What this episode is about
Once a year I like to update this list, because we experiment a lot with analytics. A lot of people look at a dashboard, see some keywords, and stop there. These are ways we've actually used it, many of them feeding QA and coaching.
Sentiment is a big one. Instead of judging an agent's tone from a tiny sample of reviewed calls, rank agents on tone and word usage across far more of their interactions. Agents who are out of line get extra QA, monitoring and coaching. We even tie incentives to it.
Some of the best uses find what you didn't know. A retail launch where 38% of callers said the product was too expensive. A happy call where the customer mentions a side frustration, which is often what becomes the next wave of negative sentiment. Silence tracked by agent, which usually points to a training gap or soft-skill issue while they search for answers.
For financial services clients, we build scenarios, like an address change followed by a request for a new card, that automatically flag calls into QA for review. Add proactive support, finding the real SLA point where customer sentiment turns, competitor mentions, and running it on email and chat too.
Key takeaways
- Use sentiment to target extra QA and coaching, not just to report.
- Look for frustration inside otherwise positive calls.
- Track silence by agent to find training and soft-skill gaps.
- Build scenario flags that route risky calls, like possible fraud, straight to QA.
- Analytics is most useful when it tells you something you didn't know.
In Tom's words
“it is more fun and analytics is such a better tool when you find out the things you don't know about”Tom Laird · 07:48
“tracking silence I think is a huge issue”Tom Laird · 14:58
“And then boom, that goes through our QA.”Tom Laird · 17:12
Transcript excerpt
These excerpts come from an automatic transcript and are lightly edited for readability (filler and obvious transcription errors removed). For exact wording, listen at the timestamp.
[07:36]There's so much information that your customers are telling you that you don't know. It's more fun, and analytics is such a better tool, when you find out the things you don't know about. The fourth one is really finding out the whys.
[13:55]The seventh piece people really don't think about is tracking silence per agent. If we're seeing a lot of silence on the phone overall, we probably have a training issue, questions coming in that we haven't prepared our associates for. But we can pinpoint it down to an agent as well, and see that maybe an agent is having issues answering questions, or with the soft skills to talk through it while they search.
[16:43]We have all these different scenarios that we've come across with financial services clients that we built in, and you can do this with anything. These calls automatically get flagged: send a new card, change address, a ton of different variables. And then boom, that goes through our QA. We're going to make sure that we listen to that.