Call Center and CRM Best Practices

Analytics applications are deployed in a number of functions and departments within the enterprise, and for a number of requirements in service operations. It is as critical to sales optimization in the marketing department, for example, as it is to performance optimization in the contact center. As a result, analytics often performs in a cross-functional capacity, typically without the benefit of coordination among users.

In the contact center, “cross-functional” may be narrowly defined as coaching and training, quality assurance, six sigma analysis, and continuous improvement functions. While working with siloed information is acceptable for solving specific functional issues, it is insufficient for the broader customer care interests of a company. That is exactly what has happened, however, as various functions within the contact center have deployed analytics solutions for their specific needs and without regard for the information requirements of other functional areas or departments. Contact center supervisors and managers believe they are gaining a deep understanding of performance issues and opportunities in their department and, while this may be true, what is overlooked is the fact that they are working with only a partial picture of a holistic performance issue. The net result is performance analysis tunnel vision that is narrowly focused with a limited view.

The tunnel vision problem extends beyond cross-departmental issues to include cross-technology issues within the contact center. Analytics comes in various forms, each with a specific focus in terms of what is analyzed and how the analytics is applied to the operation. Once again, there is little coordination between analytics solutions, leading to very deep understanding of a very narrow element of contact center operations. A new white paper from Saddletree Research, Speech Analytics and a Unified Analytics Strategy for Workforce Optimization, sponsored by Enkata   discusses the solution to the problem of incomplete, partial pictures of operational data and discrete silos of Information. It is the unification of analytics applications or data from the analytics applications