Speech Analytics: The Fastest-Growing Application In Contact Center History

Customer Inter@ction Solutions, May 2007 by Campbell, Susan J

Speech analytics have become an important tool in the contact center in a short amount of time. When properly implemented and monitored, such solutions can drive better customer satisfaction and productivity in the center, thus facilitating an increase in agent satisfaction and boosting the overall performance of the contact center. Speech analytics, in fact, have demonstrated an unprecedented ability to mine invaluable information from contact center transactions of all kinds. The data derived from speech analytics can positively affect almost all aspects of the contact center: customer loyalty and retention, cross-selling and upselling, agent management and the reduction of turnover, customer relationship management, call routing, compliance and, in the end, that shining goal of every call center: first-call resolution.

A new report has analyzed this growing market and outlined why speech analytics have rapidly developed into the fastest-growing application in the history of contact centers. The 2007 Speech Analytics Market Report by DMG Consulting is positioned as the definitive guide to this emerging market segment. The report provides detailed information about the market, vendors, competitive landscape, technology products, functionality accuracy, ROI, pricing, market share, projections and implementation best practices.

First introduced into the contact center in 2004, speech analytics is still considered an emerging application. Donna Fluss, president of DMG Consulting, noted in a statement, "Within five to eight years, speech analytics will become a must have" for enterprises as it is the only solution that gives them insights into customer needs and wants in real-time and near real-time."

Contact centers implement speech analytics solutions to analyze customer-agent conversations with the goal of providing benefit to the entire enterprise. The DMG report examines the technical and business opportunities and challenges involved in implementing these applications and also provides best practices and guidance for making these applications work for the enterprise. The Report also explains how speech analytics leverages insights contained in unstructured customer conversations to improve profitability, reduce costs, enhance the customer experience and reduce corporate liability. These "unstructured data" make up a lot of the information gathered on a daily basis by call center interactions; until now, however, the call center was unable to do anything with this potentially valuable information.

The Report describes the specific uses, benefit and ROI of speech analytics for various operating departments within enterprises. Eight case studies of highly successful speech analytics implementation in leading verticals are profiled in the study.

"Enterprises are rapidly learning how to use the output from speech analytics to benefit many operating areas including sales, marketing, R&D, compliance, risk management, collections, fraud, back-office operations and, of course, the contact center. The great news is that the benefits are real when users invest the time and resources," added Fluss.

The Report Includes:

* A detailed description of die compelling benefits and ROI that speech analytics applications present to the contact center, customers and die enterprise;

* An explanation of how speech analytics structures customer conversations and die technology diat enhances accuracy;

* A review of current and projected speech analytics uses in the contact center, sales, marketing, operations and throughout the enterprise;

* An analysis of the vendor landscape and vendor directory;

* Detailed company reports to assess vendor viability, ability to execute, vision, strategy, technology, product functionality and future product plans;

* Pricing for premise-based, hosted and managed service offerings; and

* Data on market share, activity and five-year projections.

Speech analytics will continue to grow as an important part of the contact center environment. With diis growdi, die industry should also expect to see future innovations that will continue to improve on product offerings and further applications throughout the enterprise.

Visit www.tmcnet.com/577.1 for more in-depth information about die Report.

By Susan J. Campbell, Contributing Editor, TMCnet