During the past several years, the global speech analytics market has experienced rapid growth. The advancement of Big Data and deep learning algorithms, coupled with an increase in computing capacity, has significantly enhanced speech analysis capabilities. This resulted in the emergence of new application areas and a higher demand for speech recognition technology.
It is not surprising that the technology needs of sales, marketing, and service departments became one of the key drivers in the market. After all, the benefits of speech recognition technology lay in how it drives revenue growth and efficiency while reducing costs across various business processes.
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Recognizing the ultimate benefits ofthe speech analytics technology for their business, many organizations began to actively adopt it in their business applications. Speech analytics enables these organizations to effectively collect, structure, and analyze large volumes of customer and prospect data passing through their front offices.
Get a sneak peak at how Velvetech tamed Speech Recognition for an Insurance Company
How Does Speech Recognition Software Work?
So what is speech recognition software? Basically, this type of software captures human speech, breaks it into words, and finally focuses on transcribing verbal form into text.
Using the algorithms, this software processes an audio track and divides it into separate sounds, scrutinizing each to find the match in a chosen language. Specifically, the speech is split into bits that can be easily interpreted and converted into a digital format to be further analyzed.
The solution is widely applied across various industries. However, based on the experience of our software developers, call center operations are the major processes that require the implementation of automatic speech recognition.
What Technologies Are Used in Speech Recognition Solutions?
Now that you know how speech recognition software works and how it is used, let’s briefly cover the technologies that ensure such capabilities.
Basically, the solution relies on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Going into more detail, it highly depends on natural language processing and deep learning neural networks.
Of course, there are many more algorithms involved in building speech recognition software. For example, Hidden Markov Models, N-grams, and Speaker Diarization all serve to empower the development of this tech tool.
Benefits of Speech Recognition Software for Business
When it comes to pros and cons of speech recognition software, the first ones seem to drastically outweight the latter. Even if it falls short of full human intelligence, it has proven to provide numerous advantages.
Speech recognition and analytics software has immense potential. It can facilitate business development and optimize the operational efficiency of staff interacting with prospects, customers, vendors, and partners on the phone.
Based on our extensive experience in developing leading digital solutions, we have pinpointed the 5 main benefits such software brings when integrated into various business processes:
1. Exceptional Customer Experience
The speech analytics software allows companies to go above and beyond the traditional Q&A sessions in an attempt to get to know their clients better.
It gives enterprises a unique opportunity to identify with greater precision their customers’ interests, preferences, and expectations, in order to discover their thoughts on products, competitors, and rising trends. By analyzing the content of all recorded interactions with a particular customer, a company can build his or her comprehensive customer profile.
A business that knows what its client wants can better organize its work to meet the needs of prospects and customers and therefore deliver an enhanced customer experience. Click To Tweet2. Streamlined Front Office or Call Center Operation
Among other benefits of speech analytics is the optimization of front office performance that lets you evaluate the customer-facing staff productivity, and organize more targeted coaching for employees.
For instance, they track the amount of non-speech intervals in the customer-agent conversations and analyze speech tonality, detecting stress. Statistics based on this data highlights employees’ knowledge and communication capabilities.
If an employee has to be trained to follow special call scripts or meet regulatory requirements, speech analytics will help to expedite this process.
Other call analytics benefits include improved first-call resolution rate for the customer support service and more productive calls for the sales department.
3. Reduced Expenses
The speech analytics software can help a company improve its bottom line by gaining higher performance and decreasing expenses.
For example, based on the accumulated data a company can find the ways to reduce the front office operational costs. Managers can better assess the demand for certain products and services, withdrawing from production those that are not popular or high quality. Opening up new opportunities for cost savings, the software enables companies to beat their competitors.
“When used properly and accompanied by best practices, speech analytics typically pays for itself in three to nine months”.
– Donna Fluss, DMG Consulting LLC
4. New Cross-Sell and Up-Sell Opportunities
New cross-sell and up-sell opportunities that companies discover after speech recognition software integration with IT systems count as yet other benefits of speech analytics software.
The data analysis can give valuable insights into how different demographic groups are affected by certain up-sell or cross-sell. Click To TweetThis information can be relied upon to improve the sales conversion rates and maximize the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. On the basis of analytics, sales managers can identify the ideas for new or refined products and services.
Speech analytics, therefore, is a great tool to boost business revenues by matching the next best offer to the stage of customer engagement and to the unique circumstances of a concrete buyer journey.
5. Minimized Customer Churn
To retain customers, use the advantages of the speech analytics programs. They help identify competitive situations and reasons behind the account closure.
Companies that rely on such software get a chance to modify their business operations in time to prevent customer turnover. With improved service quality, customers might not have a reason to leave in the first place.
Gaining Control of Customer Engagements
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Types of Speech Recognition Software
On-Call
Leveraging AI & ML technologies in real time, speech-to-text software enables users to transcribe conversations right during the call. As a result, it helps businesses gain tangible benefits from data-driven insights without time wasted.
From boosting agent coaching to discovering new sales opportunities, online speech recognition software sets the ground to help customers faster and drive agent confidence on the call.
Post-Call
Another type of speech-to-text software is the one that supports post-call transcription. In this case, the conversations are processed from the stored audio files after the call is over or upon the request whenever the transcription is needed.
In tandem with analytics, call transcripts improve the efficiency of sales, marketing, and service teams allowing for script adherence, agent auto-scoring, and identifying top performers.
Speech Recognition Takes the Stage
In conclusion, speech recognition and analytics software is a great tool that can help enterprises improve their business performance and enhance the experience of their customers.
After being integrated into the IT infrastructure and Telephony Service of a particular company, it should, however, be adapted to specific business needs for maximally smooth and efficient day-to-day operation.
Companies also have to establish clear processes for the implementation of the analytical findings produced by the program in order to get positive results.
The right technology partner can significantly help you with the implementation of speech recognition and analytics solutions in your company. Such a partner should indispensably possess the experience of both integrating the leading phone systems and speech recognition technologies with the top-of-the-line CRM and BI Platforms, Data Analytics and Decision Support Systems, and delivering effective solutions for specific business cases. This extensive experience is of crucial importance for addressing real business challenges successfully.
Velvetech’s team has vast cross-industry expertise in implementing such technologies and knows well how to develop speech recognition software to meet your goals. Don’t hesitate to contact us and entrust your project.
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