REAL TIME REPORTING: MORE CRITICAL THAN EVER IN THE CONTACT CENTER

REAL TIME REPORTING: MORE CRITICAL THAN EVER IN THE CONTACT CENTERIn this age of mobility and social media, consumers can freely share their gripes about a company’s poor customer service instantly, through any number of online outlets, whether Facebook, Twitter or personal blog. One bad interaction with a contact center agent could cause a once-faithful customer to go on a “social media rampage” that could spread virally, causing signifi cant damage to an organization’s reputation and brand.

As a result, it has become imperative that organizations consistently deliver high quality customer service across all channels in the contact center. Helping them to achieve this are today’s cloud-based contact center systems and their advanced real time reporting capabilities. With these systems, contact center managers can gain real time visibility into every aspect of contact center operations, thus enabling them to quickly identify and resolve customer service issues.

While historical reporting in the contact center has long been an invaluable tool for improving agent performance and uncovering trends in customer behavior, it is only useful in analyzing long-term trends. With real time reporting, managers can monitor Key Performance Indicators and other metrics as they progress and make adjustments “on the fl y” to mitigate the impact of dips in performance. This can range from adjusting staffi ng to identifying an agent who is struggling and in need of coaching. The importance of real time reporting is growing as the speed of information increases. Real time reporting enables contact center managers to resolve customer service issues before they snowball into major disasters that end up being displayed across the Internet.

Real time reporting is also particularly important in light of increasing contact center complexity resulting from the introduction of new technologies. No longer are contact center managers focused just on phone interactions and Call Detail Records, they need to keep track of agent performance across all channels, including email, Web chat and social media. In most traditional contact centers, these systems are “silo’d,” meaning they are not fully integrated and therefore may not be capable of readily sharing data. In contact centers using legacy systems, managers often must generate separate reports and manually consolidate them in order to get a true picture of overall effi ciency, which is often a tedious and time-consuming process.

In contrast, cloud-based contact center systems are tightly integrated on a shared platform, thus allowing real time data from multiple systems to be instantly consolidated, analyzed and presented in useful, graphical formats. With these unifi ed systems, data can be collected from across all channels — phone, email, Web chat and social media — and seamlessly packaged into custom reports and delivered in automated fashion to authorized users.

What’s more, cloud-based systems, with their real time reporting capabilities, enable contact center managers to receive real time alerts when thresholds have been met for certain metrics or KPIs. This capability has been a boon for managers, who are tasked with ensuring operational effi ciency and are valued for their ability to control outcomes, yet are faced with increased complexity and a mandate to correct all performance issues as they arise. With cloud-based real time reporting, managers can monitor contact center performance as a whole, by group or by individual agent from any browser-enabled device, and take immediate action when problems arise.

Not only is real-time reporting increasingly being used to drive reactive decision making, it is also playing an increasingly important role in automating contact center operations. For example, if an agent is having a diffi cult time meeting the goal for a particular KPI, such as Average Handle Time, the system can be programmed so that when he/she fails a certain number of times, an alert is sent to the manager and the agent is automatically taken “offl ine” for a live coaching or training session via an e-learning system.

Real time reporting can also play a vital role in training contact center agents and helping them to “self-improve” their performance. With today’s contact center systems, KPIs can be displayed on wallboards or even directly on the agent’s

desktop in the form of individualized scorecards. By giving agents access to real time metrics, they can see where their performance is in relation to the group and adjust accordingly. This gives them greater “ownership” of their job performance, which in turn improves agent satisfaction while reducing the workload for the contact center manager.

Real time reporting is also critical for monitoring the performance of distributed contact centers, including remote locations and outsourced or home-based agents. With a cloud-based contact center system, KPIs could be monitored for each and every agent on the network, regardless of their location or contract type. By the same token, contact center performance can be monitored holistically, giving contact center managers a unifi ed view of distributed operations.

Today’s real time reporting systems are proving their worth with their analytical abilities. Today’s systems work much like forecasting tools in that they let contact center managers track trends as they develop, both historically and in real time. They can then use the reporting software to predict, with a high degree of accuracy, how a particular metric will trend over time. This vital information gives upper management a powerful tool for strategic decision-making. In addition, most reporting systems let managers get a granular view of the stats they want to see. This allows them to make adjustments where they need to be made — on an individual agent, group or network-wide basis.

Many organizations today view real time reporting in the contact center as essential for delivering consistently high quality customer service and building customer loyalty. However, it is important to recognize that real time reporting must be monitored in order to be effective: It is of little use if there aren’t adequate resources in place to monitor performance and take corrective action. In addition, it is essential that organizations properly identify which metrics or KPIs are suitable for monitoring in real time. Some KPIs, such as Service Level, Call Abandonment and Adherence, are ideal to monitor in real time, while others, such as Average Handle Time and Average Cost per Contact, are typically measured on a less frequent basis.

REAL TIME TELEMETRYConnect First’s Real Time Telemetry is a cloud-based contact center solution that gives organizations the ability to monitor KPIs and metrics in real time, thus affording them the opportunity to identify problems quickly and adjust operations accordingly. With this fully Web-based reporting solution, managers can collect real time performance data from multiple systems including ACD, email and Web chat. In addition, managers can consolidate and present it in graphical reports that they can access from any browser-enabled device.

For organizations with inbound contact centers, Connect First’s Real Time Telemetry delivers Inbound Remote Monitoring, which offers detailed stats on all inbound queues, such as the number of calls in the queue, maximum hold time, and the number of agents available to handle inbound calls. For companies with outbound or blended operations, Connect First’s Outbound Remote Monitoring gives managers clear visibility into the performance of all agents, regardless of which telemarketing campaign they are working on — or where they are located.

What makes Connect First’s Real Time Telemetry unique is that it enables contact center mangers to easily monitor agent interactions. Using the intuitive interface, a manager can select an agent to monitor, drill down into his or her stats, and with a single click “silent monitor” the agent’s current interaction (providing he or she is on a call). The manager can also “barge in” on the call, should the interaction turn sour, and steer it to fruition — or simply terminate the call. Once an agent’s performance problems are uncovered, management can take corrective action, such as having the agent undergo additional training. In this regard, Connect First’s Real Time Telemetry solution serves as a powerful agent training and coaching solution.

With Connect First’s Real Time Telemetry, contact center managers can decide which metrics and KPIs they want to monitor in real time — whether holistically, by group or by individual agent — and have them packaged into their preferred format. What’s more,

they can measure agent performance across all locations — in the main center, remote centers, home-based agents or even outsourcers. With real time performance data at their fi ngertips, contact center managers and business executives can gain deep insights into contact center operations and react quickly to events that can put customer satisfaction and future revenues in jeopardy.

ABOUT CONNECT FIRST

Connect First is an award-winning SaaS telecommunications and cloud contact center software provider that focuses on customer satisfaction and elegant hosted solutions. Connect First offers a robust platform, designed and supported by a team of highly experienced engineers, designers and business analysts, and backed with personalized in-house customer care. Solutions include Cloud Routing, Inbound ACD, Outbound Dialing, Call Tracking, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Voice Broadcast, Disaster Recovery, Predictive Dialer, Real-Time Telemetry, CDR Reporting, Live Agent Chat and more. Through a consultative approach with each customer interaction, Connect First builds customized solutions to meet the needs of a discerning customer base.