The number of call centres is growing steadily since almost every company is nowadays offering their customers some kind of service desk. Online shops, mobile phone providers, banks or insurance companies – they all offer instant support via telephone for their customers. But not only the number of call centres is growing – so is the frustration on both ends of the lines. Angry customers complain about swamped call centre agents and vice versa.

The main reason for complaints from customers are bad service and a lack of competence of the call centre agents. Reasons for those problems are high labour turnover rate and the low level of decision-making power. Thus, the agents are often not able to offer appropriate solutions to their callers.

This is where Callyser, a call centre speech analysis software developed by audEERING, comes into play. Callyser is a tool which is capable of automatically analysing voice recordings on multiple levels. Callyser not only computes the formal parameters of the analysed audio material, like the duration of a conversation or the speakers’ shares of a dialogue. What makes this tool special is the ability of detecting the speakers’ emotion as well as the atmosphere during the phone call which is provided by audEERING’s sensAI technology. Thus, Callyser can detect and prevent escalations before they happen. When a call centre agent loses control of a situation, a more experienced call centre agent is alerted and can take over and calm the situation.

The challenge for Cabot Financial, a UK credit management company, was to get insightful qualitative feedback from customers who are often vulnerable, and in difficult circumstances. In commissioning a feedback program, Cabot chose BigEars over better-known, cookie-cutter solutions that couldn’t deliver the customer-empathy that Cabot needed. The team at BigEars recognised the unique relationship Cabot has with its customers and tailored a solution that treated customers considerately, allowed them to talk about the things that mattered to them most, bringing maximum insight for minimum hassle. BigEars offered a tailored implementation of Customer Radio, their revolutionary and unique feedback tool, to spread customer insight across the business. The Cabot CEX team use the ‘discover’ interface to investigate issues and identify trends, while a feedback tracker module tracks any negative feedback and consequent follow-up action. Catherine Allford, Customer Journey Manager, noticed an immediate improvement in the immediacy and the reach of the feedback collected: “BigEars allows us to get our customer’s thoughts, feelings, and concerns – whatever they may be – directly to the people that need to hear it quickly.” In a challenging customer relationship, where staff-empathy is crucial, the ability to share the actual voices of customers was a game-changer. At Cabot, the customer voice now plays a big part in staff training, coaching, and performance recognition. “It really brings home to everyone, regardless of their role, just how important it is that we remember our customers. It reminds you that these are real people going through real experiences.” Furthermore, the staff performance rating at Cabot went up drastically due to front line staff hearing customer feedback on their performance immediately.

Use Case 2: Wellington City Council

Embarking on a program of strategic renewal, the customer-facing arm of Wellington City Council knew that listening to the views of Wellingtonians was going to be key. The Council already employed a variety of feedback mechanisms, but the data collected was largely quantitative. It was time for qualitative feedback, in which the customer set the agenda. Council service development and improvement manager, Jaime Dyhrberg, saw that what BigEars was offering was different – the ability to capture and share the voices of actual customers, talking freely about what mattered to them. Three dialogues designed by BigEars cleverly guided respondents through a series of free-response questions, attached to rating scores. The feedback that came in was rich and plentiful, and at times surprising: “BigEars presented the ability for people to say, “Well, my immediate response is this, and, now that I think about it, x, y and z,” and actually the insight resided in the x, y and z.”

Council staff listening to the feedback began to see the rating score as just an entrée to the main course – the customer’s voice. Call Centre staff created a ‘Wall of Wow’, where positive feedbacks (of which there were many) were displayed to celebrate and motivate hard-working call centre operators. And when customers weren’t happy, staff took the time to respond personally. “Just to hear the voice of the customers, it does resonate with people. It becomes much more real and I think it’s much easier to feel motivated to respond to that.”

Building Emotional Connections On Every Member Phone Conversation

Use case details

One of the nations top five health plans is leveraging Cogito’s technology to enhance the emotional connection developed between an agent and a member during phone conversations. Cogito’s technology performs real-time voice analysis and recommends in-call adjustments in speaking behavior to ensure each agent communicates with empathy and builds better rapport.   Through instant behavioral analysis Cogito provides an automated measure of member experience for 100% of phone conversations.

In the past the health plan found it difficult to discover and correct the phone conversations in which agents were communicating in an apathetic manner, were lacking confidence, or were not tailoring their speaking style to that of the member. Agents were doing a good job communicating the proper policies and procedures, but they were not effectively communicating in a way that left members feeling increased trust or loyalty to the brand.

By leveraging Cogito they can more easily identify the agents in need of coaching and provide them with the guidance they need to improve behavior. They can identify trends in customer behavior or staff performance that enables to them to rapidly and iteratively adjust service delivery.

