Deloitte acquires speech analytics provider KnowledgeSpace

Deloitte has acquired Melbourne company KnowledgeSpace to boost its services in the conduct and compliance space. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Founded by Mia Lander in 2003, KnowledgeSpace has created speech analytics software to analyse the work of call centres and provide insights that can be turned into actionable tasks. The software can identify patterns of repeated customer concerns and complaints across areas such as conduct, compliance, customer sentiment, and loyalty.

For Deloitte, the acquisition comes as more customers seek out its conduct offering in the wake of the banking royal commission.

Jamie Gatt, Deloitte’s managing partner assurance and advisory, said the firm is “delighted” Lander chose to join Deloitte.

“[KnowledgeSpace] are already working with some of our major clients and what we can do now is bring Deloitte’s expertise to provide solutions to the identified problems,” Gatt said.

“Whether it is the financial services sector, energy or transport and manufacturing there is ongoing scrutiny on compliance, on the requirements around privacy, and on improved outcomes for customers. KnowledgeSpace is providing real-time data on where issues are developing.”

Lander, who will be joining Deloitte as a partner, added, “Joining Deloitte allows us to scale-up our offering in the market. Having access to Deloitte’s pool of resources, expertise and talent, not only benefits our clients, but also our team’s ability to get bigger and better.”

KnowledgeSpace is one of a growing number of companies offering call analysis services.

Sydney-based startup Daisee, which was this week accepted into the first cohort of Microsoft’s Sydney ScaleUp Program, is working on Deakin University’s artificial intelligence platform Maestro to develop and deploy custom AI solutions for clients, will call centres a key market.

Cofounder Richard Kimber told Startup Daily earlier this year, “The business problem there is that, historically, call centers have all been about efficiency by keeping the cost down. What you really want to do is measure the content and quality, but there are no content and quality measures; the current methodology is very archaic in the sense that it’s sampling on two percent of calls, and there’s not really much insight being driven out of it.

“We can help you listen to every single call. You can look at all the topics, and you can understand if the call was resolved. There is a huge variety of insight that you can get.”

Fellow startup Dubber, meanwhile, has created ‘Zoe’, a collection of call recording intelligence modules that can also provide insight into calls.

A key offering from Zoe is ‘Sentiment’, providing sentiment analysis; Sentiment will identify a speaker’s emotions on a recording, analysing their tone of voice, stress levels, speed of speech, and specific phrases to determine a caller’s sentiment.  

Image: Mel Lander.