Go BackHow do I make sense of all the management information that my contact centre systems generate?
When formal customer contact centres were first being set-up in the 80s and 90s, managers often suffered from a lack of timely and relevant management information upon which to base their business decisions. In many cases, today, they have too much information.
That's because all the various point solutions that can be found in modern contact centres: ACDs, IVRs, call recording and quality systems, workforce management systems, performance management systems and more, are all capable of spewing out tons of stats and reams of paper reports.
If you're looking to resolve a specific quality or performance issue that can be a major problem. Not because the answer to your problem isn't there but because finding it within a mountain of management information can be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
The answer, Aspect Software believes, lies in effective technology integration, and in using appropriate technology tools to analyse and extract the information you require - when it's most useful to you, and in the form it's most useful to you.
Too much data?
Each customer contact generates a wealth of call data (what numbers were called, talk times, call recordings, abandoned calls etc.) as well as customer data (updated client account details, product orders etc.). Operations also generate a wealth of data and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) around 'shrinkage', agent schedule adherence, customer satisfaction, agent performance and more.
It's all truly valuable data. None of it needs to be discarded.
What managers need are the right processes and technologies in place to analyse and evaluate that data - and then intelligently use the information gleaned to train agents, tweak business processes and set the right strategies.
Holistic integration and analysis
Key to achieving this is the tight integration of contact centre systems. If your many technology systems (quality management systems, workforce management systems, ACDs, diallers, performance management systems etc.) exist as islands of automation, then integrating the data these systems produce in a meaningful way, in real or near real time, could be extremely painstaking and expensive. Perhaps even impossible. Conversely, in a tightly-integrated contact centre environment, information from different systems can be much more readily combined and synchronised to produce tailored reports.
Additionally, what's key is the ability of your analytical software to draw 'meaningful' conclusions from the wealth of data presented, and it's here that the latest generation of performance management software can make all the difference.
Products such as Aspect Performance ManagementT will take the data from multiple systems and provide key performance indicators (KPIs) and a structured process environment for providing on-demand, personalised views of KPIs versus goals, as well as initiating 'actions' for improvement through automatic alerts and workflows.
This will help create a performance-based culture in which each level of your organisation gains access to the information it needs to align contact centre performance with corporate objectives and identify the root cause of issues hindering agent performance. Managers and supervisors, for example, will find it easier to:
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pinpoint problem calls;
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get to the root causes behind unusual calling patterns;
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identify what calls (and what advisor behaviours) are contributing to First Call Resolution success;
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optimise outbound and inbound campaigns;
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train and coach agents differently in various business areas (while also upskilling);
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build tailored dashboards that can measure the impact of changes in different; business areas, and for individual agents, in real time.
And agents will feel more empowered - with access to near real time performance stats, and perhaps even access to analysis that tells them where issues are occurring and how they can put those problems right.
It's an integrated approach that has advantages beyond just customer contact analysis. If advisor details are all held within a single business application, for example, then as new advisors are added to ACD teams other systems automatically become aware of them without the need for dual entry. This can deliver significant time and cost savings in contact centres that are experiencing high attrition. Integrated systems also make it easier to apply a single set of business rules to customer contacts, regardless of how they are received (email, phone etc.), ensuring more consistent service.
By rapidly and effectively combining and synchronising information from multiple contact centre systems, you can really effect tremendous change in your organisation's performance. Your contact centre will find it easier to have the right resources available, with the right skills, at the right times, to optimise service, sales and collections campaigns, and ultimately drive behavioural change to improve your competitive position and bottom line profitability.
Author is Isabel Montesdeoca, Senior Director of Marketing, Europe and Africa, Aspect Software isabel.montesdeoca@aspect.com
