New Travel Network Group tech will analyse in-store customer interactions

New Travel Network Group tech will analyse in-store customer interactions

Consortium says technology will revolutionise how agents measure performance Continue reading

Technology that listens, records and analyses in-store interactions between agents and customers will be offered to The Travel Network Group members next year.

The consortium said the technology, originally developed for call centres, had never been used in a retail setting and would revolutionise how agents measure performance.

The move met with the approval of England Rugby World Cup winning coach Sir Clive Woodward, guest speaker at the travel agency group’s annual overseas conference in Monaco.

Sir Clive told delegates how his decision to use Prozone, which features powerful cameras to track players’ every move, was vital to his success with England.

He told delegates “whoever wins at IT tends to win” and added: “Voice analytics, amazing. I would love to see it.”

Sir Clive admitted England rugby players had not at first been enthusiastic about Prozone cameras being installed at Twickenham Stadium because it meant there was no hiding place.

But he said they came to appreciate the data and insight it offered both on their performance and the opposition’s.

Group chief executive Gary Lewis said the technology, which was not named, was not about spying on staff but about measuring agent performance by analysing conversations with clients.

“It’s about how you make your customers feel,” he said.

“It’s an emotion, it’s sentiment, positive or negative. To measure that in a conversation becomes really interesting.”
The technology will take voice recordings via microphones placed in agencies and turn that into text which is then analysed.

Lewis said permissions would have to be sought from staff and customers, but he believed agents would embrace the technology to help them improve performance.

The technology has been trialled with a call centre and two shops.

An implementation and analytics team will be established and pricing set ahead of a planned introduction of the technology in the first quarter of 2018.