Category: Blog

Building Brand Loyalty Through a Customer-Centric Company Culture

A strong customer service culture lies at the heart of many successful brands. But it can sometimes be challenging to maintain an enduring customer-centric focus as companies expand and diversify. Keeping a values-based customer service culture, even in the midst of growth, is essential because regardless of how stellar a product or service is, if customers are not able to receive effective support easily and quickly, their opinion of the product and, more importantly, of your brand may be at risk.

In this post, we explore what a customer service culture is, who creates it, and how to cultivate it to create rewarding experiences and satisfied customers.

Driving Excellent CX Through a Customer Service Culture

As customers undergo their own digital transformation, they have high expectations of the brands whose products and services they consume. In fact, 72% of consumers expect brands to have knowledge of their previous engagements. When a consumer is asked to explain their problem to multiple people when seeking support, they are disappointed. After just one bad experience, many consumers will abandon a brand or speak negatively about their experience with other consumers.  

More than half of all enterprises outsource their customer service to third-party business process outsourcing (BPO) partners like iQor. In order to provide customers the quality service they deserve, it’s critical to ensure that the entire customer service team and frontline staff responsible for delivering customer service are plugged into the culture of the brand they serve.

At iQor, customer service culture is in our DNA. Creating an exceptional customer experience is the minimum bar we set for the brands we support, no matter the industry. This culture permeates interactions at all levels to provide positive experiences for employees and customers alike.

What Is a Customer Service Culture?

A customer service culture is defined by a unified focus on the customer across the entire business.

Though a customer-centric focus is essential for those with positions in customer service, marketing, sales, and product creation, it is beneficial for all departments within a company to be customer-driven. In other words, in this culture the entire company is customer-driven, even employees in departments that seemingly don’t engage directly with customers. Think of it as a universal “customer first” culture. 

In this culture, even staff in departments such as accounting, which is commonly viewed as unrelated to customer engagement, come to the realization that every department exists to either help win a new customer or keep and support existing customers. Consider the people in accounting who pay suppliers’ invoices. The parts (or services) purchased from suppliers are used to build your brand’s products. Treating suppliers like customers is a healthy mindset when it’s understood that without suppliers, you can’t make the products you sell to your customers.

By infusing a customer-centric mindset into your enterprise’s core values, vision, and mission, you lay the foundation to build a customer-focused culture across the entire business. Rather than wondering how each department is connected to the customer, this mindset empowers everyone to connect those dots easily. Research and development will focus on building products and services that solve customers’ challenges. Sales and marketing will communicate your brand’s value proposition clearly to current and prospective customers. And your leadership will always ensure that you have the appropriate customer support resources in place—whether in-house or outsourced—so that when your customers have questions or problems, the support they receive will be exceptional and they’ll want to tell others about it. This deepens employee engagement and customer loyalty. In this way, an entire corporate culture is a customer-centric culture.

The culture of your organization is two-fold. It is supported by your company’s stated values and beliefs, while also developing naturally through the attitudes and behaviors that result from business policies, decisions, and practices. 

6 Key Elements of a Great Customer Service Culture

Customer service culture should be rooted in your mission, but having all the right pieces in place doesn’t happen automatically. Moreover, it doesn’t happen solely because it’s written in your mission statement; it evolves from a true commitment to customer service and the related attitudes and behaviors that permeate your organization. Some key elements are crucial to making your company culture a customer-centric one.

1. Consistent Training and Coaching to Improve Customer Service

Businesses developing an in-house customer support strategy should know what we know in the business process outsourcing industry: that training and career development play a pivotal role in building a culture that prioritizes customers along every step of their journey.

From recruiting to onboarding to training and nesting, new employees must be engaged in training that not only solidifies their product and program knowledge, but also builds their soft skills embedded in the company’s mission, vision, and values so they become a part of the customer-centric company DNA.

This training and coaching should be ongoing and a part of the lived experiences and behaviors throughout the organization. Company-wide training and re-training add to the employee experience as they deepen their commitment to the customer-centric culture and support your brand’s commitment to providing great customer service. 

2. Empowerment to Take Initiatives

Frontline staff responsible for handling customer questions and solving problems can deliver a better customer experience when they are empowered to help customers. 

Customer service representatives are equipped with well-developed scripts to guide their answers to a wide variety of questions and provide a consistent level of service and expertise. A customer-centric culture, however, also empowers employees to resolve customer issues and address their pain points in ways that make sense for each situation.

This empowerment is facilitated by intelligent automation that can help guide agents while they are servicing customers, removing some of the burdens placed on them when handling complex questions. This reinforces your company’s commitment to entrusting frontline staff to resolve customer questions and contributes to retention. This is further enhanced by speech analytics which not only facilitates compliance monitoring but also provides insight into the customer and employee experience to inform script modifications as well as training and coaching so agents have the skills and resources they need to meet customer needs.

Customers assuredly prefer communicating with brand representatives who show empathy for their situation and demonstrate a willingness to resolve it. The customer will be frustrated if the customer service representative reads the same scripted response they’ve heard before while their problem remains unresolved. Your customer service representatives should show empathy, making a human connection with each customer to create a memorable customer experience that will leave a lasting positive impression and build loyalty to your brand. 

3. Common Language

While some scripted customer conversations are warranted to enable customer support delivery at scale, it’s important to instill a culture of using common language to facilitate human connections with your customer. Such common language details should be covered in training and re-training exercises.

For instance, a strong customer service culture can underpin the delivery of empathetic customer support in healthcare. If a patient asks questions about their deductible or copay, it’s important that the customer service representative uses common language that aligns with the customer-centric culture. Training and re-training should ensure the representative can show a patient-first approach through active listening, empathy, and a clear understanding of the program to differentiate between copays and deductibles and resolve the patient’s issue effectively. When this shared language is part of the company culture, it promotes consistent and rewarding experiences with the brand.

Common language should be delivered consistently internally as well as being included in presentations, internal emails, newsletters, internal documents, etc. Such communication should use specific terms and phrases that are commonly used to describe your products and services. Indeed, a customer service culture should be part of your brand voice.

All customer-facing communication should follow suit as well so that customers visiting your website or social media posts will recognize the same language, voice, and approach that they receive when interacting with your customer support specialists. 

4. Leadership by Example

Examples of excellent customer service experiences should be everyday occurrences in your business when there is a company-wide customer-centric culture. Enterprises looking to partner with a business process outsourcing solution provider like iQor should conduct a thorough examination of the BPO’s customer-centric culture as part of the overall assessment. BPO CX services should extend beyond just training agents about your brand’s products to also include training and development about your brand’s culture in order to serve as an authentic representation of your brand’s culture and voice to your customer.

The way to lead by example is to observe the culture of the BPO. Is the BPO a living, breathing example of being customer-centric? How do they interact with you? What do their training programs look like? Do they boost retention and support the company culture through clear career paths that provide growth and opportunity for agents and supervisors?

5. Humility and Respect

Great customer service is rooted in respect and informed by humility. When a customer has a problem, they want to be heard and supported with empathy. Customer service employees should be empowered to listen well and trained to seek to understand the customer before jumping in to try to solve a problem they may not fully comprehend yet.

