Conversational Intelligence for UK Businesses: How to Convert Callers

Today, converting a caller means delivering the right details exactly when needed – before, during, and even after the call. Forget frustrating queues, operator transfers, or unnecessary hurdles – just pure value.

Consider adopting conversational intelligence software to:

• Gain deeper insights into callers by analysing their speech
• Enhance call routing to reduce or remove waiting lines
• Boost your live operators’ effectiveness

Sound unbelievable? At Phonexa, we’ve been harnessing the power of AI for some time to help clients make the most of inbound calls – all while keeping those leads engaged throughout the buying process and beyond.

Understanding Conversational Intelligence

Conversational intelligence uses AI to analyse spoken words or text, providing real-time and strategic insights like tailored suggestions for sales reps pitching a product to a customer.

The crucial term is “personalised”: AI quickly analyses speech to predict what each individual customer prefers.

These are the key AI call intelligence features businesses should know about:

Enhanced Call Routing	Directing callers to the appropriate sales rep by analysing both their words and emotional tone
Real-Time Conversation Insights	Analysing calls live to provide sales reps with helpful prompts during the interaction
Strategic Marketing Insights	Post-call analytics revealing patterns in customer and agent conversations, both overall and individually

Conversational intelligence uncovers caller emotions, intent, and behaviour to deliver exactly what they need for a smooth and satisfying call.

AI Technologies Powering Conversational Intelligence

Although conversation intelligence tools differ, with some focusing solely on post-call analysis and others offering real-time insights, they generally share a similar AI foundation.

Key AI technologies behind conversational and phone call intelligence include:

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)	ASR transforms spoken words into text in multiple steps: Initial processing: Cleaning the audio by reducing background noise, adjusting volume, and tuning to speech frequenciesConversion:  Breaking speech down into data segments (like MFCC)Identifying phonemes: Detecting the smallest units of soundContextualisation: Assessing which words fit best given the contextDecoding: Assembling the most likely word sequence from recognised pieces
Natural Language Understanding (NLU)	A branch of NLP, NLU enables AI to understand human language by detecting speaker intent, extracting entities – the same tech as the one behind GNLP – and analysing sentiment and context. Unlike ASR, which only converts speech to text, NLU interprets that text within context.
Natural Language Generation (NLG)	NLG produces natural, context-aware responses for callers, allowing businesses to handle some requests without a live operator.

Conversation intelligence software may also integrate conversation analytics tools that blend speech and marketing data, creating the optimal journey for callers.

How Conversational Intelligence Functions

Modern conversational intelligence AI combines multiple technologies, providing strategic and real-time insights about callers. For instance, an NLP-powered IVR can resolve some queries immediately while directing others to the appropriate support or sales team.

A key advantage of advanced conversational intelligence software is its continuous self-learning capability: the more data it processes, the more precise it gets (meaning increasing callers boosts your conversion rate).

Conversational Intelligence vs Call Tracking Software

Integrating conversation intelligence with call tracking creates a powerful synergy for tech-forward businesses. Let’s distinguish these tools so you understand their differences and why both might be essential.

Typically, call intelligence and tracking are bundled together, providing end-to-end coverage for campaigns across diverse industries and clients. For lead buyers or sellers, this all-in-one system can dramatically boost revenue by offering unmatched market insights through expert market knowledge.

Introducing our all-in-one call intelligence and tracking solution, Call Logic:

 

Growing Your Business Using Conversational Intelligence

It’s clear that understanding your callers deeply is key to business growth. Call intelligence acts not just as a marketing tool but as a psychologist, uncovering intricate conversational behaviours.

Below are specific intelligence metrics you can leverage to boost call conversions:

Keyword Recognition	Configure your system to highlight key terms, such as customer concerns, providing insights on areas for improvement.
Speech Patterns	Beyond keywords, detect speech patterns indicating the caller’s emotions. Phrases like “over and over”, “Why can’t you just”, or “How come” can signal frustration.
Conversation Pace	Long pauses and simultaneous talking interfere with conversations. Speech recognition can identify such problems and thus help you train your support and sales people how to solve them.

While each caller shares a unique narrative, big data simplifies interpreting what each call signifies for the client and guides your conversion strategies.

1. Customising Interactions

Understanding broad behavioural trends (e.g., New Mexicans respond well to “cheap home insurance policies”) alongside individual patterns (callers get frustrated when unable to find suitable policies) allows you to create a customised conversation path for each caller.

Similarly, post-call speech analysis can reveal the best routing options for various clients – insights that work well when combined with call tracking:

➥ For instance, if you know that callers from New York abandon call queues after 60 seconds and get frustrated even if connected later, you can route them to the first available agent. Conversely, callers who prefer waiting for premium service will benefit most from location-based call routing.

The more data you collect, the more you can optimise the experience for your callers. At times, it’s best to let callers use the IVR directly if queues are too long or if their requests can be efficiently automated, such as payments, availability checks, or confirmations.

