It’s easy to think that phone calls are a thing of the past with many new tools on the market for online communication. However, the 2022 “State of the Connected Customer” report by Salesforce shows that customers prefer phone calls over any other method of communication with their brands. In fact, the number of customers who prefer calls over email or other modes of engagement has grown from 54% in 2020 to 59% in 2022.
The situation is similar with sales calls where immediate and personalized interactions over a call can shorten your sales cycle and improve conversion rates. It’s no surprise then that more and more businesses are investing in contact center software instead of relying on their business phone alone.
In a custom research study with Metrigy, GoTo found that nearly 7 out of 10 businesses take inbound voice calls through a traditional phone system, but they don’t have any data to show what’s happening on the phone. In fact, inefficient use of rep time (44%) and lack of transparency into KPI/agent metrics (39.7%) were the top two pain points reported. If you don’t know how good you are at something, how can you possibly get better at it?
With so many calls coming in and going out of your business, contact center analytics can give you key insights into what’s working, what isn’t, and how you can improve your overall business performance. Here, we look at contact center analytics use cases and discuss the benefits you can expect from paying attention to your call data.
Contact center analytics use cases
If you’re already using a cloud-based contact center as a service (CCaaS), you probably know that you’re sitting on a treasure trove of data. A quality CCaaS system would keep track of call wait time, average call time duration, and how many calls it takes to resolve a customer issue or convert a client.
However, none of this data is useful unless you do something with it. So, here are some powerful use cases for your contact center analytics which can help you reduce cost and improve overall efficiency.
Call volume
Call volume can be an incredible indicator of business performance. For example, have you noticed an uptick on calls after you’ve released a new feature, indicating that perhaps your customers are struggling with it? Or, have you seen a drop in the number of calls some of your salespeople are making?
Regardless of whether you’re looking from the customer service or sales side of your business, tracking call volumes can offer great insights into how your team and your business is performing overall.
Average call time
Similar to the number of call volumes, call duration can tell you how effective your communication is overall. Do you notice an increase in call length in certain times of year or perhaps for specific agents? Are some client issues taking longer to get resolved? Why is that? Looking at this data can tell you what areas are draining your call time and what improvements you can implement to make your calls more effective.
Agent effectiveness
How many calls does it take for a client to get their issue resolved? How often are issues resolved on the first call? Is there a difference between agents and how they perform? All of these questions can be answered by tracking your agent effectiveness. Your call center analytics can give you a visual dashboard on how each agent is performing and what areas they might need to improve on. Knowing their areas of expertise can help you route calls to the right agent so that issues get resolved fast.
Abandoned calls
Ouch! This is a hard stat to look at, but it’s important to understand how effective your contact center is. Have you noticed the wait time on calls increasing? Are more people dropping the call? Abandoned calls can quickly turn into poor customer reviews, requests for refunds or even loss of business. A good CCaaS should provide you with a queue callback option which releases the caller from having to wait in a queue. Instead, an agent can give them a callback whenever they’re available.
Benefits of contact center analytics
We already mentioned some of the benefits from tracking and acting upon your contact center data. That said, it’s worth expanding on these as there are many more use cases which can transform your operations from good to exceptional.
Better decision-making
How do you know if you need to train your sales staff on better sales techniques or improve your product documentation unless you track how your team is performing? Are most of the calls complaints about a specific service or perhaps interest in a new promotion you’re running? Do your sales people convert more people in the morning or are they more effective towards the end of the day?
All of these insights can improve decision-making and drive business performance.
Improved customer experience
Customers appreciate immediacy more than anything else. Being able to resolve an issue there and then is far more powerful than the days or weeks it may take to get things sorted via an email.
Tracking your customer call data, the type of requests they make and how your agents handle these calls can help you stand out as a service provider and increase customer loyalty.
Increased efficiency
While it might take an agent three emails to get to the bottom of a customer issue, a phone call can clarify things within minutes. Likewise, a sales agent might need to send five emails across several weeks before getting any response, but a phone call can help them build a relationship with their prospects on the same day.
Food for thought
Your phone system can feel like just another thing you need to keep on top of, but in reality it’s a tool that can give you key insights in how you and your team are performing. Not only this data can uncover past inefficiencies, but it can signal early issues, highlight good practices and give you pointers on how to navigate your communications in the future. That’s worth its weight in gold.
If you don’t already have a cloud-based contact center or you don’t track key metrics with your existing phone system, why not head to our GoTo Contact Center page and see how we can help you improve your communications.
