How to Put Your Contact Center Data to Work

Here’s some good news for call center leaders: You’re already collecting the business intelligence (BI) you need to put your organizational data to work.

But there’s a catch – nearly 73 percent of all your data is going unused.

Truth is, even with all that data at your fingertips, it takes time and effort to get the right data to the right people to make an impact.

Not only do you need fully-integrated data, but you must build processes to analyze it properly.

To improve customer service and boost agent productivity, you need expert analysis, centralized data, and insights from your unstructured data sources. Here’s how you can do it:

See how call centers put their data to work 

Every Call Center Needs a Data Analyst

Call center agents are focused on giving customers convenient and exemplary service across every interaction. Meanwhile, call center leaders are working to equip those agents with the solutions and data insights that can bolster their ability to deliver on that promise. 

So who’s left to make heads or tails of the heaps of organizational data being collected? (It’s a rhetorical question — but we like to think we have the best answer.)

Historically, data analysis in call centers was not a priority. Only in the most dire situations, such as customer complaints or sprawling outages, did anyone dig into the numbers and make sense of the findings. 

Now more than ever, forward-thinking call centers are driving huge ROI with skilled data analysts who can identify patterns and build data models that are truly powerful.

With that consumer intelligence in hand, analysts can prescribe actions or pinpoint flaws in current processes that would otherwise go unnoticed. And the opportunities are ever-changing and emerging.

From agent productivity to customer satisfaction, data analysts can offer objective, data-informed strategies that will allow you to eclipse your competitors. 

Want help finding the perfect call center data analytics platform? 

Centralize All Your Call Center Data

By now, you probably have your data “connected” across your enterprise, but if you’re not actively working to centralize your systems, you’re at the mercy of a stitched-together ecosystem.

This can lead to inconsistencies in customer data; slower agent training to learn multiple systems; and suboptimal customer experiences. 

To make life more seamless for your customers, and give your agents easier access to the data they need, employ these two guiding principles for better data collection:

Trust a single source of truth: Creating a localized resource for every question or task your agents may face is a great way to bolster organization efficiencies and drive stellar service for your customers. 

Normal data is extraordinary data: Ensuring the data you have on Jane Q. Customer is consistent is the first step toward driving friction-free engagement and building long-term customer relationships. 

Every campaign strategy that touches your data should bookmark the above adage to help put your data to work.

In call center environments, centralized and normalized data helps by:

• Eliminating duplicate work, such as data entry into multiple systems or verifying that data sets are recorded correctly and up-to-date. 
• Securing data that is compliant and consistent to give decision-makers added confidence.
• Fortifying call center data so any future campaigns are built upon a strong foundation.

The sooner you launch a centralized data initiative, the sooner you can drive data ROI.

Want to see how easy centralizing your data can be?

Ask Yourself: “Does My Unstructured Data Give Me an Advantage?”

For call center leaders, if you’re failing to leverage your unstructured data in all its forms, you are missing a significant amount of information that comes straight from your customers. 

Structured data can be understood as the quantifiable data typically collected and stored in databases, such as a customer’s net promoter score; whereas, unstructured data is the context-heavy insights – from call transcripts, emails, social media, etc. – that can truly inform how a customer feels about your brand. 

With 80 percent of all call centers citing customer feedback as an essential driver of business decisions, unstructured data is an easily-tapped well to better understand your customers. 

Contact center solutions that make it simpler to capitalize on unstructured data open your organization to key benefits than can influence long-term revenue and efficiency, including:

Quicker response time: Like most industries, the expectations of your consumers will steadily rise. To deliver exemplary call center service, you must anticipate the needs of your consumer base. Trusting the context-based insights of unstructured data will help you quickly gauge what customers truly want.

Increased customer retention: It follows that if you’re proactively meeting customer needs, you’ll likely keep them longer. By creating better customer experiences, built from the feedback you’ve mined from unstructured data, you can remove common pain points that often serve as roadblocks to long-term relationships.

Better innovation: By scouring CSAT data, such as customer reviews and surveys, unstructured data can help pinpoint gaps in your customer experiences, which can then allow your leadership to identify the technology or strategies to improve overall. 

Simply put, every call center leader should have a strategy for leveraging unstructured data in 2020.

Need help building a plan to get more from your data?

Today is the Day You Put Your Data to Work

Is your organization rich in data but poor on insights? 

If so, make 2020 the year you do more with your data. Call centers have a tremendous opportunity to drive value for their customers, their agents, and their business by partnering with knowledgeable, cloud-based providers. 

To thrive in the new decade, enrich your team with better analysis, centralized data, and deeper customer insights with the help of Cloud Call Center Search. 

Our industry experts can help you quickly and intelligently drive ROI from the data you already have. Just contact us for a free, no-risk consultation to learn more.

This article originally appeared on the Cloud Call Center Search Blog.

If you are considering new cloud call center technology, or are ready to make the switch from a premise system to the cloud, we’ll find you the right technology partner. Get started with a free consultation.

We help companies find the best high-performing cloud-based contact center solutions. At no charge, our technology experts put over 25 years of industry experience to work, helping clients SIMPLIFY the search process and cut through all of the options in a highly cluttered marketplace. We match companies with the cloud software solutions that perfectly match the requirements of their inbound and outbound call centers. You can trust us to help you save significant time, reduce costs, and minimize risk when switching or selecting a new cloud-based call center software solution.