Big data is allowing contact centers to improve many aspects of their operations, including processes, technology and workforce management. Managers can leverage the insights that big data provides to make informed decisions that help increase a contact center’s bottom line. This benefit requires the right reporting tools and ability to analyze the data they provide, allowing contact center managers to make the data-driven decisions need to push the business forward.
This idea sounds great in theory but it’s still possible to make bad decisions, even when you have all the data you need. The vast majority of business decisions should be supported by facts rather than instinct. Data-driven decisions can serve as the backbone for call center operations by improving the experience of both customers and staff members.
Enhance Customer Service
Modern customer service should be virtually unique for each customer, although some general trends exist based on the customer’s characteristics. For example, age and geographic location can affect the customer’s preferred mode of address. These variations create a challenge for contact centers trying to provide the most personalized customer experience possible. Big data can provide agents with the facts they need to accomplish this goal.
Predict Consumer Inquiries
Automated systems can match customers with their customer service records, allowing agents to display their service and purchase histories before contacting the customer. Automated systems can also use the data to predict the needs of customers more accurately and provide them with proactive service or self-service. For example, such a system can determine if a caller wants to check a technician’s arrival time or reschedule a service call.
Better Routing of Calls
Contact center solutions can leverage big data to route calls more effectively, which requires an understanding about call patterns and why customers contact businesses. This capability increases operational efficiency by sending calls to the agents who are best qualified to serve that customer. For example, some agents are best suited for service recovery, while other agents are better at up-sells. Matching an agent’s skill set with the customer’s requirements, increases the contact center’s opportunity to increase revenue through improve sales, brand loyalty and customer satisfaction.
Eliminate Repetitive Experience for Callers
The ability to leverage data-driven insights also allows contact centers to make user experience less repetitive. Take the example of a customer attempting to schedule a maintenance appointment for an oven. In this case, an agent could recommend scheduling dishwasher maintenance at the same time. This scenario eliminates the need for an additional call, benefiting both the contact center and customer.
Data insights also avoid the need for customers to provide the same information to multiple agents, which is a common cause of customer dissatisfaction. This capability is critical for successful call centers as every second that a customer is in contact with a company incurs a cost for both parties.
More Proactive Service
Contact centers can also use the data provide proactive service through the use of predictive analytics. An agent who already knows a customer’s purchase and service habits can make proactive suggestions more effectively. Assume for this example that an agent notices a customer’s data usage regularly exceeds the plan’s monthly allowance. That agent might be able to suggest a promotion that would provide the customer with more data at a lower cost.
Proper execution of this up-sell can allow the customer to appreciate the discount, thus increasing customer loyalty. Furthermore, this customer may also promote company by telling others about how the company was able to decrease the bill.
Anticipate Staffing and Training Needs
Using big data to predict staffing and training needs requires contact centers to mine information on a large scale. For example, the number of interviews per hire is a metric that contact centers often used to measure their staffing performance against industry standards. A contact center that consistently interviews more applicants than the average for that industry will be at a competitive disadvantage, especially when it tries to expand. Industry metrics can help contact centers achieve the level of granularity they need to succeed in hiring for a particular job type or market.
Mining information at scale and using that data for analysis is critical for contact centers to plan for the future. It allows them to differentiate themselves from their competition based on value by delivering candidates who can provide greater insight into customer behavior.
Plan for Volume Increases
Planning for increases in contacts is a particularly important aspect of anticipating staffing and training needs. This process should include a “driver analysis,” which analyzes the factors driving the contact center’s contacts. A driver analysis helps ensure that the right agents are already in place with the training they need to ensure they can effective assist customers. For example, a company with an upcoming open enrollment period should provide refresher training on enrollments and schedule the most knowledgeable agents for peak periods.
Identify automation or self-service opportunities
Contact centers prefer self-service because it’s the least expensive service model, so they don’t want customer contacts going to a live agent more than necessary. Big data can provide insights into contacts that eliminate the need for live agents to offer upsells. For example, customers who use self-service can receive an automatically generated message asking them if they want to place a previous order. An automatic system can also prompt customers to buy a different product based on their order history.
More defined coaching
The ability to obtain data-driven insights also allows contact center managers to provide agents with more effective coaching. Managers can better explain why customers are calling for that particular contact center, which improves efficiency regardless of the agents’ level of general training or experience. These coaching sessions accomplish this by helping agents serve customers more proactively.
Connect Data to Insights
Contact centers have had access to big data for decades, but the ability to analyze it effectively is a much more recent capability. Predictive analytics creates the opportunity to increase customer satisfaction by providing them with unique experiences. Analytics will also drive future growth in the contact center as this technology continues to improve.
Big data often represents aspects of contact center operations that managers have previously ignored. This trend provides an opportunity to gain a better understanding of the business and exert greater control over it. Digital technology will continue to improve, further facilitating data collection. This capability is particularly important in contact centers, which typically have a greater need to act on data in real time than other businesses. Big data can also improve productivity by delivering solutions that focus more on customers. If you want to see how big data can positively impact your business, book a demo to see how the Aceyus system can benefit your business.
