Speech analytics can be defined as the process of analysing recorded calls or audio to discover actionable information, using speech-to-text, natural language processing (NLP), and text mining. It is an essential technology for contact centres as they scale, making operations more efficient and improving performance. Indeed, Gartner advises customer service and support leaders who are under pressure to cut costs to partner with a speech analytics vendor.
Today, while speech analytics is technically classified as an emerging technology, there is immense potential and a strong promise of growth fuelled by advancements in AI and the cloud. This makes speech tech innovations more accessible to vendors, beyond the limits of large data science and AI leaders.
Speech Analytics Market Size
In 2020, speech analytics was valued at $1.5 billion globally. This includes turnkey speech analytics platforms, APIs/integrations, embedded speech analytics capabilities, as well as professional services. Importantly, several companies choose to implement speech analytics via managed service providers which makes up a sizable portion of the market.
By 2025, speech analytics is expected to be worth $3.8 billion globally, more than doubling within the forecast period. This means a CAGR of 20.2% – significantly higher than most other technology and software categories.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the cloud-hosted slice of the speech analytics market is expected to grow at an accelerated pace. Cloud-based speech analytics would allow companies to gain from flexible payment models and managed deployment also accessing insights into call recordings, from a location of their choice.
Types of Speech Analytics Vendors
There are several ways you could classify the speech analytics market based on key solution categories.
The first and most foundational classification trait is the speech to text technique. There is phonetics speech analytics that breaks audio down into phoneme components, and there is Large Vocabulary Continuous Speech Recognition (LVCSR) that maps audio against a predetermined lexicon.
You could also choose between on-premise and cloud-hosted vendors. And, there are pure-play speech analytics vendors like CallMiner and embedded solutions that work in conjunction with the large contact centre tech stack, such as NICE.
Leading Speech Analytics Vendors with Pricing
- CallMiner – Speech analytics and interaction analytics provider with the flagship platform, Eureka; costs approximately $1,275/month
- NICE – Offers speech analytics as part of the CXone solution, powered by the acquisitions of Uptivity; pricing starts at approximately $100 per feature (variable)
- Verint – A customer engagement and BI solutions provider offering speech analytics as part of its VOC capability; pricing based on hosting environment (speech analytics starts at $2400 for 12 twelve months)
- Clarabridge – A CX management platform provider with powerful speech analytics and audio mining tools; pricing information not available
- Invoca – Call tracking and analytics provider powered by AI, promising string security compliance and QA features; pricing starts at approximately $1000
Vendor Assessment Checklist
Before selecting a speech analytics vendor, make sure to check the accuracy rate of its speech to text component, typically calculated as word error rate (WER). Apart from this, pricing based on your average call volume, the hosting environment, user interface, and integration with your existing tech stack also makes a big difference.
