Building the Best Possible Contact Center Operation with the Help of Analytics

Multichannel customer service is not a new concept, but the type and number of channels seem to change – grow larger, in most cases – every few years. Customers expect the highest quality service, and they expect it regardless of which communications media they choose. The days when telephone calls were answered within two minutes but customer e-mails sat lagging for days unanswered are gone – at least for companies that wish to continue to keep their doors open.

As the number of channels proliferates and customer expectations rise, the demands on the IT department become greater. Not only must all customer communications channels be tied into the customer relationship with a 360-degree view, companies need ways to stratify, analyze and report on the customer a single view, and managers need to receive alerts when things go off-kilter.

According to Kate Leggett, principal analyst at Forrester (News - Alert) Research writing for CIO, there are four important lessons companies, and specifically their IT departments, should take away from this message. They include:

Understand your customers’ preferences. Most customers will have a “favorite” communications media, but those same customers may choose to use a mix of media, or they may choose certain channels under certain circumstance (text messages for immediate alerts, for example). It’s important that the IT department use this information to anticipate the technology they'll need to support in the future.

Cross-channel communication. You need to offer your customers the ability to start a customer interaction on one channel (such as voice) but continue it on another (such as the Web) without having to restart the conversation, says Leggett.

Equip agents with what they need. Make sure customer-service agents are empowered with the data they need to quickly answer questions.

Analyze everything. It’s critical to measure customer satisfaction and agent productivity metrics on an ongoing basis, so you can better understand your processes, people and the effects on your customers. This way, you can tune things that don’t work accordingly.

It’s this latter mandate companies must have the ability to achieve if they are to fine-tune their operations to the standards customers demand today. Many of the modern analytics solutions on the market, including those from workforce optimization solutions provider NICE Systems (News - Alert), allow contact centers to capture and analyze all interactions across the customer journey and apply big data technologies to identify valuable patterns and trends. This information can then be used to take action, resolve issues and leverage sales opportunities. Using the intelligence they gain from analytics contact centers can optimize their processes to best practices standards, ensuring that their operations run like clockwork and making changes when elements go out of alignment, translating root causes and best-practices into increased productivity.