Processes that allow flexibility with the time needed to complete a support request, for example, leave space for the customer to vent so the support agent is empowered to help that customer feel cared for in that situation. This increases first-call resolution rates and promotes customer satisfaction through human connections. Training that teaches active listening skills and empathy sets support specialists up for success in a customer-centric culture. 

6. Balance Between Technology and Humanity

Automation and omnichannel customer support are on the rise, which is fantastic for you and your customers when human connections remain at the center. Recent research shows that 69% of customers are satisfied with their chatbot experiences.

Still, customers expect a balance between technology- and human-based customer service. Some customers strongly prefer access to an agent via phone to speak with a live representative. Others may prefer the ease and convenience of SMS-based texting. But most customers can tell the difference between a live chat with a real person and a programmed chat.

It’s crucial to know when it is practical and effective to offer chatbot support for requests such as password reset or account balance and knowing when to connect your customers with a human representative either through live chat or a voice line. When offering a digital menu of options to the customer, the choices should provide options that address the most common scenarios through a balance of technology and the human touch. And they should include an intuitive option to seamlessly switch to live support at any point in the customer journey.

This is why iQor named our podcast “Digitally Irresistible” to showcase experts with a mix of CX technology and human interaction know-how. A successful customer-centric support program finds the right blend of CX technology while prioritizing efficiency and maintaining the human touch that creates smiles.

Benefits of a Customer-Centric Company Culture

A customer service culture across the entire company benefits more than the customer service team. When the customers’ needs and interests are embedded in your culture, the entire brand benefits. Your business will strengthen brand loyalty, stand out from the competition, and win more customers. It will meet customer expectations and create a great customer experience.

The impact of excellent customer support services on your business can be very consequential. Loyal customers take customer service seriously and base their decision to continue purchasing from your brand on that. Over 81% of consumers have reported that a positive customer experience improves the chances of making another purchase from the same business. 

Customers with good customer service experiences are likely to return and recommend you to others. As Shep Hyken says in his book, “I’ll Be Back”, “A great experience gets customers to return again and again.”

Exceptional customer service is an opportunity for enterprises to set themselves apart from the competition. Customers value great service, and they are more likely to shift from a competitor to your brand when they experience excellent service. High-quality customer service can be the reason a customer moves to your brand or stays with your brand, both of which are of high value to your business. 

A True Customer Service Culture Enhances CX

When customer service is truly part of your company’s culture, you can ensure that the customer always comes first, no matter what. Whether it’s executives making big decisions, frontline representatives speaking with customers, or developers designing the digital experience, each stakeholder must prioritize the customer, making business decisions that serve their interests and needs. A satisfied customer is a happy customer and that builds loyalty.

Whether your company delivers customer service in-house or chooses to partner with a BPO provider like iQor to manage cost-effective high-quality customer service, a customer-centric culture is foundational to creating smiles with your employees and with your customers.  

Experience the Best in Customer Service

iQor is ideally suited to help brands create amazing customer experiences. iQor provides a comprehensive suite of full-service and self-service scalable offerings that are purpose-built to deliver enterprise-quality CX.

Our award-winning CX services include:

• A global presence with 40+ contact centers across 10 countries.
• A CX private cloud that maximizes performance and scales rapidly across multiple geographies on short notice.
• A partnership approach where we deploy agents and C-level executives to help maximize your ROI.
• The perfect blend of intelligent automation for scale and performance coupled with an irresistible culture comprised of people who love to delight your customers.
• Virtual and hybrid customer support options to connect with customers seamlessly, when and where they want.
• The ability to launch a customer support program quickly, even when you need thousands of agents ready to support your customers.
• A best-in-class workforce management team and supporting technology to create a centralized organization that can better serve your entire business.

iQor helps brands deliver the world’s most sought-after customer experiences. Interested in learning more about the iQor difference? If you’re ready to start a conversation with a customer experience expert, contact us to learn about how we can help you create more smiles.

James McClenahan is executive vice president and chief sales officer at iQor.

Omnichannel Customer Support Helps You Forge Better Customer Relationships and Stand Out in Your Industry

Omnichannel marketing and customer support aim to create a harmonious customer experience. Indeed, both approaches strengthen cross-channel customer relationships. While omnichannel marketing seeks to support customers pre-sale, omnichannel customer support focuses on post-sale experiences. In this blog post, we focus on the most important benefit of omnichannel customer support: building relationships with customers.

Today’s digital landscape has perpetuated the expectation for fast, responsive, and convenient service. This has resulted in an increasing demand for omnichannel customer service—a key element in building strong customer relationships.

4 Key Benefits of Building Relationships With Customers Through Omnichannel Support

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically shifted customer trends, prompting customers to expect greater convenience and control over their purchasing decisions.

Instead of communicating with brands through a single channel, customers prefer an integrated and holistic experience across several channels.

Research shows that 86% of customers expect a company to recognize them when they switch between channels. To the customer and to the brand, the benefit that matters most in omnichannel customer support is relationship building.

A Harvard Business Review study reports that by providing a seamless customer experience through several digital channels, companies can gain an advantage over competitors. Additionally, the study reveals that omnichannel customers enjoy interacting with a brand’s touchpoints through a variety of channels.

These omnichannel customer service options include live chats (via chatbots and customer service representatives), phone calls, in-app SMS messaging, social media, emails, and text messages, to name a few.

Good customer support is an integral part of a successful customer experience. It builds loyalty and helps customers attain their desired outcomes. As a result, excellent customer experiences have the power to expand a brand’s customer base and build a positive reputation and increased loyalty.

iQor, a managed services provider of customer engagement and technology-enabled business process outsourcing (BPO) solutions, helps the world’s top brands design intelligent optimization strategies to ensure their channels are perfectly aligned with customer needs. Whether artificial intelligence (AI)-powered digital agents with a human feel or in-app messaging, iQor’s omnichannel experience helps brands build lasting relationships with customers.

What follows are some key benefits of an omnichannel approach to customer support in building rewarding customer relationships. 

Increased Customer Retention 

Good customer service opens a gateway to convert buyers into repeat customers. Omnichannel support that is part of a larger digital transformation strategy uses customer relationship management software and artificial intelligence tools to merge offline and online customer experiences. It allows for a more tailored customer experience, reducing churn and improving customer retention.

What’s more, good omnichannel support provides the capability to promptly respond to customer complaints regardless of the channels they use—from voice to chat to social media. Simply providing a response to customer concerns dramatically improves customer satisfaction.

Optimized Agent Interactions

Seamless omnichannel integration provides a connected customer experience across multiple different channels. With the help of intelligent automation, mundane tasks can be addressed through omnichannel support channels while simultaneously freeing up time for live customer service agents to focus on more complex interactions.

This capability can improve myriad metrics such as average handle time (AHT) and first call resolution, making for a better customer experience and a better agent experience. Further, omnichannel offerings provide agents the opportunity to interact with customers through digital channels instead of just voice—making for a better employee experience for those who prefer digital channels.

When customers have queries about a brand’s products or services, they expect an expedited response—regardless of the channel used. They might want to connect by voice with a live customer service representative at a contact center or turn to social media for an immediate reply. Some customers may prefer live chat.