Use Case Title (USE CASE 2)

Delivering Better Care Through Real-time Emotional Intelligence

Use case details

A top five-health plan (different company than use case 1) sought to increase care management program enrollments and reduce member dropout rates through higher quality clinician/member interactions. Through member feedback and evaluation of program execution, they discovered that while clinicians were providing accurate information to members, they were failing to establish a trusted bond on calls. Member’s perceived a lack of empathy and personalization in clinician interactions that resulted in lower than desired enrollment in programs, as well as high, stagnant dropout rates.

The plan deployed Cogito and it has become the key source of in-call guidance for their speaking behavior. Visual cues and real-time alerts have helped clinicians identify high stress levels and anxiety in members, as well as adjust their own communication style to improve rapport in the moment. Clinicians and members are having more engaged, productive conversations that leave both parties satisfied. Clinicians have improved their listening skills and are speaking more confidently and concisely.

Supervisors are using Cogito to gain insight into clinician speaking behavior and member engagement. They are identifying trends and more effectively replicating good behavior. They are sharing best practice calls amongst their teams and increasing the frequency and objectivity of feedback.

Management is utilizing member experience feedback to improve care. Prior to Cogito, member feedback was limited, biased, and time delayed. Supervisors and Executives now have access to robust insights, enabling them to make faster, more informed decisions.

Use Case Title (USE CASE 3)

Artificial Intelligence Enhances Negotiation Skills

Use case details

West Point is utilizing Cogito’s technology to analyze and improve the negotiation skills of cadets. Cogito’s behavioral analytics technology will systematically analyze communication patterns within negotiating sessions and provide insight into the cadet’s psychological state. The technology will provide an unbiased assessment of how each cadet is being perceived by the other party. It will deliver insights into how they can modify their behavior to improve negotiation outcomes

For more information: http://www.cogitocorp.com/cogito-works-with-west-point-to-enhance-negotiation-skills/

Use case details:
A global manufacturer of automation equipment focuses its VoC program on its Net Promotor Score® (NPS) score and the Company was using transactional surveys to supplement additional customer feedback. Today, the process has expanded and now distributes approximately 25 VoC surveys, spanning five different divisions of the organization.

Through these surveys, the company captures the emotional component of each customer interaction and uses the information to create customer case studies or buyer/customer profiles. Specifically, the organization has annual management meetings where they bring in high profile customers and share some of their comments from the surveys. The Company has found that the customers are open and willing to share feedback candidly as they know it will foster change in processes that will ultimately benefit them.

When this manufacturer first started using Horizons its NPS was in the low 30s, and in just the few short years using the solution it has nearly doubled with a number over 50. The team has recently implemented Confirmit Genius, the text analytics solution, and is now able to gain a whole new level of insight into what is being said across different categories of the business and the emotion behind those responses. This allows them to match the sentiment from both positive and negative feedback, analyze the true sentiment for the categories that suit their business, receive timely alerts about sentiment changes, and align those insights with key customer metrics.

Use Case Title: Sony Mobile Corporation: Emotion in Social Media

Use case details:

The adoption of social media by a large proportion of SoMC’s customers as their preferred channel of communication means that the company must engage with all social media channels to provide a great service.

“Our challenge is to detect consumer service issues across 54 markets, in over 20 languages, for up to 10 major product launches every year. It’s a serious undertaking,” explains Olle Hagelin, SoMC Quality Manager.

It is virtually impossible to manually collect and analyse tens of thousands of daily social media mentions quickly in order to identify the very first instance of an issue. SoMC decided that the most effective approach was to introduce the social media and text analytics capabilities provided by Confirmit Genius. This would enable it to mine solicited and unsolicited free-form content, and enable the company to analyse complex, often conflicting sentiments within each piece of content.

Confirmit Genius is now used to provide daily global issue tracking by crawling and filtering social media networks – over 2,600 sources, with over 100,000 sub-sources.

Acting fast and reducing costs

The process of continuously monitoring social media to detect issues early, and the ‘triage’ system to rank issues for immediate action, has helped SoMC to save tens of thousands of dollars associated with the cost of warranty.

Over the past five years, Confirmit Genius has helped SoMC to identify and act upon 35,700 unique issue reports in social media; across 400 issue categories; and spanning 70 past, present and future products.

Use Case Title: Uncovering Emotion in B2B Sales and Support

Use case details:

A B2B technology provider works with Confirmit to tap into its customers emotions by using unique survey questions in its VoC program. The traditional OSAT and Net Promotor Score® (NPS) measurements are very important to this Company and help them to benchmark their VoC programs against other providers in the industry, however, these metrics weren’t providing the level of depth that the Company was looking for when it came to uncovering the emotions involved in B2B support and purchasing decisions.

