Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Why your real time reporting solution does not work


If you are manually creating reports you understand the value of data and reporting in the call center.  However, these reports have five problems that prevent them from being effective for the entire call center.

Not automated
To be effective your real time reporting (RTR) solution must be automated.  The reports must be created and delivered to your target audience automatically and on a schedule.  Manually created reports are valuable but have challenges.
  • The time needed to create the reports adds up.  Managers can use their time more efficiently than building reports;
  • Managers can get too busy to do the reports and so they are not always created;
  • Reports that are assigned to someone else may be created wrong or valuable data missed.

The data that you want is not included in the report
Data is left out of the report even though it would be very valuable to have in the reports.
  • Managers are aware of valuable data that is not being included in the manual reporting because of the time it would take them to extract and crunch that data.
  • Getting access to the data takes time and is complex therefore it is left off of the manual reporting.
  • The data access is complex and the manager is unaware of how to get at the data. Getting assistance every day to get at this data is not a viable option for the manager.

The data is not what you need to report on
All too often call centers build reports only on data from the ACD.  The statistics from the ACD are good but do not include some of the most important data.  Data from WFM, CRM, Help Desk, FCR and CSat information should be included in your real time reports. Data from these and other sources provide critical KPI’s to the call center team.
  • WFM – Schedule adherence and absenteeism
  • CRM – Revenue, quotes, sales details
  • Help Desk – Ticketing KPI’s
  • FCR – Quality scores
  • CSat – Survey results
These are examples of what should be reported on from these data sources. There may be more information that your organization can glean from these reports.

The report(s) is not given to everyone that could benefit from the information
There are reasons why certain reports should not be given to everyone but these same reports can be modified so that each level within the call center can get this valuable real time information.
  • Agents – real time information on their status
  • Team Leaders – real time and historical information on agent and group status
  • Managers – real time and historical information on group status and drill down to agent status
  • Senior Management – historical information and daily business critical information with drill down to real time data.
However, creating one report takes time, creating four reports takes considerable time and some of the information that is provided to senior management may be confidential.

The report is not proactive
Manually created reports may be built daily but they do not alert anyone if a threshold is exceeded throughout the day. A manager may review the data at the end of the day but by the time the data is analyzed the event causing the threshold has past.  An automated reporting solution must alert the call center and managers when a KPI has exceeded it threshold.

Real time reporting is much more than showing how many calls are in queue.  An effective reporting solution is proactive, made available to all levels of the call center, captures data that you need and want and is automatically created throughout the day and summarizes at the end of the day.

Spectrum is a leading provider of Unified Contact Center Reporting.  Contact Spectrum today to learn more about Contact Center Activity Monitoring and Unified Reporting.

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Dan Boehm
VP Sales and Marketing
Spectrum
dboehm@specorp.com
+1 713 986 8839