It’s imperative that all touchpoints work together seamlessly to guide customers in a single direction. An experienced digital BPO partner like iQor can create a smooth omnichannel customer experience that creates efficiencies across all service channels.

Improved Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction depends heavily on the quality of customer support with 93% of customers likely to repeat purchases with brands that offer excellent customer service. And the relationship extends beyond simply the product purchase itself. Some customers follow up with queries about product usage or comments about their purchasing experience. An effective omnichannel customer engagement strategy makes their journey easier and ensures a connected and intuitive experience that generates smiles across channels. 

Expanded Customer Access and Engagement

Lastly, omnichannel customer support builds customer relationships by understanding and offering customer-preferred channels. By understanding the channels that customers are more likely to use, customer support can be structured accordingly to improve access and ensure fast response times. By providing excellent support that is consistent and streamlined across multiple channels, customers can enjoy a personalized experience that makes them feel valued and reinforces their brand loyalty.

Lifetime Value of Customer Relationships Increases With Omnichannel Support

Customer lifetime value is a key indicator for understanding customers. It predicts the value that a customer relationship can bring to any business. Customer lifetime value data helps businesses decide which resources to invest in to win new customers and retain existing ones. Not surprisingly, the integrated customer experience generated by seamless and responsive omnichannel support increases a customer’s lifetime value.

Lifetime Value and Its Impact on Businesses

Monitoring customer lifetime value provides insight into the health of a business, ensuring that existing acquisition and retention tactics contribute to business growth. If lifetime value trends show troubling performance, adjustments can be made to improve the bottom line.

• Customer lifetime value can be calculated to better understand customer retention. According to 81% of marketers, monitoring customer lifetime value over time strengthens customer relationships and boosts sales.

• This value helps brands determine how much to invest in retaining customers and helps define marketing strategies, build customer loyalty, and improve retention.

• Customer lifetime value informs how brands manage customer relations, increasing overall profitability. 

Omnichannel customer service fulfills various customer preferences by allowing engagement in their preferred channel. BPOs like iQor gather business intelligence data to provide insight into which channels to offer, meeting customer expectations and improving customer interactions to create excellent CX that strengthens customer relationships and elevates the brand.

Calculating Lifetime Value of Customers 

There are several formulas for calculating customer lifetime value; the main goal is to choose one and stick to it. The traditional formula for calculating customer lifetime value multiplies the customer value by the average customer life span. Other factors to consider include:

• Customer retention rate.
• Customer churn rate.
• Average profit margins of each customer.

By analyzing customer data, customer lifetime value can be further refined to determine historical and predictive customer value. The former is the total gross profit from a customer’s previous purchases. The latter focuses on customer transactional habits to predict their future actions. These insights can inform omnichannel support offerings to ensure excellent customer experiences that expand lifetime value.

Building Relationships With Existing Customers Through Omnichannel Support Costs Less

Nurturing existing customer relationships is important not only to strengthen a brand, but also to save costs. Studies show that acquiring a new customer is 5% to 25% more expensive than retaining an existing one, considering the time, energy, and resources needed to earn new customers.

Business growth depends significantly on maintaining relationships with customers. When customers sense they are cherished, they become loyal and are less likely to switch to a competitor.

Not only do businesses save costs by satisfying existing customers, but they also harness a critical asset for growth. Here’s how sound omnichannel support for loyal customers is less expensive than for new ones:

• Knowing the preferences of repeat customers enables a personalized omnichannel service. Targeting new customers comes with a set of challenges. For instance, investing money across channels without knowing customers’ unique needs and desires may not actually convert potential customers to new customers.

• Post-sale omnichannel support is more affordable than targeting new customers pre-sale. Attracting potential customers requires a lot of investment such as running advertisements on Google, social media channels, and elsewhere. That’s not the case for existing customers.

• The success rate of selling to existing customers is 60% to 70%, much higher than the 5% to 20% success rate for new customers. Omnichannel customer support offers a higher likelihood of satisfying customers, deepening bonds, and boosting sales than targeting new ones who might not know about the brand or products.

The Power of Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Omnichannel Support 

Omnichannel customer service offers an opportunity to promote a brand by word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth marketing occurs when customers talk about a brand’s service and products with their family, friends, acquaintances, and even their social media followers. 

It’s one of the most powerful forms of marketing because 92% of customers trust their friends and family more than paid media. Customers with a higher net promoter score—the chance of them recommending a product—are advantageous to business growth.

Omnichannel customer service enhances loyalty and encourages word-of-mouth marketing.

Customer satisfaction stories spread like wildfire—and in today’s digital world, where more than 3.96 billion people use social media, that’s an invaluable chance to make an impact for a brand. 

The following are a few key elements of how effective omnichannel support encourages word-of-mouth marketing.

Map Out the Customer Journey

The primary goal of omnichannel support should be to improve the customer experience. To offer a flawless experience, it’s important to know the customer journey.

Mapping helps monitor and determine the best-performing part of the omnichannel strategy throughout the ever-changing customer journey. By visualizing a customer’s path to purchase, BPOs like iQor can provide insights to improve the experience for existing customers and promote word-of-mouth marketing.

Focus on Existing Customer Relationships

As stated earlier, protecting and nurturing the existing customer base is effective and less costly than targeting new customers. 

Successful omnichannel customer service supports human connections with current customers, even when utilizing artificial intelligence and digital tools. These connections create satisfied customers who recommend brand products and services to their peers.

Upload Content on Digital Platforms

Maintaining brand identity across digital platforms—especially on social media channels—creates a smoother customer journey. Content must include relevant, clear, and precise information that promotes the brand and improves the customer experience. Staying connected to customers and satisfying their needs encourages a positive brand image. And customers that share a positive experience with others can attract them to your brand.

Naturally, some new customers will come without even being specifically targeted by a brand. To this end, seamless omnichannel support can boost customer engagement and maximize results. 

Streamlined Support Strengthens Relationships

In a nutshell, customers are most likely to be appreciative of efficient, reliable customer support. When that support encompasses a strategic omnichannel approach provided by a BPO like iQor, it will sustain, strengthen, and nurture customer relationships through exceptional experiences that build brand loyalty.

Experience the iQor Difference

iQor’s omnichannel support experience helps brands connect with customers on their terms. Our CX experts partner with brands to design intelligent channel optimization strategies to ensure they are perfectly aligned with customer needs. From AI-powered agents to in-app messaging, iQor’s experience makes us a trusted partner in CX.

iQor is ideally suited to help brands create amazing customer experiences. iQor provides a comprehensive suite of full-service and self-service scalable offerings that are purpose-built to deliver enterprise-quality CX.

Our award-winning CX services include:

• A global presence with 40+ contact centers across 10 countries.
• A CX private cloud that maximizes performance and scales rapidly across multiple geographies on short notice.
• A partnership approach where we deploy agents and C-level executives to help maximize your ROI.
• The perfect blend of intelligent automation for scale and performance coupled with an irresistible culture comprised of people who love to delight your customers.
• Virtual and hybrid customer support options to connect with customers seamlessly, when and where they want.
• The ability to launch a customer support program quickly, even when you need thousands of agents ready to support your customers.
• A best-in-class workforce management team and supporting technology to create a centralized organization that can better serve your entire business.

iQor helps brands deliver the world’s most sought-after customer experiences. Interested in learning more about the iQor difference? If you’re ready to start a conversation with a customer experience expert, contact us to learn about how we can help you create more smiles.

