×
Have questions or ready to talk to a Vonage expert?
Robot Chat Icon
Device Type: 
Skip to Main Content Skip to Main Content

5 Ways to Use Sentiment Analysis in Contact Centers

This article was published on July 11, 2024

Sentiment analysis can be used to assess the nature of customer comments in phone calls, text messages, emails, and chat sessions. These interactions can then be routed, based on the customer’s sentiment, to — for example — agents who are good at empathizing and calming unhappy customers.

 

Sentiment analysis in contact centers has been around for many years, although previously it was typically only available to the largest and most sophisticated sites. This is now changing as technology and AI advancements are bringing this functionality to contact centers of all sizes.

Photo of a smiling contact center agent talking to a customer through her phone headset. In the background, a series of small purple vertical lines run across the frame, representing conversation.

Leveraging Sentiment Analysis in Contact Centers

1. Root cause analysis.

Utilizing sentiment data in contact center reports can help identify the more obscure interrelationships. For instance, compare a customer’s retention rate with the number of their negative sentiment calls. Listening to the calls with both negative sentiment and decreased retention will highlight why customers are leaving.

2. Highlight where Quality Managers should be spending their time.

It’s simply not practical to listen to every call when quality monitoring. Sentiment analysis helps identify when an agent is involved in a call with negative sentiment, giving Quality Managers pointers on which interactions to review.

3. Uncover agent effort not captured by typical performance metrics.

Call duration is often used as a contact center KPI, but this can often penalize the best agents who may be dealing with very complex issues while delivering a great customer experience. Sentiment Analysis can be used to highlight agents that are frequently involved in calls that have positive sentiment so that they can be rewarded — and learned from — as top performing agents.

4. Get a bigger Voice of the Customer.

It’s usually a fairly small percentage of customers who respond to post-call surveys. To supplement surveys, focus groups, and customer advisory results, sentiment analysis data can provide detailed insights into the impact of every contact center interaction.

5. Gauge marketing campaign effectiveness.

Sentiment analysis can be used by Sales and Marketing departments to understand how customers are viewing recent advertising campaigns, the effectiveness of sales and marketing messages, and to uncover how the brand is perceived or how sentiment varies by product.

The Benefits of Sentiment in the Contact Center

Sentiment analysis helps get to the source of customer frustrations and to better understand what delights them. Be sure to choose a vendor that has a long history of helping to improve customer and agent experiences, is willing to develop a deep knowledge of your business, and will work in partnership to deliver the best outcomes.

How Can Vonage Help?

Vonage has been helping contact centers improve their customer and agent experiences for many years. Introducing sentiment analysis into the contact center helps to better target the small changes that can be made that deliver big dividends for the organization.

To learn more, explore Vonage Contact Center.

Deskphone with Vonage logo
Outside the US: Local Numbers