How to use AI to analyze phone calls and unlock insights

You’re all too familiar with the ‘old way’ of analyzing calls — spending hours combing through call recordings or listening in on calls to check for quality and gather customer feedback. Now, you’re excited about the ‘new way’ with AI: automating call reviews and generating instant transcripts, making it quick and efficient to get insights on the go. 

You’re not the only one excited about AI phone tools. Around 80% of customer service and support organizations were predicted to use AI to improve customer experiences this year. And considering the cost may drop 10x every year, it’s more accessible to small businesses than you’d think.

If you’re looking to modernize your business and stay ahead of the competition, this article outlines five key steps for using AI to analyze phone calls. And if you’re still on the fence or need to get buy-in from your team, we’ll highlight several important reasons why AI call analysis is crucial for growing brands.

Step-by-step guide to analyze phone calls with AI

Ready to level the playing field with larger companies?

Here’s the step-by-step process to turn phone conversations into valuable customer insights.

Step 1: Get a phone system that supports AI call analysis 

While you could use standalone call recording AI tools like Otter or Rev AI, this will add extra work to your already full plate. You’d need to upload call recordings into the app, which becomes less scalable as your business’s call volume grows.

What about automating the upload with tools like Zapier? While this could save some time, it would require adding yet another app to your expanding tech stack. Plus, if something goes wrong, manual troubleshooting could eat up your time.

A more efficient approach is to invest in a VoIP phone system like OpenPhone, which automatically records calls, organizes them in a conversation inbox, and analyzes voice call sentiment with AI. No need to switch between multiple tools or configure APIs — just press record (or set it to auto-record), and you’re good to go.

Which brings us to the next point:

Step 2: Switch on call recordings and transcriptions

There are two ways to record phone calls for your business: on-demand and automatically.

On-demand call recording is what it sounds like: tapping a button on your phone, computer, or tablet to capture specific parts of a call. Automatic call recording removes the manual effort, automatically recording entire phone calls from pickup to hang-up.

Automatic call recording is ideal — you don’t have to worry about remembering to press record. If you’re using a VoIP system like OpenPhone, you can turn on auto-record on the Business or Scale plans.

The next step is enabling AI-powered call summaries and transcripts, which provide searchable records for future reference. In OpenPhone, our AI model transcribes the audio, extracts valuable insights, and creates a summary of action items to help you prioritize next steps.

No more lost details or manual note-taking — you can fully focus on each conversation with automatic recording and transcripts..

💡Related: How to legally record phone calls

Step 3: Organize conversations with smart call tagging 

Using OpenPhone, you can use AI communication tools like call tags to automatically categorize calls based on predefined criteria for customer sentiment, keywords, or business topics. This makes it easy to prioritize specific calls or get actionable insights that create a better experience for your customers.

For example, you could add AI tags like:

• Dissatisfied customer: Call tags use customer sentiment analysis technology to flag negative conversations whenever callers voice frustration or complain.
• Billing issue: You can tag calls mentioning payments, invoices, or other account charges so you can identify unresolved problems or escalate issues if necessary.
• Escalation needed: Speaking of escalations, you could add tags for calls that mention requests to speak with a manager or supervisor (or if the rep refers a customer to another team or department).

If you also have OpenPhone’s AI agent, Sona handling calls that would otherwise go to voicemail, you can also use call tags to analyze any trends. That way, you can iterate on training Sona.

Step 4: Take meaningful action based on insights 

Once you’ve set up AI call tags in OpenPhone (available on the Scale plan), you can quickly filter and find important calls using call views. This dashboard lets you filter calls by tag, teammate, or date, helping you identify objections, feature requests, and call drivers at a glance.

Let’s say you see surges in tags for billing issues. That could mean your checkout process needs clarification. Spotting frequent customer frustration tags? You may need to refine support scripts or your FAQs.

You can also use call data to keep an eye on performance. By opening call views and filtering by rep, you can review their most common call tags and summary items to find coachable customer service moments or celebrate wins.

Step 5: Automate follow-ups and optimize workflows

Apart from simply analyzing calls, you can use AI tools to make after-call work easier.

For example, you can:

• Use integrations to auto-log transcripts and call details in your CRM. This is a great way to help sales and support teams stay aligned and create a single source of truth for everyone to reference.
• Create AI-generated follow-up messages. You can use our text message response generator when sending a resource, scheduling a callback, or offering a special deal..
• Delegate next steps by tagging coworkers in recordings or transcripts. That way, everyone on your team knows who’s following up on what, so you don’t accidentally double up on tasks.

Why analyze phone calls using AI? 

Still not convinced AI call analysis is worth it?

Here are a few more ways it benefits small businesses:

Save hours of manual work

No need to manually review call recordings or take notes. With conversation intelligence tools, you can instantly convert conversations into text and get a detailed summary of action items for after-call work or follow-up emails.

The bottom line? You’ll spend more time engaging with customers and coworkers and less time doing busy work or switching between multiple tabs.

Identify customer needs faster

Rather than guessing what your customers need, you can use sentiment analysis tools to find and address their issues. This will help customers feel heard and engaged and can reduce churn risks.

OpenPhone’s AI tools help you spot trends and patterns in real time, like common customer complaints or team performance issues (think excessive call time or excessive call transferring). Then, you can brainstorm solutions to solve these problems, whether that’s creating additional resources or offering 1:1 training to your team. 

💡Related: Customer service quality assurance: Why your business needs it

Improve team collaboration

The best AI call analysis platforms offer ways to get more work done as a team. With OpenPhone, you can create shared phone numbers with team inboxes so everyone on your team can review past customer interactions — whether or not they were on the call.

You can use OpenPhone to collaborate beyond phone calls. For example, you can set up text message templates (we call them snippets) so your team can respond quickly and consistently. You can also use tools like auto-replies and scheduled messages to set expectations while you’re away from your desk.

Related: Want to create better customer experiences? Learn the best strategies for customer interaction management.

Make data-backed decisions to improve the customer experience

AI analysis tools help you build stronger customer relationships by quickly addressing issues and improving their phone experience. This can be as easy as looking for trends in call tags — such as an uptick in troubleshooting requests — so you can add resources to your customer support process.

This also applies to sales. Let’s say your leads have recurring objections that need extra finesse. Identifying them will help you refine call scripts for your sales team and monitor how results change over time. Done right, this should improve your sales performance and lead to better conversion rates.

Unlock AI call analysis with OpenPhone

AI call analysis once seemed like a sci-fi gimmick rather than a business essential. Even when it became a reality, many believed it would be too expensive for small businesses. 

But as you’ve seen, AI call analysis is here to stay — and with a VoIP platform like OpenPhone, it starts at just $35 per user per month.

OpenPhone provides everything you need to analyze customer conversations more efficiently, from automatic call recording and transcripts to third-party integrations to push insights to your CRM, Slack channel, and more. 

All that’s left is to take us for a spin.

Test OpenPhone’s AI tools with your team by signing up for a seven-day free trial.

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