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Checklist for Speech Analytics when purchasing or changing Contact Center Solutions

Are you considering changing your contact center solution, dialer, or telephony solution? And as part of the assessment, do you want to ensure that the new system provides you with the best options for working with speech analytics and conversational insights?

We have compiled a list of questions here that you can discuss with your potential future supplier to ensure that you have optimised the conditions for creating greater insights and automating processes through speech analytics.

Recording + IVR

It should be easy to enable recording and configure different Interactive Voice Response (IVR) for different queues, allowing your customers to consent to recording and get assistance from the right employees.

Access to recording via API or FTP server

Integration via API is generally preferable, as it is more stable and minimizes setup requirements for you as a customer. FTP also works well but requires more configuration and is potentially a more expensive solution.

Separate recording of employee and customer

Ask if it is possible to record only the employee's part of the conversation so that you can record the employee's track on all calls, even if the customer declines recording.

Stereo or mono recording

It is significantly easier and more accurate to work with stereo recording rather than mono. So, go for stereo if you can.

Audio quality

This quickly becomes technical, but elements such as format, sampling, compression, and processing are crucial for how "easy" it is to recognize words in a conversation. A rule of thumb is that the less done to the sound, the better (feel free to contact us for more information on audio quality or read more here).

Metadata – scope and access

The more metadata available, the better the conditions for segmenting conversations and conducting subsequent analyses. So, check if your queue names, reason registrations, satisfaction scores, labels, and the like come with the conversation.

Price for recording + storage

Recording is often an "add-on," so make sure to check the price – also for storing the conversations. It's frustrating to pay more for recording and storage than for the software to perform the analysis itself.

Availability of recordings and metadata

It is essential that both conversations and metadata are available immediately after the conversation ends and can be accessed not only once a day.

Deletion policy

It should be easy to define a deletion policy so that conversations older than a certain date are automatically deleted according to your GDPR procedure.