How analytics can be deployed to suit businesses of any size
This article originally appeared on callswitchone.com here on 30/01/2025.
As IT and telecoms continue to converge, and customers expect more added features such as?CRM integrations, productivity software, and additional security measures, resellers face challenges finding a vendor that can provide quality solutions in these areas.?
In order to keep a competitive edge in a saturated market where price is a sensitivity, especially where margins are shrinking due to commoditisation of services, resellers need to be able to broaden their portfolios to meet a wider range of customer needs across multiple industries. It is not just about maintaining profitability, but also improving customer retention and ‘stickiness’, by delivering value-added services that can drive higher ARPU and create long-term, loyal relationships.
Traditional business attitudes of reselling standalone software or services is no longer enough. Costs are rising in every aspect of business and competition is tightening, therefore resellers need to have innovative approaches under their belts in order to stand out. Providing advanced analytics tools as a part of an overall offering can address this need, offering customers unmatched insight into their operations whilst increasing perceived value of services.
Enhancing UCaaS offerings with Analytics
Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) empower businesses to leverage cloud-based telephony for essential business call functions such as voice communication, call queuing, time-of-day routing, and utilisation of softphones, as well as providing additional channels of communication like SMS, messaging, and video.?
These features ultimately give businesses the tools to create informal contact centres for customers without significant infrastructure investment. If a business communicates with customers, ultimately they need call centre tools in order to create professional customer experiences. However, without analytics tools, providing good service and keeping on top of high call volumes can be incredibly challenging.?
Quality analytics tools provide a powerful solution to this, offering insights into call patterns, historical customer experiences and data, and operational efficiency - for example, how many calls have been dropped and how long customers have been waiting to speak to an agent. These tools help users to optimise their processes, make data-informed decisions, and create a professional environment in a cost-effective manner. In this way, resellers can offer their customers offerings beyond standard communication tools and deliver measurable value for a whole range of businesses and industries.
The opportunity for resellers to boost revenue
Deploying contact centre solutions with advanced tools has traditionally been a costly endeavour which requires specialist knowledge. However, analytics and reporting as an add-on to a hosted UCaaS system allow resellers to provide high value features to end users without high levels of effort or understanding on their part. These tools cater to the needs of businesses of all sizes, and are supported by the vendor, which creates ease of adoption for both the reseller and the end customer.
By offering analytics tools as a bolt-on to existing UCaaS solutions, resellers are able to generate new revenue streams and create value-add opportunities for customers. Analytics are a tool that all businesses can utilise, with benefits such as:?
Industry-specific use cases?
Analytics and reporting tools are built to be versatile, with varied use cases across different industries. Here a few specific examples of the ways different businesses may utilise these tools:
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Healthcare
While there are no universal mandates around ring times or hold times within the healthcare sector, businesses will have obligations and expectations to answer calls quickly and efficiently, especially when they are dealing with health emergencies. In this scenario, analytics and reporting tools can help ensure agents are adhering to expectations with regard to factors such as average wait time and queue lengths. If wait times begin to increase, wallboards help supervisors to understand where bottlenecks may be taking place, and if traffic continues to steadily increase over time, it may be time for businesses to expand and hire new call handlers (with this decision backed by data).
Contact centres?
Contact centres of all sizes face pressure to create great customer call experiences and answer any queries with minimum frustration. Advanced and granular analytics tools allow businesses actionable insights into their proceedings, such as agent performance, call handling times, and customer satisfaction levels. For example, managers can use data visualisation to identify bottlenecks in call routing, optimise scheduling based on call volume patterns, or reduce the number of dropped calls by deploying resource at peak times. Analytics empower contact centres to enhance service quality and provide a professional customer experience, which is crucial for retaining clients in this competitive industry.
E-Commerce / retail
Retailers can enhance operations by leveraging VoIP wallboarding and reporting features in order to monitor metrics like call enquiries, live chat response, and customer service performance levels. This is key for providing real-time visibility into communication and support processes, but may be too basic for the needs of the sector.
Platforms like CallSwitch One can take this a step further by offering integration options with broad data visualisation platforms like Power BI, where they can combine their call statistics with data from other platforms they may utilise.
This means businesses can analyse diverse data sources like abandoned carts, website clicks, and seasonal demand patterns. This approach, combined with communication data allows retailers to deliver personalised customer experiences and navigate the unique qualities of the e-commerce sector.
Broadening your portfolio and offerings?
Choosing a vendor with add-on tools such as analytics and reporting allows resellers to serve a wider range of customers, and provide a broader, all-encompassing and more professional service to end users, regardless of size.
The flexibility and customisation of such tools allows resellers to cater to a much broader market, which enhances competitive edge in a saturated market and positions them as trusted partners who are thinking ahead. By utilising analytics and reporting add-ons, resellers can benefit from increased avenues of revenue, customer retention, and a future-proofed business model.
Upskilling teams is key to success, however, and it is vital to find a vendor that will provide dedicated training and workshops to ensure teams are fully equipped with the knowledge to sell add ons and troubleshoot any issues that end users may have when using the features. Ensuring that teams understand the value of the product and the benefits it can provide businesses on top of basic communications solutions means that resellers are able to pitch and sell it more effectively, and end users are able to fully understand how they will benefit.
Final thoughts
Ultimately, analytics and reporting tools, when positioned as an add-on package for quality UCaaS solutions, provide a range of opportunities for both resellers and end users of all sizes. By integrating analytics and reporting tools, resellers can shape their offerings to suit niche industries, as well as provide a professional and comprehensive suite of tools that go beyond basic communication.?
In the same vein, end users are able to think differently about how they operate both internally and to customers, and react in a much more efficient manner to patterns, trends and issues to ultimately make more informed decisions which leads to improved customer experiences.?
Analytics and reporting tools are not just an add-on to a product, but also a key business strategy. An entirely customisable experience means all businesses can benefit from improvement and growth here.
Ready to learn more about our advanced, customisable reporting and wallboards solution? Get in touch today.