Anupam Verma is director of digital solutions at iQor.

A Digital CX Strategy With Speech Analytics Reduces Risk Throughout the Customer Journey

A digital CX ecosystem that includes speech analytics offers endless opportunities to enhance business intelligence and improve the customer experience. One way is through risk management and regulatory compliance monitoring to ensure all steps of the customer journey mitigate risk and meet legal requirements.

Because all customer calls are recorded, business process outsourcing (BPO) companies like iQor can tailor speech analytics software to search for specific content based on a client’s needs in response to changing factors in the environment, whether the release of a new product or impacts from a natural disaster. One method to achieve this is through customizable keyword-based queries which tag any customer interactions that relate to the topic of concern and prompt a deeper data analysis. This empowers supervisors and program leadership to make adjustments to improve the customer experience through speech analytics, from coaching agents on particular areas of need to adjusting scripts and updating training protocols.

In this blog post, we will look at the capacity for customizable speech analytics to reduce risk and improve regulatory compliance monitoring in contact center environments. By harnessing the power of iQor’s proprietary speech analytics solution (VALDI), platform users can perform searches by keywords and data filters in response to changing needs. The results inform brands on the pulse of their customers to provide optimal customer experiences.

Speech analytics is part of a larger iQor digital transformation strategy to garner customer experience insights using advanced data analytics.

Through artificial intelligence (AI)-powered solutions, we can mine all recorded contact center calls and turn their content into actionable data to create smiles throughout the customer experience journey.   

What Is Speech Analytics in CX?

Speech analytics is an AI-powered digital technology that mines human speech and text. As a managed services provider of customer engagement and technology-enabled BPO solutions, iQor has developed a proprietary speech analytics platform that uses cloud computing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to analyze every recorded interaction between agents and customers.

The Top Six Ways to Improve Risk Management and Compliance With Speech Analytics

Leveraging speech analytics has the power to mitigate risk and monitor regulatory and contractual compliance in contact center environments. The flexibility of customizable speech analytics solutions enables CX teams to identify areas of non-compliance and leverage digital capabilities to address and improve performance through coaching and training. Large quantities of data can be analyzed based on customized searches to identify areas in need of addressing. Then CX teams can summarize the data to inform decision making.

This data analysis process yields insights to improve numerous components that impact the customer experience. Optimized speech analytics improves risk management and regulatory compliance in the following six ways.

1. Identify Connection Issues to Maximize Uptime

Speech analytics solutions like iQor’s can include capabilities to detect connection issues. Static noise or voice cutting in and out may affect the quality of contact center interactions. VALDI speech analytics automatically tags calls containing phrases such as, “I can barely hear you” or “You’re breaking up.” These recordings can then be easily retrieved in the platform interface.

iQor’s speech analytics can identify these vulnerabilities so they can be properly addressed in a timely manner without having to manually review thousands of calls.

By reviewing only a fraction of calls, quality assurance (QA) specialists are able to determine if the communication problems resulted from actual line issues or whether they were caused by external factors such as difficulties hearing or challenges understanding the subject matter. These actionable insights empower contact center operations with the necessary business intelligence to take measured and appropriate actions, such as updating policies or agent scripts.

But this fraction of calls can still be too many to strategically address connection issues. How can CX teams identify persistent issues or tell the difference between a single temporary disruption and an acute problem leading to poor customer experience? In VALDI, all calls receive a Connection Issues (CI) Score which measures connection issues on a numerical scale. It is implemented by default on all client programs that utilize iQor’s speech analytics solution. On top of the query detections, the score uses a complex set of call data to provide a best connection issues risk estimation.

This metric is represented in a Connection Issues Report which provides a short list of agents at greatest risk of experiencing recurring problems. Supervisors can easily check on specific agents and determine appropriate next steps such as potentially moving them from a work-at-home environment to work-in-office. VALDI reporting also allows for comparing metrics, including CI Score averages, between teams and locations. Finally, an hourly distribution table provides insight into times of the day when connection issues tend to happen. In these ways, data empowers quality management, inspires best practices, and assists agent performance tracking in order to ultimately provide the best customer experience.

2. Discover Trends During Emergencies

In the event of emergencies such as weather-related events, natural disasters, data breaches, and pandemics, it is essential that BPOs like iQor are prepared to respond immediately and effectively to the needs of employees, clients, and the end customer. Speech analytics enables quick adaptations to identify and monitor trends on calls in order to provide responsive customer service experiences.

For instance, when COVID-19 prompted stay-at-home measures across the globe in early 2020, iQor implemented a targeted speech analytics query to detect every instance when an agent or customer mentioned the pandemic. Language analysts were able to quickly define keywords associated with COVID and cross-reference them with other topics present in the dialogue, like technicians’ visits or shipping. This approach led to the discovery of new trends and problems caused by the pandemic. Thanks to this insight, contact center operations could make informed decisions to proactively address a variety of current needs, such as shipping delays.

Speech analytics teams worked closely with operations teams to develop scripts to enable agents to respond effectively. For example, teams were able to improve the scheduling process for in-home technician service calls in part by modifying scripts to promote omnichannel self-service for the customer to modify their appointment in the event of a COVID quarantine. These measures protected technicians and empowered customers and agents with informed and efficient customer service options.

The COVID query has been deployed on all VALDI speech analytics programs to inform clients of trends and improve the customer experience. By empowering agents with scripts that prompted them to ask the customer the right questions in the moment, agents were able to provide excellent customer service to support brands in the midst of a global pandemic.

Additionally, iQor operations can independently browse through speech-to-text (S2T)-generated call transcripts whenever a new crisis hits without contacting VALDI support to arrange selected keywords into a query definition, even a complex one. The VALDI Text Search bar allows for instant searches on already processed calls. This may not make iQor entirely immune to external events impacting our clients’ businesses, but it allows operations to quickly rise to the challenge and navigate the uncertain, changing world as securely and wisely as possible.

3. Monitor Agent Compliance on KPIs

Speech analytics teams are able to develop specialized solutions to efficiently identify issues that may impact relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) in order to address them throughout a program and mitigate risk.

An example of such a KPI is call avoidance, an especially important risk in work-at-home (WAH) environments. The recent development of the Potential Call Avoidance (PCA) Score provided insight for operations teams to identify why it may be occurring and address it quickly to deliver a customer-centric approach throughout all voice interactions.

The PCA Score calculates the probability of call avoidance occurring in the call. It focuses on certain scenarios that affect customer satisfaction, like long holds and ghost calls. The reason behind these situations may be intentional call avoidance, but they may also occur due to connection issues or high call occupancy at a given time. Each case is different and VALDI speech analytics users are strongly encouraged to review the calls to confirm or reject call avoidance and develop appropriate interventions.

