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Managing Categories

Categories are used to group calls with similar characteristics so that SpeechMiner users can find calls that require their attention for particular reasons. The call characteristics that define a Category can be as simple as "calls in which the Topic of interest rates was found," but they can also be very complex, defining a very specific mix of characteristics. For example, a Category can be defined to group calls in which the Topic Payments was mentioned by the agent, the customer displayed signs of agitation, and the call-center supervisor was called in to deal with the customer during the last two minutes of the call.

SpeechMiner assigns calls to Categories after it has finished processing them. All the Categories in the system are global Categories that can be applied to any call. When call processing is completed for a call, SpeechMiner goes one by one through the list of Categories in the system and checks whether the call meets the conditions of the Category. If it does, the call is assigned to the Category. A single call may not belong to any Categories, but it can also belong to many Categories.

Category assignment is intended to help reviewers find calls with particular characteristics so that they can analyze them and compare them. For example, reviewers may wish to compare how different agents handled customer agitation during a particular sales campaign. It also enables SpeechMiner to perform statistical analysis on calls. For example, SpeechMiner can check the percentage of calls in September in which customers exhibited agitation.

Categories can be nested; a parent-Category can contain sub-Categories, and there can even be multi-tiered Categories, in which a Category is a sub-Category of one Category and a parent-Category to other Categories. In this case, only the lowest-level Category in the hierarchy is defined by specifying the characteristics of the calls that belong to it; the parent-Categories are defined as containers for their sub-Categories. Thus, when SpeechMiner identifies a call as belonging to a sub-Category, it automatically identifies it as belonging to the parent-Category as well. For example, a Category called Sales Campaigns could contain the sub-Categories Spring Campaign and Summer Campaign, and each of these sub-Categories could contain a number of their own sub-Categories, such as Supervisor Required, Customer Agitated, and Customer Agreement. Any call that was included in the Supervisor Required Category of the Spring Campaign would automatically also belong to the Spring Campaign Category and to the Sales Campaigns Category. Call reviewers could use any of these Categories to find calls belonging to the Supervisor Required Category of the Spring Campaign.

Another type of Category is a Manual Category. These Categories have no criteria at all; users of SpeechMiner can use them to group calls manually when they are reviewing them. For example, a manual Category could be Weekly Review, and a SpeechMiner user could use it to save a list of calls to review during routine weekly staff meetings.

See also

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