AI Call Analysis Explained: Benefits, Tools, and More

Introduction

AI call analysis is transforming the way businesses understand customer interactions. By analyzing tone, keywords, and conversation patterns, it helps teams uncover customer sentiment, sales opportunities, and areas for service improvement.

It provides actionable insights that enable smarter decision-making, better agent performance, and stronger customer relationships.

In this article, we'll look at the top AI call intelligence tools you should consider for call analysis, how to choose the right one, and the best practices when analyzing calls using AI.

We'll also highlight the best communication platform that unifies automated calls, chat, and SMS using omnichannel AI agents.

What is AI Call Analysis and How Does It Work?

AI call analysis is the process of using artificial intelligence to automatically evaluate customer and sales calls to extract actionable insights from the conversations.

In a call center, agent-customer call interactions are processed using machine learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) through call intelligence software.

The aim is to understand speech patterns and customer sentiment, identify key topics, and flag compliance issues.

You'll also want to uncover areas for improvement across agent performance, customer service, and related operations such as sales and marketing.

Here's a quick overview of how AI call analysis works:

1. Speech-to-Text Transcription: AI call center software can convert a call's audio to a written transcript for text-based analysis.
2. Natural Language Processing: NLP analyzes the transcribed text to understand the intent, meaning, and context of the conversation.
3. Sentiment Analysis: The AI evaluates the emotions of the speakers in a call to gauge the overall tone of the interaction. For example, it can consider emotions that indicate churn risk, such as confusion, anger, and frustration.
4. Keyword and Topic Identification: AI systems can identify critical words and themes that customers use frequently, which can reveal trends, popular preferences, or common customer- and product-related issues.
5. Topic Modeling: Advanced AI systems can group similar conversations to uncover underlying patterns and trends across multiple calls.
6. Actionable Insights and Reporting: Call center call analysis AI systems provide structured outputs that show a conversation’s main points, patterns, and emotional context.

But how does this benefit call centers?

Benefits of AI Call Analysis

Here, let's explore the various critical benefits it delivers for call centers:

• Improved Agent Performance: Through actionable insights, call center operations leaders can provide real-time or instant agent development. You can coach them on areas like compliance and communication skills, depending on the shortcomings of each agent.
• Improved Customer Experience: Enhanced agent performance and a deeper understanding of customer pain points lead to better customer service and experience.
• Enhanced Sale Performance: AI can analyze voice calls and identify trends in successful sales calls and areas where your agents can improve their approach.
• Automated Compliance Monitoring: Call intelligence software can automatically identify and flag potential compliance issues or violations during calls, reducing risk. Compliance and security solutions are handy in sensitive organizations that require SOC 2 Type 2, TCPA, HIPAA, and strict adherence to evolving AI disclosure laws. These typically include healthcare, insurance, real estate, startups, and financial services industries.
• Consistent and Objective Evaluation: Unlike human call analysis, AI provides consistent and unbiased call assessments, which eliminates errors and discrepancies.
• Deeper Insights: Call center intelligence software can identify hidden patterns and trends from large amounts of data that are often missed by manual reviews.

Essential Features to Look for in AI Call Analysis Software

Depending on the vendor, you can expect the following features in AI call intelligence tools:

• Omnichannel Communication: Most AI-powered call center intelligence platforms support multi-channel communications across voice, SMS, and chat, meaning you don't have to rely on voice calls only.
• Consolidation and Integration: With the right software, you can integrate various tools, which eliminates the need to manage multiple disconnected tools.
• Call Analysis Functionalities: Your preferred software should support call analysis capabilities such as speech analytics (speech-to-text), call summaries, sentiment analysis, and AI insights.
• Agent Performance and Support Functionalities: Real-time agent coaching, AI agent assistance, and automated agent coaching are critical features to ensure agent productivity.

Top 5 AI Call Analysis Tools Reviewed

While your call center needs a call analysis tool for insights, the calls have to happen first. It's even better if you have a platform that initiates conversations with customers through AI SMS, voice calls, and chat to boost conversions.

• As an enterprise-level AI-based communications platform, Plura automates prospect and customer conversations across calls, texts, and chats.
• Our platform deploys intelligent, brand-customized AI agents that can handle texts, chats, and calls with human-like responsiveness.
• You can scale to millions of concurrent call interactions with adaptable human-like agents that learn, adjust, and evolve as each conversation unfolds.‍
• Unify your calls, SMS, and chat today to future-proof millions of conversations through omnichannel AI agents.

Then, if you wish to extract insights from all your calls, here are some of the best tools to consider:

1. Insight7

Insight7 is an AI call analytics platform that simplifies and expedites the evaluation of customer voice conversations by capturing, analyzing, and acting on insights from your calls at scale.

Like most other similar platforms, the software evaluates call performance, identifies sales and improvement opportunities, transcribes calls at scale, and unlocks actionable insights from calls.

Pricing ranges from $16 per month for the Starter package for individuals exploring call insights to $250 per month for the Business package for those seeking extensive call analysis.

For the Enterprise level, which allows you to analyze calls at scale, you need to contact the team for a custom quote.

