In this post:
- What is business intelligence?
- How does BI relate to contact centers?
- Here’s how call center BI can impact your business
- 3 questions to ask when choosing a BI tool
- Call center BI helps you make data-driven decisions
What is Business Intelligence?
Business Intelligence (BI) is the process of using data to generate insights that influence your business strategy. It’s essential for company decision-makers because it helps them understand what is happening within their business and then take action.
BI typically involves using software to process data from multiple sources. These tools include features that let you create customizable dashboards that highlight the metrics that matter to you.
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How does BI relate to contact centers?
Contact centers generate huge amounts of data about operational performance.
The right BI tools will let you track the most critical call center metrics so you can take steps to improve them.
The exact metrics you track will depend on your needs and goals.
They commonly include:
- First Contact Resolution (FCR)
- Average Handle Time (AHT)
- Customer Satisfaction (CSat)
- Sales and revenue data
Here’s how call center BI can impact your business
You’ll improve call center efficiency
Data can highlight places where your contact center can improve its efficiency.
For example, you may find that one team handles calls better than others in your business. They might have fewer callbacks or a higher first contact resolution than other teams.
You can use this insight to dig deeper into why this team is overperforming. Once you discover what they are doing right, you can roll it out across the other teams in your business.
You can create better customer experiences
Better knowledge about business operations can result in better customer experiences.
Imagine your BI platform shows that agents are frequently overrun at certain times of day, which leads to long CSat-destroying hold times.
With knowledge of the problem, you can fix the issue.
For example, you could:
- Improve employee scheduling
- Roll out self-service help resources that allow customers to find answers independently.
Read this article for more ways to improve your contact center’s CSat.
You can generate more sales
If your contact center handles sales, you can use business intelligence to improve the selling process.
You just need to discover data about what makes people more likely to buy. This could mean tracking metrics around the sales process and then seeing what successful calls have in common.
Some tools will even use conversational AI to record and analyze calls. They can then provide data into metrics like how many questions successful agents ask and how long they spend talking compared to listening.
3 questions to ask when choosing a BI tool
Different BI tools offer unique features that will suit different types of businesses.
Here are three essential questions to ask before choosing to make sure the tool fits your needs.
Will it integrate with your data sources?
Business intelligence tools thrive when they have the data they need to provide insight.
The tool you choose must integrate with all your data sources. If it can’t, it’ll miss out on a big chunk of information about how your call center operates.
The most important data sources for call centers are typically your CRM, IVR, telephony platform, and even your ticketing software.
Connecting all these tools will provide a complete view of how your call center is performing.
Is the reporting clear?
Large amounts of raw data won’t tell you anything on its own. Your tool needs reporting and visual presentation features that help you process this data into easily actionable data points.
By making the data clear, you and your team have the best opportunity to act on it. The data should also be delivered in real-time so you can act on issues that occur.
Can I customize it to my needs?
All businesses have different needs, and your BI tool should reflect this. You want to make sure you can see the insights that are useful to your teams.
For instance, you need to work on your visual communication, implementing more business photos and business-related content on your websites.
Customer service teams will benefit from knowing metrics like CSat, AHT, and Service. On the other hand, sales teams will benefit from data about which agents make the most sales.
Because of this, you must be able to create dashboards that highlight important metrics without cluttering up dashboards with irrelevant data.
Call center BI helps you make data-driven decisions
Business Intelligence helps you use the data your business generates to make more informed decisions. You’ll see the exact places where your teams are performing at a high level, as well as the places where they could improve.
All you need is a way to connect your data sources and then present this information in a helpful way. Find out more about babelforce’s reporting features and how our tools can help in this article.
