Among the myriad of challenges that call centers face, garnering raw data about their customers and operations is not one of them. They can access mountains of call statistics from phone switches. They can, using CRM software, generate reports ad infinitum detailing what purchases customers make and customers' opinions about your service. Call monitoring tools can fill volumes with figures on agent talk time, hold time, post-call wrap-up time, etc.
The challenge for call center managers, rather, is to aggregate data in real-time from these and other sources - your ACD, workforce management software, e-mail and Web servers - to make timely and informed decisions that advance call center objectives.
Example: Analytics tools can help agents recognize a cross-selling opportunity by noticing that a high number of customers who purchase PCs over the phone later purchase memory expansion modules on-line. Your company's sales department can view the same data and instruct the phone agents to offer PC buyers a special promotion on memory expansion modules - thereby boosting revenue on the original sale.
Analytics can also help you troubleshoot customer problems. If agents receive frequent calls about a defective product, employees from various departments can view the rising call volumes from upset customers and react accordingly.
Donna Fluss, principal for DMG Consulting, says analytics opens up key customer service data to sales, marketing and other departments within your organization.
"Sales and marketing departments don't take agents' comments very seriously," she says. "But if there's a process that automates the collection of that data, analyzes that data, expresses the data's relevance and allows the organization to take action, the input from the call center will be taken more seriously."
Vendors featured in this article offer "real-time analytics," tools that allow you to share the timeliest data with agents and other employees. But the term requires clarification.
Fluss and others note that it's hard to capture, analyze and prepare the data so that your organization can take action on the fly. The majority of real-time analytics software delivers data about customers' actions within five minutes of their occurrence. All of the vendors we interviewed say their products can update data within five to 15 minutes.
That's still a sufficient amount of time for agents to receive important information, such as the likelihood that a customer might purchase a given product or cease doing business with you.
"You've got to deliver analytics to agents while the customer's on the phone," says Mike Schroeck, global iAnalytics leader for IBM Business Consulting Services. "To that extent, [analytics software] turns call centers into arms of marketing departments by enabling agents to ask the right questions to customers."
As useful as analytics can be to secure both sales and customer loyalty, the software can also help improve call center efficiency. By capturing data about agents' job performance, like how quickly and successfully they resolve each call, you can determine what aspects of customer service to enhance.
This article will focus on analytics tools that collect data from multiple sources, like phone switches, e-mail and Web servers, CRM software and databases containing customer information.
Given space constraints, we cannot describe every analytics product that generates reports containing information about agent performance or customer service trends. Many of these products have, and will continue to be, covered in separate product features (e.g., the analytics modules of call monitoring and CRM software vendors, which we described, respectively, in our October and December 2002 issues). This article will address "real-time" analytics tools from vendors that are comparatively new to our pages or otherwise do not lend themselves to other feature topics.
In addition to detailing product functionality, the vendors we interviewed detail how best to use analytics to anticipate customers' needs, increase sales and sharpen agents' customer service skills. Here are their insights and opinions.
An Assortment Of Analytics Angles
Bob Kelly, president and CEO of CenterForce Technologies (Bethesda, MD), explains why most call centers can benefit from integrating data with analytics software.
"If you're [managing] a simple center that handles inbound voice calls and the only thing you might need to know is how agents spend their time on the phone, you can get that from phone system reports," says Kelly. "But if I want to find out anything more complex, like the relationship between how agents use CRM or collections software and the number of sales dollars they earn per hour, I need analytics software."
Kelly adds that you don't need to manage a complex call center to gain a substantial ROI with analytics. If your center handles only inbound customer service calls, you can use the tools to determine the relationship between agents' call handling times and customers' satisfaction with the resolution of each call. You might find that shorter call lengths don't make for happier customers. Viewing agents' average handle time statistics from your phone switch can't help you to make such a distinction.
Analytics' effectiveness, say observers, hinges in part on figuring out what devices or sources to collect data from, and what data to collect.
"Seventy percent of the work is getting the data," says Michael Smith, group director of marketing for Informatica (Redwood City, CA). "The remaining 30% is defining what metrics you want to use."
Smith places analytics into three categories. The first is call statistics that you can find from a phone switch, like average speed of answer and call volumes. Category two comprises the quality of customer service, like how many customer service cases were opened or closed. The final category, focusing on agent performance, might detail who helped the most customers or attained the highest customer satisfaction ratings. Combining metrics from each category lets you determine agents' strengths and weaknesses.
But don't err by viewing agents' performance metrics only on an individual basis.
"The way to determine if an agent isn't performing up to standard is seeing what they've done relative to the objectives you've set and compared to other agents," says David Spindel, technology analyst for consulting firm Datamonitor (New York, NY).
He adds that analytics can help you assess how well agents perform relative to predefined objectives. If you set an hourly sales goal and note that agents consistently don't confirm as many sales as you expected, you might need to reassess that goal. If you find that the majority of agents exceed your goal, you can contemplate raising the bar.
Comparing agents' personal metrics can also help you identify and reward star performers, as well as agents who need additional training.
