Getting the most out of your call centre analytics

It is tempting to think that analytics can solve all of a call centre's problems. Reports can isolate instances of low productivity or quality, to the point of being linked to individuals' key performance indicators. If done right, they allow managers to institutionalise the right behaviour, incentivise performance and improve the call centre's overall efficiency and effectiveness.

Few do it right

And yet very few call centres "do analytics right". Many call centre platforms offer only rudimentary reporting. Among the better solutions, few are used to their fullest potential, because many call centre providers are "box droppers" that instal a solution, give staff a crash course in its use, and then clear out. Subsequent callout fees are high and results are not guaranteed, leading customers to underutilise the tech at their disposal.

As a result of both these situations, managers are at the mercy of agents, who are quick to find loopholes in the reporting structure and use them to their advantage (and the disadvantage of the call centre).

By procuring the right technology, implemented and managed by the right partner, the following common loopholes and many others can be plugged:

• Basic schedule adherence - the simplest performance metric is "basic schedule adherence". Surprisingly, few call centres have even this level of analytics. Adding it to their arsenal of performance measurement tools is bound to be revealing.
  
• Quality measurement - because productivity metrics alone are not enough to measure the desired agent behaviour, some systems offer quality monitoring, according to scripts. This is all part of the power of proper performance measurement.
  
• Prioritising agents - agents have been known to collude to bypass incentivised systems and still make target. For example, average agents may forward inbound calls to better-performing friends on the team, thus cheating the system while still splitting the rewards. This will be picked up by good analytics that is properly understood.
  
• Overcoming objections - agents hauled over the coals for poor call numbers may counter by saying their productive time was spent on email. Good analytic platforms can integrate and measure communications channels.

How can one make sure of finding the right partner that will implement the right reports and help customers to interpret data?

Many guises

Call centre technology companies come in many guises - telcos, hosting companies, broad-based integrators and platform specialists. Most are concerned only with a component of the total call centre, or use the solution as a means to achieve a business objective that is, at best, only related to the analytics-driven efficiency of your workforce.

Telcos, for example, are focused on voice termination, not the intricacies of using their systems. A broad-based integrator is focused on implementing the call centre and keeping it running rather than on operational issues, such as analytics.

To help with operational issues, call centre customers need more than this: a trusted partner offering a managed service to help attend to operational issues, including the proper design and use of analytics.

To be most effective, such a provider must be a specialist with deep experience in call centres. It must further follow a consultative approach. A call centre environment is highly dynamic, with constant personnel moves, additions and changes, new applications and system tweaks, to respond to business intelligence.

The appropriate customer engagement model in such an environment is a service contract with a trusted provider such as 1Stream, not an upfront capital cost with subsequent callout fees.