Speech analytics have been a tough sell for smaller collection agencies and contact centers. The complexity and sophistication of the technology often requires a dedicated analyst on staff to help make sure that the tool is refined and working properly. But in noticing that the most common functions used by customers was the search tool, CallMiner decided to strip down its Eureka speech analysis product to make it more affordable for smaller-sized contact centers.
Called the Eureka Starter Edition, the product offers manual search and tagging functions, which provide opportunities to improve compliance and quality assurance, said Scott Kendrick, vice president of marketing for CallMiner.
Companies with no speech analytics in place must do everything manually when looking to audit calls for compliance or training purposes. Eureka’s Starter Edition offers automatic searching, where users can either search for specific terms in transcribed calls, or what are called inverted searches, where certain words or phrases are not found in a conversation.
“This narrows down the calls that need to be audited,” Kendrick said. “From our studies, the search tool within our Enterprise product is one of the most-used tools.”
The Starter Edition is targeted at call centers with fewer than 50 seats, Kendrick said. The product is available on a month-to-month subscription and costs about $0.90 per hour of call recording. Blocks of 500 hours are sold at a time.
“I don’t think there is anything like this in the market,” Kendrick said. “Most systems are double that price per hour.”
The product is entirely web-based, Kendrick said. CallMiner supports all major call recording technology, but on the off chance that it does not support a particular service, clients can upload copies of their recordings to be transcribed.
Speech analytics has evolved from a luxury product within the ARM industry to a more core requirement as the compliance burden has increased. Having the ability to analyze calls can help head off potential complaints and can provide assurances that employees are following proper policies and procedures.
The expectation is that companies that sign on for the Starter Edition will see the automated functionality of the Enterprise Edition and eventually migrate, Kendrick said. But companies can stay on the Starter Edition for as long as they choose to without feeling any pressure to upgrade their service.