Part 3/3: How Can AI-driven Conversation Analytics Help with Customer Experience?

Why Are Call Centres Still Broken?

Despite living in an age of cutting-edge technology and AI, call centres remain frustratingly inefficient. As customers, we feel it every time we're stuck in endless queues, repeating our concerns to indifferent agents.

But why haven’t they improved?

It’s not a technology problem—it’s an incentive problem.

Many call centre providers are paid by interaction or minute, so they profit from higher volumes, not better solutions. The more time you spend on the line, the better it is for them. If they charge per seat, they’re incentivised to push for more seats—not better service.

This is why we’re stuck in a world of suboptimal customer experiences. AI and innovation won’t fix call centres until we fix what drives them: the incentives.

So, how do we change the game?

By flipping the incentives to prioritise outcomes over outputs. And the first step is understanding the current state of your customer experience.

How Do You Know if Your Customers Are Suffering?

You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Surveys alone aren’t enough—they miss the silent majority who don’t respond. That’s where conversation analytics comes in.

AI-powered conversation analytics provides an objective, real-time way to gauge customer satisfaction. It analyses customer interactions to uncover emotions, behaviours, and key events. Paired with simple metrics like waiting and hold times, it gives you a 360-degree view of your operations.

With tools like this, you can shift from reactive to proactive to elevated, transforming operations in seconds and creating a better world of customer service—one that’s finally optimised for the right outcomes.

New KPIs with Conversation Analytics

With Sentient Machines Analytics+, you can unlock the full potential of conversation analytics to redefine customer experience. By introducing new, actionable KPIs, you gain real-time insights that drive customer happiness and operational excellence.

Here are just a few KPIs that could transform your operations:

• KPI 1: Change of Customer Sentiment Imagine tracking sentiment shifts during calls. If a customer starts angry, but leaves happy, it’s a clear win for your agent, and customer. Conversely, calls ending on a negative note can be flagged for immediate action to prevent churn or complaints.
• KPI 2: Customer Experience Index A unique metric from Sentient Machines , this index predicts customer satisfaction based on interaction quality. A high score signals success; a low one points to areas needing improvement.
• KPI 3: Behaviours to Stimulate Sentient Machines can extract key agent behaviours, like reassuring or empathetic responses, which correlate with high customer satisfaction. Managers can encourage and train agents to replicate these actions across the board.
• KPI 4: Behaviours to Eliminate Identifying unproductive behaviours, such as uncertainty or lack of confidence, allows for targeted coaching. Shifting to assertive, solution-focused interactions ensures customers feel their problems are truly resolved.
• KPI 5: Root Causes Driving Negative Sentiment The platform reveals the root causes of customer frustration, whether it’s a bug, a flawed product launch, or other operational challenges. Addressing these issues in real time shows customers they are valued, driving loyalty and satisfaction.

By using AI-driven conversation analytics, you can stop simply measuring interactions and start driving outcomes. The result? A customer service operation optimised for happiness, loyalty, and long-term success.

The Power of Incentives and Human-Machine Collaboration

It’s about turning every interaction into an opportunity for improvement.

So, next time your phone rings, think of it as a chance to learn something new—and make it better than the last.

And here’s where the power of incentives comes full circle.

When you use conversation analytics, you’re not just improving interactions—you’re realigning your incentives. Instead of rewarding more calls, longer calls, or more seats, you’re focusing on outcomes that matter: happier customers, faster resolutions, and long-term loyalty. It allows you to incentivise for more efficient conversations that lead to happy customers and agents.

This isn’t just a step forward for customer service; it’s a fundamental shift in how call centres operate. By fixing the incentives, you fix the system—one conversation at a time.

But this transformation is not about AI replacing humans—it’s about AI and humans working together. AI brings unmatched speed, objectivity, and analytical depth, while humans provide empathy, intuition, and creativity. Together, they create a system far stronger than either could achieve independently.

AI can analyse emotions and behaviours, but it’s human agents who act on those insights to build trust and connections. It’s the blend of technological precision and human warmth that truly redefines the customer experience.

By combining forces, we don’t just solve problems faster—we create experiences that leave lasting impressions, turning every interaction into a step toward a better future.