When it comes to speech analytics, there are more options than ever before. Due in large part to advancements in natural language processing (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU) that have improved the accuracy of speech-to-text transcription, today’s solutions do far more than ensure contact center compliance and conformity. Businesses now can leverage speech analytics to better understand customer sentiment, improve customer conversations and gain valuable insights to drive better business results.
Speech analytics solutions have historically been tied to contact center software such as Genesys’ Interaction analytics and Nice’s Nexidia Analytics. However, with advances in machine learning, dedicated and independent speech analytics solutions have come into their own in recent years.
While the legacy speech analytics providers are invested in transcription-oriented solutions, the leaders in the industry are those that are focusing on its use for experience optimization, conversation guidance and emotion detection.
Defining a Strong Speech Analytics Solution
To evaluate speech analytics providers, we identified 6 key features that separate the leading solutions from the pack. Here are the criteria:
- Real-time transcription
- Post-call speech analytics
- Predictive analytics
- Sentiment analysis
- Searchable recordings
- API access to allow for customization
Because not all businesses need these features, we have grouped the top analytics providers into three groups based on feature availability – out-of-the-box providers, niche or specific use providers, and custom solutions. Here are our top 10 speech analytics vendors:
Out-of-the-Box Providers:
CallMiner :
With more than 14 years of experience in the industry, CallMiner is a proven provider of speech analytics that offers advanced speech analytics functionality. Their solution combines traditional speech analytics with machine learning to provide agents with guidance on follow-up actions. The solution is also easy to use with a rapid time-to-value. Because CallMiner is agnostic to the source system that captures data, it can be integrated with most call recorder, chat and email systems, as well as social networking sites.
ClaraBridge:
As a recent addition to the list of notable providers of speech analytics, the company has quickly taken a leadership position. Clarabridge’s solution has gained attention because of its robust machine learning capabilities and deep learning for emotional detection. It uses both linguistic and machine learning to enable insights and to analyze customer data across channels.
Vocitech:
The company offers two products, Vbalze and Vspark. Both products have many of the key features of a leading speech analytics solution, such as automated speech-to-text conversion, root cause analysis with search capabilities, sentiment analysis and more. V-Blaze is aimed at enterprises needing real-time call transcription and API access to power other text analytics solutions.
Tethr:
As a leading speech analytics solution, Tethr provides a rich interface with capabilities such as call categorization, risk identification, and AI enabled speech redaction for compliance purposes. They refer to their solution as an “AI-powered communications intelligence platform.” According to Tethr, their platform is capable of going beyond traditional human identified pattern analysis and into being able to isolate previously unknown patterns to highlight emerging issues customers may be experiencing.
Niche Providers
Invoca:
Invoca’s AI-powered speech analytics solution has the capabilities to support conformity in call centers of all sizes, as well as drive more engaging customer conversations, increase market effectiveness and gauge customer sentiment. Invoca uses machine learning-based speech analytics to classify calls and measure their quality and outcomes, which is beneficial for both marketing and sales. Their machine learning approach automatically trains and selects the model with the best prediction accuracy to advance call classification. However, their solution is not intended for workforce optimization or engagement analytics.
Balto Software :
Balto provides real-time call guidance. While not a full-blown speech analytics solution, it is perfect for situations where agents need help with saying the right things to save calls. With real-time speech transcription powering it, Balto is able to detect caller-side questions, determine the optimal solutions to either improve the call experience, shorten handle times, or other goals that have been set by the contact center.
Cogito:
Cogito is another solution that allows for live call guidance in various situations including contact centers. The value proposition is to be able to course correct while the call is happening instead of post-call coaching. Cogito makes it possible to detect call situations needing correction whether it be to infuse more empathy or to improve sales techniques. The company goes one step beyond conversational analytics by incorporating machine learning techniques into its solution to make it smarter with use.
Custom Speech Analytics Solutions
VoiceBase :
The company provides a speech analytics API that can be used to create commercial speech analytics applications. Voicebase’s solution extracts keywords and auto generates topics that can be used to summarize calls and find trends. It has a speech-to-text transcription service with a deep learning neural network component. In a contact center environment, VoiceBase’s solution can be used to detect script compliance, call conversions, and a variety of other performance metrics including silence ratio, energy ratio, etc. VoiceBase also offers a predictive analytics module that uses pattern identification to identify at-risk customers.
Gridspace:
This is one company that really gets how to do analytics around conversations. Not only does it boast near real-time conversation transcripts, but it also claims a 97% accuracy for data sets that the Gridspace solution has been trained on. That combined with a comprehensive array of ways to search for conversations, finding similar interactions, and merging semantically similar words with emotions in a search makes Gridspace one of the best speech analytics solutions around. Despite being categorized as a custom solution due to its enterprise level API, Gridspace also provides a full featured admin UI that can be used to run a a standalone speech analytics solution.
Nuance:
The big daddy of them all, Nuance has been around since 1992. Nuance provides speech recognition, artificial intelligence and imaging solutions. According to their website, 75% of the Fortune 100 companies use Nuance solutions. However, you won’t find out-of-the-box Nuance branded products for purchase. Instead, Nuance provides these technologies either through partnerships with other vendors in the speech analytics space or as custom solutions for the enterprise. It provides services including, but not limited to, natural language processing, conversational AI, cognitive AI, virtual assistants, and more. If you have the budget, be sure to consider Nuance for your speech analytics needs.
That rounds up our top 10 speech analytics vendors. Do you know of any others that should make this list? If yes, please chat with us and let us know!
