4 Important Categories of Contact Center Analytics

 

Contact centers collect a lot of data. They can find out what their customers are doing on a daily basis. They can determine what time a customer contacted support and how long their contact lasted. They can listen carefully to conversations and decide if a customer is happy or angry based on certain keywords. All of this data helps the contact center do things like reduce call times and examine agent performance. To be competitive, contact centers have to stay focused on the customer. By keeping track of customer service metrics, contact centers can make decisions based on reliable data.

1. Speech Analytics

Speech analytics help contact centers improve a customer’s phone call experience. Customer service agents are monitored to ensure they’re adhering to scripts and following regulations. This can also pinpoint the areas in which an agent needs additional training. Speech analytics will also segment hard-to-handle calls so that they can be dealt with by a supervisor or an agent with more experience. Furthermore, speech analytics can determine the reason for the customer’s call, what they hope to get out of the call, and if they are happy, upset, stressed, satisfied, etc.

2. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Analytics

Intuitive IVR systems improve the customer experience. Insights that can be gleaned from IVR analytics include the percentage of callers who want to speak with a live agent and their reason for doing so; the reason for the transfer of calls between departments; the percentage of callers who were not identified accurately; and the number of calls that were handled from start to finish by IVR.

3. Overall Customer Satisfaction

Gauging overall customer satisfaction will give you an idea of how well you’re delivering the entire customer experience. In order to measure customer satisfaction, the CSAT score is often used. The contact center will ask the customer to rate their satisfaction with a specific experience, like an interaction with the company or a transaction. For example, the customer may be asked to rate their satisfaction on a scale of one to ten. Any answer that’s a six or above means the customer is satisfied. To figure out the percentage of satisfied customers, the number of customers who responded with a satisfied rating is divided by the total number of customers who were surveyed.

4. Predictive Analytics

Tracking analytics isn’t worth much if you’re not going to take the information and figure out how to improve the contact center. Predictive analytics show the changes that will most impact the performance of the contact center. Management can then figure out the best way to communicate with customers, retain happy customers and resolve problems with dissatisfied customers.

One single metric will not give you a useful view of customer service quality. Instead, several metrics that are carefully chosen based on your customer service goals have to be followed. Tracking analytics allows the contact center to improve, update and revamp their programs on a regular basis.

7 Questions to Ask Yourself About Touchpoint Effectiveness

After you’ve mapped the customer journey, look closely at each touchpoint. Mastering each touchpoint makes a brand a great competitor while improving customer loyalty and enthusiasm. Ask the following questions to make sure you’re being as efficient as possible.

1. What specifics are occurring at each touchpoint? What are both the brand and the customer doing at each touchpoint?

2. Are the touchpoints addressing the customer’s needs and concerns? Are questions being answered?

3. Are the touchpoints working together for the brand’s target audience, including novices, experts and everyone in between?

4. Are there needs that aren’t being met by your brand or by your competitors? Is this a gap that your business is able to fill?

5. Is the same branding being used across all touchpoints? This includes tone, message, buzz words, and voice.

6. Are there problems with flow from one touchpoint to the next? Is this causing the brand to lose customers or is it causing dissatisfaction, such as product returns or extra help line calls?

7. Are your brand’s touchpoints different or better than those of your competitors?

Attend the ‘Shaping the Journey of the Connected Customer’ Virtual Conference March 16 – 19 to help you answer these questions.

How Creating Value and the Customer Experience Affect Business Outcomes

Often, people confuse the customer journey with the selling process. While the sales process is focused on how to get a buyer to purchase a product or service, the customer journey provides value and takes into account all of the questions and needs that must be answered and met along the way. According to Forrester, 21% of businesses base how well they’re handling customer experience on the business outcome (if they make a sale, for example). However, customers have to go through their journey at their own pace with plenty of content and support agents to help them along.

According to Forrester, between 70% and 90% of the buyer’s journey is finished before ever communicating with a vendor. While 80% of businesses feel that they provide a great customer experience, only 8% of customers agree. If you’re not one of those rare brands with customers who are truly enjoying their journey, it’s necessary to improve the customer experience you’re offering.

The Importance of Creating Value

According to 2014’s Marketing Performance Management Study, Best-in-Class (BIC) marketing companies create value by applying the follow best practices:

• They map touchpoints, taking note of possible problems.

• They look at each touchpoint to capture data regarding customer perception and expectation.

• They apply the customer experience and related metrics to business outcome.

• They create tools, processes, content, and systems to offer customers a differentiated journey.

James Allen’s Three Ds of Exceptional Customer Service

In an article for the Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge for Business Leaders, James Allen, Barney Hamilton, and Frederick F. Reichheld defined three elements that set apart the elite 8% of companies that deliver a superior customer experience.

1. “They design the right offers and experiences for the right customers.”

2. “They deliver these propositions by focusing the entire company on them with an emphasis on cross-functional collaboration.”

3. “They develop their capabilities to please customers again and again – by such means as revamping the planning process, training people in how to create new customer propositions, and establishing direct accountability for the customer experience.”

How Business Outcomes are Affected by Customer Experience

A brand won’t be able to reach its business outcome goals (repeat purchases, customer lifetime value, and brand preference, for example) if they don’t focus on customer experience. BIC companies realize that what happens before the sale is just as important as what happens after the sale.

Tips for Mapping Customer Touchpoints

In order to achieve business outcomes, successful brands understand that they have to develop a customer-centric outlook on the customer experience. Throughout the journey, touchpoints must be matched with breakpoints, which are the interactions that decide whether or not the customer becomes loyal or maintains loyalty. These four tips can be applied to customer journey mapping, with importance paid to touchpoints.

1. Universal Touchpoints: At first, map out universal touchpoints, which are ones that can be applied to all of your brand’s customers. Eventually, you’ll create more specific experience maps with more distinct touchpoints.

2. Detail Each Touchpoint: Make a list of touchpoints and pay extra attention to the ones that serve as breakpoints. For each one, include a description, interaction method, and customer expectation. At this step, you may need to get other people from the organization involved. Many organizations find it helpful to collaborate with their customer advisory board when mapping the customer journey. Working sessions and interviews will help capture data about customer expectations.

3. Visualize the Touchpoints: Visually illustrate the customer journey map, including flow from one touchpoint to the next. Having a visual will help you to see areas that work well and also areas that need to be improved. Spend extra time with the touchpoints that act as breakpoints.

4. Further Customize Each Touchpoint: Based on the data that was gathered throughout the mapping process, brands should revisit each touchpoint and further develop content that’s more relevant to the customer.

Competition, price transparency, and short product lifecycles mean that customer expectations are regularly changing. Improving the customer experience and fine-tuning the customer journey is an ongoing process.

Register for ‘Shaping the Journey of the Connected Customer’ Virtual Conference March 16 – 19 to learn more about Customer Touchpoints.  Attendance is free.