There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that one of the most important sources of information about customers is locked-up in the calls that companies record as I have pointed out. These records contain vital information about what customers are calling, why they are calling, and what prompted them to call. Unlocking this information has been a challenge for companies for the simple reason that these recordings have no pre-determined structure, making them very difficult to analyse. However times have moved on from the days when companies had to create a dictionary of common words and phrases just so the software could search recordings to identify calls including these words. The latest products include the ability to recognise the tone and inflections used by the caller, and they no longer rely on a dictionary but use phonetic-based techniques to uncover the real content and meaning of what was actually said.

One vendor I have examined is Nexidia. The latest release of its software – Nexidia Enterprise Speech Intelligence (ESI) 7.2 – uses phonetic indexing and searching techniques to enable companies to analyse many thousands of calls per hour. As the software uses advanced phonetic techniques, companies no longer have to create a dictionary, the software can work with multiple languages and grammatical structures, all of which makes it much easier to set up and operate. The product is built on Nexidia’s new Workbench 6.0 platform that includes real-time analysis software, enhanced search and call classification capabilities.

The software produces various, configurable reports and analysis to the specific user, including intuitive call correlation, trend and talk time analysis. These capabilities allow an organization to get the big picture of what customers are saying and allow them to understand the reasons behind why they called, and the performance of different contact center sites, teams or individual agents. These reports and analysis are presented in highly graphical ways such as activity maps, key performance metrics dashboards, dashboards showing how different parts of the organization are performing and tree-maps that literally show in scalable squares the pattern of calls; the size and color of the square representing the proportion of that type of call.

My research into the technology used to enhance the customer experience shows that organizations are beginning to mature with 19 percent currently using speech analytics to understand how customers are reacting during conversations with contact center agents. Nexidia is one of a small number of vendors that supply speech analytics including two of the main call center providers, NICE and Verint; and dedicated providers that I am examining for research coverage including Aurix, CallMiner, and Utopy. Each of these has taken a slightly different approach from embedding this technology into their solutions and other have stand alone products; some work by wording spotting with only the more innovative vendors like Nexidia work on phonetic techniques.

My research shows that when companies are evaluating these products the key requirements are the ability to analyse very large volumes of calls, the type and extent of analysis available, the presentation styles available, and the ease of set-up and use. Nexidia ticks all the boxes in these respects and so companies looking to unlock the actual voice of their customers should examine its offering.

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Regards,

Richard Snow - VP & Research Director