9 Myths to Debunk for a Data-Powered Contact Center

As customers become more empowered through technology, so must the organizations that serve them.

Analytics in the data-powered contact center are proven to drive KPIs across key metrics, including first contact resolution, cross promotions and overall customer satisfaction.

“Contact center agents are at the forefront of addressing client needs and have a direct and profound impact on customer experiences. This means that WFO programs in the contact center are a key ingredient impacting the overall service delivery efforts, as well as customer satisfaction,” notes a report on workforce optimization (WFO) analytics by Omer Minkara of The Aberdeen Group in 2014.

Customer engagement and analytics software yield measurable benefits. Aberdeen surveyed 83 companies and found that those with “strong voice of the customer” (VoC) analytics:

• Improved their annual revenue by 10.9 percent.
• Decreased their customer care costs by 6.3 percent year-over-year (versus a 2 percent annual increase for those that didn’t).
• Enjoyed year-over-year improvements to their Net Promoter Score three times greater than those companies without VoC analytics.

But most significant of all, was the dramatic increase in customer satisfaction rates. Those that Aberdeen considered VoC analytics “leaders” reported a 17.8 percent increase in customer satisfaction rates year-over-year, compared to a 3.9 percent decrease in customer satisfaction by the rest. (The Aberdeen Group, Omer Minkara, May 2014).

Despite this, and other well-documented evidence that analytics in the contact center accelerates performance, many businesses are hesitant to embrace customer engagement and analytics technology.

Some fear the cost, others mistakenly believe the ramp-up time and effort will be overwhelming. These and other myths are keeping many organizations from realizing the benefits of speech and text analytics, which are driving top line growth and the next generation of customer conscious corporate strategies.

Let’s now explore and debunk the nine myths that might be holding your organization back:

Myth #1: Thousands of seats are required to make analytics “worth it.”

Reality: Even the smallest contact center can take advantage of the data they’re gathering with cost-effective, scalable solutions that are built to catalyze growth through customer interaction analytics. To learn more, read our complete guide to customer interaction analytics. Organizations can create insight and discover the most important metrics for their business, no matter whether they have five seats or 50,000.

Myth #2: You’ll have too much data.

Reality: In the Aberdeen study, 80 percent of the companies surveyed said they’re collecting enough data to measure performance, yet only six percent said they were “extremely satisfied” with their ability to use the data. Analytics can liberate the data from the “server closet” and provide actionable insights backed by data science.

Myth #3: You already know what’s happening

Reality: Even if your gut is right a majority of the time, customer engagement and analytics give organizations the power to see and know more. Analytics uncover emerging trends and provide hard data to back up instincts. Knowing is always better. Directional guidance from customer engagement and analytics allows leaders with data-driven insights to truly understand their customers, to better serve customers and to drive revenue with every customer interaction.

Myth #4: You must create order and solve everything right away.

Reality: The easiest way to implement customer engagement and analytics is by starting with the information you already have, and often have for QM and compliance. Once you’ve made the early wins in these areas, you can make the case for more integrated analytics and a customer-conscious corporate strategy.

Myth #5: You need disparate solutions for different types of analytics.

Reality: Proven solutions that bundle all the analytics for speech, text and desktop are available and helping thousands of companies around the world achieve impressive competitive advantages today.

Myth #6: You have to struggle with a complicated, confusing interface.

Reality: The beauty of analytics is that they bring order to chaos and present information through a simple visual interface – built by data scientists and designed for real people. Empower your team to provide data-driven insights and collaborate across your organization’s IT ecosystem to make it all come together.

Myth #7: You will start eliminating people’s jobs.

Reality: Customer engagement and analytics is meant to fuel human interactions, not replace them. Find the tools designed to empower the people you need in your contact center, giving them the data they need to improve and accelerate growth.

Myth #8: You need to hire highly trained data scientists to work with the information.

Reality: Leading contact centers gauge the effectiveness of their tools by identifying what metrics can measure performance. Customer retention, Net Promoter Score, first contact resolution: truly evaluate which KPIs drive business performance and elevate the results all the way to the customer-conscious C-suite.

Myth #9: You have to spend months and deplete resources to implement analytics.

Reality: This is perhaps the most erroneous myth of all. Analytics can be turnkey, efficient to deploy and simple to turn on. Customer engagement and analytics technologies today are ready-made to integrate with your existing infrastructure and ACD, and deployment takes days, not months.

Calabrio recently demonstrated the ease and efficiency of installing analytics, screen capture and 100 percent recording, along with getting 329 agents to full production on Calabrio ONE, all within 30 days.

The client, a major luxury retail company, was in a tight spot after upgrading its Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise platform to the latest version and then being left in the lurch its existing workforce optimization technology vendor.

Despite promises from the incumbent vendor that its software would be redeployed in time for the critical holiday retail season, they failed to deliver. To make matters worse, the retailer had purchased hardware for the deployment, which never got underway.

Luckily, Calabrio was on their radar. We were able to take this worried customer from handshake to full production in a mere 28 days. And not only did the customer reach full production status well before the holiday season, they also benefited from a fully redundant customer engagement and analytics solution with the same footprint as the non-redundant system they were using previously (which did not feature analytics).

Calabrio was able to respond quickly and efficiently to meet this customer’s needs and provide a compelling value proposition. While some vendors might charge exorbitant “rush” fees, Calabrio kept costs in line with its typical fair pricing and helped to catalyze growth through customer contact.

We don’t believe in “nickel and diming” our clients or holding them over a pricing barrel in emergency circumstances. Calabrio is an investment for prosperity to build a customer conscious corporate strategy.

Interested in learning more about the possibilities behind a customer conscious corporate strategy? Continue reading key insights about customer engagement from my recent Calabrio Customer Connect (C3) keynote speech.

Want to learn more about the key concepts and best practices in workforce optimization (WFO)? Read our complete guide to WFO here.

Tom Goodmanson

Tom Goodmanson, President and CEO of Calabrio, has more than 20 years of experience leading fast growing dynamic software and technology companies. Since assuming the CEO position in 2009, Tom is credited with reinventing the company and its culture around a strategy to expand value and reach through new, innovative products, and remarkable customer experiences. Addressing the market need for simpler solutions to complex customer interaction challenges, Tom’s vision to redefine the standard for software ease-of-use has been instrumental in making Calabrio one of the fastest growing companies in the industry.