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Making Your Contact Centre Data Work
Contributed article by Kevin McGachy, Head of Solutions, Sabio Group
How data powers excellent CX delivery for contact centre
advisors
We’re finding that one of the biggest CX challenges that our
clients face is working out exactly how to capture, organise and act on the
potentially billions of data points that are generated as a result of different
customer journeys.
Whether it’s digital voice, chatbots or conversational AI, brands are
collecting more interaction data than ever before - along with a wealth of
information detailing specific customer preferences. This data explosion is
being fuelled by transformational technologies such as Digital First and AI
& Automation, along with the accelerated adoption of CPaaS and CCaaS
solutions.
But it’s not the volume of data being collected that is the problem, but rather
understanding it to release its potential and thus benefit the business.
Joining the Data Dots
While many brands clearly recognise the potential value
that’s stored within this data, very few are currently successful in bringing
much of this unstructured information together.
A key reason for this is that so much of this data is siloed
across different parts of the business. For many brands, for example, the data
about what customers have bought is stored in a different place from the data
about who you are, your address, and your purchase history, as well as other
potential follow-up interactions.
It’s hardly surprising, then, that the customer experience offered is often
disjointed and frustrating. In addition, with interactions now expanding across
different channels, siloed functions and data can quickly translate into poor
customer experience – which is a real problem for brands focussing on CX as a
key competitive differentiator.
As customer expectations continue to evolve and increase, it’s vital that CX
teams collect the right customer data and use it correctly. This
means collecting information from across all channels, making it available
to support both self-service and contact centre operations, and also ensuring
that key customer insights are shared consistently with other relevant parts of
the business.
Taking advantage of data that already exists within contact centres
Despite deep customer service expertise, it’s probably fair to say that many
contact centre teams still don’t realise the value of the data that they
already have – and how they can put it to work. This data already exists –
either within the contact centre or elsewhere in the business – and it simply
requires tools and understanding to unlock quick data wins.
Sabio’s Intent
Capture & Analysis (IC&A) solution and Twilio’s Segment
are great examples of how this can work.
IC&A uses Google
Cloud’s Contact Centre AI to uncover the reasons for calls into the contact
centre – capturing contact intents and categorising them. This helps CX teams
to build rich insights that can support exactly how calls are routed.
Meanwhile, Twilio Segment similarly combines data from multiple tools to create
a single centralised customer database containing information on all touch
points and interactions. That data can then be segmented to create more
personalised experiences.
This intelligence, of course, opens up new opportunities.
Rather than resource planning by traditional skills level,
you can start to plan around intent levels, so your teams will be ready and in
place to handle the issues that customers are actually contacting you about.
These insights can also help you in terms of responding to
customers. Instead of adopting an open call approach, your advisors can use
conversation and responses that are more likely to deliver better outcomes in
terms of customer satisfaction and retention. This not only delivers an
improved experience for customers but can also unlock quantifiable bottom-line
benefits.
Applying existing data to help optimise resource planning can also have a
positive impact on training – particularly around onboarding new agents and
handling spikes in demand. If, for example, you’re using IC&A to track your
customers’ intent when calling, then you can focus on training new advisors to
handle those types of interactions first. This means your advisors get to start
handling customer contacts more quickly, accelerating their time to value.
Balancing contact centre data needs with broader corporate information plans
Sabio already works closely with our clients to ensure they have the right
integration between their contact centre operations, AI technologies and CRM
systems. This helps to provide a single, unified view across multiple touchpoints.
But this only represents part of the story for today’s CMOs, CXOs and CCOs.
Whether it’s enterprise CRM platforms such as Salesforce
or Twilio Segment, or the growing portfolio of digital, orchestration and
analytics tools employed by marketing departments, there’s a much broader range
of solutions that play an integral part in building customer journeys.
So, discussions around sharing critical CX data across the business inevitably
are now much more complex. Increasingly organisations are considering the role
of Customer Data Platforms to help them break down traditional information
silos – but these are often marketing-led. This means that contact centre
leaders need to be actively involved in the corporate data conversation,
particularly where information decisions may have an impact on existing contact
centre solutions.
Today’s
CX teams can’t afford to remain isolated in their separate contact centre,
service desk or CRM camps. With the pressure on brands
to differentiate via their customer experience, making the right CX
technology decisions becomes more important than ever. The good news is that an
effective CX data strategy will deliver significant benefits around improving
the customer experience, optimising contact centre resourcing, and empowering
advisors in delivering excellent customer service.
Find out more by downloading our new Data eBook, How
Data Powers Excellent CX Delivery For Advisors.