3 Best Practices to Improving Sentiment Analysis Scores in Your Call Center

Your call center agents are an important reflection of your brand. In call centers, sentiment analysis can be an important way to gauge customer interactions and learn insights about their experience with your organization. It helps leaders understand areas for improved coaching or highlights where teams are excelling.  

Customer sentiment (or their attitude and emotions) is an important element of the experience being delivered. By listening to conversations and understanding the tone and emotions being conveyed, call center leaders gain valuable context in monitoring performance and ensuring quality assurance. 

One way sentiment is captured is by monitoring customer sentiment at the beginning of the call and at the end of the call, then comparing the two. At Authenticx, we calculate beginning and ending sentiment using a five-star rating, where a one star indicates a negative sentiment and a five star represents the most positive sentiment.  

Most of the time, calls start with a neutral sentiment. In 2021, the average starting sentiment across healthcare companies was 2.96 (out of 5), while ending sentiment scores are commonly higher. This demonstrates the importance of the agents who handle calls and seek to find a resolution to the customer’s reasoning for calling. 

3 Approaches to Improve Sentiment Scores

Initiatives to improve customer experience often focus on increasing ending sentiment score, since this implies the caller issue has been resolved or at least the caller’s query has been appropriately addressed. Sentiment analysis also helps direct focus on evaluating agent quality, informing agent training, coaching, and recognition opportunities.

1. Demonstrate the caller has been heard in an authentic and human way: Acknowledge the situation by repeating back what you heard.  

“OK. I think I hear you saying….Do I have that right?” 

Apologize if necessary. “I’m sorry to hear that you….” 

2. Walk alongside agents to support and own the issue, even when they can’t solve it: Empower the agents to own the issue, even if they can’t solve it. Share a commitment to walk alongside them.  

“I’m not able to answer that, but I will find out who can answer that for you.” 

 3. The last impression can be a lasting impression. End the call with a wrap up: Even if the agent is unable to address the problem, they can end the call on a positive note. Show appreciation by thanking the customer for their loyalty and encouraging them to call back in the future. 

“I would just like to summarize where we are ending this call. Please let me know if you disagree. Today we discussed (share the full context). Our next step is to….Is that a fair summary?”  

What Are You Doing to Improve Sentiment on Calls?

Customer experience is rapidly becoming the battleground in developing a competitive advantage to attract and retain customers. To do that, business leaders are seeking ways to reach consumers and provide a painless and efficient brand experience. Sentiment analysis is an important piece of that puzzle  

Your agents can have a profound impact on customer sentiment.  

Customer Listening Playbook

Use this 7-step playbook to set strategic and actionable goals to connect with your customers and drive meaningful change in your organization.

Tell Me More About How Authenticx Works with Operations Leaders

Operations leaders need to be able to confidently identify disruptions impacting customers across the enterprise. Authenticx was founded to surface meaningful insights from unstructured data. We help leaders strategically invest to optimize their digital front door to improve customer experience and operational effectiveness. We work with revenue cycle, patient access, and contact center operations leaders to help bring contextualized, data-driven conversational insights to your organization.  

See Authenticx in Action

Learn more about how Authenticx analyzes customer conversations to surface recurring trends in this two-minute video.

About Authenticx

Authenticx was founded to analyze and activate customer interaction data at scale. Why? We wanted to reveal transformational opportunities in healthcare. We are on a mission to help humans understand humans. With a combined 100+ years of leadership experience in pharma, payer, and healthcare organizations, we know first-hand the challenges and opportunities that our clients face because we’ve been in your shoes.

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