Speech analytics is the process of analysing recorded speech, such as phone calls, to gather customer information to improve communication and future customer interaction. Speech analytics as a technology has been evolving especially rapidly over the last few years. It gives the ability to structure and analyse previously lost streams of insight-rich data, such as phone conversations. Empowered with this technology, operations can gather incredibly valuable business intelligence to drive call delivery performance improvements. It’s smart in that it automatically identifies focus areas in which customer service or sales teams may need additional call training which then, in turn, improves the call’s successful outcome. Speech analytics, as a process, can isolate buzzwords and phrases used most frequently within a given time period, plus indicate usage is trending up or down. This data is highly useful to call managers to spot changes in consumer behaviour so that action can be taken to improve customer satisfaction. Zadarma is a leading global VoIP provider and offers a smart speech analytics feature as part of their incredibly easy to use telecommunications offering. The tool is free as part of the wider PBX phone system bundles, included in the free recognition minutes. Zadarma’s analytics feature allows data access to every internal or external call conversation. The benefits of speech analytics include: Improved customer service - By analysing call content of all recorded interactions with a particular customer, any company can build his or her comprehensive customer profile. This is one of the major reasons call centres & sales teams first adopt speech analytics technology. By allowing your customer services and sales teams to mine and analyse audio data they can detect emotion, tone and stress in a customer’s voice. Managers can review speech analytics reports and streamline their management processes and call effectiveness. They can quickly identify each calling customer’s needs, wants and expectations and then gauge how to best address the customer issue.  Reducing operating costs & expenses - By analysing speech, it can often reduce office operating costs. Call insights can ensure sales teams focus on high demand product areas, gaining a competitive advantage. Call centres can improve their efficiencies through the avoidance of live calls that can be handled by effective IVR or website self-service systems. The savings can be endless with faster efficient call handle times and fewer transfers. Increasing customer retention - With additional insights gained through call analytics, often sales and customer service agents can improve their rapport with prospects, through the focused conversation. Call analytics can often identify competitive situations and reasons why deals are closing more than others, building the customer relationship and often improving customer retention rates. Streamlining team productivity - Speech recognition analytics allows managers to evaluate the customer-facing team’s productivity. If more training is required this can be picked up quickly and actioned to empower teams and increase the probability of sales success. By analysing which conversations lead to more sales, sales & call centres can focus their efforts on the most productive conversations. Accelerated sales performance -  Speech analytics can accelerate your customer and sales teams general business performance. Managers can focus on the best performing and most effective call patterns to close more sales deals and develop a training program to mentor other team members. Quicker responses can often make teams increase their customer and sales performance. With more sales, comes a happier, more highly motivated team. Zadarma’s speech analytics tool comes highly recommended by customer service & sales teams globally. This smart technology helps to simplify internal processes and make it easier for managers to organise tasks.  Speech analytics is one of the fastest-growing areas of telecom technology, above all it assists in identifying and predicting customer behaviour and the factors driving it. By using analytics you can learn to improve customer loyalty and focus on distinctive areas of concern. Businesses that have adopted speech analytics as a customer service improvement process are realizing great returns that will continue to provide an impressive competitive advantage.