To gather more information on emotion in these B2B relationships the Company began to ask the following question on its post-purchase and support surveys.

Using a scale from 1 to 10, please indicate how you feel about your relationship with Company?

Scale 1 ———————–    5   ———————– 10

Disregarded ———————————————— Appreciated

Stuck ——————————————————– Invested

Adversary ——————acquaintance—————- Companion

The data from this question on the survey is being analyzed in conjunction with OSAT and NPS to drive changes in the actions taken in specific support situations and is being used to coach account managers and call center agents on how to better handle customer complaints and cultivate more meaningful and longer lasting relationships with customers.

Using CrowdEmotion’s state-of-the-art facial coding software and psychological testing, the BBC set out to understand the emotional impact of content-led marketing and demonstrate its effectiveness. We asked 5,153 digital consumers of English language international news across the globe to view content on bbc.com. This groundbreaking project won an IAB Europe award in the Consumer Attitudes and Behavior category, beating off strong competition including Yahoo and their content marketing project.

Our software recorded facial movements on a second-to-second basis to uncover the user’s true implicit attitudes towards the presented content. Overall results showed that, when clearly labeled, content-led marketing can be persuasive in quality environments. Most of all, content-led marketing has a powerful emotional impact on the brands involved.

Highlights:

1. Transparency is Key – 64% were happy to read content-led marketing as long as it is clear which brand it is presented by
2. Labeling is Key – In the facial coding study, rejection for labeled brand-presented content was 7% below the average benchmark, while rejection for non-labeled content was 18% above the average.
3. Quality is Key – 63% of respondents were happy to see the content as long as it mirrored the quality of the provider’s editorial content. In addition, 59% found the content informative and 57% said they would share it. Hence placing content in a premium environment, such as the BBC, will give your content credibility and allow it to flourish.

This project uncovered that overall exposure to content led marketing improved customers positivity towards advertising brands

CrowdEmotion’s facial coding technology was used to measure the audience’s engagement while watching Trailers for 22 BBC shows. Capturing unconscious reactions allowed for comparison between what the audience say’s the think and what they actually think.

Results demonstrated a shockingly small correlation between conscious and unconscious measurement of engagement. The audience reported the lowest “linking” score for show 5, while it produced the happiest unconscious response of all the programmes. This happiness was subsequently reflected in viewership, as show 5 outperformed average primetime ratings and produced significant viewer numbers.

Highlights:

·       81% of the sample effectively disliked show 5, while it produced happier facial engagement than 82% of programmes tested.

·       8 out of the 13 shows (62%) that were disliked in survey were shown to produce positive engagement.

This project uncovered that alone survey-based testing alone may be unreliable, and should be used in conjunction with emotional metrics. With use of CrowdEmotion’s facial coding technology, BBC Worldwide was able to identify programmes which viewers really loved as opposed to said they loved. In the future, this technology may be used not only as a programme validation tool but a content development methodology

In partnership with Spotify, CrowdEmotion employed facial coding to develop the world’s first emotional music discovery experience. Crowd Emotion, exclusively for Huddle, explored the possibility of an emotion response based music recommendation system. To do so we focused on what people’s emotional engagement indicate about their music preferences.

Listeners first answered a questionnaire about their musical preferences, and then watched a mash-up of indie artists to measure their emotional engagement when uncovering new music.

Individual results displayed that people often engaged with music genres beyond their preferred musical genres. Additionally, measured musical engagement often did not match the partakers indicated musical preferences. We made 97 emotional discoveries in total, and 87 leads, producing a lead conversion of 48%. That’s one every 4:48 seconds!

Highlights:

• 97 Emotional Discoveries
• 87 Leads
• 48% Lead conversion
• One lead conversion every 4:48 seconds!

Through application of Memo Measure software, CrowdEmotion worked with Spotify to craft a groundbreaking emotional music discovery platform. This platform allowed Spotify to understand the musical preferences of users beyond what they claim. Hence this partnership allows Spotify to uncover their listeners implicit music taste, working towards shaping the world’s very first emotion based music recommendation software.

Use Case Details:

Alliant Energy in WI implemented a pilot, branded as Alliant Energy Advisor, which was designed to address common consumer barriers and misperceptions about energy, including the fact that most Americans think they use less energy than they did five years’ ago and that their homes are already energy efficient. As a result, AE’s customers were participating in a statewide energy efficiency program at a rate of only 2% percent.  

AE knew that traditional marketing wasn’t enough and wanted to better reach and engage customers to build a stronger relationship with them and increase participation. AE used Fiveworx to help more of its customers participate in programs and save more energy. The persona-based content and customer journeys in Fiveworx email marketing/marketing automation software uses insights from polling of American consumers’ attitudes and behaviors around energy and its identification of four personas – each with their own distinct emotional and psychological drivers. Understanding and leveraging these personas was critical to AE’s success. Timely, relevant and personalized email messaging helped to create a trusted relationship with customers so they continued to allow permission-based email marketing from AE.

