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Lumada customer case code: UC-00830S

Improving the Operational Efficiency and Service Quality of Contact Centers Through Speech Recognition and Integration with FAQ Systems

Using the voice of the customer to solve corporate problems

2022-09-12

Contact centers need to respond to customer inquiries efficiently and carefully. This article looks at customer cases for improving the efficiency and quality of inquiry responses, regardless of operator experience, by utilizing real-time speech recognition and integration with a FAQ system.

Key points of this article

  • The solution provides pop-up displays of FAQs that provide possible responses to an inquiry, thereby helping even inexperienced operators give excellent responses.
  • Integration with the FAQ system allows operators to use real-time speech recognition for FAQ searches.
  • The solution improves the efficiency of increasingly diverse and complex contact center operations, and reduces operator workloads.

And...

VOC (voice of the customer) analysis* aids efforts to develop and improve products and services. In VOC analysis, speech recognition is used to transcribe the content of calls into text format (speech-to-text conversion). The system extracts frequently used terms and phrases, which helps company personnel to visualize customer issues and provides hints regarding areas where products can be, or should be, improved. In this way, calls recorded and accumulated at a contact center on a daily basis can be used to generate business ideas.

*
VOC analysis: A variety of customer feedback (referred to as VOC, the voice of the customer) collected at contact centers is analyzed so that the data can be utilized in various ways.

Co-create with Lumada! Improved visualization of inquiry calls

Improving the Efficiency and Quality of Inquiry Responses by Aiding Operators

Contact centers are increasingly swamped with work, and are expected to respond to customers through a variety of channels, including email, SNS, fax, and postcards, in addition to the conventional method of call centers, which is responding to customer inquiries over the phone. The role expected of the contact center is not only responding to inquiries, as in the past, but has now branched out in multiple directions to include promoting the company’s products, and identifying customer needs to help direct product development and marketing efforts.

Improving operational efficiency and response quality, regardless of operator proficiency

Contact centers serve as a point of contact between the customer and the company. In addition to responding to customer inquiries and complaints, contact centers are now expected to fulfill the role of a sales channel. In acting as the face of the company, operators must be courteous and meticulous in their responses, but they also need to do the following:

  • Acquire knowledge regarding a vast array of services and products to handle a broad range of inquiries and complaints
  • Reduce customer wait times, while maintaining and improving customer satisfaction by using acquired knowledge to efficiently and effectively respond to inquiries
  • Enhance their IT literacy: for example, they must be able to use a PC to quickly and accurately enter the content of calls into a CRM (customer relationship management) system

In addition, contact center managers need to take steps to reduce operator workloads while striving to improve operating efficiency and quality, regardless of operator proficiency or experience. Managers need to do this even as their contact centers are tasked with handling an increasingly diverse and complex array of operations.

Using recorded calls effectively in contact center operations

Using recorded calls is an effective way of improving the efficiency and quality of inquiry responses, regardless of operator experience.

Contact centers are often faced with a range of problems, both big and small, including fielding unexpected inquiries and unreasonable demands, and misperceptions arising from poor phrasing or a slip of the tongue. Although just telling callers that their call is being recorded can reduce problems, a way to easily check recorded calls would further reduce issues by allowing both managers and operators to quickly identify the cause of a problem and to clearly determine where responsibility lies.

A speech recognition system that transcribes the content of calls into text (speech-to-text conversion) provides data on conversations with customers in an easy-to-handle format. The text data can be used not only to respond to inquiries, but also to improve existing products and to develop new products.

Aiding operators by using speech recognition and FAQ search functionality

Hitachi’s Speech Digital Solution connects to a contact center’s voice recording system and speech recognition platform. The solution performs speech recognition on collected calls and carries out speech-to-text conversion in real time. FAQ system integration helps further alleviate operator workloads by making it possible to search FAQs using keywords contained in the text data of a call.

With this solution, the current inquiry call is converted into text format. Using keywords extracted from the current call, the solution searches the FAQ system for FAQs containing those keywords. The system then shows a list of relevant FAQs on the operator’s computer monitor. From the displayed candidates, operators choose and read the response that best matches the nature of the inquiry. Through this process, operators can provide excellent responses regardless of their experience.

This process of using the accumulated data of recorded calls greatly helps operators to check what happened previously.

Using speech data converted to text to analyze customer needs and aid operators

Speech Digital Solution - A Way to Reflect the Voice of the Customer in Business Decisions

We provide a total support solution for analyzing VOC (voice of the customer) and aiding operators. This solution encompasses all necessary aspects: from consulting on the use of recorded calls, to building and operating the environment required for the customer to record calls, use speech recognition with speech-to-text conversion, and perform analysis.

Helping create new value by utilizing recorded call content

Advances in IoT technology make it possible to create digital records of various phenomena, human language, and behavior. Coupled with advancements in speech recognition and data analysis technologies, these advances have paved the way for communications with customers to be incorporated into measures addressing a wide range of issues, including aiding contact centers.

The Speech Digital Solution promotes the effective application of recorded calls in business operations by using recorded calls as digital assets, which can enhance contact center operations and aid VOC analysis. For this solution, we provide the following three services.

