Informed business decisions in the contact centre

The contact centre has become a key success factor when implementing business analytics strategies, as it provides insight and valuable knowledge around the one aspect that keeps the contact centre evolving - customer behaviour.

To effectively capture the behavioural statistics that help shape contact centres of the future, businesses must understand what statistics to look for, which are critical contact centre-specific metrics and where these metrics can be found.

This is according to Ebrahim Dinat, sales and marketing director at Ocular Technologies, who says that, in order to make informed decisions, managers need access to relevant data that will help them understand current issues and make the most appropriate decisions in each instance.

"In reality, often what managers find is raw or operational data both of which are meaningless in an analytical context," he says. "This is an unacceptable situation and contact centre managers are now faced with having to adopt more aggressive and proactive approaches to exploring the data that is inherently available in the contact centre."

Dinat says the silent battle going on in all contact centres sees, on the one hand, enormous pressure to cut costs and keep a lean, aggressive and competitive operation and, on the other, a crucial need to deliver an outstanding customer experience.

"While these two objectives are not incompatible, getting the right balance can be challenging," he says. "To really move from a cost to a profit centre, contact centres must be able to measure and provide insight and knowledge nuggets that are actionable so as to generate more revenue, improve customer service and drive costs down."

He goes on to say that an effective contact centre business analytics strategy must take the several building blocks into consideration.

. Input data - Users must be able to capture and integrate data from all available interaction channels

. Operational usage - Managers must provide agents and business analysts with the right tools to better serve customers

. Central repository - Managers must ensure that all data generated by the contact centre is centralised at a common repository to facilitate a holistic view of its customers

. Configuration - Deploy a system that enables fine tuning and adjustments in real-time to guarantee the success of any given campaign.

. Business applications - The contact centre must be highly integrated within the corporate applications layer

In order to develop and implement a powerful and effective contact centre business analytics strategy, Ocular has highlighted a few guidelines that have proven to be key to success in these endeavours. These include mapping of customer interactions; assuring data consistency through the interaction cycle; integrating data from all relevant applications; and standardising and documenting collected data, to name but a few.

"These guidelines will assist contact centre managers by unleashing the potential inherent to contact centre analytics and the value these can add to the business," says Dinat. "There are several solutions available today that can support organisations in making the most out of contact centre data, adding analytics intelligence to decision making processes and allowing users to make informed decisions in real time."