What Is A Call Center Analytics Dashboard and Why Do You Need It?

Hard to believe, but it’s been thirty years since I first walked into a contact center—C&P Telephone Company of Virginia located in Richmond, Virginia, which would later become part of Verizon. Back then they weren’t even called “call centers”, let alone “contact centers”. People referred to them as “business offices”.

The journey that got me to here as the founder and CEO of a SaaS company is one for another day, but the seed of what inspired me began back then. Jim Trent and Beth Sorah were two of my many early mentors. They taught me to solve problems with data.  One of my first assignments was (in a pre IVR world) to provide a “comprehensive series of recommendations to improve business office [contact center] access [service level] to our residential [consumer] callers during peak capacity.”

That was thirty years ago? Just yesterday, I was helping a senior executive with a major enterprise, solve this same problem. WOW! Nothing has changed. And yet everything has changed. It got me thinking about the metrics and visibility we were using and how fast we moved and why a drillable, BI-powered, contact center dashboard can be so powerful.

Managing a call center requires organizations to constantly dial into performance metrics. The objectives may vary from increasing customer satisfaction and reducing handle time, to meeting SLAs (service level agreements) or improving First Call Resolution (FCR).  A real call center analytics dashboard gets far beyond the metrics and far beyond the reports available from even the best CCaaS platforms. Great dashboards are interactive and tell a complete story. Real, BI-Powered analytics tools present organizations with a visual display that simplifies analysis and reduces the time required to consume information. Such dashboards are drillable and allow you to move from high level information into the underlying to sample what is happening for real. With such a dashboard in place, teams can review performance at a glance, and then drill in and manipulate these visualizations and even derive advanced metrics to truly understand root cause issues.

At the age of “Customer Experience first,” it is increasingly important for organizations to get real-time insights from call center data. In the case of our enterprise client, IVR usage had doubled at a time of peak capacity. Many executives would have celebrated at the amazing coincidence of enhanced automation in crisis. My business partner was savvy and a bit skeptical and knew that no new functionality could explain this rise in “containment” and was worried. Twenty minutes and a few manual drillable inspections later, we discovered that a tree error (coincidentally introduced a week before the big launch of calls) had trapped callers in a loop! Only a dashboard with trending and drill capability would have gotten us there in 20 minutes. You cannot SEE your calls. But a drillable dashboard with trending flags allowed us to identify the problem in minutes and then to inspect the underlying conversations to hear what was happening.

Data helps identify the weaknesses, strengths, triumphs, and faults of an organization in various areas. Modern-day enterprises use data to improve and enhance business operations and to stay on their toes just like this. But the right dashboards lead us there.

Customer service is just one of the critical areas where call center data and dashboards have an enormous impact. Call centers can use the reports generated from analytic dashboards to monitor agent performance, set targets, and identify inefficiencies.

Organizations improve interactions with customers by using call center dashboards to increase productivity and enhance complaint resolution rates.

Data derived from dashboards provide insights that help identify service inefficiencies. Call center leaders can streamline business processes, cut costs, connect WFM findings with agent findings, and enhance service delivery using call center dashboard reports.

Agent metrics help organizations support call center team members who need help in their roles. As a result, management can engage staff using a more personable approach and identify those that are thriving and those who are in trouble. Staff members are happier in this setup, and this enhances the level of support given to customers.

Analytic dashboards enable organizations to spot trends and address potential issues as they occur. Consequently, call center staff members can stop any issues before they spiral out of control like we saw with the IVR example above.

If the dashboard presents the data in an intuitive, interactive, and visually appealing format, staff members can view, analyze, absorb, and share it easily. As a result, cross-departmental collaboration becomes easier, and organizations save valuable time.

Communication is critical for any organization. Analytic dashboards are available to call center teams through multiple mediums, including PC, tablets, and mobile phones. Call center agents can access critical metrics at the click of a button or the swipe of a screen 24/7.

Are you stuck with basic contact center reporting from 30 years ago?  Let us help you modernize your contact center information flow with vibrant, drillable and fully connected dashboards that put YOU in control of your operations.

SuccessKPI.com helps organizations to get rid of data silos and unlocks a 360-degree view of call center operations. Find out more here on our website.

Or better yet, watch this webinar to learn key recommendations and steps to put you in control of your CX transformation.