Top 5 Speech and Voice Analytics Software for Call Centers
Author: Geouffrey Erasmus | Date: 08/07/2022
Call centers produce huge amounts of data every single day. From calls to chat messages, DMs, and emails, agents are having more interactions across more platforms than ever before.
Now, call centers must find new ways to handle and extract insights from this data. According to a recent report, the market for AI in call centers is projected to reach $4.1 billion by 2027, as more companies invest in new and innovative data processing technology.1
But is this investment in AI tech the best way to improve contact center processes and improve customer experiences? In this article, we’ll outline what speech and voice analytics software is, how it can improve customer experiences, and what the best software is in 2023.
Suggested reading: Read our eBook, ‘How Speech and Voice Analytics can Improve First Call Resolution’, to learn more about the benefits of speech and voice analytics.
What are speech and voice analytics?
Typically, call center managers have to sift through millions of hours of material — which, as you might expect, is quite a challenge. Locating just the right moment in a twenty-minute interaction can waste a lot of time.
This is where speech and voice analytics come in. Speech analytics is software that transcribes spoken conversations into readable text, while voice analytics goes one step further by using artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning (ML) to pinpoint specific words and accurately determine the sentiment behind them.
Speech analytics can be used across a range of use cases, and makes it possible to perform speech recognition and identify the emotions embedded within a conversation. As a result, contact centers can better understand customers and proactively monitor their sales agents’ well-being.
Why are speech and voice analytics important?
According to recent research, phone volumes increased by 24% over the past year alone.2 Many customers are feeling frustrated by the lack of support they might receive from online or self-help channels, and are turning to phone call support for answers.
Now add to this that the call center standard is to answer 80% of calls in 20 seconds or less — and you can see exactly why so many are struggling to ensure agent well-being and customer satisfaction.3
Speech and voice analytics offer call centers the ability to quickly assess agent performance and how well the call center is performing against key KPIs. Managers that employ analytics tools can gain actionable insights that then inform agent training, script development, and KPI metrics.
With the right analytics tools and processes in place, call centers can expect to see:
- Improved first contact resolution (FCR) rates
- Higher customer satisfaction levels
- Reduced AHT times
- Improved mental health and reduced stress in the contact center
- Optimized compliance and quality assurance (QA) processes
Now that we’ve established what analytics is and why it’s important, let’s explore some of the best speech and voice analytics software available in 2023:
#1 Awaken
Awaken offers a range of call center software solutions, including an intelligent post-call analytics tool designed to help contact center managers listen, understand, and guide callers towards a perfect resolution during every interaction.
Post-call analytics allows team leaders to batch upload a day’s or week’s worth of call data, and receive actionable insights based on the sentiment, compliance, and performance of each call. The call data is:
- Automatically uploaded to a secure cloud-based storage area
- Passed through a series of AI models to identify call content, tone and specific keywords and phrases
- Assessed against customisable KPI and compliance metrics
The resulting data breakdown provides a series of actionable insights that call center managers can use to learn more about how conversations develop and, crucially, whether they are meeting key performance indicator (KPI) goals. Awaken has partnered with a noise canceling technology company to ensure high transcription accuracy across all calls.
Key features
As well as post-call speech and voice analytics, Awaken offers:
- AI-driven real-time guidance to help agents communicate clearly
- Auto QA software to track compliance and breaches
- Scripting tools to support agents working across highly regulated industries
Pro tip: Explore Awaken’s case studies page to see how their analytics software works in practice.
#2 Observe AI
Observe AI is another provider utilizing artificial intelligence to automate contact center processes while improving customer interactions. Its main speciality is increasing call center productivity, particularly in monitoring compliance and automating many of the more mundane processes that agents have to perform.
The platform uses conversational AI analytics to identify low-performing agents and subsequently highlight opportunities for improvement prompted by their call data.
Observe AI’s machine learning (ML) focuses on a range of data points in each call, including tone of voice, speech rate, speaker volume and pauses. From this, it extracts a summary of caller sentiment, including positive and negative moments of interaction.
