RESOURCE CENTER

Understanding Call Center Analytics

Optimize your customer service with these approaches to call center analytics

June 2021 - 5 minutes

Call center analytics is the process of collecting and analyzing customer data to unearth valuable insights about your service organization’s performance. This includes customer satisfaction (CSAT), revenue, customer retention, customer effort score, and service-level agreement (SLA) performance.

However, a common challenge for many service executives is having a real-time, holistic view of call center performance across all channels. With multiple agents dealing with scores of customers every day, only highly escalated situations – such as a system outage, a significant customer complaint, or an employee in need of coaching – come to their attention. That means there are many opportunities for improvement.

These are the top ways to use your call center analytics to improve customer loyalty and increase revenue.

Find the right approach for call center analytics

Successful contact centers use advanced call center analytics software to monitor and review agent performance, not only from a customer lens but also from the perspective of both employees and management.

Each approach offers its advantages and comes together to provide a comprehensive understanding of call center performance. To choose the best call center analytics system, determine what area of your business needs to improve and then see how analytics can help.

Here are the approaches you need:

Omni-channel analytics

Customers today turn to an average of nine channels to browse inventory, seek advice, and make purchases. Seventy-six percent of customers prefer different channels depending on context. They may use chatbots for quick questions and SMS for ongoing support.

76% of customers prefer different channels depending on the context.

Source: “State of the Connected Customer,” Salesforce, October 2020.

Service teams need a way to track all of these interactions. Seventy-nine percent of service professionals say it’s impossible to provide great service without a complete view of customer interactions. Help your service team reach a resolution faster by giving your agents a complete view of customer interactions – even those outside of your service team, such as SMS alerts for a sale from your marketing team or an email from your sales team. Customers may respond back with a request or a problem.

79% of service professionals say it’s impossible to provide great service without a complete view of customer interactions.

Source: “State of Service,” Salesforce, December 2020.

By using omni-channel analytics, service teams have a single dashboard to view performance across all customer engagement channels. You can easily drill into customer profiles to diagnose issues quickly and resolve problems – without shifting to disconnected analytics solutions.

Omni-channel analytics also help contact center managers improve agent productivity. They can review incoming agent work volume and assess key performance indicators (KPIs). If there is an issue, contact center managers flag it and jump in to help their team.

Predictive analytics

With a single dashboard to review call volumes, SLA performance, first-contact resolution, and call handle times, service teams can use call center predictive analytics to stay one step ahead of customer concerns. Predictive analytics uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze call center data and applies logic from past solutions to solve current problems. For example, you may use predictive analytics to determine the right amount of agents to staff over the holiday shopping season or plan for high call volumes when a new product rolls out. Or, you can use it to predict churn risk and identify any potential product or customer issues before they happen based on your existing data and trends.

Voice analytics for call center managers

With voice analytics, contact center managers have the ability to monitor calls in real time or review automated transcripts. If a service team is working remotely, contact center managers can see how a call is going, step in to help, or provide agent training as needed. With the right analytics, your voice channel operates as a digital channel with all the insight your team needs to improve customer experience. For example, does one agent need additional training on how to handle an exception with a return, or is there an influx of calls about a particular issue? Based on this data, call center managers intervene in real time, suggest further training opportunities for agents to improve customer satisfaction, or escalate cases as needed.

Customer self-service analytics

Self-service channels like your help center, FAQ page, or customer portals empower customers to resolve simple issues on their own while deflecting more cases for your company. In fact, sixty-six percent of service professionals say self-service channels reduce case volume.

Sixty-six percent of service professionals say self-service channels reduce case volume.

Source: “State of Service,” Salesforce, December 2020.

Customers can update their contact or shipping information, check their order status, or set up an appointment from your customer portal. They may access an FAQ on your site for a common question or reach out via chat and interact with a chatbot.

Self-service analytics show you how well these channels are working for both your customers and your employees. You can review your case deflection scores and see if there are any slowdowns or problems in the experience. You can also use self-service analytics to review common searches and identify any new trends in customer requests.

Quantify customer loyalty

Ninety-one percent of customers agree that a positive customer service experience makes them more likely to make another purchase. If customers find themselves on hold for too long, need to explain an issue to different agents multiple times, and are unhappy with the resolution, it diminishes their experience with your company.

Call center analytics gives service teams access to the critical data and insights they need to work faster, smarter, and improve the customer relationship. Once you understand if and when issues occur at your call center, you can take steps to address them. For example, when you can visually see your call volume data by hour, you can then take action to ensure you have the proper staffing levels for peak periods to reduce or even eliminate customer hold time.

Make every interaction count

With the right technology in place, agents can swiftly resolve customer service issues. Solutions like Salesforce Service Cloud give agents a single place to access customer information, purchase history, and communication preferences. Omni-channel routing connects the right agent with the right skill set based on the request. Guided workflows walk agents through processes to get to resolutions faster, and AI recommends the next best action. On the back end, intelligent analytics help management review performance and find opportunities for improvement. As a result, your service organization delivers the kinds of experiences customers want, expect, and deserve.