(This article was originally published in
Healthcare Call Center Times in December 2020.)
Customer contact centres generate a vast amount of data every day, but do you really know what your ‘Big Data’ is telling you? With so many inputs and variables at stake, it can be difficult to find the real insights that will help you understand your customers’ behaviour and drive improvements in service.
It’s widely recognised that Big Data is the key to revenue generation because it can deliver deep insights into customer behaviour and market trends. According to a recent report from CapGemini, 61 prcent of companies stated that Big Data is crucial to understanding customer behaviour, but in the same report, only 27 percent of those surveyed considered the initiative successful.
This indicates that there is a clear understanding that data has significant value, but many organizations are failing to realise this value in ways that help them grow their business. Why are so many companies unable to access this value?
Data Is Hidden in Different Systems
Data silos are the most common reason that ‘Big Data’ is inaccessible. Data from different sources and departments is often stored in disparate, separate systems that don’t talk to each other. This limits the ability to see how one aspect of a customer interaction may be impacting on other parts of the process, and in turn limits the agent in finding the right action to be taken in resolving a customer problem or enhancing the experience further.
According to a survey conducted by the International Customer Management Institute, 69 percent of customer support agents have to navigate different systems to locate required customer information, and 40 percent are still manually inputting customer details. This is hugely inefficient, repetitive and leaves your data prone to errors while creating an intensely frustrating experience for both your customers and your agents.
The other challenge is that if data is gathered through different systems it may be recorded differently and will therefore render different results. This can lead to different departments coming to conflicting conclusions, as well as unnecessarily duplicating the labour. Without an integrated 360° view of your entire operational process, covering all channels, it’s impossible to fully understand or trust the accuracy of your data, and this/will limit your ability to make sound business decisions.
Are You Measuring the Right Data?
Many organizations struggle to fully understand what their data is telling them, and more importantly, they often fail to measure the inputs or variables that truly have an impact on their business.
For example, you may be measuring agent performance metrics such as call handling time, speed of answer and admin follow up, but does this really represent the value they are delivering or even the objectives of your business? The ICMI survey reports that 63 percent of contact centres collect data on customer satisfaction following an interaction, but only 48 percent actually use this information to implement improvements.
Additionally, many businesses are still failing to cater for customer contact on all relevant channels. Most call centre operators are already monitoring customer support enquiries through email, chat and SMS, and collating this data to create a picture of common support enquiries. But don’t forget that external channels can also have a significant influence. Customers often post enquiries and complaints on companies’ social media channels and if not managed properly, this can quickly escalate into a widely shared issue which is detrimental to your business reputation.
Organisations need to define the metrics they measure in line with their business objectives. It may be important to streamline processes and minimise costs, but if this comes at the expense of customer satisfaction, it will still hurt your revenues. Gathering data from all relevant sources and pulling it into a single location will enable you to quickly generate reports from across the entire business, whenever they are needed. This approach will not only provide a holistic end-to-end view of your operational processes, it will help you to discover trends in complaints, customer satisfaction, and any product issues over time, or even identify new revenue opportunities. Armed with this deeper insight, you can anticipate changing customer needs and ensure all processes are streamlined, and all areas of the business are better integrated, to work in unison to deliver a seamless, excellent customer experience.