The News: Balto recently released a new update to its Real-Time Index, a tool that collects contact center trends to provide insights and analysis for eight different industries. The index formulates trends from the over 200 million guided calls that Balto manages and tracks data points such as objections to overcome and most underutilized soft skills. The Q2 2023 edition contains enhancements such as an updated data processing methodology and improved sorting. See the complete Press Release here.
Balto’s Real-Time Index: Unveiling Contact Center Trends for Enhanced Customer Experiences
Analyst Take: Balto, a provider of real-time guidance solutions for contact centers, has released a new edition of its Real-Time Index. This index was first started by Balto’s Conversation Excellence Lab in 2022. The index takes in data from Balto’s 200 million plus guided calls and turns it into actionable insights.
Developing the Real-Time Index
The Real-Time Index was inspired by the research and data gap Balto recognized both within its own content strategy and more importantly, in the industry. The lack of contact center trend exploration, and research that was based on actual incoming contact center data was an impetus behind Balto leveraging its own data set from its own calls.
Pulled together from the company’s own in-house research team, The Conversation Excellence Lab, it was the company’s core belief that the data should be open to anyone who would like to see it, free of charge. Released on a quarterly basis, the Real-Time Index pulls out relevant trends that can help those in the contact center industry identify common points of friction amongst eight different industries: B2B Tech, Collections, Health Insurance, Home Improvement, Property & Casualty Insurance, Retail, Utilities and Financial Services.
Focus on Objections and Soft Skills
Currently the Real-Time Index delves into four primary areas:
- The most common consumer objections
- The most difficult objections to overcome
- The soft skills that agents use the most
- The soft skills that agents us the least
The information can be viewed both for sales and for customer service for each of the four areas.
As an example, the quarterly update for the retail industry provides top level results such as these:
As well as much more granular data:
“We lean into objections and soft skills because that’s what’s been relevant to us and ultimately, this is an area that few people have insight into at an industry level. And we have been able to pull out the data consistently with a good level or accuracy,” says Justin Smith, Balto Senior Content Strategist.
Potential Enhancements
The Real-Time Index has evolved from its inception in 2022, particularly with the addition of more industries. Balto does want to keep focused on providing quality data over quantity so wants to make sure its sample sizes for various industries are large enough to speak to what is actually happening in that segment. New industries will be added if they can meet that criteria.
The index has decent accuracy right now (based on language models with an 83% recall and 82% precision) but the company is aiming to increase that. Balto will also be working toward more in-depth change over time trends and the ability for graph that can update in real time. The inclusion of sentiment data, additional use cases, and objections by call stage are also in the planning stages for future enhancements.
It is easy to see how this information could be helpful to both contact center managers and Balto in identifying how to best support agents as they face specific objections, offer more targeted coaching and guidance, and identify which soft skills might need some attention. From an overall industry perspective, it will be particularly interesting to see how soft skill improvements track, as well as comparative data points such as budget objections move along with the economy.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Other Insights from The Futurum Group:
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New CX Research from Deloitte Digital, UserTesting, Vonage, Alchemer, and Balto
SurveyMonkey’s State of CX Report Reveals Customer Feedback Is a Priority for CX Teams in 2023
Author Information
As a detail-oriented researcher, Sherril is expert at discovering, gathering and compiling industry and market data to create clear, actionable market and competitive intelligence. With deep experience in market analysis and segmentation she is a consummate collaborator with strong communication skills adept at supporting and forming relationships with cross-functional teams in all levels of organizations.
She brings more than 20 years of experience in technology research and marketing; prior to her current role, she was a Research Analyst at Omdia, authoring market and ecosystem reports on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and User Interface technologies. Sherril was previously Manager of Market Research at Intrado Life and Safety, providing competitive analysis and intelligence, business development support, and analyst relations.
Sherril holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from University of Colorado, Boulder and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University.
