Methods for Creating Keyword Definitions

Following are methods that you can use to ensure that you are gathering the most important keywords and phrases for your contact center. For more information, see Other Considerations for Defining Keywords.

Understand the purpose of your contact center

One factor that you must take into account is purpose of your contact center. What is it supposed to achieve? Different contact centers are designed for different purposes:

Technical support/Customer support	Information services	Collections
Sales/Lead generation	Complaints	Notifications/Dispatching
Surveys/Market research	Donations/Charities	Screenings
Order taking/Event registrations	Appointment scheduling

With all of the possibilities, you must determine the areas on which you want to focus. Do you want to monitor agent interactions to determine who is performing well and who is not? Do you want to monitor customer interactions to determine their concerns or if they are upset? Perhaps, you want to monitor both sides of the interaction to measure many different aspects of your contact center.

Regardless of these considerations, the most important thing that you can do is to define those factors upon which you determine the success or failure of your contact center.

Create meaningful keywords

When thinking of possible keywords and phrases, determine some often-used keywords, but also determine what information the keyword provides to you.

For example, for a technical support contact center, you could track the word "problem." However, doesn't everyone who calls into that contact center have a problem? What other information does it provide? Instead, try to identify keywords that define the nature of the problem. Is there a specific problem that most customers are having? Does this problem affect customer retention or repeat business?

Careful analysis of recorded interactions and listening to live conversations helps you identify what keywords are most often said, which have the most impact to your business, and which of these keywords differentiate some interactions from important interactions.

Determine problems and effectiveness

In your contact center, there are many factors for you to consider that determine the effectiveness of your contact center and how your business is meeting customer needs. The following list of factors provides you some insight into what keyword categories you could monitor:

• Customer satisfaction - Are your customers happy at the end of a call? Are they going to be repeat customers? What do they think about your company, product, or service?

• Customer problems - What negative words are customers using in interactions? What products or services do customers mention? Do customers threaten legal action? What common problems are customers experiencing? What questions do customers most often ask?

• Customer loss - Do your customers mention competitors or their products? Are customers canceling accounts or stopping service? Do customers demand refunds? Do customers keep calling back?

• Agent effectiveness - Are your agents using positive words? Are the agents using the provided script? Do customers praise the agents that helped them? Do agents use words and phrases that indicate apathy to customer problems? Do customers ask to speak to managers or supervisors?

• Agent satisfaction - Are some agents getting too many difficult calls? Are agents using positive words that indicate their own satisfaction? Are agents using negative words when becoming frustrated? Do customers thank agents for their help?

• Agent training - Are agents using personalized language when addressing customers? Do agents use the same words as the customers? Do agents know what to say to customers? Do agents know the solutions to problems? Are agents retaining customers or losing them?

What keywords are involved in the answers to these factors? What would a customer likely say in these situations? What would an agent say? Do you want to track every indication of someone using words that indicate emotion? The answers vary based not only on the purpose of your contact center, but also in what you determine to be important.

Gather keywords from other areas of your business

To maximize the value of Interaction Analyzer for your business, consider what other words or phrases are important to other departments. For example, are customers asking questions about a certain product? If so, these calls could be valuable sales leads or indicate the success of a marketing campaign.

Other business units can benefit greatly from the keywords that you define. Consider asking for input from these other units and ensure that the valuable customer information is conveyed to them. Customer satisfaction and successful sales are great but being able to repeat them through business intelligence and customer metrics is better.

Ensure proper agent training

How well do you train your agents? Do they read from a script? Are they trained to use certain words and phrases in their interactions? Are the agents able to resolve customer problems or answer their questions? If you answer "yes" to any of these questions, you already have a set of indicative words that you can enter as keywords and monitor. Monitoring the use of these keywords and phrases can indicate the success of your training methods. Additionally, they can help determine which agents need refresher training when these keywords are not used in interactions.

Listen to your customers

Determine which keywords and phrases are important to the direction of your business. Are customers asking for the same new features? Do customers complain about the same things? Are agents constantly defending the position of the company or a business practice?

Ensure that you define both positive and negative keywords. Monitoring positive customer keywords enables you to track the general happiness of your customers with your contact center. You also want to track negative customer interactions so that you can identify common problems and agent ineffectiveness.

Getting this information is valuable to your business. It indicates if your business is achieving or failing to meet customer needs. This data can inform you as to where your business must go and what services, products, or solutions it must offer.

Use only the consistent keywords

When you have found some keyword phrases that you want to monitor, think about how that phrase can be said in different ways. One of the most important aspects in creating keyword phrases is to define only those words that are said consistently. The following examples show how some keyword phrases can be dissected to contain only consistent words. The inconsistent portions of these phrases are displayed within parentheses in the following list:

• (They/The company/My boss) didn't train me (for/to/about)

• I completely understand (the situation/your concerns/the problem/the trouble)

• (Since/Because) you are a valued (customer/client/partner)

• Your satisfaction is (important/very important/our main concern/my goal)

• Is there anything else (I can do/I can help you with/giving you problems)

• You're not listening (to me/ to a word I say/at all)