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Contact center managers rely greatly on the performance of their agents to drive the overall performance of the contact center. While disparate solutions have traditionally been in place to drive performance, it wasn’t until contact center performance management (CCPM) solutions became available that these managers were able to measure a difference.

Speech analytics have also gotten a great deal of attention as of late as such solutions can offer significant benefits to the contact center, management, staff and even customers. And, while speech analytics and CCPM deliver measurable benefits, it is challenging for many contact center managers to evaluate the solutions and discern one from the other.

Rob Berry, with Enkata, shared his opinions in Connections Magazine that while it is true that speech analytics and CCPM offer many of the same benefits, they each solve different business problems. Plus, there is a difference in the degree and source of the benefits they deliver and the deployment risks of each are significantly different.  

Gartner (News - Alert) Research, an industry analyst firm for the contact center market, has found that CCPM solutions are used most often when contact center management is seeking to automate the supervision and coaching of an agent, and to improve the overall performance of the organization.

According to a Gartner January 2008 report, "These solutions integrate an organization's established contact center technologies, CRM systems, and other data sources to provide a transparent picture of performance through role-specific dashboards and reports, and they drive actions through embedded alerting and workflow capabilities." 

For speech analytics tools, they are primary used by quality management (QM) analysts and, even some contact center supervisors. Such solutions can search for examples of calls that meet specific criteria, including dead time, mention of a competitor or an antagonistic or frustrated tone.

While recording calls can deliver significant benefits within the contact center, few organizations actually record every call. Some industries report that they record as much as 30 percent of their calls, but even that is a generous number.

At the same time, these calls are purged regularly and such activity minimizes the usefulness of speech analytics. Therefore, to be effective, speech analytics must be properly designed to fit the practices of the contact center.

When right-fitted for the contact center, CCPM can be used as a management tool that uses multiple systems to create agent-level key performance indicators (KPIs) and enables supervisors to rate agent performance while identifying opportunities for improvement. Best-in-class systems enable supervisors to identify those agents who are struggling in order to address the issues and make necessary changes.

To best determine whether the contact center should invest in a CCPM solution or speech analytics or both, it is important first to understand the business problems that need to be addressed and then make the selection based on the strategic goals of the contact center. In doing so, the center will be able to experience measurable benefits and an overall improved performance.