Speech Analytics vs Voice Analytics

Businesses today have access to more consumer data than ever before, especially through their customer support and service centers. The essence lies in understanding the optimal way of extraction and utilization of that data. Speech analytics and voice analytics are two approaches to call analytics that can be used for the same function. Even though they may both analyze phone conversations between customer support representatives and customers in order to reveal customer insights, their mechanisms are quite distinct. Discerning these differences is crucial to determine which solution of call analytics is ideal. Moreover, both the methods are used by customer support and service centers to gather information about the market performance of products. However, speech analytics and voice analytics are very different tools. The operating principles of analyzing used are very diverse.

Call Analytics

Call Analytics refers to the collection, measurement, analysis, and reporting of data collected over phone calls. Retailers and brands can use the insights gained from call analysis to optimize call handling and marketing campaigns. Call analytics also allow for viewing and analysis of both the macro and micro phone traffic patterns and sort the collected data into informative call reports. There are two different methods of call analysis, i.e speech analysis, and voice analysis.

Speech Analytics

Speech analytics analyzes the spoken content of a phone conversation by analyzing what is spoken between support representatives and the customers, and the context of the conversation. It does so by using phonetic indexing or converting speech to text for the organization of the content. Speech analytics makes it feasible to search and locate the speech of a representative or a customer and their response to each other. The context of the conversation is divulged by the method of isolating specific words and phrases in proximity to one another.For example, if a customer calls a business to ask about the shipment of an order and when it is expected to arrive, then the execution of a search for the words “order” and “shipment” of the customer with close proximity to a search of the customer care representative using the word “shipment,” crucial information such as the reason for the customer’s call as well as whether the customer received a satisfactory response may be determined.Important factors such as keywords and syllables based on a frame of reference searches set up by the business play a vital role in speech analytics. Unveiling the most common phrases and words used by customers during such a conversation enables speech analytics to give businesses better insights into the latest trends. This, in turn, prepares the business to be able to create informed marketing strategies and make decisions that provide the customers with the best experience possible.

Voice Analytics

In contrast to speech analytics, which focuses on the words and phrases used in an interaction between the representatives and the customers, voice analytics targets the intonation of how it was spoken. Voice analytics work by analyzing the audio patterns for vocal elements such as the tone, pitch, tempo, rhythm, and syllable stress,  to gauge emotional quotient. This provides businesses with a deeper knowledge of the mood of a customer.For example, if a customer uses the word “amazing”, voice analytics can be used for the detection of cues, such as anger or sarcasm, which utterly changes the meaning of the word. It is crucial to understand the demeanor of a customer in order to be able to provide them with a satisfactory experience.

After the assimilation of raw vocal data, it is run against an emotional voice database, comparing factors generated by the voice analytics system with known factors associated with emotions such as anger, happiness, fear, and sadness, to correctly identify and classify the emotional state of the customer. In essence, voice analytics captures the emotional aspect of speech in a conversation.

Speech analytics is essential in cases where specific keywords and phrases show a strong indication of potential sales opportunities as well as situations such as cancellation of orders. Speech analytics determines the needs of a customer by the use of keyword detection whereas voice analytics, saves time and labor by guessing the meaning of words and phrases used in a conversation.

Furthermore, by analyzing a customer’s response and emotional state, voice analytics can help predict future behaviors. This is used in second call targeting by focusing on customers likely to make similar purchases. Thus, differentiating between what has been said with respect to how it was said can provide with different kinds of information, that may be used to improve the quality of operations in various ways.

There is no doubt that AI is a popular buzzword in the retail landscape and retailers are slowly recognizing its potential and are increasingly adopting at least one form of AI into their customer journeys or internal processes. By 2019, 40 percent of retailers will have developed a customer experience architecture supported by an AI. Retailers that choose not to incorporate an AI-backed solution into their business strategies will face consequences that can severely affect their bottom line.