Manual call verification may prove daunting, even though the PCA Score is triggered in a very small portion of all client calls. This is why iQor’s speech analytics enables operations to quickly identify agents with the highest ratio of risky calls to ensure proper agent training and consistently great CX. By accessing speech analytics reporting, contact center operations can quickly identify the lowest-performing agents and intervene with targeted coaching and training.

The PCA Score has proven efficient in providing actionable insights, improving agent performance, and lowering call average handle times. These Score-based findings have also prompted some operations teams to modify policies, to ensure consistently high levels of service. The ultimate goal, however, is to provide the best customer experience by limiting or eliminating situations that customers may find difficult or frustrating. Higher Net Promoter Score (NPS) values show the benefits of acknowledging, researching, and addressing call avoidance as one of the risks in CX.

4. Ensure Agents Adhere to Scripts

The increased number of WAH contact center agents at the onset of COVID accelerated the need to monitor proper adherence to scripts to make sure agents deliver the same level of customer service, regardless of their work environment. Custom keyword searches through speech analytics provide insight into calls to ensure agents communicate according to the scripts and prompts provided on their program.

5. React to Negative Experiences

VALDI applies artificial intelligence to measure CX by calculating customer sentiment in each interaction and linking calls with post-call surveys and NPS values. Additionally, language analysts create query definitions aimed at detecting any negative feedback and communication barriers. Researching these areas allows for successful agent training.

6. Prevent Legal Risks

Speech analytics solutions facilitate effective quality assurance and audit functions at scale, regardless of call recording volume.

Data scientists can create queries and sub-queries to drill down on specific issues, identify trends, and develop interventions to improve service in unique circumstances.

For example, program teams can use speech analytics to identify the exchange of credit card information in customer service calls. This functionality allows operations teams to limit their audit to only the calls that contain credit card data.

For one client that wanted to ensure credit card data was not discussed on customer calls, iQor tracked more than 46,000 calls with significantly less effort than would be required if we had done so manually. A query was built to identify the calls on which the term “credit card” was mentioned. The team then created sub-queries to further focus the detection to identify card information.

The result was a nearly 100% reduction in the number of calls in need of audit.

Speech analytics capabilities produced exponential savings in time and cost while protecting the client with valid PCI compliance.

Speech analytics also simplifies the creation of cease-and-desist lists to guarantee that customers who indicate they don’t want to be contacted are removed from call lists in order to meet customer expectations, regulatory requirements, and protect the client’s reputation.

What Differentiates iQor’s Proprietary Speech Analytics Solution?

At iQor, we deploy our internally developed speech analytics technology, VALDI, to enhance customer service delivery that many of the world’s top brands outsource to us. Each instance is customized to the unique needs of the client—in terms of search filters, reporting modules, and data types.

Our speech analytics solution is excellent for risk management because it offers flexibility when a new problem arises, whereas commercial, off-the-shelf tools typically either can’t be modified or require significant time and cost to do so. And you don’t need to be an expert to use it!

Several key attributes of iQor’s speech analytics solution include the following:

• VALDI evolves according to client needs with the capacity to quickly build new capabilities in short timeframes to proactively address changing circumstances.
• It offers customer experience analytics that shields clients from potential risks at scale.
• iQor operations are empowered to use VALDI technology to make informed decisions.
• Its video capabilities help QA to monitor agent performance by reviewing the recorded agent screen capture synchronized with the audio.
• Nothing in VALDI is random—every signal and query is designed to drill down into specific needs.

This proactive combination of digital CX technology with artificial intelligence and human review provides a holistic approach to improve the customer experience and create smiles.

Experience the Best in Speech Analytics

iQor’s proprietary speech analytics platform uses a combination of cloud computing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to extract every customer interaction for actionable data insights delivered as a custom solution with outsourced CX services.

iQor is ideally suited to help brands create amazing customer experiences. iQor provides a comprehensive suite of full-service and self-service scalable offerings that are purpose-built to deliver enterprise-quality CX.

Our award-winning CX services include:

• A global presence with 40+ contact centers across 10 countries.
• A CX private cloud that maximizes performance and scales rapidly across multiple geographies on short notice.
• A partnership approach where we deploy agents and C-level executives to help maximize your ROI.
• The perfect blend of intelligent automation for scale and performance coupled with an irresistible culture comprised of people who love to delight your customers.
• Virtual and hybrid customer support options to connect with customers seamlessly, when and where they want.
• The ability to launch a customer support program quickly, even when you need thousands of agents ready to support your customers.
• A best-in-class workforce management team and supporting technology to create a centralized organization that can better serve your entire business.

iQor helps brands deliver the world’s most sought-after customer experiences. Interested in learning more about the iQor difference? If you’re ready to start a conversation with a customer experience expert, contact us to learn about how we can help you create more smiles.

Monika Starczewska is director of Analytics at iQor.

Irena Michalewicz is manager of Information Services at iQor.

They are both part of the VALDI Team.

Contact Center as a Service Is Great for the Customer Experience

In today’s digital world, world-class customer service has to provide a customer experience that reflects the way people prefer to engage with companies. Being placed on hold while waiting for the “next available representative” isn’t it. Contact center as a service (CCaaS) offers businesses exceptional customer experiences with integrated communication channels for an optimized service delivery model. In this post we delve into the benefits of utilizing CCaaS on a digital CX journey, drawing on iQor’s extensive experience as a digital business process outsourcing company that makes customers smile.

Using cloud-based software, contact center as a service handles customer interaction through an omnichannel-enabled contact center that covers all stages of the customer service journey. This contact center solution replaces outdated call centers with digital technology that provides personalization and automation for customer inquiries, voice calls, interactive responses, intelligent virtual agents, social media, chat, email, texting, and speech analytics. 

The contact center as a service model allows brands to partner with a BPO like iQor to handle all aspects of customer service through a cloud-based contact center infrastructure.

Instead of every contact being siloed by department or agent, CCaaS delivers a complete overview of customer behavior, including all interactions a customer has had with a company and the communication channels they’ve used. This information enables contact center agents to provide personalized, up-to-date support that quickly resolves customer concerns and builds customer loyalty. 

Contact center as a service also improves workforce job satisfaction. Seamlessly combining options for live interactions with customer service representatives as well as automated self-service increases agent productivity and reduces redundant and mundane work. Contact center technology puts the power of digital and traditional communication channels into the hands of customer service agents.

The Benefits of Contact Center as a Service

Companies that want to experience digital customer experience success by efficiently providing the best customer service experience will benefit from contact center as a service. The advantages of using this service model include the following. 

Better Customer Experience

A cloud-based contact center gives customers more options. Whether they choose to call in by voice or use digital channels—such as social media, text messaging, email, or live chat—customers can access support in the way that’s most convenient for them. Customer satisfaction is the top priority for most companies. Using a cloud solution to provide accurate, real-time customer support can help achieve that. 

Reduced Cost and Increased Efficiency

Outsourcing customer experience management to a cloud-based contact center reduces the number of resources devoted to customer support delivery. With CCaaS, companies pay only for what they need without the overhead associated with maintaining an on-site customer service center. CCaaS eliminates the costs associated with physical buildings, hardware, and energy, as well as HR and IT support because the BPO providing the service handles all the infrastructure details. Additionally, it prevents companies from investing in a system with a lot of features they won’t use just to access the ones they need. 

