Speech analytics is one of the most over-sold and under-delivered categories in CX. The technology genuinely works — 100% interaction coverage, automated scoring, sentiment overlays. The deployments that fail do so because the output never enters an operational workflow.
Where we see real payback, three things are true. The analytics feed directly into the QA queue, replacing manual sampling. Insights are surfaced at supervisor and team-leader level, not just to a central analytics function. And there is one named owner accountable for closing the loop on findings.
Where it gets shelved, none of those three things are true. The dashboard exists, nobody opens it, the licence renewal is questioned, the project is killed. The platform is not the variable. The operating model around it is.