Description
Contact center managers need to understand the key goals of the larger organization, then put their vast amount of information to use toward those goals.
Using Business Intelligence to
Transform Yourself into a
Contact Center Hero
Whitepaper
Using Business Intelligence to Transform You into a Con- CallCopy
i www.callcopy.com
Contents
1. The Elevator Story 1
2. Information: Your Most Important Competitive Advantage 3
3. Understanding Analytics 4
Speech Analytics 4
Data Analytics 4
4. The Role of Analytics in the Modern Contact Center 5
5. Knowing What to Look for, and Where to Look 6
Revenue Enhancement 6
Cost Control 7
Compliance/Risk Mitigation 8
6. Establishing a Business Intelligence Initiative 10
7. How to Be a Hero in Five Easy Steps 11
8. Summary 13
About CallCopy 14
Next Steps 14
© Copyright 2011, CallCopy, Inc. All rights reserved.
No part of this document may be transmitted or distributed, or copied, photocopied, scanned,
reproduced, translated, microflmed, or otherwise duplicated on any medium without written consent
of CallCopy. If written consent is given, the same confdential, proprietary, and copyright notices must
be affxed to any permitted copies as were affxed to the original. The information contained in this
document does not constitute legal advice, and should not be considered a replacement for sound
legal counsel. CallCopy shall be in no way liable for any use or misuse of the information presented
herein.
Using Business Intelligence to Transform Yourself into a Contact Center Hero CallCopy
www.callcopy.com
Bob Edwards is contact center manager for Graycom, a wireless communications provider that
has carved out a niche in the senior citizen market. Graycom offers low-cost basic cell service.
Their phones feature large number keys and a big display. The $35 monthly fee includes unlimited
minutes to any calling area. Graycom is located on the ninth foor of a downtown offce building.
One morning as Bob entered the elevator he heard a hearty, “Hi Bob, how’s everything down in
the contact center?” It was Tony Hancock, founder and CEO. Bob knew he had about 30 seconds
to convince Tony of what a great job he was doing running the contact center.
Bob made his opening gambit. “Good morning Mr. Hancock. Nice to see you and glad you asked
about the contact center. I’m really excited about the progress we’re making. ASA is 20 seconds,
down 15% from the time I took over. With our new WFM system, the occupancy factor is up to
75% and adherence is close to 85%. I’m also happy to report that FCR is up and AHT is down.”
Tony Hancock looked puzzled. He replied, “Bob, that’s all really interesting, but are customers fully
satisfed with our services and are we making a dent in our customer attrition rate?”
So much for scoring points with the boss.
Now, let’s assume that Bob had invested in speech and data analytics software (and perhaps
displayed a little more savvy during his chance encounter).
Take two:
“Hi Bob, how’s everything down in the contact center?”
“Good morning Mr. Hancock. Nice to see you and glad you asked about the contact center. I know
how important customer retention is to our growth plans, so we’ve conducted an in-depth review
of all customers that cancelled their contracts over the past six months. Our agents are all trained
to ask customers why they wanted to discontinue their service and to offer an incentive to change
their minds. As you probably know, we record every customer interaction. Until last January,
when we installed our new speech analytics software, we had no easy way of sorting through all
of these recordings. One of the frst things we discovered was that a surprisingly large number of
seniors want text messaging, which we don’t offer. It seems they want to stay in touch with their
grandchildren and the grandchildren want to text. The other thing we found is that many of our
customers are hard of hearing and prefer to text.
“The next thing we did was look at our procedures for signing up new customers. We found that
our agents need to navigate through six different applications, many of which asked for the same
information that was already entered in a previous screen. We have a funding request in for
desktop analytics to help us understand the steps agents take to complete the application process.
If we can reduce this by just 20 seconds, that translates into savings of over $50,000 per year with
no negative impact on customer satisfaction.”
10 Secrets to Boosting First Call Resolution CallCopy
1
Using Business Intelligence to Transform Yourself into a Contact Center Hero CallCopy
The Elevator Story
1
2 www.callcopy.com
Tony was really pleased with this information. Later
that day Bob received a call informing him that he
had been appointed to the prestigious New Products
and Services Committee and that the CEO wanted
him to make a presentation at the next executive
committee meeting.
In the frst example, Bob succeeded in reinforcing
the CEO’s stereotype of the contact center as a
department that lives in its own world and makes
only a marginal contribution to the enterprise. Bob provided plenty of data, but precious little
information that pertained to the issues of most importance to the CEO. In the second example,
the CEO recognized that Bob understood key corporate goals and had access to a vast amount of
information that could directly impact those goals. This made Bob uniquely positioned to make a
signifcant contribution to solving problems and fnding new and better ways to serve customers.
Contact center managers need to
understand the key goals of the
larger organization, then put their
vast amount of information to use
toward those goals.
Using Business Intelligence to Transform Yourself into a Contact Center Hero CallCopy
3 www.callcopy.com
Not that long ago, the success of a business depended
largely on geography, natural resources, patents,
fnancing and other largely tangible attributes.
While all of these factors are still important, for a
growing number of enterprises the most precious
commodity today is information. The Internet has
made it possible for a small business with big ideas
to grow from a handful of people to several thousand
in just a few short years. Access to vital information
is the difference maker. Highly coveted business
intelligence (BI) includes understanding consumer
needs, knowing what competition is up to, keeping
ears to the ground to make sure that products and
services continue to meet changing customer needs
and complying with a growing array of rules and
regulations.
