May 23, 2018

The Why, The How, And The What Of Real-Time Contact Center Monitoring

A growing number of customer-centric organizations are starting to monitor and harness analytics to continuously improve how they manage contact centers. Commonly referred to as real-time contact center monitoring, these solutions are now becoming the holy grail of customer experience management.

Real-time contact center monitoring enables you to keep your fingers on the pulse of your contact center while improving the quality and consistency of customer service. It can directly influence your operational efficiency and agent performance and transform the way you deliver customer experience.

In order to understand real-time monitoring in contact centers, it is pertinent to logically break it down into 3 simple parts:

• The Purpose - WHY should you invest in real-time contact center monitoring?
• The Process - HOW can you get started?
• The Payback - WHAT are the likely business benefits?

Part 1: The Why

The purpose of real-time contact center monitoring

Contact centers are high-demand environments that are abuzz with action. Agents are busy doing what they can do to keep customers happy. Supervisors are forever on the go, managing and coaching agents, and handling demanding customers. In addition, they own the daunting task of monitoring everything that is happening.

Given the number of variables that govern daily operations, contact centers are perpetually bursting with big piles of numbers such as performance metrics that include Key Performance Metrics (KPIs), reports and more. Here are a few critical reasons why getting a real-time view of all this data is fundamental to any business in today’s digital climate:

• Gain a broad, holistic and current view of your contact center operations
• Paint a transparent picture of performance across sites, functions, levels, and agents
• Measure performance against business objectives and targets
• Uncover hidden patterns and unknown correlations. Make informed decisions
• Fine-tune contact center operations for peak performance
• Get the best out of agents by maximizing agent performance
• Build happy customers - eventually leading to superior customer experience
• Discover new revenue opportunities – drive profits

Part 2: The How

The process of getting started with real-time contact center monitoring

Data from most contact center sources are raw. It needs to be transformed and linked with data from other sources before you can understand the context. Therefore, to monitor your contact center in real-time, you need performance management systems that can integrate the in-place contact center technologies, CRM systems and other data sources to provide a transparent view of performance.

There are many vendors who will claim they have the right tool for real-time monitoring in contact centers. But, as the number of options increases, it gets confusing. How do you then pick the right real-time contact center monitoring solution that fits for your purpose? Use this 10-point check-list to gain confidence that you are on the right path.

1. More options may not always lead to more possibilities. So, set evaluation criteria that shrink the number of choices

2. Pick a purpose-built, horizontally specialized operational intelligence platform (something designed for the contact center) instead of a generic fit-for-all monitoring solution

3. Look for a solution that will allow you to detect and respond to issues that are present and to those that are likely to emerge

4. User experience makes a big difference. The solution must have BI tools that allow you to drill down data, create custom dashboards using widgets, and create stunning visuals in the form of charts, videos, and graphs

5. It is important that solutions evolve and scale along with your operations. Check if it is available as-a-service on the cloud

6. Most managers these days are mobile-enabled data sifters. You should be able to access reports on the go, on mobiles, tablets, and other hand-held devices

7. Sometimes you might have to share specific dynamic reports without giving away full access. It is commonly referred to as a permalink. Sharing reports as a link should be a breeze

8. Select a solution that natively supports and compliments your existing contact center infrastructure

9. The solution shouldn’t require you to train your supervisor. Instead, it should come with simple GUI to build custom dashboards that don’t require any coding

10. Look for a specialist in your industry with deep domain understanding of contact centers and customer experience management. Preferably someone who offers a suite of integrated solutions instead of piecemeal solutions

How to become awesome at Contact Center Analytics? | Servion Watch Video

Part 3: The What

The payback you are likely to receive as business benefits

Customers expect an outstanding customer experience each time they interact with you, increasing the need for situation awareness in daily operations. Nobody has the patience to wait for days or weeks to analyze transactions and data – they want it now!

Real-time contact center monitoring will enable you to exactly do that - in full context quickly and instantly.

Companies that deploy these solutions often reap the following benefits:

• Gain business insights in real-time; improve decision-making capabilities
• Tap on the pulse of the contact center; anywhere, anytime and on any device
• Get a holistic 360-degree visibility
• Improve agent productivity; coach them and keep them motivated
• Improve supervisors’ efficiency; make jobs easier, reduce the manual load
• Improve critical SLAs metrics; reduce abandon rates, average hold time, average handle time
• Reduce operating costs; increase profitability
• Be data-driven; ensure compliance and reduce risk
• Respond quickly to emerging situations

If you would like to know more about real-time monitoring or simply how to improve your contact center performance, our CX consultants will be happy to connect with you.

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