Moreover, contact center software provides flexibility for customer service employees to work remotely and collaboratively while simultaneously ensuring endpoint security and data compliance measures are in place. All of the tools agents need to provide excellent customer service are available in one place. They can easily share files and see previous customer interactions. This all-in-one cloud solution boosts the efficiency of the entire team. Since CCaaS provides automated tools for many tasks, it also cuts down on the work agents must do, freeing them up to focus on more important tasks that delight customers. 

Actionable Insights

The CCaaS solution not only produces a more memorable customer experience but also provides important data to analyze and inform actionable insights. These business intelligence insights can drive the business strategy. If the same issue crops up repeatedly, it can be addressed at the source. Furthermore, contact center technology delivers metrics to track and improve productivity and agent responsiveness. 

It also offers insight into customers’ preferred channels for customer service. If, for example, most customers interact with customer service agents through social media, brands can devote more resources to an effective social media monitoring strategy. Additionally, using CCaaS technology to track hold times can improve workforce management and inform staffing needs to save money and improve CSAT metrics. 

Differences Between Call Centers and Contact Centers and Why They Matter

Call centers and contact centers are both centralized locations for providing customer support. A traditional call center does this primarily through agents handling telephone calls, while a contact center empowers customer service representatives to use a variety of digital channels for connecting with customers, such as texting, social media, live chat, email, and voice calls. 

It’s easy to think of contact centers as just call centers that use more channels, but there are more substantial differences that separate the two. A call center will typically accept an inbound call from a customer who is contacting them to answer a question or solve a problem. Even when call centers provide more channels for customer communication, they’re still primarily addressing an issue in an isolated manner. 

In contrast, contact centers provide customer satisfaction at all stages of the customer journey. Customers expect a fast response and a personalized experience when dealing with businesses whose products and services they consume, and contact centers provide that using omnichannel enhanced tools. 

Another big difference between contact centers and call centers is that contact centers provide analytical metrics to track and evaluate different aspects of the customer journey. This data is essential for driving the customer service strategy as well as influencing the broader business strategy.

Because of the focus on the entire customer journey as well as providing actionable insights, contact centers are a more holistic approach to customer experience than call centers. 

Best Practices for Harnessing Contact Center as a Service

One of the biggest challenges when switching to a contact center as a service model is figuring out how to integrate it into existing systems. The most important step in finding a solution is to determine short-, medium-, and long-term needs. This list of the top four priorities helps to get the most out of this model. 

1.   Focus on Customer Experience First

Toprovide the best possible customer experience, a contact center as a service provider like iQor should offer services and tools such as social media monitoring to improve service levels based on customer feedback. These tools allow brands to go beyond just putting out fires to proactively create a great customer experience throughout their journey with your brand. 

2.   Take Advantage of Automation 

Since efficiency is one of the biggest benefits of contact center as a service, a CCaaS provider like iQor can integrate tools that support contact center automation. These tools help increase operational efficiency, agent productivity, and quality assurance. Interactive voice response systems that capture customers’ numbers on incoming calls and call back when an agent is available are a great example. By eliminating hold times, customer satisfaction rates can greatly improve. 

3.   Implement Workforce Optimization 

Quality monitoring and performance management metrics let agents and supervisors quickly improve their performance. Based on these metrics, quality management procedures can be implemented to generate quick gains in customer satisfaction as well as employee happiness. Cloud-enabled contact centers can further reduce customer service inefficiencies by using performance dashboards to track agent productivity. 

4.   Provide Effective Agent Training

The customer experience journey will only be as good as the customer service agents. CCaaS technologies can provide targeted training based on known topics that need attention. This training can be delivered through a combination of in-person and online courses leveraging neuro-based learning methods. 

CCaaS Elevates Your Brand Experience

Contact center as a service brings big data insights and advantages to businesses of every size.

The scalable nature of CCaaS means that the solution can grow with the business without consuming additional resources. It simplifies experiences for customer service employees and for customers interacting with the brand. CCaaS offers a streamlined, cost-effective approach to a customer service model tailored to the needs of a brand to ensure rewarding customer experiences in a digital CX environment.

Experience the Best in CX

iQor’s contact center as a service model channels iQor’s digital ecosystem of customer service solutions to produce targeted improvements for the employee, customer, and client.

iQor is ideally suited to help brands create amazing customer experiences. iQor provides a comprehensive suite of full-service and self-service scalable offerings that are purpose-built to deliver enterprise-quality CX.

Our award-winning CX services include:

• A global presence with 40+ contact centers across 10 countries.

• A CX private cloud that maximizes performance and scales rapidly across multiple geographies on short notice.

• A partnership approach where we deploy agents and C-level executives to help maximize your ROI.

• The perfect blend of intelligent automation for scale and performance coupled with an irresistible culture comprised of people who love to delight your customers.

• Virtual and hybrid customer support options to connect with customers seamlessly, when and where they want.

• The ability to launch a customer support program quickly, even when you need thousands of agents ready to support your customers.

• A best-in-class workforce management team and supporting technology to create a centralized organization that can better serve your entire business.

iQor helps brands deliver the world’s most sought-after customer experiences. Interested in learning more about the iQor difference? If you’re ready to start a conversation with a customer experience expert, contact us to learn about how we can help you create more smiles.

Richard Temple is senior vice president of IT Transformation at iQor.

SMS Messaging Elevates Customer Support Offerings in the Digital Transformation Journey

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, CX needs to be seamless and easy, accessible to customers when and where they want. Consumers want to engage with brands in real-time through authentic interactions across omnichannel platforms, staying connected and on-the-go. To this end, customers often prefer conversational SMS messaging to address their customer service needs.

Short message service (SMS) text messaging is a fast and convenient way to provide helpful customer service. In this post, we explore the role of SMS text messaging in customer support delivery. It is part of broader intelligent channel optimization strategies that a business process outsourcing (BPO) partner like iQor can design to ensure customer support channels are perfectly aligned with customers’ needs.

What Is SMS Customer Support?

Simply put, SMS customer support service refers to the omnichannel support a brand provides its consumers through text messaging. The service doesn’t demand any physical interaction and is entirely virtual.

According to GigaOm, 98% of text messages are successfully opened on average. In the case of emails, however, the rate is only 22%. Moreover, the SMS engagement rate is three to five times higher than with emails.

In fact, 90% of SMS messages are read within three minutes of receipt.

This means that if you want to interact with your customers, one of the best ways is to give them the opportunity to communicate with your brand through SMS text messaging.

Benefits of Using SMS Messaging in Customer Support

As a managed services provider of customer engagement and technology-enabled BPO solutions, iQor has experience creating SMS channels for customer support that produce numerous benefits for businesses.

Customer Satisfaction

With SMS messaging, customers can communicate with brands more conveniently. The interactive nature of SMS can create a stronger connection at the moment of customer contact.

Additionally, according to recent statistics, the chances of customers replying to a text message are four times higher than responding to a call. Thus, SMS can prove to be quite beneficial when it comes to customer service excellence.