According to Gartner, in 2010 companies spent $10.5
billion for BI and related software, trying to make
sense of all the information siloed away in disparate
databases and applications. This money was spent
trying to mine structured information (numbers
and text). These costly investments overlook the
contact center, where unstructured data (voice and
screen actions) contain answers to many of the key
questions that infuence strategy.
The unstructured data in the contact
center ’s recorded interactions
contain answers to key questions
that infuence overall strategy.
Information: Your Most Important Competitive Advantage
2
Using Business Intelligence to Transform Yourself into a Contact Center Hero CallCopy
4 www.callcopy.com
Recognizing the value of this untapped resource,
contact centers have increasingly turned to speech
and data analytics to extract the information
contained within their vast amounts of unstructured
data. As these technologies have matured, their
capabilities have increased while costs have come
down.
Speech Analytics
Speech analytics is a spectrum of software tools that
automates the process of sifting through thousands
of hours of recorded customer interactions to uncover
otherwise-hidden gems of useful information.
The tool analyzes spoken content, searching for
key words and phrases used to effciently review,
identify and categorize calls.
Common applications for speech analytics include
compliance, performance management, discovery
and root cause analysis. An example of a compliance application is to quickly locate incidences
in which legally mandated disclosures were not accurately recited. A performance management
application might be drilling down to the recordings of agents who consistently score low on frst
call resolution (FCR). Discovery and root cause analysis are highly interrelated. Both were illustrated
in the Graycom example.
Data Analytics
Data analytics software examines textual data such as PDF fles, e-mails, webpage visits, screen
actions and virtually any other type of electronic information. As with speech analytics, solutions
vary widely in terms of capabilities and cost. Desktop analytics is an emerging category designed
specifcally for contact centers. Desktop analytics works in concert with speech analytics to help
ensure compliance and identify root causes of performance deviations. Since the software functions
by capturing and analyzing information that appears on user desktops, there is minimal cost to
integrate with other agent applications and databases.
Understanding Analytics
3
Speech and desktop analytics turn
unstructured data into searchable,
comprehensible information.
Using Business Intelligence to Transform Yourself into a Contact Center Hero CallCopy
5 www.callcopy.com
Contact centers today have four core objectives:
1. To delight customers.
2. To sustain or increase revenue.
3. To minimize operating costs.
4. To provide valuable business insights to the entire organization.
The relative importance of each mission varies based on the nature of the enterprise. Organizations
that have invested heavily in developing brand equity will be most concerned with customer
delight and business intelligence. This would include virtually all businesses that cater to consumer
markets. Outbound telemarketers and collections agents are focused almost exclusively on revenue
collection. Process-oriented contact centers such as reservation centers, catalog retailers, claim
centers, tech support centers, wholesale order takers and product return centers are primarily
concerned with effciency and cost savings. Sharing business intelligence is an emerging focus,
made possible by the emergence of analytics tools. Speech and data analytics contribute to these
objectives in many ways, as listed below:
The Role of Analytics in the Modern Contact Center
4
Top Ways Speech and Data Analytics Contribute to Key Objectives
• By understanding customer expectations and the factors that motivate satisfaction.
• By helping identify the key expressions that signal sales opportunities and assessing
how well agents transition into selling mode.
• By isolating and evaluating interactions that can help senior management spot signifcant
competitive actions.
• By identifying opportunities for cost savings through process improvements.
• By helping determine the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
• By identifying and rectifying causes of sub-par performance by drilling down into calls
that exceeded pre-determined thresholds.
• By ensuring compliance with regulations and avoiding costly and unnecessary litigation.
• By constructing performance metrics uniquely tailored to the strategies and processes
of the enterprise.
Using Business Intelligence to Transform Yourself into a Contact Center Hero CallCopy
6 www.callcopy.com
We have all seen individuals hopelessly walking up and down the beach waving their metal detectors
hoping to discover lost coins, jewelry or even buried treasure. Most of the time all they come up
with is discarded beverage cans. Savvy contact center professionals looking for buried treasure in
their thousands of hours of recorded speech and desktop data don’t have time to randomly poke
around hoping to fnd that precious nugget that will elevate them to the executive suite. Rather,
they will do their homework and fnd out exactly what information they should be looking for. This
is done by fostering positive relationships with managers of other customer-facing functions and
researching all they can about their industry and the priorities of their organization.
This process will reveal business intelligence requirements that tend to fall into one or more of
three broad categories: revenue enhancement, cost control and compliance/risk mitigation.
Revenue Enhancement
On the revenue side, the frst priority for many organizations is to hold onto their existing customers.
The second priority is to increase revenue by up-selling or cross-selling existing customers. In order
to craft effective customer retention and revenue enhancement initiatives, sales and marketing
management will beneft by asking questions such as, “How successful was our last campaign?”
Marketing Questions that Impact Revenue Enhancement
• What do we need to do to increase customer retention?
• Are we losing customers to competitors, and if so why?
• How satisfed are our customers
with the quality of our products and
services?
• How successful are we with our
promotional campaigns?
• How can we improve our products or
services?
Organizations spend billions of dollars on
third-party market research to get answers
to these questions. While there will always
be a need for specialized market research,
sometimes the answers are right under our
noses – in the consumer’s voice, not just in
sterile statistical tables.
Knowing What to Look for, and Where to Look
5
Figure 1: Use speech analytics to stay informed about
competitive threats. Identify trends in defections due to
pricing, new products or promotions, and take steps to
quash the threat.
Using Business Intelligence to Transform Yourself into a Contact Center Hero CallCopy
7 www.callcopy.com
Take the example of customer retention. Research studies have shown that it typically costs fve to
ten times more to replace a customer than it does to retain the one you already have. Customer
retention programs need to address the reasons why customers are switching to a competitor’s
brand. Agents that handle service cancellation requests need to ask probing questions about why
the customer wishes to defect, and be in a position to offer appropriate incentives.
