There is global recognition of the advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and how powerful AI and automation tools can be for businesses. The following article is written by Dimtry Toker, CMO of Zadarma, a leading global VoIP communication provider. This article discusses how leveraging VoIP analytics and integrated AI applications can provide a significant competitive advantage in business.
Artificial Intelligence or AI is being utilized more and more within business processes. AI draws on computer systems to perform tasks that normally require human interaction and human intelligence. Common examples of AI are integrated with VoIP solutions, including speech recognition, speech analytics, and chatbots. These features can help business managers avoid biases and accelerate the decision-making process, through extracting insights out of large data sets to inform faster strategic choices.
The benefits of AI applications
Speech Analytics
Zadarma Speech Analytics is most commonly used in call center environments. It provides analysis of recorded calls to gather vital customer information, such as the reasons behind a customer call as well as real-time and historical analytics. Speech analytics has proven to increase call and deal conversion rates. Business leaders looking to improve customer servicing standards often use VoIP analytics to support this strategic priority. Speech analytics helps call handlers to understand customer drivers and expectations by gathering customer insights from each phone call. Call performance indicators help inform areas you need to improve. These could include:
- Analyzing the prophecy of calls and how quickly call issues are resolved
- Analyzing call quality by critiquing the quality of customer call interaction
- Analyzing the repeat rates of calls by identifying the reason behind customer’s dissatisfaction and utilizing the opportunity to make necessary changes for improving repeat customer rate.
Call center managers are utilizing recordings and text transcriptions, to inform the visibility of their call analytics data for further internal business processing, analysis, and call handling improvements. Many managers are building employer training and development plans informed by collected speech analytics data to improve sales and customer service call handling performance.
Speech recognition
VoIP analytics uses AI applications such as speech recognition. Speech recognition can be used by anyone, from large to small enterprises, and is more broadly advantageous. For instance, you may be traveling and miss a critical call, however, with speech recognition in place, any missed call will activate and send a voicemail message directly to you. The voicemail will be transcribed to text to your messenger. Speech recognition is faster and more accurate than humans. The speech-to-text capability is useful for on-the-go, busy individuals and teams, as the application can be accessed anywhere, with voice messages being transcribed into a text. Real-time speech-to-text is essential for industry sectors that need transcripts of conversations instantly. It is widely being used in healthcare by doctors, for instance, so they don’t have to spend time writing diagnoses. With real-time speech-to-text, a patient’s diagnosis is immediately created. Zadarma is seeing increased adoption of VoIP analytics utilized with speech recognition to automate business processes and provide instant insights into what is happening in calls, even when calls are missed. The technology is proving to be more accurate than humans, reducing errors, improving customer satisfaction, and speeding up processes in a variety of B2B and B2C industries.
4 Reasons AI Applications Provide Businesses With A Competitive Advantage
- Improved Customer Services and Satisfaction Levels
VoIP analytics integrated AI applications are assisting call center teams to improve how they are serving their inbound calls and customers. AI can support human decision-making, providing call handlers with probes and questions to ask customers to ensure that discussions progress further. For instance, analyzing call data can help to discover themes and trends that can be used to develop more effective cross-selling strategies which in turn can improve customer satisfaction levels and deal conversion rates.
- Better Return On Marketing Activity
AI applications are easy to use and integrate. They are often used to support marketing optimization efforts. This allows sales and marketing teams to better understand their customers’ path to purchase, as well as their drivers and behavior patterns, through following the end-to-end journey from the source. Marketing managers can then optimize their marketing campaigns and advertising placements based on tracking call data and click-through rates. Messaging can be tweaked and shaped to ensure it meets their target audience’s needs. An AI-informed optimised marketing strategy will significantly improve the customer journey and in turn, will inspire your customers’ purchase intent to sign up or buy your product or service.
- ROI and Cost Savings
One of the most significant advantages of using AI in the workplace is the potential for cost savings. In addition, AI can help businesses make data-driven decisions, leading to more accurate forecasts and reduced risk. Through leveraging VoIP analytics you can gain call insights that can ensure your sales teams prioritize the highest demand product areas, which can deliver better Return on Investment (ROI) advantages. AI can assist in discovering which segments of customers have the highest rates of conversion and engagement. This will help reshape customer buyer personas, allowing you to better target a niche audience that other companies aren’t. In turn, optimization will provide increased conversion on advertising and marketing spend.
- Efficient Business Processes
Businesses that are leveraging AI applications are often leveraging the automation of repetitive tasks and streamlining business processes plus providing instant insights into call activity. AI technologies are also more accurate and efficient than human transcription. It can free up employees’ time to focus on more strategic and creative tasks and use artificial intelligence to deliver more time-consuming activities, eliminating unnecessary bottlenecks and streamlining business operations.
In conclusion:
The AI space is fast-moving, with vast coverage. To successfully implement AI, businesses should be sure to select relevant processes that can benefit, assessing the implementation cost. AI applications vary in price, with some being highly affordable, often integrated with VoIP solutions, and free to access. Other standalone applications can be more costly. VoIP analytics integrated with wider AI applications can optimize your business, from facilitating call and sales conversations and improving customer service handling to providing improved tracking of customer behavior to inform marketing and sales decisions. However, it’s important for business leaders to not become detached from reality and be mindful of where AI technologies could be most useful, specifically for their business. Ultimately there will always be a need for human decision-making and action at the heart of any business. AI applications simply supercharge this process but must be integrated effectively.
Zadarma provides free VoIP analytics with speech recognition features with free integrations to all Zadarma registered users: https://zadarma.com/en/services/speech-analytics/
