Speech analytics is one of the fastest growing technologies in the contact center market, but not everyone has applied this game-changing technology yet. Speech analytics software is great for call centers because it allows you to take data from thousands of calls and conversations and mine it to gain insight about your customers, your contact center agents, and what you can be doing better at your contact center. If you use it properly, you can end up getting a significant competitive advantage. So let's talk about what exactly speech analytics can do for your call center, and why you'll benefit from implementing it.

Help Train Your Agents
When you use speech analytics, you can identify when your agents have trouble handling a certain type of call, when they leave out important information, or even how often they talk over a customer. So instead of wasting time re-training or firing and hiring new agents, you can identify the areas where your agents are weakest, and tailor training to help them deal with those calls.

It's easy to find agents that aren't being proactive or satisfying customers when you use speech analytics. It allows you to specifically coach underperforming agents, without wasting the time of your best agents. And when all your agents are performing their best, your customers will spend less time on the phone and hang up happier.

Customer Satisfaction
Most contact centers implement speech analytics because they are trying to improve the customer experience. Speech analytics doesn't just record the call, but it can also identify the reason for the call and the products mentioned by your agent, even identifying stress in the customer's voice. Tone of voice is important because it may indicate things that the customer isn't actually saying. Simply seeing a transcript of a call doesn't give you the same information about the call.

Hold Times
The software also gives you a way to identify the reasons for excessive hold times. Customers hate being put on hold, but it happens all the time. In many cases, the most you can do is minimize that hold time, and speech analytics gives you the power to place these calls in a single category so that managers can review them to find out what the problem is. You can easily use this technology to identify patterns in your customers' calls, and then change your strategy to meet their needs.

Using speech analytics successfully will reduce customer attrition overall, and give you a better idea of why customers are leaving. When you know why they're leaving, you've already accomplished the first step in changing your strategy to keep customers coming back. Overall, your ability to improve customer service with speech analytics will increase customer satisfaction and keep them from leaving in the first place.

Do you think your customers could benefit from your contact center's use of speech analytics software? To learn more about the system, watch our video on Verint's Speech Analytics. If you like what you see, contact us!

Real-time public safety technology has been on the market for years, but up until recently, it’s mostly been implemented in large cities - places like New York and San Francisco, for example.

From gunshot detection technology, to real-time video feeds, to facial recognition technology, much of what’s available seems almost futuristic. When it comes to crimes, police are coming ever closer to being able to respond almost instantly, and with a wealth of important situational information that they simply didn’t have just 10 years ago.

Cities that employ these new tools often house them in high-tech “crime centers.” These are essentially information- and data-gathering stations, where staff members can access and monitor surveillance cameras, access crime and private databases to gather information on suspects, and send information straight to police officers’ cell phones.

History of real time crime fighting

According to an article in Police Chief magazine, the first Real Time Crime Center was opened in New York City in 2005. Taking three years to establish and costing $11 million, the crime center was the vision of the NYPD police commissioner at the time, Raymond Kelly.

Kelly worked closely with a team of information technology and public safety officials to design and create the center, which allows officers and staff to access a massive volume of data. The system is able to access more than 120 million records of arrests, criminal complaints, and 911 calls that go back 10 years. This gives officers the crucial data they need when trying to uncover connections between seemingly unrelated crimes or revisit unsolved cases.

Of course, all the data in the world does little good unless it can be clearly sorted and analyzed. The New York center does this as well, employing tools like 911 call mapping, an event-notification system that relays information to officers’ emails, and mapping technology that can display layers of information on top of each other.

A recent addition has made it possible for staff at the crime center to send photographs of suspects to officers’ mobile devices. This technology will soon be available for police car laptops, as well.

Real Time Crime Centers spread to other cities

Due to the massive investment of resources that a Real Time Crime Center represents for a municipality, it’s not surprising that for many years, it was only large cities that could afford to implement them.

After New York’s opened, places like Houston, Tex., Miami, Fla., and Seattle, Wash. followed suit with their own crime centers, employing tools like gunshot detection technology, among others.

These are sensors that are placed in high-crime areas that can detect the sound of gunshots - they can even differentiate them from similar sounds like cars or motorcycles backfiring - and send that information as well as location information directly to police stations.

Now, however, these high-tech public safety centers are spreading to smaller municipalities. This February, Hartford, Conn. opened its Real-Time Crime and Data Intelligence Center, a major investment in the city’s police department.

The center feeds police officers real-time information that, according to the center’s leader Sgt. Johnmichael O’Hare, has assisted officers in hundreds of cases that led to arrests.

Hartford isn’t the only city making this kind of investment in its crime-fighting capabilities. Wilmington, Del. and Springfield, Mass. have both opened similar centers in the past year, while Modesto, Calif., Bridgeport, Conn., and Wilmington, N.C. are all working on opening their own real time crime centers in the months and years to come.

It’s a true testament to the power that technology has to make not just our cities safer, but our police officers’ jobs safer, too. Armed with video feeds, photographs, and a stream of real-time information, officers can head into dangerous scenes more confidently, with much greater situational awareness.

Public safety technology isn’t just for organizations with real-time crime centers, however. Public safety answering points, airports, police stations, and private companies can all benefit from the increased knowledge and analysis that technology has to offer.

KOVA has worked with countless organizations to help them select and implement high-quality technology that serves their public safety needs.

To learn more about what’s available, check out our Public Safety Software Solutions section.

Like every other sector of business, the financial services industry is being reshaped by new and changing technology. These changes are happening in the way these organizations do business, but also in the way they market themselves and engage with their customers. Customer service and engagement are crucial to businesses in this industry, as it evolves, to keep current customers happy and attract new ones. Here’s a look at some of the most prominent customer service trends in the industry, and how they’ll help your business thrive in this new environment.