Cost-Efficiency

There is no doubt that it is more cost-efficient to support customer service inquiries via text rather than over the phone, while simultaneously enabling the customer to access that support through their preferred channel. Indeed, a service agent can support more than one customer at a time with fast response times through SMS messaging. Further, with the integration of AI-powered chatbots, SMS messaging provides efficient and reliable service.

Flexibility

SMS texting provides the flexibility to curate different customer experience strategies. For instance, scripts can be created specifically for SMS messaging and can be tailored to boost awareness about key offerings.

In addition, videos, links, and images can be shared via text to promote specific customer support messages, goods, and services.

Speed

SMS messaging helps provide the end user on-demand support in real-time, 24/7/365. Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered bots can respond to a high volume of inquiries through SMS, reducing the need for customers to speak with live agents.

Accessibility

A customer may not open Facebook Messenger regularly, but they will almost never miss a text message on their mobile phone. SMS messaging offers instant access to customers and facilitates simple and rewarding interactions with your brand.

Building an Effective SMS Strategy for Customer Support

Given the undeniable benefits of SMS messaging, BPOs like iQor can create custom solutions to integrate SMS messaging capabilities into the digital customer experience to create smiles throughout a streamlined customer journey with your brand.

An effective SMS customer support strategy includes various features, such as the following:

Automated FAQs

Instead of using live agents to repeatedly answer the same common questions, chatbots can respond to FAQs quickly and consistently, freeing up agents to focus on addressing more complex issues. This creates more rewarding experiences with higher levels of customer satisfaction.

Collect Feedback

SMS messaging offers a direct and immediate channel to encourage customers to share feedback on their customer experience, your product, and/or your service.

Collecting feedback as part of the SMS customer strategy helps achieve two things. First, it provides an understanding of areas that might require improvements. Second, customers will feel that their words carry value and are important for the brand’s business goals.

Keep Customers Informed

An SMS messaging campaign should be consumer-centric and must be designed to keep customers informed about promotions, updates, and orders. Such a strategy helps increase customer retention and brand loyalty.

For SMS messaging, the text must be straightforward. Flashy language and long-winded explanations only work for emails, sometimes. Texts should be short and to the point at all times.

Use Different Support Channels With SMS

An omnichannel strategy allows customers to choose the medium of communication that suits them best. So, for instance, if a certain service issue is complex, customers should be able to transition seamlessly from SMS to email or voice with live agents to effortlessly receive the customer support they need.

Best Practices for SMS Customer Support Delivery

An effective SMS text messaging strategy encompasses certain best practices:

Establish Clear Goals

When implementing SMS customer service strategies, BPOs like iQor work with brands to develop clear objectives.

Whether the goal is customer satisfaction, cost-efficiency, or digital transformation, it is important to prioritize goals in order to develop an effective SMS messaging game plan.

Categorize Incoming Messages

Establishing a clear SMS messaging management system facilitates the efficient handling of bulk messages. BPOs like iQor can categorize SMS messages according to the time they are received, their value, or their urgency, among other filters. In addition, integrating chatbots into the SMS system can further facilitate the handling of large numbers of queries.

Train Customer Support Agents

Customer support agents must be trained not only on how to use the technology but also on how to communicate professionally in ways that align with the brand while maintaining the human touch in communication.

The language and tone of agents on live chat, texts, or even social media platforms reflect the identity and values of the brand. Utilizing data analytics and regular social media monitoring to inform coaching and ongoing employee development can help ensure timely and effective customer service through SMS that makes people smile.

Promote Customer Support SMS Offerings

In order to use SMS messaging for support, customers must know about it.

As part of a comprehensive digital customer experience strategy, the availability of SMS support can be promoted through channels like social media, on-site apps, and phone calls. Providing links and details on the company website, app, and social media pages will let customers know about this customer service option. Additionally, advertising SMS messaging to a captive audience of customers when they call in for support can direct them to choose the messaging channel in the moment, thereby reducing calls in the queue for live agents.

Experience the iQor Difference

iQor is ideally suited to help brands create amazing customer experiences. iQor provides a comprehensive suite of full-service and self-service scalable offerings that are purpose-built to deliver enterprise-quality CX.

Our award-winning CX services include:

• A global presence with 40+ contact centers across 10 countries.
• A CX private cloud that maximizes performance and scales rapidly across multiple geographies on short notice.
• A partnership approach where we deploy agents and C-level executives to help maximize your ROI.
• The perfect blend of intelligent automation for scale and performance coupled with an irresistible culture comprised of people who love to delight your customers.
• Virtual and hybrid customer support options to connect with customers seamlessly, when and where they want.
• The ability to launch a customer support program quickly, even when you need thousands of agents ready to support your customers.
• A best-in-class workforce management team and supporting technology to create a centralized organization that can better serve your entire business.

iQor helps brands deliver the world’s most sought-after customer experiences. Interested in learning more about the iQor difference? If you’re ready to start a conversation with a customer experience expert, contact us to learn about how we can help you create more smiles.

Anupam Verma is director of digital solutions at iQor.

A Digital Transformation Strategy that Utilizes Speech Analytics Enhances the Customer Experience

Today’s digital transformation environment offers seemingly endless opportunities to empower individuals and improve outcomes. A digital ecosystem that includes speech analytics is one way to harness technology to create transformative customer service experiences that build brand loyalty. In this post, we delve into the benefits of using customizable speech analytics to improve all aspects of the customer experience.

Even though big data has been a part of the business lexicon for over a decade, many companies do not take advantage of the data-driven insights that could give them a competitive edge. Much of the richest data points are only available in an unstructured format. Unlike structured data, unstructured data aren’t readily available in a searchable configuration like a database. Because they are not easily accessible, unstructured data require more effort to extract and analyze.  

Unstructured data comprise between 80% and 90% of all data produced, making them an incredibly valuable asset for improving performance in all areas. This is particularly true in call centers. The ubiquitous recording of calls for quality assurance is essential, but it must be accompanied by effective data analysis to make sense of the interactions and inform recommendations for improvement.

That’s where digital transformation comes in with access to customer experience insights using advanced data analytics. When brands have access to interaction and predictive analytics, they can truly lead from a customer-centric standpoint. They gain a complete view of the entire customer journey, as well as the capacity to retrieve deep, granular insights into what is influencing the customer experience, why it’s happening, and how to improve outcomes.

Manual data extraction is generally cost-prohibitive and inefficient. Fortunately, business process outsourcing (BPO) companies like iQor with a vast digital ecosystem harness advances in artificial intelligence (AI)-powered solutions to analyze copious amounts of data and put them to good use. Speech analytics, like iQor’s cutting-edge proprietary platform (VALDI) developed by our in-house data scientists, can mine all recorded contact center calls and turn their content into actionable data. We, in turn, use this data to elevate employee and customer experiences while improving outcomes for clients to create smiles throughout the customer service journey.  

What Is Speech Analytics in Customer Service?

Speech analytics is a type of digital technology based on machine learning that excavates human speech and text. As a managed services provider of customer engagement and technology-enabled BPO solutions, iQor has developed a proprietary speech analytics platform that uses cloud computing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to mine every available recorded omnichannel interaction between agents and customers.