Key features
- Agent assist tools to support agents in real-time
- Call center consulting services
- Integrations with omnichannel web chat providers
#3 CallMiner
CallMiner has trained its AI on over two billion hours of customer conversations, and having been founded in Florida in 2002 now has more than two decades of experience in the field.
CallMiner’s conversation analytics platform combines an analysis of the acoustic qualities of any interaction with its context and meaning. Their customer sentiment analytics methods score performance across a cross-section of calls, agent teams and timeframes to build a composite portrait in real time.
Additional features such as screen and call recording make CallMiner a strong option for call centers looking for a well-rounded solution. It performs especially well as a customer service coaching or onboarding tool since it can illustrate the process of a call to new agents — from searching across multiple dashboards to responding to customer queries.
Key features
- Quality management software to ensure compliance
- Fraud detection within the call center
- Software that monitors sales performance across calls
#4 Daisee
A comparative newcomer in the field, Daisee was founded in 2017 with the aim of combining best practices in customer service with cutting-edge data science. The company boasts over 90% transcription and quality scoring accuracy — helping to solve the common analytics challenge of poor accuracy.
Daisee is pioneering improved speech-to-text and voice analytics solutions, facilitating monitoring of script adherence if managers want to get truly granular. This kind of call center quality management system is particularly beneficial to highly technical or regulated fields. Daisee can do this kind of analysis in verbatim and non-verbatim modes — allowing you to adjust how precisely you need your agents to follow a set text.
The platform’s AI is designed to identify and categorize the reason behind each customer call, allowing you to pool responses for service and product improvement. Team and individual agent dashboards provide insights so everyone can concentrate on improving their performance.
Key features
- ‘Daisee Essence’ AI sentiment analytics software
- Reader-friendly dashboard of call data and relevant personal information
- Agent performance workflow solution aimed at making call center management as seamless as possible
#5 Cogito
Cogito provides real-time analysis of each call’s dynamics, and can be used in both a call center and home-working setting. Their ‘Emotion AI’ solution aims to identify triggers like delayed turn-taking, excessive pauses, and energy and empathy cues.
This voice analytics software is further supplemented by their suite of agent coaching and monitoring tools, which provide agents with all of the support they need to excel across their calls.
While this level of in-depth analysis is fascinating, there’s a slight risk it could make agents overly self-conscious on their calls, so perhaps the analysis is best performed retrospectively. That said, it is an excellent training tool, and Cogito builds in many cues and pointers to empathic communication so that agents can proactively improve their interactions.
Key features
- Enhanced emotion-detecting analytics software
- Personalized agent coaching opportunities
- ‘Cogito Teams’: a real-time dashboard for call center managers
Finding the right solution for your call center
Investing in the right voice analytics software is crucial for call center success; each offering has a range of different features, and, depending on the specific needs of your organization, will provide different benefits.
As you explore speech and voice analytics solutions, make sure you are considering:
- Compliance requirements: how closely do your agents need to adhere to scripts? If compliance requirements are very restrictive, for example, you may want to employ an analytics solution that has inbuilt call center quality management software.
- Team size: how many agents do you need to assess or manage? Your team size will dictate how extensive your analytics tool needs to be, and how much data it can process.
- Analysis requirements: not all analytics tools will perform sentiment analysis. Consider how much you need it within your call center to help inform whether you go for speech and voice analytics, or speech analytics tools alone.
- Existing software: Will your new solution integrate seamlessly with your existing software? This is especially important if you are working with less agile legacy systems.
Awaken: Actionable insights, optimized performance
Awaken offers a range of call center solutions, including post-call analytics, quality management software, and real-time agent guidance.
We support call centers by helping them to improve customer engagement, boost agent performance, reduce churn, and maximize revenue. Our software has been shown to increase customer satisfaction by up to 49%, while integrating seamlessly with existing software and streamlining internal training processes.
Book a demo today for more on how our speech and voice analytics solutions could transform your contact center.
1 Call Center AI Market worth $4.1 billion by 2027 – Report by MarketsandMarkets™