Speech Analytics - an evolving business resource..

 

 Speech analytics technology has evolved in recent years, providing organizations with insight into sales, service and products gleaned from the voice biometrics of customers.

 It has also brought a dilemma for organizations deploying it - Does it belong under the hands-on management of the contact center? Or should marketing govern its use? Or maybe it should remain under the strict control of Business Intelligence (BI)?

 An important question organizations need to consider when they're purchasing speech analytics tools, according to Keith Dawson, senior analyst with Frost and Sullivan.

 "There is no one way to determine which is best -- different options are good at different points," Dawson said. "A lot of it is going to depend on where the purchaser's analytics culture is."

 Vendors that have developed speech analytics typically promote just the core speech analytics functions; Parsing recordings for meanings, establishing patterns and alerting users to unseen connections; but there are actually three primary philosophies for organizations purchasing speech analytics.

Businesses with entrenched speech technology in self service or other speech-recognition tools might take the "what's it doing re: in-house performance" approach.

In the contact center environment, agent performance optimization vendors are pushing the technology from the workforce optimization side. Speech analytics are a way to both measure agent skills, and train them as well.

When presented as a marketing tool/revenue producer, discussions on buying speech analytics turns from cost cutting to profits.
Contact center mangement has often concentrated only on cost control;
Average Handle Time ("AHT") or per-call Average Work Time ("AWT");
  and have mostly ignored profit and revenue.

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"They're going to have to collaborate with business people who don't care about the activities & performance inside the call center -- they care only about the outcomes," Dawson said.