Every business should be scrambling to provide the ultimate customer experience for any transaction, full stop. We live in a day and age when customers are very quick to abandon one provider, vendor, or even individual transactions just because of a poor experience.
In the real world, this means delivering service with a smile and a pleasant tone — but what about over the phone, or in a webchat? That’s where things become a bit more difficult.
In fact, ask most contact center agents, and they’ll most likely tell you that the average caller leans towards the frustrated side. No one wants to have to contact support, and when they do it’s usually to fix something that went wrong. Or, if it’s even to gain a simple bit of help in the buying process, no one wants to be slowed down by annoying IVRs, which can definitely be improved, or even unfriendly agents.
In Comes Predictive Analytics
Well, time for some more science fiction stuff, that isn’t really sci-fi at all — because it’s already being used. Predictive analytics can go a long way in helping a business determine the best leads, or a possible outcome, utilizing a massive set of data.
The idea is pretty simple, but since we like nice clean definitions lets go ahead and assign one, before we jump too far into the details.
Predictive Analytics, similar to predictive dialers in a way, are a distinct form of tools that, well, make predictions about the unknown future, generally based on sets of data. Essentially, this is a form of AI that can look at information, and attempt to predict a logical conclusion based on this data.
What Are We Predicting?
Well, depending on the different form of analytics your business is focused on, these tools can be used to predict a lot of different outcomes.
Bumps in the Contact Process:
Some predictive analytics can be used to run through your contact center’s process, the customer’s journey. You can use predictive analytics to, well, predict where clients will grow frustrated, or abandon the entire process. Recognize peak call times, or low points in the day. Use this information to establish and act on future strategies.
High-Risk Clients:
Another use for predictive analytics is to identify those high-risk clients, or rather, those that are at a high risk of abandoning your service. Through data mining and data analysis, predictive analytics can look help point out which demographic of clients is most likely to abandon service.
Agents That Need More Training:
Instead of looking externally, predictive analytics can also look internally. In fact, predictive analytics can help contact center managers apply the proper training and assistance to those agents that need it most. Managers can also even recognize which agents might be at risk of leaving the contact center, if they are not preforming as expected, or have a slip in performance.
The Best Leads to Follow Up:
Predictive analytics can also be used to help agents determine which leads are strong, and which might require more follow up. By pouring through the data of different demographics, different clients and different circumstances, predictive analytics can help determine which leads are a sure-win, and which might need that extra call to convince.
But moving beyond these simple concepts, what if predictive analytics can help you’re agent understand how the client will respond, in order to create the smoothest possible interaction? What if predictive analytics can almost read minds?
Predictive Voice Analytics Is the Fun Stuff
Now, let’s spice things up a bit with another idea completely: predictive voice analytics. This is what your contact center was missing all along. This is really the true power of predictive analytics, at least in the contact center universe. Predictive voice analytics are very real, and they’re here to help your contact center improve the customer experience in a pretty dramatic way.=
Everyone is human, and we can’t always expect our agents to respond with a cheerful, glowing, happy response. Nor can we expect all callers and clients to have the patience agents deserve. But, what if we could almost read the minds of callers, and help agents navigate the tricky mind-field of emotions?
That’s right, voice analytics. You know that old joke about the little devil on one shoulder, and the little angel on another, telling you what’s good and what’s bad? Well, predictive voice analytics could work something like that, except it would be all good.
Why Does My Contact Center NEED Voice Analytics?
With the right AI, predictive voice combined with call center analytics can listen in on the conversation your agent is having with a client — or read the text if they’re using texting or web chats to get in touch with support. These tools can then go ahead and analyze and predict the emotions of both callers, and agents.
- Improve the Customer Experience by analyzing emotions and behaviors in real-time. Agents can then have a little buddy on their shoulder feeding them information to help avoid frustration, and friction in the process.
- Anticipate the need of callers through voice analytics, and allow your agents to “read the minds” of callers. If a caller is frustrated, voice analytics can help anticipate a negative experience, and divert the call to an agent best equipped to handle these emotion filled conversations.
- Prevent call center fraud by utilizing voice analytics to help discover the true intentions of the caller. This works to help agents recognize angry callers, but also fraudulent callers as well. Certain voice queues and emotional triggers can help recognize who is upset, and who is malicious.
- Voice analytics can also be used to measure caller satisfaction at the end of a call. This data can then be used to help predict possible future outcomes for other calls, and clients, based on previous conclusions and satisfaction levels.
By understanding why customers call, what level of support they require, how quickly the issue was resolved, and the customer’s satisfaction with that resolution, your contact center can learn how to best handle requests later.
The Bottom Line
Contact centers are all about the customer journey. Guiding callers and clients through the process as simply, quickly, and easily as possible is what all support centers should aim for. Predictive analytics in its most basic form can completely change the journey your customers have to wander through, recognizing the speed bumps before they might even occur. Predicting trends and learning from the past will help your contact center completely prepare for the future.
And of course, if you want to break out the big guns, predictive voice analytics can completely revolutionize the way your agents handle callers. Whether the goal is to detect and prevent fraud, or simply detect when callers might grow frustrated or angry, voice analytics will guide agents through the proper responses to keep that satisfaction level high.
When customers are willing to jump ship at the slightest hint of friction in the experience, predictive analytics are one of the best tools your contact center can employ to help eliminate that friction.
