Speech Analytics Success Series Part Four: The Right People

Last time I talked to you about having focus as a part of your Speech Analytics program. This week I am going to talk about the next ingredient – the right people. Let me start by saying you will be challenged in finding the ideal speech analyst. Speech Analysts are part Scientist and part Artist. Let me explain. As a Scientist, your Analysts must have a skill for analysis. A commonly made mistake made when recruiting is that the job description and requirements are heavy on analytical skills and the related tools. Educational requirements may focus on certification and experience may look at titles such as Data Analyst. If recruiting internally you may focus on staff from your WFM team because they do analysis in the contact center and you believe the skills are transferable. They are all valuable skills, but they need to be balanced with the Artist.

As an Artist your Analysts must know the nuances of the customer and how they interact with your organization. They need to be able to listen to calls and put themselves in the customer’s place. Because call listening is involved a lot of organizations look to the Quality department for resources, but I recommend against this for Speech Analytics. Quality monitors are trained to listen to an Agent and evaluate against a specific criterion. The only criteria a Speech Analyst has is the customer’s reaction and that can change with every customer.

So, what should you be looking for in the ideal candidate? I would suggest the following skills: a good listener, the ability to take the customer’s perspective and an analytical mindset. Skills can be taught, the ability to see not only cause and effect, but effect and cause. Most important and probably the toughest to find is someone who is at ease with soft data as much as with hard data.

Hopefully, this has been a help, next time I am going to talk about the fifth ingredient for success – the willingness and ability to change.