Contact Centre Real Time Reporting: Alex Cooksey of Syntec suggest ten simple ways in which real time reporting can help you ensure that your contact centre is working to maximum effectiveness.
Contact Centre Real Time Reporting: Alex Cooksey of Syntec suggest ten simple ways in which real time reporting can help you ensure that your contact centre is working to maximum effectiveness.1. Make use of different views – Reporting systems these days have so many options and different views on offer, it can be easy to get lost in the maelstrom of information in a busy call centre. Consolidated views give you a good overall feel for how things are going in your call centre and you can then set up specific boards focused on key teams of agents or brands to get more detailed information about team performance.
2. Deal with fluctuating demand on the fly – Systems like Syntec’s AgentCall allow you to temporarily divert agents from one area to another in order to help deal with peak traffic, simply by dragging the agent into the appropriate call group on the fly. The agent is automatically returned to their original group after they log out or at midnight or you can manually switch them back using the dashboard.
3. Use alarms with care – Alarms can be a useful way to alert managers when calls or breaks go on too long or when number of calls queuing for a specific function are too high. It can be tempting to set up alarms for every imaginable scenario. However it is generally a good idea to use alarms sparingly. If you have too many set up then they end up going off all the time and call centre managers can become inured to them and unconsciously stop paying them attention.
4. Customise your queue view to show only the metrics you need – When determining what to look at in live reporting it’s important to focus on that the data that really matters to your call centre and try to limit it to that. Different call centre managers like to see different information. For example, some call centres focus on keeping the number of calls waiting as low as possible, others find they respond best to an abandoned rate, others need to see the number of calls live in each of their overflow call centres. Removing anything you don’t need from your queue view will ensure that even casual observance means you’re seeing the things you need to. Again, if you have large amounts of information constantly visible it’s all to easy to become inured to it.
5. Monitor agents’ availability wherever they (or you) are – Syntec’s QueueView and Agent Dashboards allow managers to see call flow and agents availability despite not being in the office, whether that be manager or agent. It’s a useful way of keeping a view on a disparate group of agents and call centres.
6. Use call listening to improve service quality – Listening in to live calls through an agent dashboard allows managers to ensure that new or recently returning staff are not having difficulties getting going, without alerting the customer or the agent to the fact that the specific call is being monitored.
7. Use live agent utilisation figures to allocate resource efficiently – Live agent utilisation figures allow managers to redistribute agents most effectively during quiet periods, perhaps getting some of them to help clear email or admin backlogs that build up.
8. Give an opportunity for customer feedback after each call – After call surveys can be a useful way of dealing with problems very shortly after they happen. By offering the caller the opportunity to leave feedback after a call, problems can be fed back to the managers very quickly though the use of negative survey alert emails to managers highlighting problem calls.
9. Set up missed call alerts – Missed call alerts can be useful in helping to call back callers who weren’t able to get through, particularly useful when cost per call advertising has been used to generate the initial call. This might be in the form of an email every time a call is abandoned, or a scheduled report that sends a list every few hours, removing anyone who has called back successfully during that time.
10. Invest in real time reporting of callers’ web browsing behaviour – Systems like Syntec’s ResponseTrack tie up the effect of a web campaign into the actual call traffic into the call centre. Real time reporting of this information can inform advertising managers about the keywords and sources that actually generate revenue (rather than just clicks or calls) and agents can be patched into the caller’s session (within your web server) to look at what the caller has been looking at on your site – allowing plenty of opportunity to up sell.
Alex Cooksey – Syntec. Alex studied computer science at Southampton University before joining EccoWare. There he looked after quality assurance and customer services, working directly with proprietary derivatives traders (those who trade their own money) and learning first-hand how to deal with customers whose entire fortunes rest on whether your software works as promised. He then joined the Department for Transport as PA to the head of property, helping to divest the government of a large portion of what was then the second largest property empire in the country. Alex joined Syntec in 2005 and looks after customer services, helping to ensure that each Syntec customer comes across to their own customers as best they can.
For additional information see the Syntec Website or view their Company Profile