  • Service supporting speech data utilization (consulting):
    Through this service, we can propose steps on how you can best utilize recorded calls based on the issues you face. We can use our extensive knowledge of data analysis to extract useful information and provide extensive support for customer issues: ranging from conducting business studies, reviewing and verifying scenarios for developing new products and services, and planning speech analysis systems.
  • Service for developing speech analysis systems (system integration):
    Through this service, we help develop a speech data analysis platform capable of recording calls with customers and performing speech-to-text conversion and data analysis. The developed operating environment includes a speech recording system, speech recognition platform, and text mining tools based on your needs.
  • Service for improving the efficiency of contact center operation (system integration):
    Through this service, we can alleviate operator workloads and improve the quality of responses to inquiries. FAQs relevant to a customer’s inquiry are displayed on the operator’s computer monitor, and customer information is automatically entered into the CRM system. This service also reduces administrator workloads by enabling simultaneous monitoring of multiple operators.

We are working to further enhance the services provided for the Speech Digital Solution to incorporate AI-driven advanced analysis and auto-response services.

Technical column: Automatically extracting and summarizing important words and phrases from text data

To make full use of speech data that has been transcribed into text, you need to have some way to remove faltering speech such as "uhh" and "umm", interjections such as "ah!", meaningless filler words such as "hmm", and stock phrases such as "Hello" and "Certainly".

Our automatic text summarization system, CoreExplorer/TS, removes phrases unsuitable for analysis (such as faltering speech and superfluous stock phrases) from the text data, and extracts and summarizes only the important parts in the text data.

This form of summarization employs automated machine learning, which reduces the amount of labor required. The system can autonomously determine and summarize key parts of text data by reading work-related data, FAQs, and past inquiries related to the text being summarized. This also reduces the operating costs of the text summarization system.

Examples of applying the solution

This section provides examples of how this solution can be used to improve contact center operations, and how call analysis can aid in business development.

  • Automatic entry into a CRM system (data entry support):
    The solution uses speech recognition, speech-to-text conversion, and text analysis to extract customer information from call content and to summarize the information. The solution then automatically registers the call content into a CRM system. This automated processing improves the efficiency of the operator’s after-call work.

  • VOC analysis (cross-analysis with CRM information):
    Integration with tools that enable cross-analysis of speech text data and CRM information enables fast analysis of massive amounts of accumulated data. This solution allows you to acquire new insights by uncovering hidden needs and areas of dissatisfaction that did not appear in questionnaire responses or in the inquiry response history that operators entered into the CRM.

For details on our solutions, see the following webpages.

Lumada
Speech Digital Solution - Collecting and analyzing the voice of the customer to aid corporate problem solving
This solution helps companies solve problems by utilizing a combination of audio data (such as the voice of the customer from call centers and sales offices) with business data. This solution is provided in Japan.
Big Data × AI (Artificial Intelligence)
Speech Digital Solution - Collecting and analyzing the voice of the customer to aid corporate problem solving
This solution helps companies solve problems by utilizing a combination of audio data (such as the voice of the customer from call centers and sales offices) with business data. This solution is provided in Japan.

For details on the related solution, Next Generation Contact Center, see the following webpage.

Big Data × AI (Artificial Intelligence)
Next Generation Contact Center - Utilizing the voice of the customer to help enhance corporate value
At Hitachi, by drawing upon our knowledge of building and operating contact centers, and our extensive track record in developing contact center platforms and utilizing speech data, we can derive solutions that effectively incorporate the voice of the customer. With our proposed Next Generation Contact Center contributing to enhancing corporate value, we support digital transformation and technological advances in our customers’ contact centers. This solution is provided in Japan.

Summary

Improving the Efficiency and Quality of Inquiry Responses by Aiding Operator Work
Our solution helps any operator, regardless of their experience, provide high-quality responses to inquiries. The solution transcribes existing audio data and new calls into text format, extracts keywords from the new calls, searches the FAQ system for FAQs that contain the keywords, and displays the matching FAQs and answers. This use of call content reduces operator workloads and improves the quality of contact center responses to inquiries.
Speech Digital Solution
This solution provides total support, which includes consulting with the customer on utilizing the content of inquiries, and support for total system integration of all components such as call recording, speech-to-text conversion, and analysis. Our services can not only improve the efficiency of operations and the quality of responses in your contact center, they can also help you generate new business.
Do you have a large amount of data that is not being effectively utilized in your business?
Do you have operations in your business that generate new data on a daily basis, such as a contact center?
You can unlock the true potential of your data and create new value through data collection and analysis.

Key points of this article

  • The solution provides pop-up displays of FAQs that provide possible responses to an inquiry, thereby helping even inexperienced operators give excellent responses.
  • Integration with the FAQ system allows operators to use real-time speech recognition for FAQ searches.
  • The solution improves the efficiency of increasingly diverse and complex contact center operations, and reduces operator workloads.

And...

VOC (voice of the customer) analysis* aids efforts to develop and improve products and services. In VOC analysis, speech recognition is used to transcribe the content of calls into text format (speech-to-text conversion). The system extracts frequently used terms and phrases, which helps company personnel to visualize customer issues and provides hints regarding areas where products can be, or should be, improved. In this way, calls recorded and accumulated at a contact center on a daily basis can be used to generate business ideas.

*
VOC analysis: A variety of customer feedback (referred to as VOC, the voice of the customer) collected at contact centers is analyzed so that the data can be utilized in various ways.
*
The service (or solution) specifications are subject to change without prior notice due to reasons such as continual improvements.