Cost Control
Every business function is expected to achieve its objectives at the lowest possible cost, provided
that quality standards are maintained. Contact centers represent a signifcant cost to the enterprise.
Table 1 shows U.S. labor rates for customer service representatives.
1
Based on these numbers, a 200-agent contact center in California would spend $7.6 million in annual
agent labor costs. If you add in the cost of management, network services, rent, utilities, licenses
and related contact center expenses, the total cost would be approximately $10 million annually.
This is a large number in any organization. If contact center management can reduce operating
costs by only 2%, that’s a direct bottom-line proft contribution of $200,000. If the business has a
20% proft margin a $200,000 savings is equivalent to $1 million in new revenue. Numbers like that
will surely catch the CEO’s attention.
1 Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2010
Table 1: Mean Wages
for Customer Service
Representatives, United States
and Top Paying States
1
Using Speech Analytics to Improve FCR
cc: Analytics, CallCopy’s powerful speech analytics tool,
can be used to improve FCR rates by searching for phrases
that indicate repeat calls, such as “called before” or “last
time I called.” After these calls have been identifed, they
can be categorized based on the reason for the repeat
call, and root cause analysis performed. This allows for
changes to be made that will impact the ability for more
customer issues to be resolved on their initial call.
For additional ways to improve your FCR rates, please
download our 10 Secrets to Boosting First Call
Resolution eBook.
Figure 2: Improve FCR by using speech
analytics to locate key words or
phrases that indicate repeat calls.
Using Business Intelligence to Transform Yourself into a Contact Center Hero CallCopy
Region Mean Hourly Wage Mean Annual Wage
United States $15.76 $32,780
Delaware $18.87 $39,240
California $18.34 $38,120
Connecticut $18.33 $38,120
Massachusetts $17.77 $36,950
8 www.callcopy.com
Speech and desktop analytics provide many opportunities for cost savings by identifying the root
causes of repeat calls and long handle times and shortcuts for handling business processes.
Contributions of Analytics to Contact Center Cost Savings
• Identify more effcient business processes.
• More accurate and more effective agent evaluations.
• Check for data entry errors.
• Integration with multiple applications.
• Extend the value of legacy applications.
Desktop analytics software monitors agent screen actions. A useful analysis is to examine a large
sample of interactions handled by agents with consistently lower than average handle times and
learn what they are doing that makes them more effcient. It is possible that they have identifed
shortcuts that can be shared with others to improve overall processes.
Compliance/Risk Mitigation
In addition to direct cost savings, speech and desktop analytics can help avoid signifcant litigation
costs due to compliance violations or misinformation.
Contributions of Analytics to Contact Center Compliance and Risk Mitigation
• Identity verifcation
• Script adherence
• Process verifcation
• PCI DSS compliance
• Compliance with state and federal
regulations
• Heads up on potential service or quality
problems
Identity theft is a major problem in the United
States today. According to the 2006 Identity
Theft Survey, sponsored by the Federal
Trade Commission (FTC)
2
, approximately 8.3
million adults were victims of identity theft
in 2005. Identity theft takes many forms,
such as stolen social security cards, patient
information and utility account numbers.
When credit card identities are stolen, it’s
not just the credit card companies that are
left holding the bag – cardholders often face
2 Synovate. (2006). Federal Trade Commission – 2006 Identity Theft Survey Report. Available fromhttp://www.ftc.gov/os/2007/11/SynovateFinal-
ReportIDTheft2006.pdf
Figure 3: Use speech analytics to categorize calls based on
key words and phrases that indicate a potential breach in
the security of caller information. This allows management
to identify potential problems, and quickly review for
deviations from set standards.
Using Business Intelligence to Transform Yourself into a Contact Center Hero CallCopy
9 www.callcopy.com
economic losses, lengthy legal battles and struggles to re-establish clean credit records. While
the impact is modest for most consumers, the same FTC report states that one of twenty victims
spends roughly 60 hours and $400 trying to clean up the mess that resulted.
The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) is the global data security standard
adopted by the payment card brands for any organization that processes, stores or transmits
cardholder data. Desktop analytics help ensure PCI DSS compliance by pausing recording during
credit card entries and blocking storage of restricted information.
How CallCopy Protects Cardholder Data in Compliance with PCI
CallCopy’s cc: Discover workforce optimization suite utilizes blackouts to ensure that sensitive
data is not stored in interactions. Both audio and video recording is paused during the portion
of the call when sensitive data is being transmitted. This results in a recording that includes a
beginning and an end for QA and liability purposes, and a “blackout” portion in the middle.
cc: Fusion, CallCopy’s desktop analytics module, facilitates blackouts by automatically
detecting where felds exist in the interfaces of third-party applications. This allows triggers
to be established based on agent activity (such as a mouse’s movement to a payment card
processing application), without the need for any custom application development.
To learn more about PCI compliance, please download our Call Recording and PCI Compliance
whitepaper.
Figure 4: Blacked-
out recording and
screen capture.
Using Business Intelligence to Transform Yourself into a Contact Center Hero CallCopy
10 www.callcopy.com
Adding business intelligence to the list of to-do’s
in the contact center does not require that you
compromise other priorities, such as providing
quality service and generating revenue. Nor does
it require a lot of additional training. BI starts with
an understanding of what management needs to
know. Once you have established your list of needs
and have secured support from management, the
next step is to develop a plan. An important part
of this plan is securing commitment from agents
who may have concerns about asking questions
that will impact their evaluations on key metrics
such as average handle time (AHT). Agents need
to understand the importance of gathering this type of business intelligence and a new set of
metrics that recognizes the value of intelligence gathering should be established. A reward system
can be created to recognize superior BI contributions.
