We’ve written about how speech analytics are being used to help law enforcement see trends, identify underlying issues, and connect the dots between cases more efficiently. But while speech analytics software just recently became common in the public safety industry, it’s been used for some time in business settings—specifically call centers, or contact centers.

Of course, in a contact center, speech analytics aren’t used to help solve crimes. Instead, they’re used in a wide variety of ways, with the ultimate goal being to create a better customer experience. Isn’t that always the goal, after all?

Here are a few of the most effective ways you can put your speech analytics software to use.

Employee Training

One of the most valuable use of speech analytics software is for contact center employee training. Because this software can record both agents and customers simultaneously, it can be used to track things like agents’ adherence to a script, or to make sure they’re sticking to company policy.

But there are more sophisticated uses for speech analytics, too. Speech analytics can be used not only to identify actual words, but tone of voice, unusual pauses, variations in pitch, and other nuanced indicators that a customer isn’t happy or that the agent is having trouble with a certain aspect of the customer experience.

When used this way, the software can make it easier for managers to offer targeted training to individual agents, rather than take a one-size-fits-all approach.

Finally, managers can use speech analytics to identify what their highest performers are doing right. By being able to identify certain phrases used at certain points in a call, for example, managers can see what’s working best and use that to help their other agents achieve the same level of success.

Improving Customer Satisfaction

Improving customer satisfaction goes hand-in-hand with agent training. When your agents are performing their job duties better, your customers will naturally be happier. But there are other ways that speech analytics can be used specifically to give your customers a better experience.

Just like the software can spot trends in the use of words and phrases, it can also spot trends across the calls of the entire contact center—like which customers are more likely to take an up-selling or cross-selling offer. It’s also able to pick up on any hints of stress or emotion in a customer’s voice, as well as to decipher potential motivating factors for the customer’s call.

Another way speech analytics can be especially helpful is by reducing customer attrition. Managers can look for the specific moments when customers tend to leave, and then react accordingly. Maybe the call agent’s script needs some tweaking, or an option needs to be presented at a different point.

Boost Revenue

This is naturally an important goal for most companies, and speech analytics software can help achieve it. Just like the software can help identify when customers are leaving the call, it can help sales managers when those up-selling or cross-selling opportunities seem to be the most successful. Then they can employ targeted training to help agents make the most of those opportunities.

Reduce Costs

According to several sources, speech analytics software can pay for itself in cost savings in as little as three months, with most organizations reporting significant cost savings within nine months. This can be great news for companies that are trying hard to keep their contact center operations domestic, rather than outsourcing them to other countries.

Regulatory Compliance

For industries where regulatory compliance is a major issue, like banking or government contracting, speech analytics can be used to ensure that agents are adhering to any and all regulations. Agents can even be given real-time prompts via a desktop client if they need help remembering to use the correct language.

This means that problems can be addressed much more quickly—really, before they even become problems.

If your organization is looking for a contact center software solution, take a look at KOVA’s Workforce Optimization Solutions. From speech analytics, part of our Enterprise Feedback Management software, to total workforce management solutions like our software package Verint Media Recorder, KOVA has something to help you achieve your organizational goals. Contact us today!

Sources:

http://blog.zoomint.com/blog/using-speech-analytics-in-call-center-agent-training

http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/news/1259565/Speech-analytics-converts-call-centers-to-profit-centers

http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/report/Top-five-benefits-of-speech-analytics-for-the-call-center

http://www.customerzone360.com/topics/customer/articles/408094-why-every-contact-center-should-use-speech-analytics.htm

 

In some ways, the contact center model hasn’t changed in years. Customers call. Agents answer. Hopefully, questions are answered correctly and courteously, while problems are resolved quickly and efficiently.

The overall purpose of the contact center is to facilitate customer contact, whether the center’s goal is to sell products or provide customer support. And while that remains the same, new trends are changing the way contact centers handle their customers. We’ve put together a list of the top five trends shaping the contact center industry below.