Conversational AI can fundamentally transform the way consumers communicate and transact with brands. While this is true across all industries, retailers, in particular, can reap multiple benefits, depending upon their adoption of new technologies. To help retailers understand the importance of implementing Conversational commerce into their retail strategy, here are some aspects where it makes a real difference:

Meeting the customer where they are

Messaging is one of the popular means to interact with one another and that’s how they prefer to interact with brands, too. Conversational AI allows retailers to tap into the most immediate form of communication i.e. messaging and reach consumers in a very convenient manner at a higher scale which was not possible before.

Moreover, with Amazon Alexa, Google Home and now ubiquitous technology in the home and office, as well as with the growing familiarity towards similar technologies, people are shopping with voice-based assistants in greater numbers.

Increased Customer Interaction with Conversational AI

Technology is evolving at a rapid pace, and both web and apps which were once quite the rage among retailers are now tools that are causing friction between the customer and retailer. Conversational AI has the ability to add a new layer of interactivity to online shopping.

It further enables a richer, more complex customer engagement, featuring personalized shopping assistants and concierge bots answering questions, recommending items, and handling individual transactions. This helps to personalize the digital experience at each touch point of the customer journey.

Conversational Design is the New Personalized Web Design

Like the human language, conversational commerce is flat. This allows brands to engage in real relationship-based commerce not usually achievable through websites and apps. While it has the ability to handle a broad set of commands, without AI, it lacks the capacity to understand complex inquiries.

 The integration of AI breaks down these barriers and retailers can turn towards messaging solutions such as chatbots and program them to echo the brand voice as well as provide a more personalized and positive experience unique to each customer.

Conversational AI has the ability to change the way all brands conduct business. It connects them with their customers more organically and creates personalized experiences tailor-made for every individual. This will serve as the first universal interface, increasing the efficiency among retailers and brands as well as maximizing profits.

 Voice enabled chatbots vs Messenger bots: What you need to know

There are two distinct ways in which a conversational interface works: text conversations and voice. Consumers interact with chatbots using both interfaces on a daily basis, with each having it’s own set of advantages and disadvantages. The big difference between a messenger chatbot and a voice chatbot or a voice assistant is the way people interact with them. 

The major differences

A text based messenger exists in one or more messaging platforms, including features of SMS and web chat messengers. This enables users to interact on a device screen via text or button presses. However, in the case of voice bots, users interact with the bot using their voice in natural language. The voice bot then responds leveraging pre-recorded messages, text-to-speech responses or a mixture of both. 

A voice enabled chatbot can be called upon in many devices such as mobile phones, computers, smart speakers (such Google Home or Alexa), wearables (Apple AirPods) or other IOT devices. These chatbots enable users to accomplish tasks efficiently hands-free. The advantage of using a voice chatbot is its ability to exist on multiple messaging platforms, that can be synchronised across different devices. Some messenger bots are also available via smart speakers - which function like platforms themselves - enabling them to perform dual actions as a voice chatbot as well as text-based bots. This can be seen with Fitness Tips via Google Home.

Key Similarities

Given their differences, the choice of interface depends largely on the purpose and context for a chatbot’s use. While both these platforms enable users to accomplish tasks or find the information they need via natural language, text-based bots can double as a voice enabled chatbot where a user can dictate using their phone’s text-to-speech feature or the bot may be available as a skill integrated into a voice chatbot. While both types of bots depend on NLP to make sense of user input and provide a response, each type has its own set of challenges unique to the interface.  Some of them include text messenger bots understanding shorthand and typos - common to mobile users and voice chatbots understanding different accents across the world. 

One major differentiator between a chatbot and a virtual assistant is its accessibility. A messenger chatbot could be a better choice for consumers who prefer to chat via their mobile phones to get information about different products. Unless voice chatbots exist on a consumer’s phone or computer, interacting with it requires getting a new smart speaker device. However, it is the perfect choice for consumers who prefer to multitask and do not want to use their hands while accomplish a task. For example: It works well for consumers who are looking for the different ingredients for a recipe and can add the items onto the shopping list via voice while doing other tasks. 

