Analytics 101: The Power of Analytics in Customer Experience

On May 5, 2020

Every day, we’re creating huge amounts of data.

From the 65 million messages sent on WhatsApp every day, to the 294 billion emails sent, the digital world is packed with information. For businesses, this means there are endless opportunities to learn more about your target audience and optimise your processes.

All you need to do is figure out how to leverage all the information you create.

Analytics, from call recording tools for compliance to AI analytics that determines a customer’s sentiment during a call, transform raw chunks of data into actionable insights. Here’s your guide to unlocking the power of analytics in your business.

What is Analytics?

Analytics in the UC landscape can refer to a number of things. For instance, you can assess the adoption rates of your collaboration tools or use workforce optimisation services to track the performance of your team. However, when most people talk about analytics in this space, they’re referencing “call analytics”.

Call logging systems and recording tools have been around for decades.

Known previously by terms like “call accounting tools”, they were designed mainly for keeping track of the number of conversations managed in a business.

However, we’ve come a very long way since then. Thanks to the rise of new analytics algorithms, AI tools, and machine learning, we can do a lot more than just collect data. We now have the power to translate that information into powerful strategies for business growth.

Today’s enhanced analytics strategies can deliver a host of exciting benefits to companies, including:

Business Intelligence: Insights into how your company operates, from supply chain to staff performance. The more you know about your organisation, the easier it is to earn results.
Compliance: Through call recording and analytics tools, companies can ensure that they’re collecting the right data, while staying in line with compliance guidelines.
Security: Analytics tools with voice recognition and biometric technology built in can determine the authenticity of calls, reducing the risk of toll fraud.
Enhanced customer experience: Through an analysis of things like customer sentiment, businesses can adjust the client/brand conversation to deliver better results.
Prediction: The more information you collect about conversations that happened in the past, the easier it will be to predict the future.

Analytics Trends

Perhaps the biggest thing driving the analytics sector forward right now, is the rise of artificial intelligence. Machine learning models that train using gigantic data centres can make businesses more productive, and efficient. AI analytics help companies to gain insights by assessing bigger data stores that we could ever manage on our own.

Already, 60% of enterprises say that they use AI to help them drive better decision making strategies. When artificial intelligence and machine learning are combined with our data stores, we can uncover insights that we never recognised before. There’s even growing potential in the use of virtual assistants to pinpoint issues and create immediate resolutions to problems.

Here are some of the leading trends that are affecting the analytics world today:

Omnichannel analytics: There’s more to a true analytics strategy than call recording and logging. Businesses need to keep track of every touchpoint in the customer journey, assessing everything from social media interactions, to video conversations. As more platforms appear in the business-to-customer environment, the demand for more advanced analytics will increase.
Virtual assistants: Virtual assistants represent one of the best ways for businesses to leverage the data that they collect as quickly as possible. Just as in the consumer world we’re learning to feel more comfortable with things like voice-activated speakers, in the business world, virtual assistants can provide information in an instant. They could even provide real-time advice to call centre agents about how to improve a conversation based on sentiment analysis.
Customer journey mapping: One of the biggest goals of analytics in the communication world, is finding a way to improve the customer experience. To do this, many businesses are using customer journey mapping to figure out exactly which path each client goes down. Analysing the customer journey allows companies to remove potential pain points that might stop a customer from getting the results they need.
Speech technologies: Virtual assistants aren’t the only way that speech technologies are being used in analytics. Contact centres are using speech recognition for everything from customer self-service, to better IVR experiences. Some companies are even investing in speech technologies to assess biometric markers in a customer’s voice and improve the security of each conversation.
Regulatory compliance: Analytics are excellent for compliance purposes. The right analytics strategy can gather non-personal data from interactions and use it to feed other strategies like machine learning tools and business intelligence. What’s more, because interaction analysis scores the touchpoints customers interact with every day, it’s much easier to track relevant details for regulatory compliance.
Security: Many leading analytics suites and recording solutions also come with things like fraud detection alarming. This means that companies can proactively monitor their inbound and outbound call trends, accessing potential fraud alerts and reducing the risk of toll fraud. As fraud detection continues to stand out as a crucial concern for business, this is likely to be a powerful area of analytics going forward.

Analytics Events

As the world of data becomes more complex, the easiest way to ensure that you’re discovering the latest and greatest tools in the analytics landscape, is to visit local events. The leading contact centre events introduce business leaders and partners to some of the most exciting additions to the analytics stack.