  1. Mobile service is growing. Customers are now doing everything from banking to shopping to making large purchases on their mobile devices, and they expect to be able to engage with companies that way too. That’s why mobile apps, texting, social media, and email are becoming increasingly importantfor contact centers who want not just satisfied, but happy customers. Companies like AT&T have a mobile app that lets customers diagnose and fix many problems with their internet or TV connection on their own, with an option to schedule an appointment with a technician. Countless companies offer live webchat in addition to phone calls. Those companies who don’t wholeheartedly embrace mobile technology quickly—really quickly—will soon find that they’ve been left behind.
  2. Video support is becoming more popular. Live webchat is great, but live video chatting is better. At least, that’s what major companies like Bank of America, Target, and American Express are thinking—all of these and many more have been rolling out one-click access to video chat over the past two years, according to The L.A. Times. It’s a logical development in a web culture that’s becoming more and more personalized. With everything from the ads we see online to our Google searches being based on our personal preferences, it makes sense that customers want as much individualized contact as possible. And next to actual face-to-face interaction, virtual face-to-face interaction is the best way to achieve that.
  3. Call-back technology is going mainstream. Also known as virtual queuing, call-back technology is hardly new. But it’s only recently been seen as the smart solution that it is. With call-back technology, customers can forgo the potentially long hold times that everyone knows and dreads. Instead, they receive a call back from an agent within a few minutes. And this is good for the contact center, too—call-backs reduce abandonment rate, help improve average handle time, and can help manage spikes in volume.
  4. Omni-channel or cross-channel capabilities are becoming necessary. According to several studies, most customers use three or more channels when engaging with a company. That could be a phone call, texting, email, a tablet or mobile app, or visiting a website via a desktop computer. Customers are expecting to have a seamless experience across all channels. For example, let’s say you start shopping for shoes or clothing on your tablet, only to get distracted and forget to complete your purchase. When you log on to your desktop computer hours later, you remember what you were doing earlier. Instead of having to go to the website and find the specific item you want again, most of us would prefer—and expect—that the item be still there, in our virtual shopping cart, just waiting for us to hit “Place order.” The same is true for contact centers. If we log a complaint via email, and then place a call because the email response time is lagging, we’d expect our complaint to be logged into the system for the agent to see and respond to. But very often, that’s not the case. Instead, contact centers have us repeating the same information over and over. This means that the companies that can successfully implement omni-channel capabilities will come out way ahead.
  5. Live calls will decline. This goes hand-in-hand with the turn toward mobile technology and video chat. For most customers, placing a phone call is something of a last resort. If they have access to tools that will allow them to resolve the problem themselves, they will; and if they can’t do that, they’ll go online. This also means that calls that do come through will become more complex, necessitating more nuanced handling by agents.

The biggest takeaway for contact centers is that technology is becoming more and more a vital part of how they interact with customers. Without current, optimized software solutions, contact centers will be left far behind. Think your contact center is in need of a technology solution? Contact KOVA about our Enterprise Workforce Optimization and Management solutions like the Verint Media Recorder package or the Enterprise Feedback Management system.

Sources:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2014/07/22/the-omni-channel-experience-marketing-meets-ubiquity/2/

https://fonolo.com/blog/2015/01/whitepaper-top-10-contact-center-trends-for-2015/

http://www.ameyo.com/blog/top-contact-center-technology-trends-of-2015

http://blog.five9.com/future-of-the-contact-center-7-key-trends-driving-a-massive-transformation-part-3/

http://blog.five9.com/future-of-the-contact-center-7-key-trends-driving-a-massive-transformation-part-2/


Contact centers are getting in customer feedback all the time. Whether it’s through a formal channel, like a survey, or an informal one, like a quick mention during a support call, customer feedback can be enlightening and useful—but only if it’s managed well.

If it’s not managed well, all you have is a flood of data that will quickly overwhelm the people tasked with sifting through it and finding the message buried somewhere within.

Enterprise Feedback Management makes data manageable

That’s why KOVA offers Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) software. With this software package, managers in charge of customer experience are able to get a clearer view into what customers think of their company. They can deploy surveys easily and retrieve responses just as easily, and all across multiple channels: phone, email, SMS, mobile, and web. They can become, in short, customer feedback superheroes!

You can watch this video for an overview of how EFM can help improve your company’s customer experience. (embedded video: http://www.kovacorp.com/info-center/videos/enterprise-feedback-management-2/)

How EFM can help your contact center

Let’s say your company offers text support, allowing customers to text in problems, questions, etc. With Enterprise Feedback Management, you’ll be able to analyze the data in those texts to discern customer sentiment, not to mention valuable information about what your customers are using the text service for. Are they texting for minor issues, or major ones? Are the problems being resolved through text or not?

And since social media continues to be an important source of customer data, with customers sharing their views increasingly on Twitter, Facebook, and on blogs, KOVA’s EFM software can capture and analyze this information as well.

Use EFM to proactively engage your customers

Another major advantage that EFM offers users? Extensive case management capabilities. For example, you could deploy an email survey to customers asking for feedback on a new credit card feature. You can choose to automatically open the cases in which someone fills in the “Needs improvement” answer, so that you can go further with that data specifically. Maybe you want to send an email or a text to those customers to gather more information.