Mobile Banking
Mobile banking continues its upward trend as more people choose to do their banking online, from their phone or tablet. The attraction to mobile banking is simple—it’s easier, and it allows people to do their banking in between checking their email and scrolling through their newsfeed. Having an app for customers to download and use is an important part of staying ahead of the curve in customer engagement.

Customer Service
This involves listening to what your customers are saying to you, as well as listening to what they’re saying about you. In-person engagements are declining, thanks in part to the mobile banking we just mentioned, but also because people are using the internet to research and investigate products and services. Now that people have the ability to sift through multiple offers and claims, great customer service comes from providing them with the best product or service available.

Comparison Shopping
The rise of price comparison websites has put even more pressure on financial institutions to provide better services and rates than their competitors. It’s important to provide a similar way for customers to simply and easily compare and contrast the benefits of certain deals. This is where customer service agents can come into play—offering “instant quotes,” on-screen chats, or offering an in-person meeting to help with the decision and establish trust. Gaining that trust is one of the big, ongoing trends in the financial services industry right now.

Data Analytics
One of the biggest advantages that financial services companies have is that they take in vast amounts of data on each of their customers. What bills people pay, where people regularly swipe their debit cards, and when people write checks—these are all signs that provide data about how people spend their money. Properly analyzing and using this data can help companies offer services based on what the data says their customer might need. For instance, if a customer’s behavior across different channels suggests a spike in saving, then why not offer them a free budgeting or bill payment app? This kind of personalization is going to be key in retaining and bringing in new customers as online options and comparison tools continue to grow.

Do you want to find out more about how your organization can improve customer engagement and retain customers? Then contact KOVA today and see what our innovative customer service solutions can do for your business.

Voice of the customer is a term used to describe the processes your business uses to get your customers’ feedback about their experiences and expectations of your products and services. VoC can be captured in a number of ways, including direct discussions or interviews, surveys, complaint logs, focus groups, and observation.

So why should you conduct VoC research? The short answer is that it gives you the information you need to connect and engage with your customers. And when you can successfully engage your customers, you then have the tools you need to improve your services or product, and in turn, improve your overall customer retention.

VoC is important in customer engagement, because when customers share their experience with you, whether it’s through a survey, a complaint, or a focus group, they expect you to listen and act on their feedback. There is almost always room for improvement when it comes to customer service, so using a VoC program is an important piece of making the necessary changes to improve.

If you’re looking for a way to start implementing your own VoC program, then contact KOVA today. Our Verint Media Recorder Customer Experience Survey Software can help you gather valuable feedback from customers at the end of their calls through IVR or email surveys. A browser-based solution, Verint Media Recorder Customer Feedback uses short, context-sensitive, dynamic customer surveys to collect data on products, processes, staff performance, customer loyalty and level of satisfaction.

So don’t wait—start improving your customer service today!

Did you know that one out of every 25 jobs in America is in the contact center industry? Or that a full 40 percent of contact centers have no analytics tools, even though analytics is predicted to become vitally important over the next five years?

Contact centers and the customer service they provide are hugely important to the country’s economy. And while you may have gathered plenty of anecdotal evidence of that truth from your  time working in the industry, it never hurts to have a few numbers that you can rattle off at a moment’s notice. Check out this infographic to learn 13 stats that every contact center manager should know.

[gview file="http://www.kovacorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/kovacorp_infographic_01.pdf"]

If your company is one of the many that wants to improve its training programs, increase its analytics capabilities, or up its employee engagement, KOVA can help. Take a look at our workforce optimization and management solutions to get started.

What is “scripted empathy,” and why has it been taking such a beating lately? Scripted empathy is the term used to describe an interaction on the phone with a customer service representative that includes some kind of standard apology or explanation. Now, you might already be thinking that a scripted apology would be a bad idea, and you’d be right. Unsurprisingly, callers don’t love hearing an apology that hits all the right buzzwords, but leaves them feeling like they’re being spun in circles by a corporate entity.

The reason scripted empathy just doesn’t work is because you can’t script a genuine emotion like empathy. When you hear a scripted apology, you can easily imagine it was said to the ten callers before you, and it’s going to be said to the ten callers after you. And how can you be expected to even care at that point?

Loose scripts work in a lot of situations, giving call center agents a way to start a conversation and take it in the right direction, but when you take out any autonomy on the employee’s part, you’re also getting rid of any chance for an apology that feels genuine.

So what’s the solution? If you want callers to feel like they’re talking with a real person who feels their pain, then you have to allow your agents to respond as the situation requires. Most customers don’t need a big apology, or a scripted response to their anger, they just want the problem fixed. Giving an irritated customer a scripted response is only going to anger them further.

That means you have to encourage your employees to have actual empathy for the customers who are calling. Call centers are notorious for bored-sounding or unhelpful representatives, and a script only exacerbates this problem. You have to change your customer service training to incorporate deep listening, and encourage them to respond to a caller as they judge the situation requires.

Your agents also have to be able to see things from the customer’s perspective, while not losing track of what they need to do to fix the situation. Again, allowing your agents to be independent during their calls can help them respond appropriately to any concerns that the caller may have. And when the call becomes a conversation, rather than a customer banging their head against a script, that’s when your agents will be able to display real, genuine empathy for what the caller is going through.

That empathy is an integral part of making sure customers hang up the phone satisfied with their call. Offering great customer service is a complex directive, but the payoff is well worth it. To learn more about how to help your contact center improve its customer experience,watch our video Call Center Solutions for Superior Service. And if you’d like more information on how Kova can help your call center, contact us today!

eyeusers