Virtual Office Resource

Incremental improvements make a big difference when competition is global. Any little edge makes a difference.

One key edge is better customer service. With customers able to find and choose a competing product or service relatively easily with the Internet and companies all across the world able to vie for that business in many cases, now more than ever the customer service experience matters. People are hardwired to choose their friends, and good customer service is how a business gets on a customer’s mental friends list.

If customer service is a key competitive edge, knowing the customer is a key edge within the customer service process. That means caller analytics.

There are two reasons that caller analytics delivers a competitive advantage when it comes to customer service.

First, knowing the customer helps agents better relate and interact with the customer. If the agent knows where the customer is living, how often they call, their age, and maybe even what they’ve been tweeting about recently, they are much more able to deliver an authentic, person-to-person interaction with the customer.

While it is true that agents won’t have the deep understanding that comes from actually knowing the caller prior to the call, good caller analytics can help cut down the distance between the agent and the caller.

The second way that caller analytics helps with the customer service process is that it helps businesses understand where they can make incremental improvements to their contact center processes. It helps to fine-tune if the contact center knows how many calls are repeats, and if those repeat calls are coming from a specific area of the country or during a specific time of day. It helps if a business knows that its callers at 4pm are middle age, or if they are predominantly a younger set. It helps to know if callers are reaching the business by cell phone or landline mostly. Data helps the incremental improvement process.

These two reasons are why caller analytics matter.

Does your business currently have the systems in place to capture caller data? If not, you should.

One solution that businesses might want to consider is Phone.com. Not only does Phone (News - Alert).com deliver a cloud-based phone solution, but it has advanced caller analytics built right in.

With Phone.com, a business gets a snapshot of caller data, with a breakdown between new and returning callers. It shows inbound versus outbound activity, duration, and time of call. Caller data is analyzed by demographics in a number of ways, including by census population data. It shows if a caller is calling from a landline or cell phone—and even shows which cellular provider is being used. Callers also can be tied to their social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter (News - Alert) and LinkedIn, in addition to their emails with the company.

In the game of business, incremental improvements mean a lot. Caller analytics are one way to drive those improvements.