Data is now the most valuable asset in any company’s toolkit. Capable of guiding better decisions, improved experiences, and enhanced outcomes, data can transform all organisations. However, to take full advantage of this resource, businesses need the right tools.
Conversational analytics, a technology built on AI and Natural Language Processing, is one of the most attractive solutions for leveraging data in the communication space. Through conversational insights, companies can learn how to delight their audience. However, there are also endless opportunities to boost employee productivity and performance too.
Businesses can leverage their conversational insights to improve employee experience and engagement, unlock new opportunities for efficiencies, and cut costs. The question is, how do you choose the right technology for your team?
Step 1: Set Goals for Conversational Analytics
The first step in effectively leveraging any new technology is determining what you want to accomplish with your investment. Conversational analytics can deliver a range of potential benefits to companies, and setting goals will help you to ensure companies pursue the right opportunities.
When exploring the possibilities of conversational analysis, most companies start by looking at how these tools can improve customer experience. Better insights into the journey of each audience segment ensure companies can deliver hyper-personalised and efficient interactions.
However, conversational analysis can also have a strong impact on employee experience too. AI tools capable of understanding human language can empower support teams by automatically providing information when a specific keyword is uttered. The same tools can also assist with call deflection, handling common queries on the behalf of agents, so they can focus on other crucial tasks.
A good conversational analytics tool can even provide behind-the-scenes insights into employee engagement levels, highlighting when hybrid and remote teams may need extra support.
Step 2: Examine Performance-Boosting Functionality
While most companies see the biggest benefit of conversational analytics tools as being better customer satisfaction, it’s important to remember EX and CX are intrinsically linked. The more empowered, informed, and supported staff members are, the better they can perform.
When comparing analytical tools, consider the day-to-day activities of team members in the communication environment and where they tend to face roadblocks. For instance, a conversational analytics tool can help with intelligently routing calls to the correct person in a team, reducing the need for transfers and enhancing collaboration.
Conversational analytics tools may also assist with bridging the gap between employees from different environments thanks to real-time transcription and translation in meetings. In today’s remote and hybrid workplaces, business leaders may even decide to create AI assistants capable of helping distributed employees to troubleshoot issues without IT guidance.
Step 3: Double Down on Employee Experience
As mentioned above, a good employee experience is crucial to ensuring positive customer experiences. With this in mind, conversational analytics tools should always take the needs of staff members into account. When comparing options for conversational intelligence, it’s best to start by looking for tools that are easy to access and use. The right solutions could even come with customisable dashboards staff members can utilise to track their performance and compare their service ratings to others.
In the UC environment, a conversational analytics tool should act as an intuitive assistant capable of aligning with all employee needs throughout the workplace. This means organisations need to consider the different employee personas in their ecosystem.
A customer service agent can use conversational analytics systems to gain contextual information about customers and access business insights quickly. A team manager can leverage the same tools to track everything from employee sentiment in calls to trends in meeting behaviour. Conversational analytics tools can even help business leaders to track things like security and compliance. Understanding the needs of each employee will help brands to leverage the right tools.
Step 4: Ensure Integrations are Available
Analytics tools work best when they have access to a wide variety of different data sources. When implementing any conversational analytics service, it’s important to ensure it can work seamlessly with the software already present in the business.
Many UCaaS and CCaaS vendors are beginning to offer conversational analysis systems as part of their cloud-based portfolio. This means they can naturally integrate with the tools companies use for internal and external communications. However, it’s also worth looking beyond the UC and contact centre environment for integrations.
For instance, a conversational analysis tool which can integrate with the CRM can provide agents with useful information about customers automatically. The same tool can also automatically update customer profiles for future interactions. Solutions integrated with workforce management and engagement tools can assist businesses in making better decisions for employee experience too. End-to-end integration is a must-have.
Step 5: Remember Security and Compliance
Collecting data from conversations both in the workplace, and with customers is becoming a table-stakes requirement for most brands. However, it’s crucial to remember any form of data collection comes with risks and security issues to be aware of. Business leaders will need to ensure the data collection and management strategies included with their software meet with their policies.
For example, collecting insights on how employees meet and connect via collaboration tools is a useful way to track staff engagement. However, businesses will still need to ensure they’re not collecting too much information about their team members. Extensive data collection can sometimes lead to mistrust and discomfort in organisations.
Information collected about customers and shared with employees also needs to be managed effectively. The right conversational analytics tools will often come with solutions for access management and controls. This should ensure businesses can reduce access to personal information, and stay compliant with federal regulations.
Think about the data captured by conversational analytics tools throughout your organisation, and ensure there are no gaps which could lead to legal or security issues.