2. Identifying Key Market Pain Points

Each call is unique; however, understanding how to address common pain points gives a significant edge in business.

For example, in life insurance, many clients fear the inevitability of death and the financial security of their families. Naturally, agents using call tracking and trained to address these psychological concerns are more likely to convert callers.

Uncovering such deep insights may require more than just conversation intelligence technology – consulting with marketing psychologists might be needed, but it’s essential to stand out in the increasingly competitive online marketplace.

3. Closing Marketing Gaps

Customer feedback is a proven way to improve business, and conversation intelligence helps create a positive feedback loop. Happy customers lead to higher profits, which you can reinvest in optimising your call operations.

Beyond spotting frequent questions and concerns post-call, you can collect feedback during calls after sign-ups, check-ins, or issue resolution. You can also tailor follow-ups based on the caller’s mood and sentiment during the conversation.

Did you know that 32.3% of callers feel they should never be put on hold? Conversational intelligence AI enables live agents to access data instantly, eliminating wait times for callers.

4. Leveraging Market Trends

Move where the puck is going, not where it’s been! Spotting trends early offers a massive edge, and conversational intelligence software can detect them before even the smartest marketers.

As a large retailer with thousands of products, staying alert to shifts in customer priorities is vital. Conversational intelligence AI can help detect early surges in discussions.

Moreover, you can integrate conversational intelligence insights with predictive modelling, included in Phonexa’s performance marketing suite, to forecast trends and campaign results.

This is what I mean:

 

Ultimately, the next best action in the caller’s journey should be based not only on what they say but also on how they say it. Providing the best experience at every step ensures higher conversions compared to traditional keyword tracking.

5. Building the Ideal Buyer Profile

In a constantly evolving market, you need to continuously refine your ideal buyer profile as new data arrives. Adapting strategies based on market shifts keeps you ahead of competitors and makes data-driven changes simpler.

Conversational AI vs. Conversation Intelligence

The difference between conversational AI and conversation intelligence is subtle: conversational AI covers a broader range of technologies. Still, since conversation intelligence is an AI system, it can also be considered part of the broader conversational AI category.

How to Choose a Quality Conversation Intelligence Platform

Turning callers into buyers while analysing their speech and delivering real-time insights to agents is a complex task. It requires the combination of modern conversation intelligence and call tracking software. Not all platforms offer both, so ensure that your chosen solution aligns with your business goals.

Keep these key features in mind when selecting a sales call intelligence platform:

Real-Time Speech Processing	Real-time call intelligence allows for:Next-best-action suggestions – instant recommendations during calls, such as relevant products or discountsSentiment analysis – gauging caller emotions so agents can tailor their responses in real timeImmediate data retrieval – fetching info like product availability instantly without putting callers on holdLive language translation – translating foreign languages when no native speaker is available
Speech Recognition Accuracy	Handling rare dialects, accents, and speech variations boosts analytics precision. Fewer gaps mean more dependable marketing insights with less risk of misunderstanding.
Contextual Recognition	Some phrases, such as “this is sick”, can have different meanings depending on the context. For example, a customer calls a hotel for a booking and gets a basic confirmation, missing upsell chances.With conversational AI, the system could detect nearby events and suggest special packages for attendees, maximising cross-selling opportunities.
Self-Learning and Adaptation	Effective call intelligence adapts quickly to new trends, slang, and shifts in caller language.Why it matters: if a customer reports “weird transactions” instead of the usual “unauthorised transactions”, early AI responses might miss the meaning. But as the conversation unfolds, the system learns to interpret such nuances and improves over time.
Data Privacy Compliance	Software must adhere to regional laws governing data privacy. In the U.S., these include the TCPA, HIPAA, FTC guidelines, and FCRA. For the EU clients, it’s GDPR.

Discover the All-in-One Conversational Software Suite from Phonexa

While conversation intelligence software is a powerful marketing tool on its own, it becomes even more effective when combined with a comprehensive suite of performance marketing solutions that address every business need.

That’s why at Phonexa, we’ve developed eight proprietary marketing automation tools bundled into one intuitive platform.

Here’s what awaits you in the lead acquisition Promised Land:

 

Get Phonexa’s all-in-one performance marketing software suite at a single price:

Build your plan now, or book a demo to learn more about Phonexa.

Frequently Asked Questions

What exactly is conversation intelligence software?

Conversation intelligence software combines AI technologies that convert speech to text and analyse conversations in real-time and strategically to optimise your call workflows. It helps you understand caller intent even before the call begins and provides AI-powered recommendations during the call, plus many other capabilities.

What is conversation analytics software?

Conversation analytics software can be a component of conversation intelligence or a standalone tool that analyses conversations beyond transcription. It processes large volumes of calls to identify common keywords and speech trends, as well as evaluate agent performance, all adaptable to various contexts.

What does conversation intelligence software cost?

Cloud conversation intelligence solutions start at approximately £100 per month for basic features, such as speech-to-text. Full software suites may cost more, but the return on investment far outweighs the expense.