Why is it difficult to access and fully leverage voice data?

Digital transformation projects and big data analytics are high on the agenda for pretty much all organisations. Data is sometimes compared to oil in terms of its value as a resource.

Indeed, in a recent Red Box survey*, more than three quarters (76%) of senior IT executives indicated that they expected to have a ‘Voice First’ strategy in place within less than five years and regard voice data as “valuable” or “very valuable” to their organization.

Voice is a critical data set because it holds much more value than any other means of communication.

It conveys context, sentiment, intent, emotion and actions, providing real intelligence. However, it is recent advances in Transcription, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning that suddenly make voice data accessible in volume, when previously it would only have been accessible by listening to individual recordings. This presents organisations with an opportunity to leverage a rich data set that can help drive true and measurable business outcomes and, in our survey, the top 5 use cases for accurately transcribed conversations were cited as:

1. Staff training (45%)

2. Improve customer service/experience (45%)

3. Compliance with legislation (43%)

4. Enhance employee engagement/experience (38%)

5. Fuelling AI (38%)

Despite this, it was estimated that fewer than half (49%) of organisation-wide conversations are being captured, suggesting limitations with current call recording solutions and set up. Furthermore, more than half (51%) of the data being captured is locked away and inaccessible for AI and analytics.

So, why is it difficult to access and fully leverage voice data and what can be done to maximise its value?

There are some key areas identified in our recent research that outline why organisations may be struggling to unlock the value of voice data sets. These are as follows:

Data silos

Valuable insight lives across a business, but our research highlights how few organisation-wide voice conversations are being captured and how much of that data is inaccessible. Why does this matter?  AI and analytics tools are only as powerful as the data that fuels them. Only capturing partial voice data sets presents a risk in terms of data silos and ultimately the quality of the output.

Poor quality data

There is a clear need for holistic and accurately transcribed data and for high-quality audio capture in the creation of ‘AI Ready’ data sets. Whilst businesses recognise the value of transcription in creating structured voice data sets to fuel AI engines, only 52% were benefiting from an automated transcription service, which is compounded by the fact that they are capturing fewer than half of the conversations taking place across the organisation in the first place.

Data sovereignty

Despite 85% of businesses considering complete control and secure access to voice data to be “imperative” or “very important”, only 8% of those surveyed claim that their voice data is easily accessible for fuelling AI engines and analytics.

Open APIs are required

84% of organisations express that it is pivotal to their voice strategies to have an open API approach, allowing freedom and options, feeding voice and transcribed data into tools and applications of their choice and, crucially, not tying them to one provider. These could include CRM, compliance, business intelligence, AI and analytics tools, or even custom-built applications.

The idea of a ‘Voice First’ enterprise is clearly in the line of sight of the majority of CIOs in the near future, yet few of those that already capture voice data are exploiting its full potential. There is an opportunity to derive real competitive advantage by turning voice data into knowledge to serve customers in the most personalised way and empower augmented employees.

Red Box captures and secures 100M+ calls a month from new and legacy communication platforms. Our partnership with Speechmatics enables customers to leverage accurate transcripts of conversations taking place across their organisation, and with seamless integration into market-leading CRM, compliance archiving, AI and analytics platforms helps them maximise the value of voice.

Richard Stevenson, CEO, Red Box

About the survey

*Survey conducted by Sapio Research for Red Box, asking 588 IT Directors or C-level executives responsible for IT across UK, US and Singapore. For methodology on the research, please contact Sapio on +44 (0) 20 7236 1604.

About Red Box

Red Box is the leading dedicated voice specialist, empowering organisations to capture, secure and unlock the value of enterprise-wide voice. With the most open and connected platform, we capture and transcribe voice communications from over 55 systems (legacy and new), across global enterprises and SMEs. Our customers retain complete data sovereignty and we connect them to the broadest partner ecosystem to maximise the value of captured voice data.

Working with our global reseller channel, we are trusted by leading organisations across financial, contact centre, government and public safety sectors (including six of the world’s top banks, 85% of global interdealer brokers, 1,700 call centres and over 70% of UK police forces) and we capture and secure millions of calls daily for over 3,000 customers around the world.

For more information visit www.redboxvoice.com