Here at UC Today, we stay on the cutting edge of the event roster, constantly ensuring that we have reporters on-hand to share information from your favourite events. Whether you keep a watchful eye on our reports, or visit the events yourself, you’ll learn how to:

Optimise customer experience
Access deeper levels of analytics, like sentiment and predictive analysis
Collect information without compromising on compliance
Pull data from different environments together into a single point of truth
Use the latest in digital assistants, artificial intelligence, and machine learning
Protect your customers from toll fraud and other threats.

Analytics Vendors

As well as examining the latest products and services on the market, it’s also important to stay up to date with some of the market-leading vendors delivering innovative new tools. Regularly here at UC Today, we create our market guides to help you discover the latest insights from some of the most inspirational analytics companies in the industry.

What’s more, if you’re looking for the very best vendors that you can work with on analytics, then you can always check out our UC Awards. In the UC Awards announcements each year, we choose a market leader from multiple categories, including analytics.

When you’re choosing an analytics company for yourself, remember to think about how this company is going to help you to achieve your goals. What do you want to accomplish with your analytics strategy? Are you trying to become more compliant, or improve your customer experience strategy? If so, then you might need an analytics service that works seamlessly with your own data centre or helps you to expand the performance of your CCaaS environment.

Analytics tools are often part of a bigger overall strategy. Figure out your goals before you begin comparing vendors. Then, when you’re ready, check out our list of leading companies.

Analytics Reviews

While overviews of vendors and event insights can give you a better view of what’s available in the marketplace, you’ll often that you need to dive a little deeper into the potential features and solutions that each analytics vendor can offer. That’s where reading reviews can be particularly helpful.

Here at UC Today, we produce regular analytics reviews on some of the latest products in the market, complete with insights into benefits, features, and more. When you’re making your decision on which analytics company to work with, think about:

Future needs: You might not need a multi-channel analytics system right now. However, as your business continues to digitally transform, and you find that customers begin coming to you on different platforms, it will help to have an analytics company that can help you to combine and consolidate your data from different environments.
AI and machine learning: What kind of advanced and disruptive analytics technologies do you want to take advantage of? Could speech technologies help you to keep your customers happier for longer? Perhaps you could use AI analytics to determine which channels in your contact centre have issues that might be limiting conversions?
Simplicity: Your analytics system needs to be easy enough to use, so that your team will want to take advantage of it. Even the best technology can’t deliver the right results if you struggle to get adoption. If you’re concerned that your team will be unwilling to explore your new tools, ask your vendor about training opportunities.
Provisioning: How easy is it to get your analytics system up and running? Can your vendor deliver everything you need over the cloud, including new software updates and features whenever you want them? As a service offerings can help to reduce some of the headache that goes into installing new tools.
Security: How can your vendor help you to protect both your customers and your business from any issues with things like data breaches or the use of private data? When information is collected by an analytics service, where is it stored, and is it properly encrypted? It’s best to ask your vendor before you sign on the dotted line.

Analytics Comparisons

Analytics tools in the current landscape come in a wide variety of different formats. There are some analytics services that focus heavily on security, and protection for things like toll fraud. On the other hand, there are other services that are focused on things like call centre efficiency, and the experience that you can deliver to your customers on any channel.

When you’re building the perfect communication stack, you may find that you need to add analytics into your strategy at multiple touchpoints. This could mean creating a list of some of the top analytics vendors in different spaces and comparing your options.

Remember, the best way to choose any communication or collaboration tool is to start with the issue that you want to solve and work backwards. Different companies will need different insights into their services and customer journeys. Speak to your team about the kind of information and analytics that could help you to achieve your goals for:

Security
Customer service/ experience
User experience (employees)
Compliance purposes
Privacy and data protection
Business intelligence

You might need a service that combines multiple analytics strategies into one. For instance, if you want something to help you improve your customer experience strategy, then you’ll need historical reports that you can learn from over time, and real-time reports that support your agents in their conversations. You could also benefit from integrated call recording features for compliance, or an ACD (call centre) dashboard, where you can track the performance of the contact centre environment.

On top of that, because security and privacy is a critical part of delivering a good customer experience, it might be necessary to invest in things like fraud management tools too.

The UC Today Analytics Smart Guide

If you’re still unsure which steps you should be taking with your analytics strategy, check out our analytics smart guides. These guides are designed to provide you with all the information that you need about everything from the contact centre environment, to CPaaS.

Our smart guide on AI in the contact centre will give you an overview of how AI tools can help you to access better insights into your business operations and customer experience. You can also check out some of our smart guides into things like cognitive collaboration, for analytics in the workforce, or GDPR compliance and how it affects your recording strategy.

As the world continues to grow more data driven, analytics will be a significant part of any successful business. Make sure you’re not left behind.