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Real time speech analytics could perhaps be more accurately referred to as ‘real-time monitoring and action’. Analysis is a detailed examination of the elements or structure of something, and refers to the discovery and understanding of patterns in data, something that by definition only happens post-call when all data are fully present. Real-time monitoring on the other hand, looks for and recognises predefined words, phrases and sometimes context, within a handful of seconds, giving the business the opportunity to act and providing real-time agent assistance.
However, AI can be trained to understand intent and recognize patterns through immersion in vast quantities of historical data, so that when a call is taking place, it can draw upon this knowledge and provide advice or action that has proven successful previously, moving towards the actual provision of real-time analytics.
AI assists in real-time speech analytics through applying the results of machine learning that have been carried out on large quantities of previously recorded conversations, providing:
• agents with the understanding of where their conversational behaviour is falling outside of acceptable and previously successful norms (such as speaking to quickly or slowly, or in a monotonous fashion)
• an assessment of the meaning of non-verbal cues such as intonation, stress patterns, pauses, fluctuations in volume, pitch, timing and tone in order to support sentiment analysis
• understanding the actions and information that have been seen to provide successful outcomes in previous similar interactions, and relaying this to the agent within the call.
For some businesses, real-time analysis is an important and growing part of the armoury that they have to improve their efficiency and effectiveness. There is potentially a great deal of benefit to be gained from understanding automatically what is happening on the call, and in being able to act while improvements are still possible, rather than being made aware some time after the call of what has happened.
Call centre speech analytics can be used in many ways:
• monitoring calls for key words and phrases, which can either be acted upon within the conversation, or passed to another department (e.g. Marketing, if the customer indicates something relevant to other products or services sold by the company)
• alerting the agent or supervisor if pre-specified words or phrases occur
• offering guidance to the agent on the next best action for them to take, bringing in CRM data and knowledge bases to suggest answers to the question being asked, or advice on whether to change the tone or speed of the conversation
• escalating calls to a supervisor as appropriate
• detecting negative sentiment through instances of talk-over, negative language, obscenities, increased speaking volume etc., that can be escalated to a supervisor
• triggering back-office processes and opening agent desktop screens depending on call events. For example, the statement of a product name or serial number within the conversation can open an agent assistant screen that is relevant to that product
• making sure that all required words and phrases have been used, e.g. in the case of compliance or forming a phone-based contract
• suggesting cross-selling or upselling opportunities.
Many solution providers have worked hard to bring to market new or improved solutions to assist with real-time monitoring and alerts, and recognition of key words, phrases, instances of talk-over, emotion and sentiment detection, pitch, tone, speed and audibility of language and many other important variables can be presented on the agent desktop within the call, triggering business-driven alerts and processes if required. Speaker separation and redacted audio output (e.g. stopping sensitive data being included in text transcriptions) further add to real-time analytics’ capabilities.
The speed of real-time analysis is crucial to its success: long delays can mean missed, inappropriate or sub-optimal sales opportunities being presented; cancellation alerts can show up too late; compliance violations over parts of the script missed-out may occur as the call has already ended. However, it is important not to get carried away with real-time analysis, as there is a danger that businesses can get too enthusiastic and set alert thresholds far too low. This can result in agents being constantly bombarded with cross-selling and upselling offers and/or warnings about customer sentiment or their own communication style, so that it becomes a distraction rather than a help.
The effectiveness of speech analytics tools may be boosted by post-call analytics taking place as well. For example, by assessing the outcomes of calls where specific cross-selling and upselling approaches were identified and presented to agents in real time, analysis can show the most successful approaches including the use of specific language, customer type, the order of presented offers and many other variables (including metadata from agent desktop applications) in order to fine-tune the approach in the future. Additionally, getting calls right first-time obviously impacts positively upon first-call resolution rates, and through picking up phrases such as "speak to your supervisor", can escalate calls automatically or flag them for further QA.
Real-time analysis offers a big step up from the traditional, manual call monitoring process, and is particularly useful for compliance, debt collection, and for forming legally-binding contracts on the phone, where specific terms and phrases must be used and any deviation or absence can be flagged to the agent's screen within the call. Finance, telecoms and utilities companies - and indeed, any business where telephone-based contracts are important - are particularly interested in this.