Redefining the Role of Voice Logging

By Patrick Botz
April 2007

Not so long ago, voice logging was generally perceived to be nothing more than a basic function implemented by contact centers to meet compliance regulations and liability requirements.  Soon it became apparent that recorded interactions were also useful for evaluating agent quality and for training new agents.  However, with the advent of full-time recording solutions and the availability of cheap, efficient storage strategies, the true value of recorded interactions began to become known.  Recorded interactions between agents and customers are a veritable gold mine of business intelligence, yielding insights into agent performance, product or service perception, and customer satisfaction.  Intelligence garnered from customer interactions can be used to improve managerial decisions and investments made by strategic-level departments such as sales, marketing, human resources, research and development, finance, or operations.

Today, organizations worldwide are realizing that in order to maximize performance, they need to be able to capture as much information as possible.  Full-time recording with 100 percent records retention (or selective retention based on business rules) provides an accurate representation of activities as well as insurance for compliance and liability management. 

Recorded Interactions – The Essential Building Blocks: Thanks to the emergence of workforce optimization (WFO) technologies, organizations are now able to capture and meaningfully assess multimedia interactions.  WFO solutions were designed to adhere to a very simple philosophy: to deliver the right information to the right people at the right time – thus stimulating dramatic improvements in performance.  Today, various WFO applications are being implemented in contact centers of all types and sizes.  In addition to interactions recording, WFO solutions include quality monitoring, workforce management, customer surveying, speech analytics, performance management, and automated agent coaching.  However, while each WFO solution can offer valuable insights and intelligence, they are more valuable when integrated with a full-time voice logging solution. 

The Power of Integration: Tightly integrated suites of WFO solutions are growing in popularity.  The voice logging module is arguably the most interrelated solution; it is crucial to, or significantly enhances, the performance of the other technologies.  For example, quality monitoring efforts can be focused by selecting the most meaningful interaction recordings for evaluation based on specific company objectives and business rules.  If you're particularly interested in the performance of a specific agent, a group of agents, or all calls resulting in the loss of a customer, automated business rules can be implemented to flag these calls for evaluation.

Supervisors can also evaluate calls based on performance management notifications of increased or decreased up-sell performance and can drill down through desktop dashboards and reports to listen to the original call recordings.  An advanced performance management solution translates performance data into in-depth insight into a contact center's strengths and weaknesses.  It monitors both telephony and business metrics in real time.  Used alone or in conjunction with other WFO solutions, the performance management software provides the tools to leverage performance data into business intelligence that can dramatically enhance your contact center's performance.  The software system collects and consolidates real-time and historical performance information, delivering it right to the desktops of your contact center's agents, managers, and executives.  Key performance indicators, quality scores, scheduling information, and service level indicators can be distributed using desktop dashboards, Web-based consolidated reporting, and TV monitor display systems. 

The frequency of a specific word, phrase, or topic detected and reported via a speech analytics solution can alert an organization to a serious issue or valuable opportunity; speech analytics technologies typically function by mining recorded interactions.  Any organization that utilizes a voice logging solution to record agent-customer calls can benefit enormously from the gold mine of business intelligence that lies buried in call recordings.  Speech analytics solutions enable a call center to extract business intelligence from recorded agent-customer interactions.  State-of-the-art speech recognition technologies listen to contact center conversations and keep track of what is being said.  This innovative technology quickly identifies call trends that until now were too costly and time consuming to uncover through labor-intensive, manual quality monitoring practices.

When a customer satisfaction issue is identified by a post-call IVR customer surveying solution, managers can drill down and listen to the recorded interaction and evaluate the situation.  A customer survey solution links customer feedback with specific customer interactions captured by your voice logging solution.  Customer feedback automatically directs you to the important call recordings to listen to – rather than randomly selecting calls.  You can trigger alerts based on what customers say about a specific call, or based on aggregate feedback at any level in your organization. 

Voice Logging – An Essential Component: The value of recorded interactions has finally been recognized.  As a result, the voice logging function has been completely redefined.  No longer considered a tedious backroom function, full-time voice logging is now recognized as an essential component in the quest to optimize processes and maximize profitability.  By enabling organizations to fully utilize and manage their recorded customer interactions, WFO solutions empower every department to function on a higher level – from the contact center, customer service, marketing, compliance, and liability management to human resources, senior executives, remote employees, and outsourcers. 

Patrick Botz serves as global director of marketing for VPI (www.VPI-Corp.com), a global provider of interaction recording and workforce optimization solutions for contact centers.  As a CRM practitioner, he focuses on the mission-critical aspects of capturing real-time customer intelligence and proactively optimizing workforce performance.  Contact Patrick at PBotz@VPI-Corp.com.