Making the Audible Actionable:
The Value of Voice Analytics
I’m at the drive-thru of a national burger chain last week, craving that juicy super-burger that melts as it slides down my throat and becomes 800 calories of fat that I’ll probably never work off. As I grab my bag of food at the pick-up window, the employee informs me that if I call the number on the back of the receipt and take the survey, I’ll get a free burger next time I visit.
The quickest way to a man’s heart is up his wallet pocket and through his stomach, so the words “free burger” sold me. Plus, I had a bone to pick – they forgot my ketchup and a straw. As I pulled out of the drive-thru, I was already dialing the survey number with my cell. After all, texting is illegal in most states, but talking isn’t. So I can provide feedback, eat, and drive all at one time!
The easiest and most effective surveying method for the customer is over-the-phone responses to an automated survey. Automated phone surveys allow you to rant and rave to a company without an awkward exchange between you and another person. You can let it fly! Plus, neither your hands nor your eyes are busy while responding to a phone survey. In fact, I JUST took a phone survey while I wrote that last sentence! That’s how simple they are!
Ease of Method Trumps Technology
According to our research at Mindshare Technologies, when customers are given the option to take either a phone survey or an online survey, they choose to use their phone approximately 60% of the time — no matter the size of the company or its industry.
Though web surveys still take almost half the cake, they’re not as hot as everyone expected. When the internet became a regular household appliance nationwide about 10 years ago, customer feedback experts expected it to overtake phone surveying methods.
Web surveys never made phone surveys obsolete because technology doesn’t dictate your customers’ surveying preference; ease of method does. And for most, automated phone surveys are the simplest, quickest, most comfortable feedback method for customers.
Regardless, both web and phone surveys are here to stay. To collect the most surveys, your customer feedback program should offer customers the option to provide feedback via phone, web, text message, kiosk, iPad, social media, or whatever method they choose. After all, the more feedback you collect, the more usable information you receive. And with proper analysis for all that info, you’ll find more specific, actionable insights from your feedback to improve operations and increase revenue.
With customers taking as many or more phone surveys as web surveys, you need an analytics engine that digests both audible and textual comments equally well, combining all comments into one system.
Your Voice Analytics Should Be Equal to Your Text Analytics
Text Analytics is a hot topic right now. Companies with successful customer feedback programs are using Text Analytics. At its very basic form, Text Analytics provides keyword search and a word cloud of topic frequencies so businesses know what’s important to their customers. But many Text Analytics engines do much more than that: trending, root-cause analysis, automatic comment categorization, and much more.
What about Text Analytics’ up-and-coming brother, Voice Analytics? Only a handful of VoC (Voice of the Customer, or EFM – Enterprise Feedback Management) vendors even offer Voice Analytics. And most of those Voice Analytics engines only provide the basics: keyword search and word cloud topics. Why? Because Voice Analytics engines don’t transcribe the whole comment, they listen for keywords within the comment predetermined by the user. For example, if a fast-food manager wants to stay on top of his location’s french fry quality, his Voice Analytics will be tuned to flag comments that mention “fries.” Then, the manager has to listen to that comment to find out what it says.
Frankly, that’s pretty weak technology. But that’s the state of current Voice Analytics engines.
If customers are speaking to companies as much as they type or text, shouldn’t Voice Analytics engines be as insightful as Text Analytics engines?
The answer is yes, they should have equal importance. Mindshare believes that the best way to utilize Voice Analytics and Text Analytics is to transcribe your audible comments into text and then feed them through your Text Analytics engine. The two methods become equal in the quality and quantity of their results. Valuable, actionable insights are extracted from both. Plus, transcribed comments make for easy referencing and provide retainable data for use over and over again.
Just remember, transcribed audible comments provide potential insights. Transcription is near-worthless if you don’t analyze the comments to find usable information.
Actions Speak Louder Than Insights
If you’re going to collect feedback, you need to act on it. Like Text Analytics, your Voice Analytics results should be actionable and drive decisions that result in operational improvements. All analytics must pass the “now what?” test. When you see Voice Analytics results, ask yourself, “now what?” The answer should be an action that drives measurable results for a Return on Investment (ROI).
When creating your Voice Analytics strategy, make sure your solution can answer the all-important "now what?" text.
Let’s put this test to work. Here are a few common, less useful Voice Analytics scenarios:
• “I know the top ten keywords used by my customers in phone survey feedback.” (Now what?)
• “I am told I need to have a word cloud.” (Now what?)
• “My competitors were mentioned 143 times by customers!” (Now what?)
See? It’s that simple. The above scenarios cannot easily and usefully answer the “now what?” question. While they are all very interesting factoids, what practical action steps do they drive? If you cannot take action with your Voice Analytics, why bother with it at all?
Contrast those with the following useful cases:
• “My least satisfied customers complain about long hold times.” (Now what? Hire more contact center agents and/or reduce talk times.)
• “When dissatisfied with order accuracy, my drive-thru customers most often use the phrase ‘missing ... toy’.” (Now what? Change the assembly process and train employees to double check that toys are included in every bag.)
These Voice Analytics scenarios easily pass the test because they lead to actions that produce measurable operational improvements. When creating your Voice Analytics strategy, make sure your solution can answer the all-important “now what?” test.
The Future of Voice Comments
As social media platforms, mobile phones, tablets, and other technology advancements continue to make communication instant and easy, surveys will also become easier. At Mindshare, we believe that Voice Analytics engines will become more effective and eventually traditional surveys will change dramatically. Let me explain: Imagine leaving a retail store with a receipt and a customer feedback number. You call the number and the automated machine collects your satisfaction ratings and tells you to leave your voice feedback after the beep. You then talk about your experience in your own words! Instead of being saved and analyzed at a later time, your comments are instantly analyzed for actionable insights pertinent to the retail location.
Obviously, surveys won’t become extinct. Businesses will still occasionally survey their customers for market research needs. But for pure customer service insights that improve operations, customers won’t be tied down by formal, structured questions about their experiences’ specifics. No more “Did you visit the _____ department? Did the employee greet you with a smile?” and other questions that only improve very minute details of your operations. Instead, you will simply talk or type, providing free-form, unstructured feedback in your own words as you remember the experience.
For that future to become mainstream, you’ll need to have extremely intelligent Voice and Text Analytics systems that actually listen to the voice of the customer, not just listen for keywords.
Conclusion
The easiest and most effective surveying method for the customer is over-the-phone responses to an automated survey. Those comments empower customers to rant and rave to their hearts’ content using their own voice. Those powerful comments are useless unless your Voice Analytics system is as insight-focused as the best Text Analytics engine. After all, the two should be equal. With an intuitive, intelligent Voice Analytics system, businesses can use audible comments to their fullest potential, and thus maximize their profits with improved operations.
Mindshare drives operational improvement. Using Mindshare, companies improve operational excellence, foster consumer satisfaction, build customer loyalty, and support employee retention. Our industry experts guide clients in building comprehensive enterprise feedback management (EFM) solutions. Mindshare's proprietary survey technology captures the voice of the customer in real-time and immediately transforms it into actionable intelligence through powerful and incisive reporting. Mindshare serves more than 25 different industries including travel, hospitality, restaurant, financial, salon, automotive, and retail. For information, visit www.mshare.net.
