Understanding Callers' Post-Holiday Anger

The holiday season may be one of the busiest times for some contact centers, but the aftermath is just as brutal. Post-Dec. 25 means calls from frustrated buyers who could want a refund, exchange, or to take out their pent-up holiday rage on an agent. Rather than trying to eliminate angry customers, however, companies can take steps to tame the beast.

Using speech analytics and examining call trends or key words is one method for evaluating customer interactions, but does not work well for the holiday season. Because the call center’s defined ‘holiday’ period encompasses just several weeks, contact center managers need customer interaction data quickly, in enough time to produce actionable solutions. Yoel Goldenberg, vice president of contact center and enterprise solutions at NICE Systems, says the company’s emotion detection solution gives its customers call analysis results in near-real time.

"The holiday season is not very long, but if we look at previous technologies in analyzing calls, it would take a couple of weeks to understand why customers were so excited or so upset about something," Goldenberg explains. "The solution [NICE] offers can analyze and understand the issues within a day. In an hour or two, you can understand the issues and assign actions from the other departments to improve the overall product offering."

NICE’s emotion detection capabilities come bundled with its SmartCenter package, which includes capabilities for analyzing a customer’s interactions with the call center. Managers who use customer interaction data to improve service not only learn more about their clientele, but also take precautions during a make-or-break cycle.

"The holiday period is probably the most relevant period for our customers to improve their performance, and they need tools to analyze and react quickly," Goldenberg states.