Business Intelligence: Is Your Call Center Equipped to Move Past Spreadsheets?

In the past, spreadsheet-driven analytics dominated old-school private branch exchange (PBX)-based call centers. With new advances in call center technology, including the development of business intelligence (BI) software, spreadsheets are slowly becoming a thing of the past.

Gathering and analyzing data within spreadsheets can be a daunting and overwhelming task, yet many call centers still use Excel for reporting and analytics purposes. Is your business among them? If so, you’re missing out on the revenue opportunities that come with using a BI solution and automating certain reporting tasks.

Eliminate Spreadsheets

With the right call center software with built-in BI capabilities, your business can actually eliminate the need for spreadsheets altogether. And by eliminating the time spent on manual spreadsheet analysis, your managers will save a considerable amount of time, in addition to minimizing manual data entry errors.

Most importantly, you’ll gain access to real-time data, enabling you to obtain deeper insight into what’s happening in your call center in time to make decisions that can impact your bottom line. With access to all types of data at your fingertips, your call center can more accurately measure agent performance and call center strategies, as well as predict future performance.

By monitoring agent performance and making changes to operation strategies in real time, your call center can ultimately boost its overall productivity and efficiency.

Visualize Your Data

One of most beneficial aspects of Call Center Business Intelligence software is the ability to view data in such a way that it is easy to understand and analyze. BI software allows call center managers to visualize their collected data using easily configurable charts and graphs on user-friendly, customizable dashboards.

Visual dashboards are a great tool for measuring call center performance at a high level. They show a snapshot or overview of what’s going on within the center. For example, among other things, a call center dashboard can reveal the total number of inbound and outbound calls occurring at any given time, or how many calls each agent has made or received.

With access to a visual overview of who and what is working efficiently and areas that could be improved within the call center, it’s easier to identify where issues lie and what processes might need to be revamped.

Customized Reporting

Good BI software will allow the user to create custom reports easily and quickly, in order to dig into the performance data on a deeper level. Creating manual reports after digging through spreadsheets takes time and effort that could be better spent training agents to boost performance and improve customer service.

For example, if today’s outbound call number is significantly lower than yesterday’s, you might want to run a report that shows call volume each day, by agent, for a particular period of time to see if there is a pattern occurring or if there is another issue that should be addressed. A quality BI software solution will make collecting and analyzing this data simple and fast.

A Solid Investment

BI software is a critical investment for call centers today. Without it, you’re limiting your ability to collect and analyze data at the same level as your competitors. According to Gartner’s 2014 survey regarding big data, “73 percent of respondents have invested or plan to invest in business intelligence solutions in the next two years, up from 64 percent in 2013.”

The same survey indicated that, “the number of organizations stating they had no plans for big data investment fell from 31 percent in 2013 to 24 percent in 2014.”

Although it may be tough to measure the immediate benefits of having this technology connected to your call center data, the risks associated with not having it are clear. It’s time to upgrade from spreadsheets and implement a BI solution for your call center.

For more information on how to work smarter with technology solutions for the modern call center, check out our Top 10 List When Considering a Cloud-based Contact Center Solution whitepaper.