Another key part of the plan is to transition seamlessly into the information gathering phase during
interactions. Much of this is common sense and fts well with other objectives, such as revenue
growth. For example, if a call related to a new promotion is received, simply asking the caller where
he or she heard about the promotion takes only a few seconds, but provides valuable insight. If
a caller wants to return a faulty product, ask a question to determine exactly what is wrong with
the product. When parsed through speech analytics, answers to questions like these will be very
helpful to the marketing and quality control departments.
For maximum effect, the BI initiative should be meshed with a voice of the customer (VoC) program.
VoC surveys often ask open-ended questions, such as, “How could our services or products be
improved?” Without analytics technology it is very diffcult and costly to categorize and quantify
this information.
When all the pieces are in place, the BI program must be marketed internally. This means maintaining
close ties with other customer-facing departments within the enterprise and sharing the fndings
of your efforts with all individuals that can beneft from the information.
Quality
Assurance
Customer
Surveys
Product
Development
Customer
Service
Sales &
Marketing
Speech
Analytics
Voice of the
Customer
Organizational
Improvement
Organizational
Improvement
Business intelligence shared
across the organization
Figure 5: Speech analytics plays a key role in
uncovering business intelligence in a VoC program.
Want to learn more about using VoC to gain better insight into the customer experience?
Download our Capturing Voice of the Customer whitepaper.
CallCopy
RESOURCE
Using Business Intelligence to Transform Yourself into a Contact Center Hero CallCopy
Establishing a Business Intelligence Initiative
6
11 www.callcopy.com
1
Transform Your Contact Center into a Business Intelligence Center
Organizations are making big investments in business intelligence software systems that
largely work only with structured data. In the contact center you have the greatest reservoir of
business intelligence in the company – the actual voices of your customers. Too often, we use this
data only to evaluate agent performance. As a consequence, only 1–4% of these calls are actually
analyzed, and then more on the basis of how the calls were handled rather than what was said.
Create categories of why people call and track trends over time. Issue periodic reports and create
dashboards to alert executives to key performance indicators (KPI) performance and root causes of
deviations. Issue real-time reports with attached recorded voice and data interactions whenever a
signifcant observation is captured, such as a potential quality defect or unanticipated competitive
action.
2
Clearly Illustrate the Big Picture
Don’t take for granted that C-level executives have an in-depth understanding of what goes
on in the contact center. They have other fsh to fry. The best way to get their attention is to
demonstrate outstanding tangible contributions in terms that they care about. Producing a carefully
researched analysis of why customers are defecting to competitive brands and offering logical and
creative solutions will surely pique their interest. Another attention grabber is to achieve signifcant
bottom-line savings without compromising the customer experience.
3
Measure What Matters
Take outcomes such as customer retention, revenue growth and satisfaction levels and relate
them to contact center metrics. This type of analysis will reveal what KPIs have the most impact
on goal achievement. If you fnd that traditional KPIs are not meeting your needs, utilize analytics
to determine the direction for custom metrics. The contact center is the only function within the
enterprise that has the data points to even conduct this type of analysis.
4
Educate Other Departments
Contact centers need to educate others about their value as a source for business intelligence.
Information that you take for granted can have many applications outside the contact center. For
example, marketing can gain insight into campaign effectiveness and collect valuable customer
feedback on new products, proposed services and competitive activities. Take the knowledge you
gain through analytics, and disseminate it across the organization.
By educating others you directly contribute to the success of the entire enterprise, raise the visibility
and prestige of the contact center, and develop a stronger business case for needed technology
investments and compensation improvements.
Using Business Intelligence to Transform Yourself into a Contact Center Hero CallCopy
How to Be a Hero in Five Easy Steps
7
12 www.callcopy.com
5
Showcase Your Talent
Contact center professionals do not always see
self-promotion as a priority, or they may assume
that the corner offce already knows what a great
job they are doing. But, if you don’t tell your story,
who will? Don’t allow the contact center to become
siloed off, largely disconnected from the broader
enterprise. Seek out or even create opportunities for
broader visibility. Consider hosting an open house
for other departments, including sales, marketing,
public relations and credit & collections. Publish a
periodic call center bulletin. Contribute regularly to
your corporate employee newsletter featuring the
agent of the month, welcoming new hires or sharing
anecdotes of interesting customer interactions.
Seek out and create opportunities
to make your contact center more
visible.
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13 www.callcopy.com
Contact center managers need to be much more
aggressive in championing their contributions.
Senior management is not interested in the alphabet
soup of typical call center KPIs. They view contact
centers like other investments, what are we getting
out of this function compared to the investment? If
the case is not convincingly made, then the entire
function may get outsourced to the lowest bidder.
Speech and desktop analytics present opportunities
to uncover new insights that can lead to successful
innovations in products, services and customer care
policies. There are also ways to identify signifcant
direct cost savings and indirect savings from risk
mitigation. Today’s modern contact center, with all
of its advanced technologies and rich database of
metrics is better prepared to show tangible value to
the organization more so than any other department
in the enterprise.
Using Business Intelligence to Transform Yourself into a Contact Center Hero CallCopy
Summary
8
14 www.callcopy.com
CallCopy, a leading provider of innovative contact center solutions, is dedicated to ensuring the
highest standards of satisfaction. The award-winning, enterprise-proven cc: Discover suite delivers
advanced call recording, screen capture, quality management, speech analytics, desktop analytics,
performance management, customer satisfaction survey and workforce management capabilities to
organizations of all sizes and industries. For more information, visit www.callcopy.com.
