How Effective is Speech Analytics for the Banking Industry?

Banks belong in the category of industries that follow trends and adopt the latest tech solutions for operational efficiencies such as speech analytics. Considering the customer base paraded by financial institutions, compared to most other industries, optimal customer service management becomes even challenging.

As such, beginning from customer-bank interactions, the banking sector needs to steadily uncover what customers need and how to get it to them satisfactorily. Meanwhile, you can check out speech analytics by Awaken that aids many banks in implementing modern speech recognition technology.

Besides, it enhances customer trust and simplifies trends that allow a financial institution to attain its goal customer satisfaction-wise. How effective is speech analytics for the banking industry? First, let’s discover the meaning of speech analytics.

What is Speech Analytics?

Speech analytics is also called conversational analytics. It involves analysing live or recorded customer calls using speech recognition technology to gather meaningful data—speech analytics functions by identifying words and phrases and analysing audio patterns to establish emotions and interactional stress.

The growth of conversational analytics tools is fast-paced across various industries worldwide. It is imperative in the financial industry that involves customer funds to ensure compliance with the delicate financial regulations. Moreover, this practice increases a bank’s customer retention rate.

Speech analytics is effective for the banking sector in many ways, including the following:

Establishing In-Depth Interaction Analysis

Speech analysis is a flexible model that lets a bank define characteristics to be supervised and watched during customer conversation with call agents, marketing campaigns, or individual sales for instance. The bank also sets suitable evaluation criteria to aid its analysis and bring about desirable outcomes.

Typically, evaluators are categorised into soft and hard evaluators to establish an objective call evaluation. Soft evaluators are established on analysing softer factors of speech, including volume, stress levels, clarity, preciseness, etc. Hard evaluators, on the other hand, focus on phrase recognition that checks whether predefined keywords and phrases were used during the conversation.

Speech analytics can also identify cross-talking and interruptions and assess speech ratios between customers and call agents. When the bank analyses the conversational content, they can understand the emotional content of calls. Such call experiences are then employed in handling challenging interactions with emotional intelligence and sensitivity in the future.

Delve into Live Financial Calls

First call resolution at banks has moved onto a new level. Thanks to modern speech analytics that emerges through specialist vendors evolving the concept towards optimising call customer call experiences. Moreover, it has enabled financial institutions to mitigate risks of mis-selling earlier, discover and amend mistakes earlier.
Contemporary conversational analytics technology admits live call analysis, which triggers live cues on a supervisor or calls agent’s screen. The reason, of course, is to establish effective customer calls for enhanced resolution.

Speech analytics provides the option to search for phrases and keywords. When questions are asked and answers provided, the system activates suggestive prompts on the call agent’s screen to correct them during the call. Supervisors also access the real-time developments in the calls without listening to the calls directly. Cues appear on their screen to simplify the entire analysis.

Identify Customer Emotions, Boost Sales

Reading customer emotions is one of the future trends to look for in modern speech analytics software. While this action takes place, supervisors can flag distressed or dissatisfied call agents or customers in real-time.
When a bank selects a reliable speech analytics tool today, the IT team can provide opportunities for call agents to correct a mis-sell and discover incompatible sales of PPI. Meanwhile, this formality spares the bank millions of pounds worth of pay-outs and evitable apologies.

Build Talents with Extracted Keywords

Monitored keywords and phrases are useful for training call agents. Modern speech analytics lets the banking industry’s upcoming agents listen and learn new keywords and phrases from top professionals. Learning from excellent service professionals encourages new talents to build their skills for enhanced customer call ratings.

When a banking industry decrypts the encoded terms and computes relevant keywords and phrases, proper customer engagement strategy and training plans are developed. Each call agent may then rely on professional terms to hold nifty customer calls. In essence, speech analytics software does not just detect speeches but allows the banking industry to ensure that upcoming talents adhere to them during customer interactions.

Compliance while Monitoring Calls

The banking industry is one of the most regulated industries globally. Thus, management ought to understand the need to deal with financial concerns delicately. For instance, PPI scandal events expose the dangers of banking collapses and financial mis-selling that underscore the relevance of transparency.

During live calls, speech analytics software shows important messages not communicated. The agent amends the omission immediately to ensure script adherence for legal compliance.

Speech analytics also ensures an agent explains contract terms properly; supervisors can intervene forthwith to assure call compliance if necessary.

Handle Customer Problems in Context

Customers prefer when agents understand the context of their problems without much emphasis. Some customers are ignorant of the appropriate terms to use for describing their experiences, which directs the responsibility on the call agent.

Speech analytics can identify and categorise speeches during conversations. It becomes more comfortable for the agent to understand the prevailing reasons for a customer’s call and address the problem beforehand.

Most of the time, such calls could have been averted if the financial industry provided online information that tackles the problem.

When your financial organisation receives this insight, it enhances customer interaction, and campaigns could be held to foreground ill-defined information. The outcome, of course, is sparing customers the frustration of reaching out to the organisation.

Final Thoughts

Following the Financial Conduct Authority, firms 2.96 million complaints in the H1 of 2024. Without speech analytics, the banking industry recording its massive complaint records will find it challenging to analyse the data.
Many arguments support the use of speech analytics software in the retail banking environment. When implemented, it ensures operational efficiency, employee performance, and compliance within a financial organisation.

Do you have to be reminded that conversational analytics software draws out valuable business intelligence that could be lost during a random call? This functionality helps to identify the grounds regarding customer dissatisfaction and to build on them.