Conclusion

Text messaging is especially popular as a mode of communication among Millennials, making messenger chatbots a more natural fit for communication with consumers. The ubiquitous nature of mobile devices further help lower the barrier of entry to the consumers while using a messenger bot. While text messenger bots are popular, voice enabled chatbots are not far behind, gaining popularity in the past year.

Ultimately, the choice of the interface lies with the retailer and the products it offers. Another aspect retailers may consider is the point of contact for the bot and the consumer. Retailers must understand their target audience and tailor make an assistant that can best help them execute the tasks they need to do. 

In the next article, we will explore more about how retailers can choose between Voice enabled chatbots and Messenger bots to enhance their customer experience.

AI Is The Best Present For Retailers This Holiday Shopping Season

Brands are undergoing massive digital transformations of their own in order to keep pace with the growing demands and expectations. The customer of today is constantly connected to whichever device is closest at hand, and are using mobile devices as a means to solve real-world problems. Some of the queries naturally pivot towards local results such as - ‘where to get party costumes’, or ‘best Korean restaurants near me’.

For retailers, however, consumers are willing to wait for delivery if the price or quality of a particular product is better online. E-commerce provides the convenience of home delivery, free shipping options, and the ease of using voice-activated speaking assistants to accomplish shopping tasks due to which consumers are increasingly moving towards shopping online. Early AI adopters are already reaping the benefits such as gaining better understanding and visibility into their customers and increased productivity.

With the holiday shopping season beginning this week, here are some AI-powered applications retailers can leverage to create memorable customer shopping experiences.

Implementing AI-powered Chatbots to pave the way for meaningful shopping experiences

Initially, chatbots were programmed to execute a specific of queries and responses, but with enhancements in technology and AI, these bots are enabled to “learn” the site’s content and consumer preferences. This further helps them to bring back relevant answers and supplying potential customers with the right information.

This service element can be taken a step further with AI-powered shopping assistants. This was seen with Macy’s On Call - an AI shopping assistant leveraging Natural Language Processing designed to aid consumers with information in 10 of Macy’s retail stores around the country, as they navigated through each one. This is a viable direction for retailers to look into in the future. 

Optimizing the site content for voice search queries

As voice search grows, retailers are tailoring content enabling them to better answer queries and also demonstrate to search engines that their answers are the best choice to showcase as results. Voice searches are more likely to be from mobile consumers who are only looking for simple answers and don’t want to engage in lengthy interactions.

Retailers must create a strategy that maps the content through the customer journey with intent, context, and formatting for voice search. Furthermore, retailers must keep in mind to take a personalized approach, using a more personalized tone, mirroring back specific questions and limiting the answers to a sentence or two in order to better optimize for voice searches.

Combating abandoned carts with AI-powered shopping experiences

Shopping cart abandonment is an industry-wide problem. It is estimated that a whopper of 70%
online shopping carts are abandoned before customers complete their purchases.

A great application in this space can be seen with North Face which personalizes the customer experience by creating a psychoanalytic profile of customer data in near real-time. North Face’s AI assistant asks questions to understand how customers plan to use their apparel and then provides ranked product suggestions which save both effort and time for customers from browsing different websites to get the right product for their requirement.

AI can help make informed recommendations that reduce the uncertainty consumers feel while shopping for a specific product, thereby increasing their confidence and the likelihood of them proceeding through checkout. 

Stepping forward with AI in the future

With AI slowly becoming the new norm in the world of e-commerce and retail, several numbers of brands and retailers are increasingly adopting technological tools into their business processes and strategies. The concern of consumers over the safety and security of shopping online - which was a major concern for brands and retailers up until a few years ago, have given way to demands for more seamless, intuitive and personalized shopping experiences.

