Data is king – that’s why speech analytics is so important

At Adobe's recent Digital Marketing Symposium I was fascinated by an RBS presentation by Matthew Harwood into how the bank is rigorously applying the latest web data and analytics thinking to reshape its online targeting.

For RBS the message was clear – data is king. As the bank’s Head of Analytics, Giles Richardson explains: “we’re way past the point where we design for segments that don’t exist – it’s now all about identifiable segments where we can see how many people interact on a daily basis. And if we can’t measure it, we don’t do it!”

It’s an approach that’s clearly working online for RBS, with the bank suggesting that when they target content to customers returning to their site they find that 70-80% of people are more likely to engage and adopt a specific product. Applying Adobe’s web and marketing analytics tools, gives the bank a comprehensive view of a customer’s interactions across all their digital channels – allowing them to continually reshape the online experience by responding to specific aspects of individual customer journeys.

RBS is clearly getting great results from this digital analytics approach, however it did strike me that this kind of laser focus, while increasingly being applied to digital journeys, is rarely concentrated on the voice channel – despite the fact that voice still accounts for 7 out of 10 customer interactions. I understand that RBS analysts do sit down next to contact centre agents and gather feedback on why customers are calling, however I suspect – like many other banks – they can only analyse a tiny percentage of overall voice interactions.

That’s why at Sabio we see speech analytics as a powerful complementary approach for organisations driving optimisation, personalisation and targeting across their digital channels. Because the latest real time speech analytics technology can effectively mine 100% of your voice contacts, organisations can now be much more successful in capturing and tagging the reasons why customers call.

By then sharing this voice data with an organisation’s online insight, there’s an incredible opportunity for firms such as RBS to use the actual voice of the customer to inform and reshape the journey provided to the same customers when they next engage online.

The better the enterprise can gather together the threads of what it knows about its customers – across all channels – the more influence it is likely to have in simplifying the customer experience. In addition, by analysing the specific reasons why customers are calling, they can also systematically identify and eliminate many online customer experience problems that are driving demand into the contact centre – unlocking potentially significant bottom line savings.

With powerful speech analytics now becoming even more accessible, it really is time that the still dominant voice channel starts to benefit from the level of analytical focus and measurement that major organisations such as RBS are already applying to their online properties. Speech analytics is ideally placed to complement digital insight strategies, ensuring that organisations capture and recognise the true voice of the customer and apply this essential insight across all their channels.