Speech and desktop analytics are powerful tools for uncovering the valuable business intelligence
locked away in the recorded interactions in your contact center. To learn more about how
cc: Analytics and cc: Fusion can transform you into a contact center hero, please contact us:
• Toll-free: 888.922.5526 x1
• Direct/International: +1 614.340.3346
• email: [email protected]
Using Business Intelligence to Transform Yourself into a Contact Center Hero CallCopy
About CallCopy
Next Steps
doc_469553567.pdf
Contact center managers need to understand the key goals of the larger organization, then put their vast amount of information to use toward those goals.
Using Business Intelligence to
Transform Yourself into a
Contact Center Hero
Whitepaper
Using Business Intelligence to Transform You into a Con- CallCopy
i www.callcopy.com
Contents
1. The Elevator Story 1
2. Information: Your Most Important Competitive Advantage 3
3. Understanding Analytics 4
Speech Analytics 4
Data Analytics 4
4. The Role of Analytics in the Modern Contact Center 5
5. Knowing What to Look for, and Where to Look 6
Revenue Enhancement 6
Cost Control 7
Compliance/Risk Mitigation 8
6. Establishing a Business Intelligence Initiative 10
7. How to Be a Hero in Five Easy Steps 11
8. Summary 13
About CallCopy 14
Next Steps 14
© Copyright 2011, CallCopy, Inc. All rights reserved.
No part of this document may be transmitted or distributed, or copied, photocopied, scanned,
reproduced, translated, microflmed, or otherwise duplicated on any medium without written consent
of CallCopy. If written consent is given, the same confdential, proprietary, and copyright notices must
be affxed to any permitted copies as were affxed to the original. The information contained in this
document does not constitute legal advice, and should not be considered a replacement for sound
legal counsel. CallCopy shall be in no way liable for any use or misuse of the information presented
herein.
Using Business Intelligence to Transform Yourself into a Contact Center Hero CallCopy
www.callcopy.com
Bob Edwards is contact center manager for Graycom, a wireless communications provider that
has carved out a niche in the senior citizen market. Graycom offers low-cost basic cell service.
Their phones feature large number keys and a big display. The $35 monthly fee includes unlimited
minutes to any calling area. Graycom is located on the ninth foor of a downtown offce building.
One morning as Bob entered the elevator he heard a hearty, “Hi Bob, how’s everything down in
the contact center?” It was Tony Hancock, founder and CEO. Bob knew he had about 30 seconds
to convince Tony of what a great job he was doing running the contact center.
Bob made his opening gambit. “Good morning Mr. Hancock. Nice to see you and glad you asked
about the contact center. I’m really excited about the progress we’re making. ASA is 20 seconds,
down 15% from the time I took over. With our new WFM system, the occupancy factor is up to
75% and adherence is close to 85%. I’m also happy to report that FCR is up and AHT is down.”
Tony Hancock looked puzzled. He replied, “Bob, that’s all really interesting, but are customers fully
satisfed with our services and are we making a dent in our customer attrition rate?”
So much for scoring points with the boss.
Now, let’s assume that Bob had invested in speech and data analytics software (and perhaps
displayed a little more savvy during his chance encounter).
Take two:
“Hi Bob, how’s everything down in the contact center?”
“Good morning Mr. Hancock. Nice to see you and glad you asked about the contact center. I know
how important customer retention is to our growth plans, so we’ve conducted an in-depth review
of all customers that cancelled their contracts over the past six months. Our agents are all trained
to ask customers why they wanted to discontinue their service and to offer an incentive to change
their minds. As you probably know, we record every customer interaction. Until last January,
when we installed our new speech analytics software, we had no easy way of sorting through all
of these recordings. One of the frst things we discovered was that a surprisingly large number of
seniors want text messaging, which we don’t offer. It seems they want to stay in touch with their
grandchildren and the grandchildren want to text. The other thing we found is that many of our
customers are hard of hearing and prefer to text.
“The next thing we did was look at our procedures for signing up new customers. We found that
our agents need to navigate through six different applications, many of which asked for the same
information that was already entered in a previous screen. We have a funding request in for
desktop analytics to help us understand the steps agents take to complete the application process.
If we can reduce this by just 20 seconds, that translates into savings of over $50,000 per year with
no negative impact on customer satisfaction.”
10 Secrets to Boosting First Call Resolution CallCopy
1
Using Business Intelligence to Transform Yourself into a Contact Center Hero CallCopy
The Elevator Story
1
2 www.callcopy.com
Tony was really pleased with this information. Later
that day Bob received a call informing him that he
had been appointed to the prestigious New Products
and Services Committee and that the CEO wanted
him to make a presentation at the next executive
committee meeting.
In the frst example, Bob succeeded in reinforcing
the CEO’s stereotype of the contact center as a
department that lives in its own world and makes
only a marginal contribution to the enterprise. Bob provided plenty of data, but precious little
information that pertained to the issues of most importance to the CEO. In the second example,
the CEO recognized that Bob understood key corporate goals and had access to a vast amount of
information that could directly impact those goals. This made Bob uniquely positioned to make a
signifcant contribution to solving problems and fnding new and better ways to serve customers.
Contact center managers need to
understand the key goals of the
larger organization, then put their
vast amount of information to use
toward those goals.
Using Business Intelligence to Transform Yourself into a Contact Center Hero CallCopy
3 www.callcopy.com
Not that long ago, the success of a business depended
largely on geography, natural resources, patents,
fnancing and other largely tangible attributes.
