Your call center probably uses a dashboard (or several) to track various performance metrics. But is your dashboard really making a difference to your teams’ performance or does it just sit there as a nice-to-have that adds no real benefits for your agents? If it’s the latter, it’s not too late to turn things around and start making your dashboard work for you.
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In this post:
- What is a dashboard?
- What are call center analytics?
- What do businesses usually need to measure?
- What are the features of a great dashboard?
- Does keen monitoring improve services?
- Should agents be able to see dashboards?
What is a dashboard?
Most businesses engage in some type of KPI tracking, whether that’s in the form of a weekly progress report or a dashboard. A dashboard is a graphical representation of performance data. It provides an overview of performance at a glance and allows you to track progress over time. It can also help you identify areas of improvement and highlight areas of concern.
Most dashboards are integrated into your call center software, allowing for automated reporting and real-time updates. This is important because it allows you to quickly act on any changes in performance while saving significant time on data entry and analysis.
What are call center analytics?
Call center analytics is the process of analyzing call center data to improve performance. It can help you identify trends, optimize resources, and improve customer satisfaction.
In a nutshell, it’s the process of mining data for insights that can help you make your call center run more efficiently.
What do businesses usually need to measure?
Dashboard data usually includes information like:
- Call Transfer Rate
- First Contact Resolution
- Average Handling Time
- Call Abandonment Rate
- Average Speed of Answer
- Average Wrap-up Time
These Key Performance Indicators help you understand how well your call center is performing. Accessing all this intelligence on a centralized dashboard provides a more impactful bird’s eye view of your situation.
But how you present this data also matters greatly. It’s easy to manipulate KPIs to make it look like everything is going swimmingly when the reality is quite different.
You can use the right data the wrong way!
Call Center Interval Reports are one of the best ways to put your data into a useful context. Take, for example, your call center’s Average Speed of Answer (ASA). At 10 am, your ASA is fantastic — 15 seconds. But at midday, it shoots up. Some of your customers are waiting on hold far longer than normal.
So, when you average out all the data, your ASA looks like a perfectly reasonable 20 seconds. But does this really give you a clear view of how your call center is performing?
When this data is broken down into Interval Reports, it creates snapshots of performance throughout the day. This makes it much easier to see when things might have been going wrong so you can take corrective action.
What are the features of a great dashboard?
All dashboards aren’t created equal. It’s not enough to just use a dashboard – the type of dashboard matters too. Crowded, unclear dashboards often end up getting ignored, or worse – they lead to misunderstandings and confusion.
So, what makes a good dashboard? Read on to discover some of the features that are central to an effective dashboard.
1. Configurability
No two call centers are the same, so their dashboards shouldn’t be either. Your dashboard must be adaptable to your specific needs.
If you’re running a sales-focused call center, your dashboard will be different to the one used by a customer service team. One-size-fits-all just won’t cut it. You need the ability to configure your dashboard to reflect the unique demands of your call center.
2. Visual appeal
It’s not just about looks… but they do matter to a certain extent. A clean dashboard is more likely to be used (and loved) than a messy looking one. When data is presented attractively, it’s more likely to hold our attention and encourage utilization.
3. Intuitiveness
The best dashboards are easy to use and understand. They don’t require much training and everything you need is usually no more than a few clicks away. If the dashboard lacks intuitiveness in this manner, it’ll fail to make as big of an impact on your teams’ performance.
4. Clarity
The most important data should be front and center. You might have 20+ KPIs that you need to track, but this doesn’t mean you should immediately throw all this information in front of the user. Effective dashboards display data in a clear, concise way that allows further exploration when required.
Does keen monitoring improve services?
The short answer is, yes. If you didn’t track performance data, you won’t know what you’re doing well and where you might be going wrong. And when you put everything together in a dashboard, all your most important information is in one place – easy to find and use.
But there’s a psychology behind it too. Frequent progress reporting is strongly linked to goal attainment. Best-in-class operations use dashboards in different ways as shown below. They:
- Don’t just take dashboard data at face value. Instead, they compare it side-by-side and drill down into the data to gain real insights.
- Identify trends over time. Does everything go belly up in the run-up to holiday periods? Is performance better on Wednesdays than Thursdays? Is there a pattern to the rate of agent churn?
- Use dashboard data to predict problems before they happen. By tracking historical data, they can see when things are about to go wrong and take proactive preventive action.
- Position dashboards at the center of their decision making. From hiring to training to agent incentives, data drives everything they do.
Should agents be able to see dashboards?
This is an important question. Conventional wisdom suggests that dashboards must be shared in order to be useful. But is this always the case? Do agents need to see all their real-time performance data, or is this likely to backfire by increasing stress levels?
Call center agents have some of the highest rates of churn out of any industry. In fact, it’s been getting worse every year. In 2019, it jumped up to 34%, before dipping to 30% in 2020.
Most organizations keep workers up to date about their performance. This allows them to evaluate their work and quickly address any areas that need improvement.
The call center industry is a different story
But in the call center industry, stress levels are already high, and agents often feel undervalued, overworked, and under pressure. Excessive agent monitoring can have a negative effect, leading to increased rates of burn-out and the inevitable churn.
A good solution to this dilemma is to provide balance. Give all agents some level of access to dashboards, with more detailed information available to team leaders, supervisors, and managers.
Dashboards can be a tool to celebrate success, as much as they can be a tool to identify areas for improvement (or instill fear). When used in the right way, they can help your call center achieve its goals.
