Given the dominance of voice in CX, there is immense potential for utilising speech analytics to mine insights from audio calls.
Between 2020 and 2025, the speech analytics industry is expected to grow at a steady pace of 10% year on year. This makes it among the fastest-growing contact centre technology segments today, despite its yet-to-mature status. One of the key roadblocks faced during speech analytics implementation is integrating with your existing technology stack and channel presence. Indeed, integration hurdles are among the main reasons why speech analytics is still classified as an emerging technology.
However, integrating speech analytics does not have to be difficult, provided you choose the right integration strategy, select the right analytics tool, and invest in your post-implementation configurations. Here’s all you need to know to get started.
What is Speech Analytics Integration?
Speech analytics integration can be defined as the process and set of tools needed to connect speech analytics with pre-existing contact centre technologies for the purpose of bi-directional data flow, seamless co-existence without impeding functionality, shared storage, and/or the sharing of cloud-based services. Integration is a mandatory part of implementing speech analytics, as the technology cannot function by itself and relies on data inputs from sources such as telephony systems and CRM.
The key systems that require a speech analytics integration are:
- Cloud or on-premise survey integration to host the speech analytics tool
- Integration with your voice channel to fetch audio data
- Optional integration with real-time data streams for ongoing call analysis
- CRM integration to map call data against existing customer information
- Social media integration(s) to enrich the analytics findings
- Workflow automation integrations to trigger actions like escalation on keyword detection
- Integration with contact centre manager dashboards to monitor performance metrics
The 3 Key Integration Strategies to Consider
There are a number of ways to set up your speech analytics service so that it can exchange data with surrounding systems and deliver a 360-degree understanding of the customer experience. The chances are that you will be using a combination of all three tactics, depending on the solution you choose and the organisation’s digital maturity.
- Native API library
API-based integrations are the most common and require very little effort to set up. The speech analytics solution ships with its own set of APIs that you could connect with certified third-party solutions that exist in your contact centre, particularly from the industry’s leading vendors.
- Pre-integrated solution suite
Here, you implement a full-featured solution suite that includes a speech analytics service. Since it is part of a product bundle, it will work in tandem with other contact centre capabilities (e.g., call recording, workforce optimisation, or QA) without requiring any more setup efforts.
- Integration development using SDKs
SDK-based integration development requires the most effort but gives you the flexibility to integrate with nearly any solution you choose. Using the speech analytics tools’ SDK, your internal IT or Dev team can build integrations with a homegrown CRM, marketing automation portal, campaign manager, etc.
