3 Benefits of Real-Time Analytics in Your Contact Center

If you work as a contact center manager, you probably have experienced the following scenario: You have several agents out on their scheduled lunches when your website experiences an issue and there is a sudden influx of calls.

 

Your agents that are still logged on are managing the influx to the best of their abilities but you are watching calls getting abandoned and wait times climb. It is stressful for everybody involved and you know this situation could quickly escalate and have serious down-the-line consequences.

 

In an ideal scenario, you would have access to a real-time analytics tool that alerted you at the first sign of increased call volume as it was happening so you could quickly, for example, transition others off of email queues to supplement your voice agents.

 

 

Real-time analytics, or “happening now” analytics, helps you easily visualize operational data to help you make adjustments at the moment to the benefit of your agents, customers, and business. When it comes to data analytics, they can either be “on-demand” or continuous. When we are talking about on-demand we are referring to data that is available once it has been requested from a variety of data sources.

 

Real-time data updates users when events are happening and can be programmed to even take specific actions automatically if certain events unfold. In our example, real-time analytics could alert call center managers if calls are on hold or call abandoned rates fall outside of a specified ideal parameter.

 

So, what is real-time analytics? And, what are some of the benefits it offers call center teams? Let’s dig deeper.

 

What Are Real-Time Analytics?

Real-time analytics are analytics that are recording and measuring data as they occur, a live perspective of your call or contact center activity. Think of real-time as “up to the second” data that makes the difference between making strategic, fast business decisions and making decisions based on what has already happened to prevent it from happening again. Real-time analytics encompasses the technology and processes that enable this sort of agile decision-making. 

 

What Is the Value? 3 Benefits of Real-Time Analytics in Your Call Center

When it comes to data analytics in real-time, a major benefit is a speed and agility your organization will gain by having access to insights that are needed to act on critical decisions. With that being said there are several other benefits to explore when it comes to real-time analysis. 

 

1. Make Quick Tactical Decisions

As previously stated, having the ability to quickly assess the operations of your contact centers helps your team make decisions quickly when time is the most important thing. Brightmetrics™, for example, offers easily customizable templates that help you set threshold alerts for your SLAs and KPI targets. 

 

Instantly know what needs attention and focus from your team. 

 

Instantly knowing what drives your business and being able to catch things in real-time helps you manage these elements.

 

2. Transparency 

Real-time data allows everyone on the team to operate with transparency. Want to empower your agents to take ownership over their productivity? Allow them to measure their performance as it is happening. Keep everyone on the same page by allowing people to easily monitor calls in the queue so that people are aware of their workflows. 

 

For example, if the team sees calls are backing up they may be more inclined to send our help desk articles and resources instead of walking through solutions step by step. If people see that their coworkers are blasting through calls at 3 or 4 times the rate they are answering calls and are still managing to have excellent returned surveys they may be more inclined to pick up their pace or mirror their colleagues’ approach. 

 

Teams perform well when quotas and goals are clear, achievable, and where data can be a tool of empowerment. 

 

3. A Fuller Picture

Historical analysis has a time and place in organizations. Real-time analytics serves as a perfect complement to get the full picture of operations. Having both real-time and historical analytics helps executives and stakeholders gain insight into intra-daily operations, easy-to-read data visualizations, and customer experience improving insights. 

 

 

Real-Time Analytics Use Cases and Examples

Here are some examples of the use cases of real-time analytics: 

 

• Data Visualization: Get data that reflects changes within the business as they are occurring in real-time. Interactive, accurate feedback is available at any given moment. No more data latency that delays strategic team and customer decisions. With customizable dashboards and the right software tools, you can also easily share new data easily with relevant stakeholders. 
• Competitive Advantages: Companies that can easily understand benchmarks, trends, and the importance of real-time analytics are companies that understand the importance of swift decision-making. 
• Measure What Matters: Real-time analytic tools are focused on outcomes so you spend less time, money, and resources on collecting data that may be outdated or stale and more time analyzing what is important in the here and now. 
• Testing Things Out: If you have an inclination that something needs to be tweaked or that outcomes could be impacted by a change, real-time analytics help you test in a controlled environment. Make small (or big) changes to small groups and you can gauge the impact without having to take on too much risk. 
• Customer Feedback: Deep dive into customer feedback and behavior by monitoring what is and is not working for your company. 
• Bottomline Management: With all of these benefits of real-time data we would be remiss to not mention the cost savings. With the proper insights and tools, you can lower operational costs, reduce clunky processes, and ensure that team members have what they need from the data. 
• Improved Decision Making: At the moment data improves the ability to make real-time decisions. With the right insights, you can update practices and introduce new business ideas and processes to your company with little risk as the analytics will provide you with all the information you need to make sound business decisions. 

 

 

Take the Lead With Real-Time Analytics In Your Contact Center

Data analysis in contact centers is hugely beneficial. And while historical data analysis may seem like an obvious contact center necessity, real-time data is often overlooked or considered an unnecessary extra. However, this could not be farther from the truth. 

 

Call center managers can confidently take quick action with real-time overviews of how many customers are in queue, the status of their agents, average hold time and queue time, and whatever other KPIs are helpful to the organization. 

 

Real-time analytics alert teams to volume increases as they happen to help insulate agents from being blindsided and customers from suffering extended wait times. Real-time analytics help all members of your operations team to monitor calls on their own devices to adapt to meet customers’ needs using dashboards and reports configurable to the SLA and KPIs most important to your company. 

 

These real-time insights can help optimize the functionality of your team, customer response times, and help you adapt to specific customer behavior that is vital to your business. 

 

Brightmetrics REAL TIME Analytics™ Tool

Brightmetrics’ REAL TIME Analytics delivers up to the second perspective allowing contact center managers and team leaders to make decisions quickly to deliver optimal customer experiences. 

 

• Take action quickly with real-time views of customers currently in the queue, agents’ status, average queue time, and more
• Contact center data that alerts you to increased volume as it happens to allow you to solve issues before they get out of hand
• Dashboards and reports configurable for the SLAs and KPIs most important to your contact center
• Allow all contact center operation teams to monitor calls on their own devices and adapt to meet customer needs

 

Watch Our REAL TIME Analytics Dashboards In Action! Click Below

 

 

Final Points On Real-Time Analytics

More companies are realizing they would benefit from a shift in their approach to business intelligence and are looking for the right analytics platform to better serve their needs. We exist in an always-on, mobile world that functions in real-time, and companies are looking to keep up with their customers’ real-time needs to make better decisions.

 

Real-time analytics help companies get a fuller picture of their daily operations by supplementing historical data that is analyzed in batches. Although historical analysis is important, relying exclusively on it can have a significant impact on the ability to compete, understand customer trends, and address market changes in a timely fashion.

 

Real-time data analytics serve a wide range of purposes for virtually every type of business but are especially beneficial when discussing the best practices for operating a contact center. Keeping track of the performance of your organization to spot bottlenecks, implement process improvement, and oversee team management will help your company stay profitable and ahead of the competition.