Outbound Call Center Featured Article

Harvesting Information from Call Center Utilities for a More Effective Strategy

By Chris DiMarco
TMCnet Web Editor

The information a contact center has access to can offer a vital avenue for process improvement. Especially in the workforce management space, tracking individual adherence rates and staff stats offers an easy way to make sure your call center is always prepared for an unexpected increase in call volume. By tracking this incoming information and prominently displaying it to the staff, call center operations can quickly improve adherence rates and customer service representative availability.

Veteran call center wallboard manufacturer Spectrum (News - Alert) Corp points out there are a number of utilities that you can harvest information from to quickly boost service levels or company revenue.

For example, your ACD gives real time information about how quickly and effectively agents are answering phones calls with respect to the goals set for the call center. This data provided to Managers, Team Leaders and Agents shows where the call center can improve immediately as well as in the future. Spectrum customers have reported up to 2 percent improvement in AHT by reporting ACD KPI’s to the agents.

Workforce Management platforms also provide traceable metrics about when your staff arrives and the call volume you can expect on a day-to-day basis. WFM suites generally contain forecasting capability that can accurately calculate how many people you should have on, and what times during the course of the day will typically be busiest.

While all of these additional utilities can be helpful in tracking and targeting areas that require your attention, there’s no reason your organization should turn away from databases built to meet the specific goals of your industry. According to Spectrum Corp, “40 percent of customers have a custom built in house database(s) that contains some type of valuable data. Typically this data is something that has been generated for years and the call center has come to depend on it for daily operations. By sharing this data on a real time basis with the entire call center everyone benefits from the data. “

Your call center operation has a wealth of information that can be applied and displayed to exceed the goals you’ve set out to accomplish. Mining the proper areas for information is essential in formulating a strategy and many of the most pertinent sources of information are likely to already be part of your operation.

Chris DiMarco is a Web Editor for TMCnet. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Quinnipiac University. Prior to joining TMC (News - Alert) Chris worked with e-commerce provider Suresource as a contact center representative and development analyst. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Janice McDuffee