactions to understand how customers feel about their business.

Sentiment analysis has far-reaching applications. The Obama administration famously used it to measure public opinion in the weeks and months leading up to the 2012 presidential election, and politicians and brands alike have since embraced the approach to better understand public attitude and opinion.

In the contact center, sentiment analysis allows the organization to analyze customer interactions to:

  • Uncover areas in the business that need improvement.
  • Monitor areas critical to customer loyalty and retention.
  • Monitor agent behaviors.

“When you measure people’s reactions interacting with your support team, you get a clearer picture of their level of satisfaction,” Jia Wertz wrote in Forbes. “This allows you to address customer service issues more efficiently, based on a different type of feedback – unfiltered, less intrusive and more honest.”

There are two basic techniques for sentiment analysis:  traditional, rule-based sentiment analysis, which relies on a dictionary of words labeled by sentiment, and artificial intelligence-powered sentiment analysis, in which a machine learning model is trained to recognize sentiment – and to continue to learn and evolve.

To be truly effective, the sentiment measurement must be sophisticated enough to identify the relative emotion of agents and customers separately for more accurate results. AI-powered sentiment analysis employs language models to find positive and negative words and phrases, spoken or written, as well as AI machine learning that has been trained to predict the outcome of the interaction. Models must be trained to score words and phrases carefully within the context in which they’re spoken.

Sentiment models go beyond language with added features that create greater accuracy in sentiment scores. Among the factors they consider are:

  • Laughter detection, which can indicate a positive change in an otherwise negative conversation.
  • Crosstalk (where both parties talk over each other), which can indicate confusion or frustration.
  • Changes in pitch, tone or speaking rate, which can signal changing satisfaction during the interaction.
  • When in the interaction the words or phrases occurred; studies show that the latter portion of an interaction drives customers’ reported satisfaction more heavily than the former.
  • Interaction length; the longer the interaction, the more opportunities there are to drive a sentiment score, so effective sentiment analysis normalizes longer interactions with shorter ones.

AI-powered sentiment models also score interactions as starting positive and moving to negative, or vice versa, to allow organizations perform root cause analysis. There are many causes of positive and negative interactions, such as problems with a process or product or frustration with an agent. An interaction that begins positive and ends negative can be due to a confused agent who’s unable to help or the customer not liking the answer they get (i.e., that an overdue bill has been sent to collections).

Organizations around the world are already using sentiment analysis with advanced AI techniques to better understand the customer and act on that understanding. While sentiment models score 100% of interactions, measuring sentiment is most effective when considering the larger picture; while it’s important to identify a single interaction, particularly when you can provide real-time guidance to turn a call around, it doesn’t provide insight into trends surrounding negative calls and the topics driving them.

“As with any new technology, the value is not in the information you mine, it’s in what you do with it,” Futurum Research Analyst Daniel Newman wrote in Forbes. “The power of AI isn’t in replacing our need to understand our customers, it’s in using tools to understand them better and then act on those understandings, for the better.”

Learn more about how sentiment analytics is only one of the many ways to drive organizational success, and how AI-enabled contact center analytics transcends the limits of traditional analytics. Our easy to read guide explains how businesses using AI-enabled contact center analytics are taking action to improve customer experiences, identify complaints, prevent fraud and more.

Do you specialise in Analytics solutions for contact centres? We want to hear from you!

960 640 Stuart O'Brien

Each month on Call Centres Briefing we’re shining the spotlight on a different part of the customer care market – and in February we’re focusing on Analytics solutions.

It’s all part of our ‘Recommended’ editorial feature, designed to help customer care industry buyers find the best products and services available today.

So, if you’re a supplier of Analytics solutions and would like to be included as part of this exciting new shop window, we’d love to hear from you – for more info, contact Carly Walker on c.walker@forumevents.co.uk.

Here are the areas we’ll be covering, month by month:

Feb – Analytics
Mar – Call Centre Technology
Apr – Automated Customer Satisfaction
May – Social Media
Jun – Artificial Intelligence
Jul – Virtual Call/Contact Centres
Aug – Training & Development
Sep – Knowledge Management
Oct – Web Self Service/Chat
Nov – Display Boards
Dec – CRM

For more information on any of the above, contact Carly Walker on c.walker@forumevents.co.uk.

Fast call centre analytics ‘vital’ in the new WFH normal

960 640 Stuart O'Brien

The immediate provision of accurate speech analytics is becoming increasingly vital as contact centres increasingly look to maintain work from home (WFH) operational models.

That’s the view of leading call centre solution provider Avoira, which is anticipating heightened interest in the technology from delegates attending the virtual Contact Centre & Customer Service Summit.

The company reports managers are finding that the interactive nature of a sophisticated real-time analytics solution not only enables more effective call outcomes, but enhances employee engagement.

Speaking ahead of the Summit, Steve Watts, Avoira’s head of sales, said: “With team leaders and managers having lost the Captain’s Chair view of what’s happening minute-to-minute,  real-time analytics are even more important and compelling.

“As a result contact centre directors and heads of innovation are now taking a closer look at the sophisticated tools they might deploy to ensure productivity and service standards are maintained as the novelty of homeworking wears off.”

He adds that capturing real-time traffic not just within a centralised centre but across a remote working network, remains a challenge for all but the most potent speech analytic solutions.

As such Watts is expecting heightened interest at the Summit in the AI powered voice analytics solution which Avoira is set to showcase.

The cloud-based Xdroid solution is a rarity – arguably unique – in delivering real-time analytics of both voice and text communications. It automatically records and analyses all calls and monitors customer experience, compliance and the performance of individual agents, wherever they are working.

The powerful solution can detect and range of emotions, reporting on whether customers are displaying displeasure, uncertainty, disappointment or happiness. Based on analysis of dialogue, it provides on-screen prompts which can steer an agent to engage in specific actions – such as up-selling or making a compensatory gesture – at the time most likely to yield a positive response.

A formidable customer service tool, the technology claims to deliver an increased client retention rate of 30% and an inbound sales uplift of 14%.

It can also increase agent retention and reduce breaches which can result in legal or regulatory actions.

“It’s not just regulatory and legal compliance with which our solution can assist, but in ensuring employees, wherever they are, continue to subscribe to and share the organisation’s ethos,” says Watts. “By providing tools with which to help an agents job be performed more easily and effectively, it also helps them feel valued.”

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