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What Customers Say Will Soon Be Measured by Contact Centers

By Rory J. Thompson, Web Editor

In a move that will be seen as both a solution to customers and a challenge to managers, contact centers will – sooner rather than later – be transitioning over in a big way to ‘advanced analytics.’ While it may sound scary at first, it’s a move that makes sense based on how customers are currently interacting with contact centers.

In a recent blog post, inContact Communications Manager Gavin Gustafson dissected the idea of analytics and how it can be used to benefit both callers and call center workers. For background material, he incorporated some recent work by inContact partner CallMiner’s (News - Alert) Jason Napierski.

“For contact centers, developing a ‘big picture’ understanding of customer interactions across the entire lifecycle is critical to providing exceptional experiences for customers,” Gustafson noted. “One way to do this is through the use of contact analytics, which captures unstructured data from recorded calls, emails, chat transcriptions, or other customer interactions to identify trends and root causes of issues.”

He then went on to list some of the benefits of contact center analytics and why organizations should be embracing their use:

Unified View of Customer Interactions: “With contact analytics in place, companies can use a single system and process for analyzing contacts across all channels,” Gustafson observed. “The benefits of using this type of software are two-fold: 1) Contact centers can develop a unified data view of all types of customer interactions (resulting in consistent analysis across channels), and 2) Companies can follow the complete customer journey (regardless of the channel used), which can help determine the root cause of repeat contacts and poor first contact resolution.”

Performance Measurement: A distinct benefit of contact analytics systems is their ability to measure various performance indicators by detecting the presence of certain language characteristics. “Armed with this type of automated scoring, contact center managers, supervisors, and agents can proactively address issues or gaps in knowledge to improve performance with additional training or coaching,” Gustafson said.

Customer Experience and Satisfaction: “According to a recent survey by Censuswide, 70 percent of U.K. customers speak to an average of two to five customer service representatives before resolving a single issue,” Gustafson notes. “Whether implementing real-time monitoring or post-contact analytics, analyzing interactions across channels allows companies to measure and improve the customer experience across 100 percent of contacts. The end result? Increased customer satisfaction, reduced customer churn, and an improved customer experience overall.”

In short, change is coming down the pike. It will be the proactive managers who see the trend and get ahead of it. Those that don’t are destined to be left in the dust.