2. TalkDesk

TalkDesk is an AI-powered real-time customer insights platform that tracks live calls, monitors agent performance, and boosts customer satisfaction.

The platform surfaces AI-driven insights and analytics that help call center leaders discover and understand customer pain points to enhance their customer service.

TalkDesk costs range from $85 to $165 per user per month, depending on the package.

3. RingCentral

As an AI-based call insights platform, RingCentral improves customer service automation through conversational voice analytics.

RingCentral features real-time agent assistance, automated call routing, AI-powered transcription, AI-driven sentiment analysis, and even workforce management.

RingCentral pricing starts at $65 per agent per month for contact centers seeking AI capabilities such as agent assistance, supervisor assistance, and automated call summaries.

4. Dialpad

Dialpad is also an AI-driven conversation intelligence tool that prioritizes real-time sentiment analysis, call transcription, and agent coaching.

Dialpad leverages automated call summaries, live agent training recommendations, and voice intelligence for reviewing calls as they happen.

Dialpad pricing is $15 per user per month for the Standard plan, $25 per user per month for the Pro plan, and a customized quote for the Enterprise plan.

5. CallRail

CallRail features an AI-powered call analytics tool that analyzes call data to surface valuable insights and highlight critical calls that require further attention.

CallRail lets you monitor calls for regulatory compliance, tag calls with keywords, and minimize the average time per call.

The pricing for CallRail’s call tracking and conversation intelligence plan starts at $90 per month. The highest plan features call tracking, form tracking, and premium conversation intelligence and starts at $175 per month.

How to Choose the Right AI Call Analysis Tool for Your Business

Given all the AI-based call analysis tools available on the market, how do you pick the best for your business, especially when they have largely similar features?

Here are some aspects to consider in the selection process:

• Define Clear Use Cases: Pinpoint the specific problems you want to solve or the outcomes you are targeting. For example, you might want to improve agent performance, monitor compliance, or optimize customer experience. Setting clear use cases narrows down your focus and helps you match software to your top priorities.
• Involve Key Stakeholders Early: Work with sales, customer service, compliance, and IT teams to understand their concerns and needs. Consult as much as possible to ensure collaborative decision-making, better buy-in, and smoother implementation.
• Compare Tools Beyond the Features: After reviewing each top tool's core capabilities, assess how it performs in real scenarios through free trials or customized demos. Consider how well each platform aligns with your daily workflows.
• Run a Trial Phase: Before you commit to a specific tool, test the ones you've shortlisted in a controlled setup with a few real call center agents. Measure the actual outcomes against your desired goals, collect feedback, and monitor adoption rates to evaluate effectiveness and fit.
• Look at Long-Term Fit: Go beyond initial requirements to evaluate scalability, vendor roadmap, and the potential for future integrations. A tool that grows with your call center can reduce the need for a costly switch later.

Best Practices for Implementing AI Call Analysis

To get the most value from your voice call analysis investment, thoughtful implementation is key.

You need to apply various best practices for a smooth rollout and strong adoption:

• Workflow Alignment from Day One: Integrate the AI call analytics solution into your existing call center processes as early as possible to minimize disruption and encourage daily use by agents and supervisors.
• Train Teams on Both the Tool and its Purpose: Offer hands-on training to your supervisors and agents, including how the tool will benefit everyone on the team. Proper training helps build trust and drive better adoption.
• Start Small and Keep Scaling: Begin the rollout with a pilot program or a small team of agents to test effectiveness, collect feedback, and refine your processes before a full-scale rollout.
• Drive Action with Insights Rather than Just Reports: Turn analysis into measurable improvements across various KPIs by connecting insights to coaching agent coaching, quality assurance changes, or operational efficiency.

Common Challenges and How to Avoid Them

While choosing the right tool and applying best practices offer powerful benefits, the success of AI call analysis depends on avoiding common pitfalls.

You'll want to watch out for problems such as:

• Misalignment Between AI Capabilities and Business Needs: Avoid investing in features you won't use. From the start, define clear goals before selecting a platform. You should also involve end users in the decision-making process.
• Poor Data Quality: Inaccurate call transcriptions or summaries and missing call data can ruin analysis. Ensure you have clean, high-quality audio and standardized call practices, such as uniform scripts across all agents.
• Poor Agent Buy-In: Your agents may resist AI tools if they think of them as surveillance. Talk to them in advance about the tool's benefits, and involve them in planning the rollout and collecting feedback.

Insights Without Follow-Through: Even the best analytics are useless without action. Assign ownership of the tool to ensure its insights lead to specific success indicators, process changes, or agent training.

Conclusion

Adopting AI call analysis in your call center can be a major step toward achieving operational efficiency and a better customer experience.

You can analyze calls to uncover customer sentiment, compliance, agent performance insights, and areas for improvement.

While AI call analysis tools come in handy, an AI-powered communication tool that goes beyond calls is crucial to providing enough data for analysis.

With Plura, businesses can simplify multi-channel communication with their customers across calls, chat, and SMS.

You can use our tool to automate and handle millions of conversations concurrently with brand-aligned AI agents, unifying all communication under one platform.

Get started with Plura today to transform how you connect, automate, and scale customer conversations.

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