What are the most effective ways to track call center performance using speech analytics?

1 Identify your goals and KPIs

The first step to track call center performance using speech analytics is to identify your goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) for each service area or campaign. Your goals and KPIs should align with your business objectives and customer expectations, and be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. For example, you may want to increase customer retention, reduce average handle time, improve first call resolution, or boost cross-selling. Once you have your goals and KPIs, you can use speech analytics to monitor and measure them on a regular basis.

2 Set up speech analytics categories and rules

The next step is to set up speech analytics categories and rules that correspond to your goals and KPIs. Categories are groups of keywords, phrases, or topics that you want to track in your customer conversations. For example, you may have categories for product features, pricing, complaints, satisfaction, or competitors. Rules are criteria that define how speech analytics will score or flag a category based on the presence, absence, frequency, or sequence of keywords or phrases. For example, you may have a rule that scores a category as positive if the customer says "thank you" or "great service", or a rule that flags a category as negative if the customer says "cancel" or "refund". You can use speech analytics software to create and customize your categories and rules, or use predefined ones based on industry best practices.

3 Analyze speech analytics reports and dashboards

The third step is to analyze speech analytics reports and dashboards that show you the results of your categories and rules. Reports and dashboards can help you visualize and understand the trends, patterns, and outliers in your call center performance across different dimensions, such as time, agent, team, channel, or segment. You can use speech analytics reports and dashboards to compare your actual performance against your goals and KPIs, identify the strengths and weaknesses of your service delivery, and discover the root causes and drivers of customer behavior and feedback.

4 Take action based on speech analytics insights

The final step is to take action based on the insights you gain from speech analytics. Speech analytics can help you improve your call center performance by providing you with actionable recommendations and suggestions for optimization, improvement, or intervention. For example, you can use speech analytics to coach and train your agents, enhance your scripts and workflows, refine your service offerings and policies, or personalize your customer interactions. You can also use speech analytics to reward and recognize your best-performing agents, teams, or campaigns, and motivate them to maintain or exceed their standards.