Retailers that have not adopted AI into their businesses, and are trying to understand ways to tap into the opportunities provided by AI, the holiday season is the best time to demonstrate these applications to help gather data to pave the way for the future.

Endless Aisles: An extension of the retail in-store shelf

Given that the retail space is extremely competitive, most retailers are racing first to offer their customers as much product selection as possible. For e-commerce, it’s easier to offer a variety of products, but with brick-and-mortar, it’s far more difficult to stock so many products as compared to its e-commerce counterpart. With a finite amount of shelf space, stores can only stock a limited number of products.

Here is when endless aisles can come into play: Endless aisles help merge the online offerings and the in-store location offerings to bring the best shopping experience for the shopper.

What are endless aisles?

iQmetrix defines it as, “the concept of using in-store kiosks to allow customers to order products that are out of stock or not sold in-store and have them shipped to their homes.”

Alternatively, retailers can choose to ship products that are out of stock directly to the customer’s doorstep. This can be done by partnering with third-party suppliers to fulfill the customer’s order. This leads to a continuous customer experience while not having to deal with suppliers, and also giving the retailers access to endless inventory without the need to warehouse it, benefitting the retailers.

The Endless aisles service acts as a bridge, carrying the products available online into the actual store. This is fundamentally another version of the in-store pick-up (click and collect) option. Leveraging digital portals, retailers can offer these services.

The Benefits of Endless Aisles

Retailers that have their businesses that are both online and in-store, offering endless aisles is a great way to capitalize on the complete product selection without the need to have inventory for each product across different store locations. The extra stock can be stored in warehouses or with third-party supplies that would directly ship to the customers’ doorsteps.

Another benefit is that by offering customers a variety of selection at the brick-and-mortar locations, retailers are decreasing the likelihood of customers going to a competitor store to make a purchase.

Furthermore, Endless aisles help to capitalize on the buyer intent that brought them to the store in the first place, without losing sales due to out of stock items. These customers can subsequently be enticed to move towards shopping online as well.

Retailers can do so by educating the customers about the online offerings, even providing a smooth and memorable user experience right from order to delivery. This way, these customers are more likely to become online shoppers in the future.

Endless aisles also enable retailers to partner with third-party suppliers, in turn, increasing the quantity and variety of products that they can offer, which can impress the customers.

Some of the challenges 

There are a few challenges retailers must keep in mind while implementing endless aisles for their businesses -

Inventory management is imperative when it comes to endless aisles, as there should be a perfect sync between the orders displayed online and the inventory.

Keeping track of multiple orders happening across different sales channels requires a centralized system of orders. Orders placed on the various sales channels cannot be managed on the respective platforms as it is inefficient.

Moreover, tracking order status and inventory levels across the various channels also pose a problem when fulfilling in-store orders with drop shippers or via online channels. Hence having a centralized system is important. There are some tools available in the market to enable the centralization such as Zapier to add new orders from the several sales channels and Order desk to streamline all the workflow.

Conclusion

With online retail undergoing a massive revolution, many customers still opt to shop from brick and mortar stores. Endless Aisles represents a literal blend of virtual technology into the physical store to deliver an enhanced and seamless customer experience for the newer generation demographics. Implementing the endless aisle strategy enables retailers in reducing the physical inventory and floor space while, in tandem, enhancing the product assortment and customer experience.

With the holidays being around the corner, the countdown has already begun on the numerous sales across all retailers and brands. A growing number of shoppers are avoiding stores and are increasingly embracing e-commerce to shop for gifts due to which prospects for online sales are looking up.

Here are five strategies that companies can focus on to break through the holiday shopping noise and score bigger online sales this season:

Using relevant imagery and information 

Displaying holiday-themed, creative and shoppable images, with product images from different angles as well as using video to showcase products creates more impact as it delivers a more immersive experience, in turn, increasing engagement. Personalized recommendations of products also stimulate interest and likelihood for a purchase.