As part of iQor’s digital technology ecosystem for CX solutions, our speech analytics platform is delivered as a service uniquely tailored to each client’s individual and evolving needs. We convert treasure troves of information into usable data to drive important decisions throughout the customer journey. Our customizations include features such as:

• Personalized speech analytics queries that empower our teams to deep-dive on each call.
• Capabilities to identify agents in need of support.
• Pinpointing recurring topics.
• Determining necessary adjustments to scripts, protocols, and coaching interventions.

In contrast, commercial off-the-shelf speech analytics tools offer standard analytics capabilities marketed to a general audience; personalizing these tools can be impossible, costly, and/or time-consuming. While helpful, a one-size-fits-all approach to speech analytics doesn’t produce the same level of interaction analyses personalized to the individual needs of a business.

iQor’s custom CX solutions include omnichannel customer interaction analytics that equips call center teams to uncover the trends driving customer calls, which can provide significant value for the client and augment the customer experience. Additionally, custom speech analytics facilitates the identification of potential friction points or bottlenecks in the customer experience and helps teams evaluate contact center agent compliance and performance across all avenues of omnichannel engagement.  

Best Uses of Speech Analytics in Call Centers

Voice analytics has numerous use cases in customer service. A catalyst that inspires data-driven decision-making to improve training techniques for individual agents, speech analytics provides actionable insights that increase business value. The following are common use cases for speech analytics in call centers. 

Increased customer satisfaction

The customer experience reigns supreme in a contact center. Customer interaction analytics can clarify what customers want when they call, the reasons for repeat calls, how agents can better meet customer needs, and what factors lead to fantastic interactions with customers. In addition, natural language processing can analyze customer sentiment and help call center agents anticipate when customers are likely to abandon a brand and what measures they can take to prevent that.  

Individualized agent training

A speech analytics tool can help quantify the performance of individual agents and identify any gaps in their customer support training. Supervisors can then provide targeted coaching and training that hones in on specific issues, eliminating the need to spend time and money on unnecessary training.  

Workforce optimization

A lot goes into staffing a contact center with trained and qualified agents based on the anticipated call volume; utilizing speech analytics is a proven way to improve operational efficiencies throughout the workforce. By classifying calls, uncovering root causes, using predictive analytics, and exposing patterns, speech analytics technology can enable streamlined customer interactions with agents to increase efficiency and optimize customer care.  

How Speech Analytics Improves the Customer Experience

Purposefully utilizing speech analytics elevates the contact center as the customer experience hub. Insights gained from the contact center can improve the entire customer experience in the following ways. 

Correlate cause and effect to improve interactions

Customizable speech analytics solutions like iQor’s, help connect specific reasons for various outcomes. Identifying the source of unsatisfactory outcomes facilitates changes that can eliminate them and improve the customer experience. Likewise, identifying the practices that result in positive outcomes empowers supervisors to encourage more agents to adopt them through coaching. Integrating business intelligence insights into coaching and training sessions improves performance, employee satisfaction, and retention while also providing positive outcomes throughout the customer journey.  

Improve customer retention

Analyzing customer sentiment can reveal the root causes of customer dissatisfaction. Using AI-powered speech analytics, we can pinpoint which customers are most at risk for churn and how agents can effectively head it off. If a customer uses language associated with churn, the agent can employ loyalty incentives to encourage customer retention. The language associated with customer loyalty can also be identified and promoted to offer insight into customer perceptions and help create more satisfying experiences that make customers smile.  

Provide insight into omnichannel experiences

Integrating the omnichannel experience into a comprehensive digital transformation strategy reduces the siloed effect associated with some customer service offerings; using speech analytics can help identify customer preferences and expectations across channels. Understanding why customers prefer specific channels allows the customer service team to provide the resources they need to engage customers in the manner they prefer. In addition, speech analytics provides actionable insight into which channels and resources produce the best ROI in terms of customer satisfaction to deliver the best customer experiences.  

Give agents a framework for empathetic listening

Some customers are already unhappy by the time they place a call to a contact center. Speech analytics technology identifies words and phrases that indicate when customers are unhappy and at risk of churning. They can also identify specific words and phrases that generate a positive response in unhappy customers. When contact center agents have this insight, they can convey an empathetic response that makes the customer feel valued, reinforces their loyalty to the brand, and generates a positive outcome.  

Real-time analytics can take this concept even further through predictive customer service by notifying agents when a call is heading in the wrong direction. Agents can be prompted to use the most effective measures to rescue the call and deliver a meaningful and positive customer experience.  

Key Features of a Speech Analytics Platform

An interaction analytics solution like iQor’s customizable proprietary speech analytics provides insight throughout the customer journey to see the complete picture and inform best practices and improvements. Some key features of speech analytics in a digital ecosystem include the following.  

Omnichannel insight

Speech analytics technology that provides advanced data processing and multidimensional analyses across channels provides the most valuable insights. iQor’s proprietary speech analytics technology, known as VALDI, delivers these insights in a single robust platform that makes collecting the data throughout the omnichannel experience quick and effective. In addition, this data provides relevant KPIs to target for optimization.  

Easy integration

A customer analytics solution should easily integrate into the existing technology framework and be customizable to adapt to domain-specific language and legacy systems for each client. Additionally, the solution must be configured to help achieve current short- and long-term goals as well as respond to changing needs.  

Searchable system

Automated reports are useful when trying to glean valuable insights from data. A fully customizable solution like iQor’s can readily search all customer interactions. Accurate call transcription and detailed, searchable information on all characteristics of an interaction are essential to optimizing quality assurance procedures.  

Customizable tracking

Another proven invaluable aspect of customer analytics is the ability to analyze and flag interactions for topics of interest to inform protocols and reduce risk. This attribute provides insight into trends and patterns, generates reports on micro issues, and sets up automatic alerts based on evolving needs.  

Experience the Best in Speech Analytics

iQor’s proprietary speech analytics platform, VALDI, uses a combination of cloud computing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to extract every customer interaction for actionable data insights delivered as a custom solution.

iQor is ideally suited to help brands create amazing customer experiences. iQor provides a comprehensive suite of full-service and self-service scalable offerings that are purpose-built to deliver enterprise-quality CX.

Our award-winning CX services include:

• A global presence with 40+ contact centers across 10 countries.
• A CX private cloud that maximizes performance and scales rapidly across multiple geographies on short notice.
• A partnership approach where we deploy agents and C-level executives to help maximize your ROI.
• The perfect blend of intelligent automation for scale and performance coupled with an irresistible culture comprised of people who love to delight your customers.
• Virtual and hybrid customer support options to connect with customers seamlessly, when and where they want.
• The ability to launch a customer support program quickly, even when you need thousands of agents ready to support your customers.
• A best-in-class workforce management team and supporting technology to create a centralized organization that can better serve your entire business.

iQor helps brands deliver the world’s most sought-after customer experiences. Interested in learning more about the iQor difference? If you’re ready to start a conversation with a customer experience expert, contact us to learn about how we can help you create more smiles.

Bartosz Golembnik is vice president of IT data sciences at iQor.

Anna Perkowska is a programmer analyst of data sciences at iQor.