Call center analytics are used to measure the performance of a call center’s customer service representatives individually and as a whole. Call center analytics are used to gauge a call center’s overall approach to customer relationship management (CRM) in a quick and responsive manner. Call center analytics are used by call center management to evaluate interactions, spot patterns, identify knowledge gaps, and make corrections through more training or other means.
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Traditional Call Center Analytics
Call center analytics have typically relied on call center software that made call recording the centerpiece of their evaluative process. However, reliance on call recording has been decreasing as its shortcomings - including delays between recording and indexing/transcribing - have introduced opportunities for newer methods.
According to the the US Contact Center Decision-Maker’s Guide for 2012, call recording is still the primary call center management tool for 80% of respondents, but 18% of those are looking for better call center management software.
New Directions in Call Center Analytics
Based on the 2012 release of the US Contact Center Decision-Maker’s Guide (produced by Contact Babel), the use of multimedia contact by customers is growing rapidly with the normalization of the social web.
The US Contact Center Decision-Makers’ Guide is the culmination of survey results from 210 call centers around the United States in a variety of industries. The study examines issues, concerns, and data relating to call center management and evolution, including trends and forecasts, for all major areas of focus, such as performance, investment, technology, human resources and strategy.
Excluding more traditional means of contact such as letters and faxes, the most popular non-calling contact channels to companies’ customer support representatives were email and self-service. Over the past five years, telephone, letter, and fax contact has diminished, but email has risen by 67% and web chat by 50%. Texting, chat, and web collaboration were also highly preferred methods.
To meet the needs of the consumer, call center management is embracing new technologies that support multi-channel communication avenues. The Decision-Makers’ Guide predicts that the fastest-growing call center tools in 2012 will be chat and speech analytics: Adoption of Web chat will grow 60% and speech analytics will jump 59%.
Both of these methods are cost-efficient, which increases their popularity with call center management. Using chat, call center CRM agents can conduct multiple simultaneous sessions. Retail sectors may find chat especially effective, as it may help them to boost sales. Customers typically find chat immediate, and therefore satisfying.
New advances in speech analytics can help improve call center CRM by addressing telltale vocal features (such as inflection, intensity, or tone) long ignored by call recordings and transcripts. Talk-over analysis can also help determine troublespots and alert supervisors of potential issues immediately. Where simultaneous crosstalk can indicate or create frustration, talk-over analysis can also pick up on the CRM agent silences that can pinpoint knowledge gaps and opportunities for additional training.
According to DMG Consulting, speech analytics has already seen a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 124% between 2004 and 2009. From 2009-2010, speech analytics implementation by call centers increased by 22%.
Most importantly, speech analytics and other, newer analytic methods (such as desktop analytics) can provide call center metrics immediately, which can improve performance and therefore boost customer satisfaction.
The Contact Babel report noted that the salient features of any contact avenue, according to customers, were:
- Perceived effectiveness
- Channel availability
- Low cost of use
- Painlessness
- Ease of use
April 7, 2023
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