An independent evaluation commissioned by AE showed that Fiveworx doubled email engagement and achieved a 150% increase in customer participation in statewide programs compared to the utility’s general customer base. Further, the pilot participants also reported increased satisfaction with the utility and high satisfaction with the pilot. The evaluation also verified that customers in the pilot group reduced electric and natural gas usage over a 9-month period.

Using Sonic Identity to Better Connect Across Touchpoints

Man Made Music creates the strategically-rooted sonic identity system for a leading entertainment and communications company. It is the brand’s proprietary sonic voice that conveys the brand story, enhances emotional connection and builds brand attribution. The system is designed to seamlessly tie together an ever-increasing number of touchpoints across communications, immersive environments, customer care, sponsorships and digital experiences. Music and sound is used to guide peoples’ emotions with relevance, distinctiveness and cohesiveness as they experience the brand.

It begins with identifying where sound can make a big difference in the experience, because overuse or misuse of sound is worse than no sound at all. Then, like the creation of the visual identity system, the sonic identity is developed to reflect what the brand is all about. It’s a flexible system that is used in consistent, yet relevant ways across touchpoints. It includes long-form music including a core brand anthem and a MicroCatalog™ of anthem arrangements ­for retail stores, sponsorship venues, conferences, employee events, and short-form sounds like the sonic logo and Brand Navigation Sound^® for providing functional and emotional feedback at different points in digital user experiences.

Over time, the sonic logo has become the 2^nd most recognized brand asset with significantly high attribution. Recently, when the identity was evolved to reflect the evolving brand experience, Man Made Music’s SonicPulse^® Research demonstrated that equity was retained, 51% of people were more likely to consider the brand, and 43% had a more positive impression of the brand, after hearing the music.

Use Case #2:

Using Sonic Identity to Galvanize People Around an Organization’s Mission

At Man Made Music, we work with a nonprofit health organization and have created a sonic identity that puts emotion and energy behind their mission. They are working hard to fund research that will someday lead to a cure, and to provide caring support to the patients and families affected. We created a sonic identity system, inclusive of a brand anthem, that conveys the emotional story behind their work, balancing their rigor and compassion. There’s also a set of MicroCatalog™ tracks that are anthem arrangements designed for different emotional contexts within the brand experience – from those that rally support, to those that tell heartfelt patient stories.

Through Man Made Music’s SonicPulse^® Research that is designed specifically to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of sound and music on emotion, brand attributes and key brand metrics – we learned that the sonic anthem was incredibly successful at expressing core brand attributes – 48% of respondents had a more favorable opinion of the organization and 55% were more interested in the organization. We also heard verbatim feedback such as, “I found the music to be exhilarating, upbeat and extremely optimistic. It gives the listener a feeling that this debilitating disease can be beaten,” and “It sounds caring and compassionate. It’s optimistic but also respectful-sounding for people dealing with this disease.” That is precisely the story we wanted to tell and the sentiment we were trying to evoke.

Through moving score, we were able to reinforce the organization’s promise and, more importantly, build an emotional connection with audiences that is seamlessly woven across brand experiences.

Use Case #3:

Using Sonic Identity to Ignite Emotion in Immersive Environments: IMAX

Man Made Music has created the strategically-rooted sonic identity for IMAX. It is the brand’s proprietary sonic voice that conveys the brand story, enhances emotional connection and builds brand attribution. IMAX, long-known for their incredibly immersive experience, is now taking the audio aspects of the experience to a new level. The sonic identity not only ignites emotion among moviegoers during the IMAX 30-second countdown before films, it also shows off the amazing technical capability through a wide dynamic range of sound that’s heard through the 12-channel sound system proprietary to its theaters. Most importantly, it sets a consistent tone for an incredible experience in over 1,000 theaters in 65 countries, with over 1.4 million views per year.

The countdown music stems from the IMAX sonic anthem, which was created using a hybrid of an orchestra, choir and electronic sounds. The sonic identity includes a signature sonic logo and a robust MicroCatalog™ of anthem arrangements so that relevant variations can be played in correspondence with the many genres of films that IMAX presents — comedies, family friendly, superhero films and action and foreign films. This ensures that genre-appropriate IMAX music can accompany any film in relevant context. Overtime, the signature sound of IMAX will become synonymous with the excitement of the IMAX experience.

MicroCatalog™ is a trademark, and SonicPulse^® Research and Brand Navigation Sounds^® are registered trademarks of Man Made Music, Inc.