Customers rarely lie.
If they tell you your product or service is amazing, they usually mean it.
If they tell you it’s sub-par, it’s usually true.
Stating the obvious, maybe.
But it’s why call monitoring and recording – and, critically, the ability to analyse the resulting call content – could now be the most under-rated tool in the kit.
Doing so retrospectively has, for many relatively new deployers of this smartest of evolving functionalities, been a game-changer.
It has enabled core workflow redesign, improved contact center agent training, and swifter dispute resolution – albeit sometimes days, weeks or even months after the fact.
However, capture, understand and act on customer sentiment immediately after a call has closed and, well, you really are at the new cutting edge.
And that means huge, fresh opportunity for Managed Service Providers, value-added resellers and system integrators who pick the right vendor partner.
“The content contained within customer interactions is the most valuable data there is – capturing and analysing it used to be all about compliance; now it’s more like market research,” says Brian Gocher, product evangelist at global call recording, quality management and voice analytics solutions provider MiaRec, which is empowering a growing number of organizations to enhance the customer relationship.
“The big equalizer is the technology that is now available and, more particularly, its affordability. Enterprises are no longer necessarily faced with high buy-in costs in order to leverage the value of their call data.
“The technology with which to achieve that has evolved rapidly and is now pretty much plug and play. That makes everything a lot less complex. It’s like: once you had to go to Oxford or Harvard to acquire the knowledge but now you can find it on YouTube.”
That said, as with most things technological, the quality of what you get out is hugely influenced by the quality of what you put in.
In MiaRec’s case, for example, supporting its customers in getting the most out of its solutions is as important as simply deploying the solution itself.
It’s about knowing what an enterprise is most interested in hearing its customers say; which keywords it feels can trigger the most effective response.
Every customer is different. Every customer’s customer is different. Every customer interaction is different.
So, that calls for clever configuration.
“We spend time with our customers to really understand the nature of their customer interactions,” says Gocher.
“It’s about understanding what keywords and competitor names are going to produce the richest data.
“We can also configure the solution to identify hot and cold topics which helps identify trends. All of that kind of intelligence can give an enterprise valuable advantage over its competitors.
“Being able to capture it, see it, and respond to it puts you ahead in the game. The analysis is capable of immediately and permanently driving efficiency, productivity and therefore profitability.”
The positive impact is not just felt on the sales and service sides either.
High-quality, intelligent call recording and analysis automatically scores calls based on keywords; empowering agents and their supervisors to improve workplace culture, processes, and training.
With many agents now working remotely or from home, clever keywords can help spot signs of ‘star’ agent burnout as well as agent pressure or under-performance.
MiaRec’s ‘single pane of glass’ user interface colour codes calls green or red; enabling supervisors to act quickly to resolve issues before they escalate.
“Agent sentiment is easily as important as customer sentiment,” says Gocher.
“It is a hugely competitive global employment market and retaining talent is critical for enterprises. Seeing and understanding exactly what is happening in the contact center from an agent perspective can play a big part in that.”
CEOs always look for return on investment, of course.
Well, it seems there’s plenty of that to be had.
They also tend not to like hearing negative feedback about their business or their workforce.
Perhaps they now need to take the view that all feedback has value…
To learn more about how MiaRec can help your and your customers’ businesses leverage the power of call recording and data analytics, visit www.miarec.com
