Call Accounting Featured Article

BYOD: Bring Your Own Distraction?

  By Maurice Nagle, Web Editor

The BYOD trend is proving to carry a double meaning. Some would argue bringing their personal device to work is way to drive productivity, whereas others can point to BYOD really meaning “Bring Your Own Distraction.” The funny part of this debate is the proof is in the reporting. So, as employee productivity is brought into question, call accounting and reporting can provide an answer.

Each business must find a measuring stick to ensure employees are on task, bringing value to operations. While, the digital age is certainly something to behold, our always-on, always plugged-in reality is costing businesses money. Every text, tweet or status update is time – the employer’s time. Let’s review a few ways employers can gain insight into exactly how productive team members are.

Abandoned ring time summaries and ring time detail are two good places to start. These coupled with other weekly or daily metrics paint of picture of how responsive your team member is. These reports are also effective in measuring the efficiency in staffing.

The executive summary melds several reports together to offer a bird’s eye for managers. After reviewing the data, management can then determine whether it’s necessary to dig further. Illustrating call distribution, trends over recent months as well possible phone service needs, this big picture point of view is exactly what is needed to pinpoint a productivity pain point.

It’s also important to know how many calls an agent will take in a given shift or timeframe. The call handling summary offers a 12hr at-a-glance view of the number of calls taken in that period as well as their average duration. From an efficiency perspective, this is a powerful tool to aid in pin pointing peak times, in addition, shift scheduling and staffing needs.

Management can also measure call redirects and transferred calls to determine how many calls are addressed by a human versus a voicemail or recorded messages. In broad strokes, it promises that customer calls are being answered in an appropriate way, and calls that can be taken are, and by the right person.

Call accounting and reporting opens eyes to what’s actually happening on one’s business. Once this new visibility is attained, initiatives can be implemented to move operations in a more productive and efficient. The double-edged sword that is BYOD offers much in the way of opportunity, but can be fraught with pitfalls.

Remember, “With great power comes great responsibility.”