How Speech Analytics Creates More Satisfied Agents

In today’s challenging contact center environment, supervisors constantly balance agent staffing while simultaneously improving the customer experience.  Both of these are critical elements in reducing costs and increasing sales. What many managers forget is that although agents are the most expensive component of a contact center, they are its greatest asset as well. Satisfied agents provide better service to both new prospects and existing customers in the short term. Long term benefits include increased productivity as the agents gain experience as well cost reduction from reduced agent turnover.  

Speech analytics can be a valuable tool for increasing agent contentment and success.  Using speech analytics can lead to a more positive culture, help educate the workforce and can reduce supervisor micromanagement.

Speech analytics provides a positive culture by replacing the subjective element of coaching with objectivity. When 100% of agent calls are  reviewed, the agent knows that his or her entire performance will be analyzed - not just a subset of their interactions. If the call sampling size is too small (as it typically is), the result can be negatively skewed and may be followed by a difficult coaching session for the agent. Additionally, speech analytics provides consistency to agent scoring. It eliminates the situations in which two coaches may have substantially different criteria for acceptable performance. Additionally, since speech analytics takes a fraction of the time to produce results versus traditional call analysis, managers can provide feedback considerably faster. For example, speech analytics can inform a supervisor that an agent needs improvement in closing techniques. Since speech analytics delivers this information to a supervisor quicker, the agent’s improved performance will have a more immediate effect on sales.  

One of the best ways to get the most out of your workforce is to continuously improve their skills through education and training. Speech analytics can be a very powerful tool in identifying training gaps in both individuals and teams. Long hold times can indicate that an agent does not have the knowledge to answer the inquiry at hand. Speech analytics can be used to identify longer than average hold times and query the transcript for the content of the call. This might identify that an agent needs more education on a recently updated product.

Speech analytics can also help agents feel more independent. Speech analytics allows supervisors to monitor and coach the agents even if they work at a different location.  This flexibility eliminates the agents from feeling uncomfortable by an overshadowing manager. Additionally, speech analytics gives agents the ability to view their own metrics in near real-time at their own workstation so they can monitor and adjust their own performance. All of these elements create a feeling of empowerment which leads to agent satisfaction.    

More satisfied agents result in happier customers. It is important to make agents feel more wanted and nurtured not only for increased productivity, but also to reduce the high cost of turnover. Agents can be a very valuable asset to a company. They can begin their career by leveraging the skills and knowledge they gain from customer service and apply them to more responsible positions within the company. The end benefit is a greater return on investment and a positive effect on the business overall.