Callminer is best known as a vendor of speech analytics software. Along with its own suite, its products also are embedded in those of several other vendors to provide speech analysis. During a recent briefing, I learned that the company has not only expanded into text and social analytics but also that its latest release includes more features and a friendlier user interface, two requirements that my research shows are essential in persuading companies to more widely adopt analytics for customer-facing processes.
My benchmark research into contact center and customer analytics shows that the majority of companies still use spreadsheets as their main analytics tool and that the biggest barrier to changing is insufficient ease of use in alternatives. Both research studies show that companies want more functionality, but it must be as easy to use as spreadsheets to be accepted and used by business users at all levels, from agents to managers. Separate research into customer relationship maturity shows that companies are not good at sharing information with everyone who performs customer-facing activities; these include agents, supervisors, managers and users in other business units who interact with customers. This lack of information is a barrier to improving the customer experience and the overall handling of customer interactions. Callminer’s Eureka 9.0 and myEureka help companies overcome both these issues.
The new version of the product integrates more sources and types of customer data, including data from transactional systems (such as CRM) to help companies produce a more complete view of customers and their interactions with the company. It also automates the scoring of interactions (including calls, text-based contacts and social media) so these can be linked back to the person handling the interaction, thus allowing companies to spot weakness and develop improvement programs with more focused training and new processes. Eureka 9.0 first spots key words and phrases included in a call recording or a text-based record, categorizing the interaction based on predetermined rules and then scoring the quality of the interaction. The outputs, which can include aggregated results, correlations between different interactions, trend analyses and alerts, can be used by various users to support customer-related activities.
This is where myEureka plays a key role. Callminer has re-engineered the outputs to resemble Facebook, which not only makes the user interface familiar to many users – and thus likelier to gain wider adoption – but also displays the information in a manner that is easy to work with. Users can set up Facebook-like groups to share information and messages via a sort of wall display, which can include boxes showing key performance metrics, and tables or charts can be used to display lower-level performance information. Each type of user can have a customized display; for example, managers might have boxes showing overall performance metrics (with the capability to drill down if they want more detail), whereas an agent might only see information relating to his or her own performance, or the team’s. I am no Facebook expert, but the demonstration I saw left me confident that I could make full use of the system. Because it is available in the cloud, myEureka is more affordable, easier to set up and use, and requires fewer resources than on-premises systems.
Handling customer interactions keeps getting more complex: Consumers are using more channels of communication, and more employees are involved in handling interactions. Spreadsheets require a lot of manual effort and so cannot provide information in a timely enough manner to help companies improve these activities and the customer experience. The new releases from Callminer have capabilities to address these shortfalls and present information in an easy-to-use way. I therefore recommend companies take a look at how the products can add intelligence to their interaction-handling operations.
Regards,
Richard J. Snow
VP & Research Director