While all of these factors are still important, for a
growing number of enterprises the most precious
commodity today is information. The Internet has
made it possible for a small business with big ideas
to grow from a handful of people to several thousand
in just a few short years. Access to vital information
is the difference maker. Highly coveted business
intelligence (BI) includes understanding consumer
needs, knowing what competition is up to, keeping
ears to the ground to make sure that products and
services continue to meet changing customer needs
and complying with a growing array of rules and
regulations.
According to Gartner, in 2010 companies spent $10.5
billion for BI and related software, trying to make
sense of all the information siloed away in disparate
databases and applications. This money was spent
trying to mine structured information (numbers
and text). These costly investments overlook the
contact center, where unstructured data (voice and
screen actions) contain answers to many of the key
questions that infuence strategy.
The unstructured data in the contact
center ’s recorded interactions
contain answers to key questions
that infuence overall strategy.
Information: Your Most Important Competitive Advantage
2
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Recognizing the value of this untapped resource,
contact centers have increasingly turned to speech
and data analytics to extract the information
contained within their vast amounts of unstructured
data. As these technologies have matured, their
capabilities have increased while costs have come
down.
Speech Analytics
Speech analytics is a spectrum of software tools that
automates the process of sifting through thousands
of hours of recorded customer interactions to uncover
otherwise-hidden gems of useful information.
The tool analyzes spoken content, searching for
key words and phrases used to effciently review,
identify and categorize calls.
Common applications for speech analytics include
compliance, performance management, discovery
and root cause analysis. An example of a compliance application is to quickly locate incidences
in which legally mandated disclosures were not accurately recited. A performance management
application might be drilling down to the recordings of agents who consistently score low on frst
call resolution (FCR). Discovery and root cause analysis are highly interrelated. Both were illustrated
in the Graycom example.
Data Analytics
Data analytics software examines textual data such as PDF fles, e-mails, webpage visits, screen
actions and virtually any other type of electronic information. As with speech analytics, solutions
vary widely in terms of capabilities and cost. Desktop analytics is an emerging category designed
specifcally for contact centers. Desktop analytics works in concert with speech analytics to help
ensure compliance and identify root causes of performance deviations. Since the software functions
by capturing and analyzing information that appears on user desktops, there is minimal cost to
integrate with other agent applications and databases.
Understanding Analytics
3
Speech and desktop analytics turn
unstructured data into searchable,
comprehensible information.
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Contact centers today have four core objectives:
1. To delight customers.
2. To sustain or increase revenue.
3. To minimize operating costs.
4. To provide valuable business insights to the entire organization.
The relative importance of each mission varies based on the nature of the enterprise. Organizations
that have invested heavily in developing brand equity will be most concerned with customer
delight and business intelligence. This would include virtually all businesses that cater to consumer
markets. Outbound telemarketers and collections agents are focused almost exclusively on revenue
collection. Process-oriented contact centers such as reservation centers, catalog retailers, claim
centers, tech support centers, wholesale order takers and product return centers are primarily
concerned with effciency and cost savings. Sharing business intelligence is an emerging focus,
made possible by the emergence of analytics tools. Speech and data analytics contribute to these
objectives in many ways, as listed below:
The Role of Analytics in the Modern Contact Center
4
Top Ways Speech and Data Analytics Contribute to Key Objectives
• By understanding customer expectations and the factors that motivate satisfaction.
• By helping identify the key expressions that signal sales opportunities and assessing
how well agents transition into selling mode.
• By isolating and evaluating interactions that can help senior management spot signifcant
competitive actions.
• By identifying opportunities for cost savings through process improvements.
• By helping determine the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
• By identifying and rectifying causes of sub-par performance by drilling down into calls
that exceeded pre-determined thresholds.
• By ensuring compliance with regulations and avoiding costly and unnecessary litigation.
• By constructing performance metrics uniquely tailored to the strategies and processes
of the enterprise.
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We have all seen individuals hopelessly walking up and down the beach waving their metal detectors
hoping to discover lost coins, jewelry or even buried treasure. Most of the time all they come up
with is discarded beverage cans. Savvy contact center professionals looking for buried treasure in
their thousands of hours of recorded speech and desktop data don’t have time to randomly poke
around hoping to fnd that precious nugget that will elevate them to the executive suite. Rather,
they will do their homework and fnd out exactly what information they should be looking for. This
is done by fostering positive relationships with managers of other customer-facing functions and
researching all they can about their industry and the priorities of their organization.
This process will reveal business intelligence requirements that tend to fall into one or more of
three broad categories: revenue enhancement, cost control and compliance/risk mitigation.
Revenue Enhancement
On the revenue side, the frst priority for many organizations is to hold onto their existing customers.
The second priority is to increase revenue by up-selling or cross-selling existing customers. In order
to craft effective customer retention and revenue enhancement initiatives, sales and marketing
management will beneft by asking questions such as, “How successful was our last campaign?”
Marketing Questions that Impact Revenue Enhancement
• What do we need to do to increase customer retention?
• Are we losing customers to competitors, and if so why?
• How satisfed are our customers
with the quality of our products and
services?
• How successful are we with our
promotional campaigns?
• How can we improve our products or
services?
Organizations spend billions of dollars on
third-party market research to get answers
to these questions. While there will always
be a need for specialized market research,
sometimes the answers are right under our
noses – in the consumer’s voice, not just in
sterile statistical tables.
Knowing What to Look for, and Where to Look
5
Figure 1: Use speech analytics to stay informed about
competitive threats. Identify trends in defections due to
pricing, new products or promotions, and take steps to
quash the threat.
