Predictive Analytics Can Be a Powerful Tool That Can Help a Business

Every business has to scramble so that it can provide a unique and ultimate experience for every transaction that is made by its customers. In today's world, customers do not think twice before they abandon vendors or providers or even give up transactions because they have had a poor experience in dealing with a particular business.

Customers in today's world require services to be delivered with a smile and pleasant manners - and this is needed even when you are chatting over the web or making a phone call. This is where things start becoming difficult.

Ask the various people who man contact centers, and they will tell you that the average caller they have to deal with is more inclined to be one who is frustrated. Most people are not inclined to contact support but will be doing so when they find that something is not right. They may require some simple information that can help them in their buying decision and will find IVR's slow and not very responsive, or agents who are not friendly; both are aspects that can be improved.

This Is Where Predictive Analytics Can Help

This may sound like sci-fi stuff but is not this in any way, as this process is already in use. Predictive analytics can help a business to predict the possible outcome and determine leads that are promising, all by using the massive data that is available for use.

The idea is a simple one, but we do like definitions that are clean and nice, and we should assign this before we get into the details.

Predictive analytics is similar to predictive dialers and is made up of tools that are distinct, and can predict the future based on the sets of data that are available for analysis. You can consider this a form of Artificial Intelligence or AI that looks at available information and attempts predictions that are a logical conclusion based on the data in hand.

What Is It That Is Being Predicted

Every business will have its own focus, and this leads to different forms of analytics, which are tools that can help in predicting different results.

The Contact Process Can Be a Hurdle

A customer's journey often starts with a contact process, and it is this process that needs to run through the predictive analytics tool. Predictive analytics can tell you at which point customers get frustrated, or choose to break off contact with the process. The tool can help you to recognize call times that are crowded or those when there are very few calls. This is information that can be of great help in establishing and acting on future strategy.

High-Risk Clients

Predictive analytics can be of use to identify clients who are high risk or those that are more than likely to abandon your service. Data analysis through data mining allows predictive analytics to identify the demography of clients who are inclined to abandon service.

Identifying Agents That Need Training

Predictive analytics can also be used to look at the contact process internally and not only externally. Managers of contact centers can use predictive analysis to decide on the agents who need assistance and training. It can also be used to recognize agents who may be looking for a change of job because they have slipped in their performance or not able to come up to the standards required.

Following Up the Best Leads

Agents can take the help of predictive analytics to determine the strong leads and those that require a greater amount of follow-up. Predictive analytics goes through a vast amount of data about demographics, clients, and circumstances to help in deciding leads that are more likely to translate into orders and require just that extra call to clinch it.

These are all simple concepts, but predictive analytics can help an agent to understand the likely responses of a client so that all interaction can be smoother. It is almost as if predictive analytics can read minds.

Predictive Voice Analytics Can Be Fun

Predictive voice analytics is an idea that is completely different and interesting. It is something that contact centres were badly in need of. In the world of the contact center, this is where predictive analytics can add great power to the agents. This is a concept that is real and very much here and it can help contact center agents to improve their customer experience dramatically.

Agents are human, and cannot be expected to be always happy cheerful and glowing in their responses. Clients and callers to the center can also not be patient with the agents. But, if agents can read the minds of callers, they can stay clear of the dangerous emotions that can become a mine-field.

Voice analytics. You heard it correctly. People can have a devil and an angel on their shoulders, each of them telling them what can be bad or good. Predictive analytics can foretell what will be said, and it can be all good.

Does Your Contact Center Need Voice Analytics?

Predictive analytics can use AI to listen in on conversations, or read the text if you are texting or using web chat to deal with clients. These tools can then analyze the exchange of words and predict the likely emotions of both the client and the agent.

Customer experience can be improved when behaviour and emotion are analyzed in real-time. The agents will then have information being constantly fed to them that helps them to avoid friction and frustration.

Callers needs can be anticipated through voice analytics which can help the agent to read the mind of the caller. Voice analysis of frustrated callers can help to anticipate negative experiences that can then guide the caller to agents more equipped to deal with emotional callers.

Call center fraud can also be detected by voice analytics as it helps to understand the true intent of the caller. Agents can then recognize not only angry callers but also those who are not genuine. There are certain emotional triggers and voice cues that help to differentiate between a caller who is genuinely upset from one who is just malicious.

The satisfaction of the caller can also be gauged by voice analytics. This data can be used in future to predict future outcomes of other calls.
Understanding the need for customers to call, the level of support they require, the speed of resolution of the issue, and customer satisfaction can all be analyzed so that the contact center can learn how to handle requests from callers in the future.

The Bottom Line

Contact centers define a customer's journey. The contact center process needs to be simple, quick and easy while it guides callers and clients and gives them all the support they require. Predictive analytics even at its most basic, level, can help to ease the journey for customers and avoid any speed bumps they may encounter. It helps in the prediction of trends and in learning from the past, which then helps the contact center to be ready for the future.

You can carry predictive analytics that much further and revolutionize the way your agents handle callers. Your aim in using voice analytics can be to detect fraud and prevent it or just to be able to detect anger and frustration in callers. So that agents respond correctly and leave customers satisfied.

Customers require just a small hint of friction to abandon contact, and predictive analytics can be an efficient tool that can help you to eliminate this friction.