Speech Analytics – Finding Hidden Value Beyond Words

In today’s technology-driven world, data is considered essential to effective decision-making. But, with the overwhelming amount of data collected through surveys, web traffic, digital administrative tools, and call center logs, it is difficult for organizations to know what information will help them be more productive and effective.

In recent years, organizations have begun using speech analytics to automatically identify and extract relevant information from unstructured data for analysis. With speech analytics, organizations analyze voice recordings and/or live conversations to obtain additional, useful information about customers beyond literal words. 

Today we can use machine-based transcription engines to convert the audio to text, which opens the door to a broader analysis process. Having the ability to analyze the mix of both audio and text can reveal emotion and sentiment of the speakers, and thus a deeper understanding of the content.

Why do you need speech analytics?

Speech analytics unearths information that would be impossible to get otherwise. Are your employees being considerate to your callers? When a caller is upset, what are the terms your employee is using to resolve the situation? How long does it take? How many calls are you receiving in which your caller is upset? What are the topics discussed in those calls? Practically, it would take too much time to listen to each of those calls, analyze them, and turn them into actionable intelligence to improve your business. Speech analytics solves the problem and can improve customer service, customer retention, employee effectiveness, regulatory compliance, and even process improvements and product research. You are analyzing 100% of all calls.

Is it just for contact centers? Absolutely not. Let’s consider compliance. It’s possible that your business requires you to be able to analyze all interactions with your customers. Imagine the auditor’s surprise when they ask, “Show me an interaction with a customer about X” and you quickly search ALL of your voice interactions and can dive directly into a conversation? Or, you are a legal firm that needs to analyze the recordings from depositions. Finding you the right part of the discussion is as simple as searching in a “voice browser”. That’s part of the power of speech analytics. 

The use cases for Mutare Insights™, Mutare’s speech analytics offering, are many. For example, one customer uses Mutare Insights to train their chat bot. Another customer uses Mutare Insights to transcribe a mono audio file with two speakers in the audio and then diarize the transcription (diarize means to separate out each speaker in the audio). That customer then uses employees to correct the transcriptions, which raises the accuracy close to 100%. Mutare Insights accelerates the transcription and analysis process, improving productivity and efficiency that far exceeds what can be achieved with human transcription alone. 

Other customers are using Mutare Insights to redact sensitive information out of both the audio and the text. This Mutare Insights capability is extremely valuable when applied to the customer’s archived and current audio files and is unique to Mutare.

How do I choose a speech analytics solution?

When you are looking for a speech to text analytics solution, it is best to look for flexible options that provide choices that fit your current environment but will also carry into the future. The provider should be able to implement the speech to text engine as a hosted, hybrid and secured behind-the-firewall system. What’s more, organizations increasingly recognize the potential for applying analytics not just to their audio, but video as well. Whatever analytics system you choose, make sure it includes that capability, otherwise it will quickly become obsolete.

Obtaining actionable insights doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated. In our work with customers, we find that many organizations are using complex tools that provide more data than is needed to capture customer information and guide organizational improvements. In fact, you can become so focused on complex data that the real or underlying issues that need to be resolved are often overlooked. In addition to flexibility and scalability previously mentioned, our professional services team advises customers to also evaluate speech analytics solutions based on ease-of-use, the ability to capture and understand relevant data and cost-effectiveness.

The bottom line is that every voice interaction with a customer includes hidden value beyond the words. Applying transcription with speech analytics allows you to find those deeper insights in the voice of your customers – to know more about who they are, what they need, and how you should respond.

It is said “a picture speaks 1,000 words.” Likewise, Mutare Insights paints a picture –a full portrait – of your customers.