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The State of Speech Analytics

Analytics, specifically speech analytics, has generated a great deal of excitement for over 10 years. The industry’s enthusiasm lies in the potential value that can be garnered from the countless customer conversations occurring each day.

In a quick sampling of clients who were early adopters of speech analytics and others who are in hot pursuit, we found a common theme of struggle to achieve the outcomes they sought when they embarked on their analytics journey. None had given up.

New capabilities make speech analytics more enticing:

  • Vendors are expanding their language libraries, using more sophisticated algorithms and direct phrase recognition to maximize both speed and accuracy.
  • Sentiment or emotion detection has become a common component of many solutions.
  • Metrics have been expanded and displayed in more user friendly reporting to drive action.
  • There are new options for how speech analytics is delivered – managed services, cloud-based services, multiple pricing options (e.g., cost per interaction, cost per agent).
  • Many vendors offer expanded professional services that can support your implementation process through building libraries and queries.
state of speech analytics

Vertical solutions are becoming common with specific libraries and search algorithms already built for financial, healthcare, insurance, government, consumer goods and retail, transportation and logistics, manufacturing, and help desk, among others. Vertical solutions reduce the time and cost of implementation as well as the required skills.

The original pioneers in speech analytics were Utopy, CallMiner and Nexidia. CallMiner and Nexidia are still operating as standalone companies focused on this niche. Utopy has been bought by Genesys, bringing speech analytics into a much broader contact center technology suite. Most, if not all, performance suite vendors offer a speech analytics solution which expands your sourcing options. You can buy their full performance optimization suite or just add speech analytics. Typically, the performance suite vendors include options for data, text, speech and desktop analytics.

Want to learn more? Read additional details in the full article entitled State of the Speech Analytics Industry.