Using Speech Analytics to Elevate Your Agency’s Productivity and Performance
- April 21, 2022
- Category: Speech Analytics
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While all collection-focused contact centers want to improve their agent performance and processes, they simply cannot handle the sheer volume of calls they need to review without the use of speech technology. Without speech analytics, firms must still devote several FTEs to manual call review – and that’s not even for 100% call coverage! Adopting speech analytics technology will enable you to automate comprehensive call monitoring, yet this in and of itself does not replace the need for a QA expert, who can help bridge the gap between compliance and operational productivity.
To understand how one can use technology effectively and what to look for in a speech analytics solution, we invited LaDonna Bohling, Chief Strategy Officer at Contract Callers, for an exclusive webinar. Below is a summary of her key takeaways and advice on creating a best-in-class speech analytics program.
Ideally, all thought leaders from an agency should sit together and brainstorm before designing effective workflows that align with regulatory compliance requirements and consider risk gaps revealed in compliance audit(s). However, it is the technology that can help you effectively enable these workflows that cover your agency from state-wise compliance breaches. The speech solution you use in your business should help you know whether you are adhering to the 7-in-7 rule or not and prevent outbound dials over the allowed number per day and week. Preventative measures put in place through speech analytics should help you avoid overwhelming consumers with phone calls, texts, and emails (without getting fined for operating outside the Reg F framework).
Some States have particular language requirements for agency-consumer interaction. For instance, New York, at any given time, can ask you whether you are noting consumers’ language preferences or not. Hence, it is always wise to work with a speech technology partner like Provana that can help you reprogram certain words and phrases in calls so you can easily score each call as per state-wise compliance rules. The other thing that a speech solution should help you do is to help you track accounts as per the statute of limitations by state.
It is also important to expect that you might face many credit reporting issues suddenly given more people are checking their Credit Karma reports as often as they like now, to monitor their credit scores and credit activity. The speech solution you use in your business should enable you to detect this data. It should help you spot risky calls and other discrepancies instantly.
Though technology can help you automate important QA functions, you still need some manual intervention to improve your productivity and ultimately business performance. This means, you still need people in your QA department to read results from the system, provide coaching and feedback to agents/team leads, and find patterns and process improvements.
Looking at agent scorecards and performance trends from speech analytics, it will be easier for you to identify silence time (an average timestamp where agents have difficulty in carrying out the conversation), spot excessive wrap-up time, find training opportunities on consumer engagement, and reallocate staffing (4×10 or 4×9 + 4) to fit calling patterns.
Given speech analytics has a crucial role to play in eliminating compliance risk, improving agent performance, and increasing recovery rates, it is important you sign up for a solution that is easily customizable and can be adapted to the latest rules such as Reg F easily without much disruption to your existing workflow. If you are planning to switch from an old speech solution to a new one, make sure you are choosing an easy-to-implement speech analytics solution like ICAP that gets running in a week. Through top-notch sentiment analysis, the solution should also try to make your agents more consumer friendly. This will ultimately point out improved agent productivity and business performance, something all collection businesses need to scale.