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What Customers Say Has Real Value: Blog

By Rory J. Thompson, Web Editor

With every call to a contact center taking on greater importance, it’s worth it for companies to constantly seek out new advantages.

Those calls coming in are more than just a conversation between two people: They can provide a wealth of information about the caller, and also provide guidance not only for the worker answering the phone, but also for their colleagues and supervisors as a learning tool as well. One call can yield a trove of data that can be parsed, sliced and diced in numerous ways.

One method being used with more frequency is analytics software, a product used to -- as its name implies -- analyze calls for valuable data.

Call center leader inContact recently posted a blog from one of its partner companies, CallMiner (News - Alert). The post by CallMiner’s Jason Napierski showed just how much this field is growing.

“In today’s digital world, it would be easy to assume that emerging communications channels (social, mobile, web chat, etc.) will eventually eclipse traditional channels such as the telephone,” he wrote. “Research, for example, shows the social customer relationship management market is set to experience explosive growth over the next several years.”

But Napierski cited the U.S. Contact Center Decision-Makers’ Guide from last year that showed traditional channels still hold a prominent position.

“The message is that channels aren’t being replaced – even letters will continue to be supported – but rather augmented,” the report noted. “Businesses have to accept that they need to develop an ‘omnichannel’ approach, as that’s what their customers are doing. This means that the pressure to unify the view of the customer across channels is a challenge that isn’t going to go away.”

So the solution would be for companies to adapt ‘multichannel analytics’, Napierski said, highlighting some reasons for his thoughts. To wit:

Information capture across platforms: “Because the best multichannel customer experiences are those that provide a seamless transition between channels, it’s critical to capture customer conversations across channels,” he wrote. “Without doing so, companies risk damaging the overall customer experience.”

Historical context: Developing a single view of the customer isn’t just about capturing and analyzing data – it also involves using that data to deliver an engaging and personalized customer experience. “Consumers increasingly expect companies to leverage this type of historical context,” Napierski notes.

Customer journey: “It’s not uncommon for customers to use multiple channels to resolve a single issue, especially in the case where they require immediate action on a pressing issue,” he says. “For this reason, agents need to be sure they understand the complete customer journey to uncover the root cause of issues and determine how to best resolve them. The end result? A more satisfied agent and a better experience for the customer.”

To see the complete blog post and learn more about how Multichannel analytic software can work to your advantage, click HERE.