Search and concordance across thousands of conversations

When something goes wrong — a product recall, a billing error, a competitor's new offer — the first question is usually "what are customers saying about it?" Answering that by listening to calls is hopeless: a mid-sized contact centre handles thousands a week, and you would sample a fraction at best.

Search changes the equation. Once every conversation is transcribed and searchable, you can find every mention of an issue across calls, chats and emails in seconds, then jump straight to the moment it was said. This guide covers how to search conversation data well.

Full-text search across every channel

The foundation is simple: type a word or phrase and see every conversation that contains it, regardless of channel. Because calls have been transcribed to text, they sit alongside chats and emails, so one search covers the lot.

The results tell you two things at once — how many conversations mention the term, and which ones — so you can move from a headline count to the individual interactions behind it.

Go beyond keywords with semantic search

Customers rarely use the exact words you would. Someone unhappy about a fee might say "charge", "cost", "extra money" or "rip-off". Keyword search alone misses most of them.

Semantic search expands your query to related phrasings, so you find the whole topic rather than a single wording. This matters most when you are sizing a problem: a keyword-only search will undercount, and an undercounted problem gets under-prioritised.

Narrow the field with filters

Search and filters work together. Once you have a result set, narrow it to the segment you care about:

Channel — calls, chat or email
Language — for multilingual operations
Date range — this week versus last quarter
Topic or classification — combine a free-text search with an automatic label
Team or agent — to see how a specific group handled an issue

Layering filters turns a broad search into a precise question: "German-language chats about cancellations, this month, handled by the retention team."

Concordance: seeing a word in context

A count tells you a term is frequent; it doesn't tell you what customers mean. The concordance view lists each occurrence of a search term with the words around it, lined up so you can scan the context quickly.

That distinction is the point. "Cancel" might appear in "I want to cancel", but also in "please don't cancel my appointment" — opposite intents, same word. Concordance lets you read intent at a glance and refine your search before you draw a conclusion.

Quick views: from a result to the source

Finding a conversation is only useful if you can read it. Quick views open the source interaction without leaving your results:

Call quick view — the transcript with the audio player, so you can jump to the exact second a phrase was spoken.
Chat and email quick view — the full thread as the customer and agent saw it.

Because the transcript is time-aligned to the recording, you can click a line and hear it — invaluable for quality reviews, dispute resolution and coaching, where the exact wording and tone matter.

A repeatable search workflow

Search broadly for the topic, using semantic search to catch variations.
Filter down to the channel, language, period and team that matter.
Read the concordance to confirm you are capturing the right intent.
Open quick views on representative conversations to see the detail.
Act — feed the finding into a chart, a Story, or a decision.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between keyword and semantic search?

Keyword search matches the exact words you type. Semantic search also finds related phrasings, so you capture the whole topic even when customers describe it differently.

What does the concordance view show?

Each occurrence of your search term surrounded by the words around it, so you can read how the term is actually used and judge intent, not just frequency.

Can I jump to where a phrase was said in a call?

Yes. The transcript is time-aligned to the audio, so selecting a line in the call quick view plays that exact moment of the recording.

Can I search calls, chats and emails at the same time?

Yes. Transcribed calls become text alongside chats and emails, so a single search covers every channel, and filters let you isolate one when you need to.

Where to go next

The pillar guide: What is conversation analytics?
Turn results into charts: Visualising conversation data
The engine behind search: Multilingual speech-to-text
See it on your data: Request a demo

Want to search every customer conversation you have, not a sample? Book a demo and we will run a live search on your own data.