Key purchasing elements about the products also need to be clear and precise, including the pricing and shipping options, which plays an important role at this time of the year.

Selling uncomplicated and useful products 

Shoppers must not be given too much choice and time to make a purchasing decision. Companies must choose products in such a manner in which it would tap into the shoppers' desires for products and that has the potential to enrich their lives. The best impulse purchases are the ones that shoppers don't regret - and the ones that are exciting, easy, and fairly universal.

Companies need to ensure that the products that are being offered answers a need for shoppers. It can be a gift for large groups such as all boys under 12, or a makeup palette that can compliment every skin tone, etc.  

Keeping the purchasing process simple 

The purchasing process refers to the technology (one-click purchase), fulfillment (free shipping), convenience (returns policy), and the driving factor - product content. During this season, impulse purchases happen more often, and in order to encourage shoppers to make a purchase, the product copy should be presented in a manner such that the shopper does not have any questions about the product, with the product copy being clear and concise, ratings and reviews being well presented with all the information up front.

Increasing visibility by diversifying platforms

In the digital sphere, one can not be sure where a shopper can come from, hence repetition is required. Showing products across various platforms and devices also help create brand recall for the shoppers and increasing the possibility of shoppers purchasing products. Retailers and brands can also depend on banner ads as they utilize “since you viewed” algorithms to feature adjacent products.

Informing shoppers on how much they will save

Shoppers would lean towards offers that allow them to save time or money - especially where gifting is concerned. Most shoppers choose to take advantage of a value deal while making purchases, especially during an impulse purchase. For digital, product copy should mention seasonal pricing or special gifts with the purchase, or free shipping. The information must be presented to the shopper clearly, but also with the mention of value to seal the deal.

E-commerce is an intensely competitive market where businesses need to keep innovating and adopting new technologies to sustain. These technologies come in packages, large & small, to help optimize the systems and processes, ensuring seamless experiences for the customers.

One of these technologies - Chatbots - has been a popular topic of discussion in the retail and e-commerce industries. Some discussions focus on how the user experience is improved while the remaining provides a detailed view of implementing and adopting chatbots for businesses. In this blog, we try to provide a holistic view of how chatbots help scale e-commerce businesses and subsequently consumers by dividing the benefits into three categories - predictive recommendations, engaging consumer engagement, reduction in the purchase process

Predictive recommendations 

E-commerce industries are user heavy and need to cater to different segments of audiences and their requirements. Whenever there is a discussion about the role of chatbots, one quote stands out -

“Goal is to turn data into information and information into insights.” – Carly Fiorina, Former CEO of HP

Imagine chatbots to be the one that hoards information and turn information into insights. They help customers find the products they’re looking for without extensive browsing, thereby providing users an incentive to stay on the platform and reduce drop-offs.

For instance, Amazon provides best-in-class search for users to find the products they want. The search takes into consideration a number of factors including user dialects, ease in product categorization and user buying behavior & patterns.   

Simple & Quick Consumer Engagement 

The primary function of chatbots is to be conversational by nature using text, buttons, and images and understand typed natural language requests. This is the reason that the most famous chatbots run inside messaging applications such as Facebook Messenger or Skype.

Hence, chatbots provide a huge benefit to e-commerce businesses to connect with the users.  In a high volume business of e-commerce, chatbots provide a highly scalable system to manage individual user conversations simultaneously for millions of users while gaining user insights to improve the product flow and experience.  

Reducing Purchase Time 

Chatbots help consumers to interact with the products at critical stages of their journey, increasing customer satisfaction, loyalty, and engagement. Chatbots provide the assistance to access product information quickly and make informed decisions to purchase the products.

Moreover, customers do not need to look at any other source to gain information on the products. Chatbots process information in the form of notifications, reminders, product updates to fuel conversions and enhance social experiences.

Image credit: Photo by Matan Segev from Pexels