The Holy Grail of Contact Center Analytics

Call Center managers need easy access to analytics that help them make good decisions when it comes to staffing levels, employee productivity and understanding the customer experience. Many contact center call reports provide a limited summary of performance, requiring managers to run multiple reports from different locations to get to detailed information that drives key decisions. Additionally, you can’t necessarily drill down as far into the data as you need to get the complete picture of your call center performance.

To derive the level of detail from your telephone data that will provide true business intelligence, you need what we refer to as the “holy grail” of contact center analytics. Having this gives the smart call center manager access to the customized reports and dashboards that reveal a complete picture of your agents’ performance with drill-down access into the insights and data you need for accurate and timely decision making.

Let’s take the example of just one of many common metrics that call center managers monitor, like transfer rates, and show you how having the right analytics can help you make better business decisions.  Here are three ways that this level of contact center analytics drives better business insights:

1. You Need an Easy Way to Look for High-Level Trends
How do you know if your employees are meeting your departmental goals for transfer rates? The first step to achieving the holy grail of contact center analytics is a high-level overview of your team’s performance. But it’s not just about having a way to report your ECC transfer rates. You should have immediate access to a dashboard or report that gives you those stats as quickly and as frequently as you need them as well as a way to see how that metric changes over time. This means not having to go to five different places to find the right numbers. It also means and having the information automated so that transfer rates are automatically included in the data you pull as frequently as you prefer, or on the wall boards that you view to manage your groups.

2. You Need an Easy Way to Slice and Dice That Data
Once you’ve noticed a trend that needs a bit more attention, like a higher transfer rate, it’s important to be able to investigate further within the same context and parameters of the report or visualization in which you detect that trend. Part of the holy grail of contact center analytics is the ability to manipulate your data, or slice and dice it any way that helps you get a better picture of your call center’s performance. You might notice that your transfer rate for the entire department is higher than normal. Having the ability to take that metric and analyze transfer rates by agent, instead of transfer rate summary, might reveal that only one or two agents struggle with higher transfer rates that could skew overall department numbers. Having the ability to easily manipulate the analytics allows you to pinpoint the key areas that require your attention and use statistics to determine which issues require action.

3. Follow The Data from Cradle to Grave
Once you’ve determined the source of the higher transfer rate, be it one or two employees or your entire team, you’re not quite finished. This third step is drilling down into the details of the data records that build the summary views (as well as into the individual call when necessary). Why? Because it’s not just that the calls are being transferred, but it’s also why the calls are being transferred. Maybe certain agents need coaching or training. Maybe the agents feel as though they are getting calls for other departments. But it’s impossible to solve the problem without first understanding the root of the problem, and that often requires drilling down into the data.

The problem with standard manufacturer static reports and limited analytics is that it often misses at least one part of the picture which is contained in the holy grail of analytics. If the data isn’t available in one dashboard or report, it can’t be sliced and diced to show you a different perspective that helps complete the picture.  If it doesn’t allow you to drill down far enough into the data to understand the true root of the problem, you are often left with a partial or incomplete understanding of how to manage your agents to get the performance you need.