Contact Center: Unplugged

It’s Time to Wrangle that Runaway Data

Author:  Gary Barnett

Data, data everywhere but way too much to drink! Does it seem that way to you?  If you think about it, the contact center may be the largest data creator in the enterprise. ACD and predictive dialer systems have long tracked very detailed information about each customer interaction – length of the call, transfers, hold times, network information and so on. And, each additional contact center technology created its own source of data too. From workforce management systems to contact center performance management systems, each application brings a wealth of potential insight into how agents and customers interact.

While gathering this information with the contact center can provide insights into how to better respond to customer demands while reducing costs, combining some of this information with enterprise data stores can lead to even more value. For example, average handle times contrasted with sales per interaction can lead to insight into the optimal amount of time your representative might want to spend with a prospective customer.

However, taking advantage of the opportunities this level of knowledge offers, requires contact center technology that fits neatly into the enterprise architecture that IT has already put in place. That can be a tricky business if you don’t have the right kind of applications in place.  By this I mean deploying IT-Ready customer interaction reporting solutions that leverage open standards like ODBC, JDBC and XML, and delivers the tools you need to consolidate and deliver raw data from multisite, multi-vendor, and multichannel implementations and aggregate data from all connection channels (email, voice, Web, chat) contact center sites and all agents. You’ll be able to reduce costs by decreasing the number of staff you need to consolidate the data and interpret the information. And, you’ll simplify your ability to make operational decisions that maximize agent productivity and enhance customer service, sales and collections experiences.

IT Ready reporting solutions can provide your contact center with some very real and immediate benefits.  But, just as importantly, implementing these types of solutions now provides your company with the foundation for the essential enterprise-wide reporting capabilities that it will need to maximize its overall unified communications strategy.

How are you preparing to wrangle your runaway data?

Author: Gary Barnett
Catergories: Contact Center Technology, Open Source, Performance Optimization, Unified Communications

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