Speech Analytics Partnerships Herald Technology's Growth
Interest in speech analytics solutions as it applies to contact centers increased yesterday when CallMiner announced a stretegic partnership with CallCopy, the same day that Nexidia announced a partnership with Noble Systems.
The partnership between CallMiner, a developer of speech analytics software, and CallCopy, a provider of quality management and call recording solutions for contact centers, allows the companies to jointly market one another’s solutions. According to the other deal, Noble Systems, a provider of contact center technology solutions, will offer Nexidia’s speech analytics products as part of its Noble Solution contact center technology suite.
"The good news with these announcements (of partnerships)," says Donna Fluss, president of DMG Consulting "is that speech analytics have become readily available and users have more choices. Speech analytics is being adopted and demanded by end-user organizations. It has many, many applications. It’s new but very viable."
Though a relatively new technology, speech analytics—one of the fastest-growing contact center market applications—has already exhibited quantifiable ROI. Contact center speech analytics extracts meaning from unstructured customer conversations, allowing enterprises to understand the motivations behind a customer’s reason for calling.
"For example," said Noble Systems CEO and president James K. Noble, Jr., "collectors can see trends in spoken promise-to-pays, and sales can determine trends in spoken objections. Many industries, like collections, are better able to comply with government regulations and other industry compliance standards." He continues to describe speech analytics as a "killer application."
Though the speech analytics community is thus far made up of a small cluster of standalone vendors building relationships with other enterprises, Fluss anticipates sharp growth in contact center speech analytics. As a result, she also expects the announcement of many more partnerships incorporating speech analytics in the coming months.