For the ones who answer “Hate it,” maybe you want to offer them some kind of incentive program, or reward, or some other acknowledgement that you’ve heard their response and want to make them satisfied customers once more. All this can be easily managed with EFM software.

To really strengthen your company’s feedback management, take your EFM from Ironman to Superman status by adding Voice of the Customer analytics. This software includes Text Analytics and Speech Analytics, as well as our Verint Media Recorder Customer Feedback solution.

Text and speech analytics give you incredible insight into how your customers feel about your products and company. Not only do these programs analyze the words customers are using—they can also analyze unusual pauses, tone of voice, and changes in pitch.

Combined with the feedback you get from surveys, this data can be extremely helpful in developing a full view of your customer.

The Customer Feedback solution offers yet another way to retrieve feedback from customers, by using short, context-sensitive surveys at the end of their phone calls. Businesses can collect data on everything from products to customer service and customer satisfaction.

Democratizing data

KOVA’s EFM solution is one of the most progressive around, with the ability to scale up to thousands of users through an in-depth collection of permissions and workflows designed to protect customer data, while still making information available to those for whom it’s most useful.

This is part of the trend toward decentralizing data ownership—getting it into the hands of front-line managers and supervisors quickly and efficiently, rather than allowing it to pile up into reports that must be received, reviewed, and shared across multiple departments.

Is your contact center in need of an Enterprise Feedback Management software solution? Contact KOVA today!

Sources:
http://www.verint.com/assets/verint/resources/datasheets/efm.pdf

http://www.ipsos.com/content/enterprise-feedback-management-%E2%80%93-three-big-changes-big-company-employees

http://www.virtualhold.com/blog/contact-center-best-practices/evaluate-effectiveness-call-center/#.VfxIS_lVhBd

It’s official: Labor Day has come and gone, and fall is in the air. Many of us parents are sending our kids off to college—some for the first time. And among all the things we’ve got to think about, from making sure our new collegiate have the right textbooks, to buying sheets, to updating the laptop, one surely looms larger than others: safety.

Now that our kids are living away from home, making sure they know how to stay safe is even more important than it was before. But even those of us who work in public safety don’t always think of every little thing they can do that will help them in an emergency—or, even better, help them prevent an emergency.

Public safety is vital to us here at KOVA—after all, our business is public safety software solutions. So to help you out, we want to share this list of 10 vital public safety tips that to pass on to your college student (and if you’ve got younger children, check out our safety tips for being around school buses and for the outdoors).

  1. Make sure your student has the Campus Police number in his phone. This may seem like a no-brainer to you, but you’d be surprised how many students don’t know how to reach their school’s campus police. To make sure they have it, look up the number yourself and text it to them. That way, even if they forget or neglect to put it into their contacts, they’ll be able to find it through a quick search.
  2. Remind them that technology can make you oblivious. This is hugely important—we’ve all experienced the total zone-out that can happen when we’re browsing Facebook, checking Twitter, or listening to a podcast while we’re walking or out in public. Not only do you increase your chances of accidents—being hit by a car, running into a bicyclist—you also greatly increase the chance of not noticing potentially dangerous situations. Staying alert and aware of your surroundings goes a long way in preventing emergencies.
  3. Keep emergency cash on hand. While this is an obvious one for anyone over the age of forty, young people—even young adults—rarely have cash. But it’s important to remind them that credit cards and debit cards can fail or get lost, and you never want to be stuck somewhere iffy just because you don’t have cash for a cab.
  4. Use locks. College campuses generally feel like, and are, very safe places. That’s wonderful. Still, make sure your student knows that it’s important to lock their dorm room and their car.
  5. Educate themselves. Most, if not every, college public safety organization offers some kind of self-defense class. Encourage your student to take advantage of it, and to pay attention to public safety tips and alerts that her school sends out. CPR and First Aid classes are also regular campus safety offerings, and are great resources for your student.
  6. Ensure they have emergency contacts programmed in their phones. If someone is admitted to a hospital alone, hospital staff always checks the person’s smartphone—they’re able to bypass any codes in order to see emergency contacts.
  7. Make sure they locate emergency call boxes on campus. These strategically located call boxes will allow them to call public safety if they’re without a phone or they see something suspicious. If they’re out alone at night, they can use the call boxes to ask for a campus escort.
  8. If they see someone in trouble, call Public Safety immediately. It may be too dangerous to intervene, but one thing your student can always do is call the police. It could mean the difference between an attempted crime and an actual one.
  9. If they see that their room has been broken into, do not go inside. If the intruder is still there, it could be dangerous for them to enter. Instead, they should go to a neighbor and call Public Safety from there.
  10. Don’t allow strangers to follow them into residence halls or student facilities that require a keycard. Students get keycards for a reason—to keep people with no connection to the college from entering student buildings. Make sure they know to keep track of their keycard at all times.

