Top 7 Benefits of Incorporating BI into Your Call Center Solution

Business intelligence (BI) is becoming a critical function of call center operations today. Without insight into the vast amount of data that organizations generate, call centers can often fly blind. They have no visibility into how the center is performing – or what impact that can have on business outcomes. Without that knowledge from Call Center Business Intelligence, managers and executives have no way of knowing which financial or operational strategies will have the most impact. They essentially have to base decisions on gut instinct and interactions with agents.

It’s no way to operate a company and certainly no way to improve business performance. “If you can’t observe it, you can’t measure it,” says Dave Bethers, our VP of Enterprise Sales. “And if you can’t observe or measure it, you can’t change it.”

Fortunately, call centers today can observe and measure their workforces with BI tools like TCN’s. Doing so has a number of benefits, including these seven.

1. Improve data accuracy. Businesses with call center solutions have historically used data dumps into Excel or worked with an outside data intelligence service. Neither option is conducive to accuracy. Excel balks at the amount of data that contact centers generate; it will likely crash multiple times, not to mention lose any unsaved work.

External data analysts are a step in the right direction, but they can be expensive. They can also pose delays in data reporting, in some cases anywhere from six to nine months, which doesn’t do businesses any good.

Contact centers need data that can be acted upon immediately. Findings reported nine months down the road will be hopelessly out-of-date and unable to guide any sort of decision-making. Business intelligence tools simplify the data collection process, ensure accuracy and provide actionable information.

2. More accurate forecasting. With BI, businesses can better predict potential outcomes. Managers examine data for weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual insights and trends, and use the information to better allocate time, resources and staff. This is critical for small to mid-sized contact centers that need to scale quickly, either up or down. For example, if they see that production slacks off during December but inbound calls pick up on January 2, they can compare the data sets, develop correlative theories on what’s happening, and test their hypotheses.

3. Measure agent performance. Businesses sometimes mine data about overall performance but are at a loss when it comes to individual employees. BI offers an opportunity to go deeper. Managers can drill into insights until they find the primary culprit, then address it with a strategy fit for the occasion and person.

Within call centers, this deeper diver can uncover a treasure trove of information about high performers…and underperformers, too. For those who excel, managers can replicate success measures across the department – perhaps a particular agent makes use of a module within the call center solution that others on the team have yet to discover. In the case of agents whose metrics are lagging, this often means providing more specialized training to help them better perform their jobs.

4. Purposeful incentives. Incentives can help employees change behaviors, but only if the rewards are relevant to them and the business. BI might not be able to decide if a lunch delivery service is the right perk, but it can determine whether agents are spending an inordinate amount of time deciding where to go for lunch or how long they spend on lunch breaks. Combining the data points with employee surveys can align potential perks with problems. Once the perk is implemented, it can be monitored via BI to see if it drives the desired results.

5. Free managers to focus on what matters. Before BI, managers could spend half the day pulling reports. That, or they took work home with them every night and weekend. After implanting BI solutions, call center managers can better balance work and life. They spend less time pulling and filing reports and more time interacting with and training agents. They’re more present at home, too. They can play catch in the backyard and pay attention to conversations at the dinner table.

6. Capture real return on investment (ROI). ROI can seem like a unicorn at times, but BI takes it from myth to reality. Managers can determine real ROI per agent and even across the entire contact center or multiple centers—it all depends on what they’re trying to measure. Regardless of the sample size, be it an individual agent or 70 contact centers, bottom costs and profits are the preeminent concerns, and BI is a way to address both.

7. Ensure compliance. Compliance might not be the most fun subject to address, but it’s only going to become a larger part of the conversation as the government builds upon the existing Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). In addition, some organizations can face large penalties for not meeting service-level agreements (SLAs).

BI is a way to address concerns and to do it in an efficient manner. If call wait times are part of an SLA, BI can monitor not only that metric but also those related to it. It can also scrub for bad phone numbers and establish restrictions and rules, elements that play into TCPA compliance.

Business intelligence is essential for today’s call centers that strive to grow and advance. It’s the best way to deliver bottom- and top-line results. It enables managers to work smarter rather than harder. That’s a good thing for everyone. People can get back to the jobs they were hired to do because the business invested in a solution that gives them visibility into critical data and reporting and measurement capabilities for the organization.

Want to see the proof for yourself? Contact us for a demo of TCN’s Business Intelligence platform today.