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Conversation intelligence is software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze speech or text in order to derive data-driven insights from conversations between sales agents and customers. The conversation data from these platforms are streamed between other technology platforms like CRMs, ad platforms, data analytics and attribution solutions, and digital experience platforms in order to take action on the data in real time. It is used by revenue teams in marketing, sales, customer experience, and eCommerce to improve buying experiences, increase conversions, and ultimately, to drive more revenue.
But can’t you analyze conversations with customers just by listening to phone calls in the call center? Yes, if you have say, 10, or even 100 calls to deal with, that would be possible. But in order to derive any meaningful insights when you are dealing with tens or hundreds of thousands of conversations like many businesses do, then you have to recruit a conversation intelligence solution to make sense of all the data and take action on it.
Is Conversation Intelligence Different than Call Tracking Software?
Yes. Conversation intelligence is the overall solution that allows revenue-generating teams in marketing, sales, customer experience, and eCommerce to understand the motivations of each individual call, including the intent, outcomes, sentiment and decisions made, and take action on that data in real time. The tools within the conversation intelligence solution include call tracking, conversation analytics, and integrations.
Call tracking is a tool within the Invoca Active Conversation Intelligence solution that provides attribution for phone calls and conversions that happen on the phone to marketing sources. Integrations with your ad and bidding platforms allow you to use call tracking to get reporting and optimize ads.
Conversation analytics, or conversational AI, is another part of the solution that is used to get data from the conversations you have with customers. See below to learn how this works.
Integrations with other technologies allow conversation data to be streamed back and forth—for example, sending conversion data to Google Ads, or bringing in website user experience data from a UX platform like Quantum Metric — enabling you to automate and take action on conversation data in other platforms.
How Does Conversation Intelligence Use AI to Record, Transcribe, and Analyze Conversations?
Conversation Intelligence platforms use conversational AI, or conversation analytics to derive insights from conversations. Conversation analytics is the process of extracting usable data from human speech and conversation using natural language processing (NLP) to allow computers to “understand” speech and artificial intelligence (AI) to extract and organize data from it. In order for the algorithm to analyze speech, it is recorded then transcribed by the NLP so the AI can essentially read it, identify patterns, and classify the data as prescribed by the user.
Okay, that’s a lot of alphabet soup to deal with. What it boils down to is giving machines the ability to process speech and allowing people to gain insights from massive numbers of conversations at scale — both of which were daunting if not impossible tasks just a few years ago.
Natural language processing extracts data computers can use from human speech, and AI is used to organize that data and take action on it. Conversational analytics is used to extract and process data from both spoken speech (e.g. phone calls and voice assistants) and typed speech (e.g. customer service chatbots). The applications are myriad, so here we will focus on how Invoca’s conversation intelligence solution is used by marketing, sales, customer experience, and eCommerce teams.
How can insights from the platform inform a sales, marketing, or CX strategy?
When you’re trying to get to the core of your customer’s motivations and needs, there is no better source of truth than the voice of the customer themselves. Traditionally, revenue teams have had to rely on digital data like click-through, abandonment, and bounce rates to figure out what works and what doesn’t. While those metrics are important, they’re just one piece of the puzzle.
When you have conversations with your customers, they are telling you exactly what they want, why they called, and what is ultimately going to drive them to make a purchase. Post-call surveys, NPS, click data—none of this comes close to the depth of knowledge that customer conversations contain. The trouble, though, has been accessing those conversations at scale. Usually, they stay stuck in the call center, and sales agents are the only people who really know what’s going on and they have no way of communicating it to other teams. Even if they could, they couldn’t do it quickly or accurately enough.
Here is how conversation intelligence works for marketing, sales, customer experience, and eCommerce teams.
Marketing teams use conversation intelligence to attribute purchases and other conversions happening over the phone back to digital campaigns to gain visibility into their true acquisition costs, to optimize digital campaigns, and personlize digital touchpoints.
E-Commerce teams use conversation intelligence to create a data-driven feedback loop as escalations happen and the insight to improve e-commerce and conversion flows, keeping more buying journeys 100% digital from end-to-end.
In customer experience, conversation intelligence is used to gain visibility into the entire end-to-end buying journey, spanning both digital clicks and human-to-human conversations. This illuminates areas of friction in the buying process, empowers CX teams with revenue-focused insights to drive top-line growth, and helps brands develop a deeper relationship with customers.
Contact Center teams can also use conversation intelligence to get real-time conversational insight into which agents are performing best, versus those that could benefit from feedback and coaching. This helps make the team more effective and productive overall, leading to higher revenue and lower agent turnover.
The opportunities to use conversation intelligence software extends to nearly all revenue-generating teams at B2C brands, and it shines light on a blind spot in the contact center that has long plagued these teams. “There’s still a huge disconnect in most businesses between what marketing knows about customers and the insights generated in the contact center. The result is disjointed experiences for customers and missed opportunities for businesses,” said Nicole France, VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. “The ability to accurately identify customer needs and priorities—from their own words—and apply them across teams presents a huge opportunity. Conversation intelligence provides a critical tool to improve customer experience and drive business results.”
Schedule a demo to learn more about Invoca’s Active Conversation Intelligence platform.