College is an exciting time for both you and your student (though probably more for your student if you’re suffering from an empty nest!). Ensure that it’s also a safe time by sharing these public safety tips with your student.If you’re a public safety professional, we hope this list jumpstarts your own ideas of safety tips to help make college a happy, healthy, and safe experience. And if your Public Safety Answering Point is in need of an upgrade, contact KOVA today and ask about our public safety software solutions.

Sources:

https://gustavus.edu/safety/tips/crime.php

http://www.up.edu/publicsafety/default.aspx?cid=12103&

If you manage a Public Safety Answering Point, then you’re probably very familiar with Next Generation 911, or NG911. These standards, which are gradually being put into place throughout the country, are taking current, telephone-based 911 systems and upgrading them into fully digital networks capable of transmitting video, photos, and SMS in addition to audio.

Transitioning to a new network is never easy, especially when that transition must be seamless—in other words, 911 services can’t be down for any period of time while the switch from current, Enhanced 911 services to NG911 is being made. For this and other reasons, transitioning to NG911 is a daunting prospect for many PSAPs.

However, the many major benefits of NG911 systems make them well worth the trouble. Here are just a few of the reasons PSAPs should begin implementing NG911 capabilities sooner, rather than later.

Improved location tracking

Those who work in public safety know that despite cell phone location data, 911 dispatchers can’t always pinpoint a caller’s location. This is especially true for rural areas, which have their own set of challenges for 911 services.

For obvious reasons, this can present major problems. While many callers will be able to tell dispatchers exactly where they are, callers who are injured, disoriented, or traveling in a city or town they don’t know may not be able to give their location accurately. This can delay care, and in some cases, even make the difference between life and death.

With NG911, 911 dispatchers can transmit maps to first responders rather than giving them the location verbally. This can greatly enhance police or EMS’s ability to respond quickly and efficiently. In addition, callers to NG911 systems can transmit photos and videos, giving even more information about their situation to dispatchers.

Improved community access

The text-to-911 abilities that many PSAPs already offer have made access to 911 services easier for countless citizens with special needs. Before text-to-911, those who were deaf, hard-of-hearing, or speech-impaired had to use additional devices to communicate with 911. Now, they can reach the service on their phone, just like everyone else.

Text-to-911 is also highly beneficial for people in a number of emergency situations—victims of domestic violence, for example, or home invasions are able to communicate silently, which can be vital to avoiding further harm.

Another way NG911 can help is by making it quicker and easier to route calls to different PSAPs, should any one system become overloaded—as can happen during power outages or natural disasters. This reduces callers’ wait time, which in turn reduces call abandonment.

Consider this example: Vermont implemented statewide NG911 standards before it was struck by Hurricane Irene in 2011. When the hurricane hit, one of the state’s largest PSAPs had to be evacuated, which could have been disastrous for communities needing help.

But because NG911 systems were in place, 911 calls were able to be routed to other PSAPs throughout the state, and communications were not interrupted.

Improved efficiency and cost savings

What NG911 benefits really boil down to is increased efficiency for PSAPs and the first responder agencies that work with them. Every photo, video, or text that provides a more complete picture of a caller’s situation not only makes response time faster, but also more appropriate.

The same is true of location accuracy and the ability to reroute calls to other PSAPs. When each call requires fewer resources—in this case, time spent trying to figure out a caller’s location or needs—dispatchers are able to handle calls more quickly, which can decrease the probability of a system becoming overloaded.

As for cost savings, while transitioning to NG911 generates a lot of costs up-front, the potential savings down the line are substantial. As noted in a 911.gov report, after switching to a statewide NG911 system, Vermont saved money by rerouting calls from a rural PSAP that fielded only 1 percent of the state’s 911 calls. Because it’s easy to share and transmit information between NG911 PSAPs, agencies and jurisdictions have the ability to make decisions about combining resources, if that’s something that makes sense.

At KOVA, we’re committed to staying on top of developments in technology. If you’d like to learn more about NG911 standards, visit our White Papers section to read about how NG911 is affecting dispatcher training. And if your PSAP is already making the transition to NG911, take a look at our public safety software solutions.

Sources:

http://www.911.gov/ng911_law/download/ng911_resize_mar2013_final_lr.pdf

http://www.911.gov/pdf/NG911-StandardsIdentificationAnalysis-jan2014.pdf

https://transition.fcc.gov/statelocal/NG911-presentation-4-22-2014.pdf

 

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