NICE Systems is expanding its portfolio of customer interaction analytics software with the purchase of Nexidia, in a move that expands its customer base and allows it to support more use cases.
A key component of Nexidia's platform is speech recognition technology for analyzing call center recordings, focusing on three main use cases: Discovery, analytics and reporting, and performance management. With the first, companies can automatically detect emerging trends within their call volumes, or check the results of new marketing campaigns and other efforts, as Nexidia's website explains.
Second, Nexidia delivers analytics for areas such as call categorization and root cause analysis, along with advanced reports and dashboards. Finally, companies can use Nexidia analytics to track the performance of call center agents, develop evaluations and form coaching plans.
"It's way beyond understanding the words and phrases," says NICE Systems VP Aviad Abiri. "How are agents selling? Are they making the best offer? How are customers reacting? Many times, there are clues to what needs to be sold that are hidden in the conversations."
To that end, managers can send guidance to agents in real time. For example, the system might determine that a banking customer mentioned they have a child starting college soon. The agent could be prompted to tell that customer about any relevant loan programs that are available.
Interaction analytics can apply to many use cases, Abiri adds. For example, a marketing manager might be interested in how often people are calling about a competitive offer. Rather than rely on agents to document it, the system can do so automatically.
Nexidia's platform can tie into any existing call center infrastructure, as building out integration has been a priority for the vendor in recent years, Abiri says.
Overall, with interaction analytics "the contact center stops being a necessary evil," he adds. "All of a sudden, it's a source of information for the entire organization."
Call Centers: No Respect At All?
As Abiri suggests, among CXOs call centers are often dismissed as cost centers, rather than something that can drive revenue directly or indirectly. But customer support organizations have an opportunity to stop suffering from the "Rodney Dangerfield effect," says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Dr. Natalie Petouhoff.
To this end, analytics should be an investment priority for customer support leaders, Petouhoff adds: "Ask yourself, do you really want to know what your customers think of your products and services? Do you have the ability to analyze in context all the channels and devices information comes from?"
However, the market is quite crowded with analytics vendors touting similar messages, she says. "It's very confusing. The issue is many customers don't know what they have, or if they do it's a very high level, and this is an area where you need to be in the weeds to get at the gap analysis."
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