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Take the example of customer retention. Research studies have shown that it typically costs fve to
ten times more to replace a customer than it does to retain the one you already have. Customer
retention programs need to address the reasons why customers are switching to a competitor’s
brand. Agents that handle service cancellation requests need to ask probing questions about why
the customer wishes to defect, and be in a position to offer appropriate incentives.
Cost Control
Every business function is expected to achieve its objectives at the lowest possible cost, provided
that quality standards are maintained. Contact centers represent a signifcant cost to the enterprise.
Table 1 shows U.S. labor rates for customer service representatives.
1
Based on these numbers, a 200-agent contact center in California would spend $7.6 million in annual
agent labor costs. If you add in the cost of management, network services, rent, utilities, licenses
and related contact center expenses, the total cost would be approximately $10 million annually.
This is a large number in any organization. If contact center management can reduce operating
costs by only 2%, that’s a direct bottom-line proft contribution of $200,000. If the business has a
20% proft margin a $200,000 savings is equivalent to $1 million in new revenue. Numbers like that
will surely catch the CEO’s attention.
1 Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2010
Table 1: Mean Wages
for Customer Service
Representatives, United States
and Top Paying States
1
Using Speech Analytics to Improve FCR
cc: Analytics, CallCopy’s powerful speech analytics tool,
can be used to improve FCR rates by searching for phrases
that indicate repeat calls, such as “called before” or “last
time I called.” After these calls have been identifed, they
can be categorized based on the reason for the repeat
call, and root cause analysis performed. This allows for
changes to be made that will impact the ability for more
customer issues to be resolved on their initial call.
For additional ways to improve your FCR rates, please
download our 10 Secrets to Boosting First Call
Resolution eBook.
Figure 2: Improve FCR by using speech
analytics to locate key words or
phrases that indicate repeat calls.
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Region Mean Hourly Wage Mean Annual Wage
United States $15.76 $32,780
Delaware $18.87 $39,240
California $18.34 $38,120
Connecticut $18.33 $38,120
Massachusetts $17.77 $36,950
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Speech and desktop analytics provide many opportunities for cost savings by identifying the root
causes of repeat calls and long handle times and shortcuts for handling business processes.
Contributions of Analytics to Contact Center Cost Savings
• Identify more effcient business processes.
• More accurate and more effective agent evaluations.
• Check for data entry errors.
• Integration with multiple applications.
• Extend the value of legacy applications.
Desktop analytics software monitors agent screen actions. A useful analysis is to examine a large
sample of interactions handled by agents with consistently lower than average handle times and
learn what they are doing that makes them more effcient. It is possible that they have identifed
shortcuts that can be shared with others to improve overall processes.
Compliance/Risk Mitigation
In addition to direct cost savings, speech and desktop analytics can help avoid signifcant litigation
costs due to compliance violations or misinformation.
Contributions of Analytics to Contact Center Compliance and Risk Mitigation
• Identity verifcation
• Script adherence
• Process verifcation
• PCI DSS compliance
• Compliance with state and federal
regulations
• Heads up on potential service or quality
problems
Identity theft is a major problem in the United
States today. According to the 2006 Identity
Theft Survey, sponsored by the Federal
Trade Commission (FTC)
2
, approximately 8.3
million adults were victims of identity theft
in 2005. Identity theft takes many forms,
such as stolen social security cards, patient
information and utility account numbers.
When credit card identities are stolen, it’s
not just the credit card companies that are
left holding the bag – cardholders often face
2 Synovate. (2006). Federal Trade Commission – 2006 Identity Theft Survey Report. Available fromhttp://www.ftc.gov/os/2007/11/SynovateFinal-
ReportIDTheft2006.pdf
Figure 3: Use speech analytics to categorize calls based on
key words and phrases that indicate a potential breach in
the security of caller information. This allows management
to identify potential problems, and quickly review for
deviations from set standards.
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economic losses, lengthy legal battles and struggles to re-establish clean credit records. While
the impact is modest for most consumers, the same FTC report states that one of twenty victims
spends roughly 60 hours and $400 trying to clean up the mess that resulted.
The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) is the global data security standard
adopted by the payment card brands for any organization that processes, stores or transmits
cardholder data. Desktop analytics help ensure PCI DSS compliance by pausing recording during
credit card entries and blocking storage of restricted information.
How CallCopy Protects Cardholder Data in Compliance with PCI
CallCopy’s cc: Discover workforce optimization suite utilizes blackouts to ensure that sensitive
data is not stored in interactions. Both audio and video recording is paused during the portion
of the call when sensitive data is being transmitted. This results in a recording that includes a
beginning and an end for QA and liability purposes, and a “blackout” portion in the middle.
cc: Fusion, CallCopy’s desktop analytics module, facilitates blackouts by automatically
detecting where felds exist in the interfaces of third-party applications. This allows triggers
to be established based on agent activity (such as a mouse’s movement to a payment card
processing application), without the need for any custom application development.
To learn more about PCI compliance, please download our Call Recording and PCI Compliance
whitepaper.
Figure 4: Blacked-
out recording and
screen capture.
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Adding business intelligence to the list of to-do’s
in the contact center does not require that you
compromise other priorities, such as providing
quality service and generating revenue. Nor does
it require a lot of additional training. BI starts with
an understanding of what management needs to
know. Once you have established your list of needs
and have secured support from management, the
next step is to develop a plan. An important part
of this plan is securing commitment from agents
who may have concerns about asking questions
that will impact their evaluations on key metrics
such as average handle time (AHT). Agents need
to understand the importance of gathering this type of business intelligence and a new set of
metrics that recognizes the value of intelligence gathering should be established. A reward system
can be created to recognize superior BI contributions.
Another key part of the plan is to transition seamlessly into the information gathering phase during
interactions. Much of this is common sense and fts well with other objectives, such as revenue
growth. For example, if a call related to a new promotion is received, simply asking the caller where
he or she heard about the promotion takes only a few seconds, but provides valuable insight. If
a caller wants to return a faulty product, ask a question to determine exactly what is wrong with
the product. When parsed through speech analytics, answers to questions like these will be very
helpful to the marketing and quality control departments.
For maximum effect, the BI initiative should be meshed with a voice of the customer (VoC) program.
VoC surveys often ask open-ended questions, such as, “How could our services or products be
improved?” Without analytics technology it is very diffcult and costly to categorize and quantify
this information.
When all the pieces are in place, the BI program must be marketed internally. This means maintaining
close ties with other customer-facing departments within the enterprise and sharing the fndings
of your efforts with all individuals that can beneft from the information.
Quality
Assurance
Customer
Surveys
Product
Development
Customer
Service
Sales &
Marketing
Speech
Analytics
Voice of the
Customer
Organizational
Improvement
Organizational
Improvement
Business intelligence shared
across the organization
Figure 5: Speech analytics plays a key role in
uncovering business intelligence in a VoC program.
Want to learn more about using VoC to gain better insight into the customer experience?
Download our Capturing Voice of the Customer whitepaper.
CallCopy
RESOURCE
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Establishing a Business Intelligence Initiative
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1
Transform Your Contact Center into a Business Intelligence Center
Organizations are making big investments in business intelligence software systems that
largely work only with structured data. In the contact center you have the greatest reservoir of
business intelligence in the company – the actual voices of your customers. Too often, we use this
data only to evaluate agent performance. As a consequence, only 1–4% of these calls are actually
analyzed, and then more on the basis of how the calls were handled rather than what was said.
Create categories of why people call and track trends over time. Issue periodic reports and create
dashboards to alert executives to key performance indicators (KPI) performance and root causes of
deviations. Issue real-time reports with attached recorded voice and data interactions whenever a
signifcant observation is captured, such as a potential quality defect or unanticipated competitive
action.
2
Clearly Illustrate the Big Picture
Don’t take for granted that C-level executives have an in-depth understanding of what goes
on in the contact center. They have other fsh to fry. The best way to get their attention is to
demonstrate outstanding tangible contributions in terms that they care about. Producing a carefully
researched analysis of why customers are defecting to competitive brands and offering logical and
creative solutions will surely pique their interest. Another attention grabber is to achieve signifcant
bottom-line savings without compromising the customer experience.
3
Measure What Matters
Take outcomes such as customer retention, revenue growth and satisfaction levels and relate
them to contact center metrics. This type of analysis will reveal what KPIs have the most impact
on goal achievement. If you fnd that traditional KPIs are not meeting your needs, utilize analytics
to determine the direction for custom metrics. The contact center is the only function within the
enterprise that has the data points to even conduct this type of analysis.
4
Educate Other Departments
Contact centers need to educate others about their value as a source for business intelligence.
Information that you take for granted can have many applications outside the contact center. For
example, marketing can gain insight into campaign effectiveness and collect valuable customer
feedback on new products, proposed services and competitive activities. Take the knowledge you
gain through analytics, and disseminate it across the organization.
By educating others you directly contribute to the success of the entire enterprise, raise the visibility
and prestige of the contact center, and develop a stronger business case for needed technology
investments and compensation improvements.
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How to Be a Hero in Five Easy Steps
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5
Showcase Your Talent
Contact center professionals do not always see
self-promotion as a priority, or they may assume
that the corner offce already knows what a great
job they are doing. But, if you don’t tell your story,
who will? Don’t allow the contact center to become
siloed off, largely disconnected from the broader
enterprise. Seek out or even create opportunities for
broader visibility. Consider hosting an open house
for other departments, including sales, marketing,
public relations and credit & collections. Publish a
periodic call center bulletin. Contribute regularly to
your corporate employee newsletter featuring the
agent of the month, welcoming new hires or sharing
anecdotes of interesting customer interactions.
Seek out and create opportunities
to make your contact center more
visible.
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Contact center managers need to be much more
aggressive in championing their contributions.
Senior management is not interested in the alphabet
soup of typical call center KPIs. They view contact
centers like other investments, what are we getting
out of this function compared to the investment? If
the case is not convincingly made, then the entire
function may get outsourced to the lowest bidder.
Speech and desktop analytics present opportunities
to uncover new insights that can lead to successful
innovations in products, services and customer care
policies. There are also ways to identify signifcant
direct cost savings and indirect savings from risk
mitigation. Today’s modern contact center, with all
of its advanced technologies and rich database of
metrics is better prepared to show tangible value to
the organization more so than any other department
in the enterprise.
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Summary
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CallCopy, a leading provider of innovative contact center solutions, is dedicated to ensuring the
highest standards of satisfaction. The award-winning, enterprise-proven cc: Discover suite delivers
advanced call recording, screen capture, quality management, speech analytics, desktop analytics,
performance management, customer satisfaction survey and workforce management capabilities to
organizations of all sizes and industries. For more information, visit www.callcopy.com.
Speech and desktop analytics are powerful tools for uncovering the valuable business intelligence
locked away in the recorded interactions in your contact center. To learn more about how
cc: Analytics and cc: Fusion can transform you into a contact center hero, please contact us:
• Toll-free: 888.922.5526 x1
• Direct/International: +1 614.340.3346
• email: [email protected]
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About CallCopy
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