How to Use Your Call Center Analytics Software to Reveal Actionable Insights

In the age of big data, digging through your analytics is vital. It’s never been easier to find out everything you could ever want to know about the people who are interacting with your company in order to improve customer experience.

The level of insight you can gain and the sheer amount of actionable information that can be pulled from these analytics is invaluable. According to McKinsey, companies that use analytics can reduce average call handling time by 40%, cut employee costs by up to $5 million, and boost KPIs like conversion rates by nearly 50%.

That’s why it’s increasingly important to have call center analytics software in place for both inbound and outgoing call centers.

Call center analytics software makes it possible to cut through the noise to figure out where you’re losing business. It reveals where things are going well. It also highlights information that could help boost sales and productivity.

What is Call Center Analytics Software?

Call center analytics software captures and tracks all the important data about people who are calling in to call centers or who are being called by centers.

Call analytics offers information like call time length, customer satisfaction, and how many times a customer called to get a resolution. It can even use speech analytics to gain a deeper understanding of your customer frustration. It does this by recording the various touchpoints a customer has with the contact center including hold time, number of calls a customer has made, and other relevant metrics from the self-service system.

Metrics are then stored in a database within your call center software for later analysis. The data helps to measure agent performance and improve customer engagement.

Sorting through that information to find the pieces offering insight to drive change in your business will help your call center agents to perform better.

How do You Improve Customer Service With Analytics?

call center data

Customer experience can easily be improved by looking at data found within your call center software.

The two best places to start looking are hold time and total call time, or average handling time (AHT). The length of time customers spend with you offers you room to grow when it comes to workforce optimization. While sitting on the phone can help build customer relationships, you need to carefully thread the needle to ensure that time is spent building trust and not frustration.

When you look at these metrics, ask yourself what you can do to lower them. Is there a clear time when these numbers are higher? Are there kinds of questions that get asked that take longer?

Answering these questions can help improve customer service.

How do You Improve Your Call Center Conversion Rate?

Better customer service improves call center conversions. Call center software data can be used to determine where there are holes in your sales process.

If customers drop off quickly and your call center suffers from a high abandonment rate, analyze your customer service approach. The longer callers stay on the line, the more interested they are but watch when they end the call. Listen to the recording to see what was happening at that time.

Was the customer asking questions the agent couldn’t answer? Did they realize the product wasn’t for them? Maybe there was another, more surprising objection that popped up?

It also helps to listen to the language that the agent is using. If it’s super jargon-heavy, you could be losing customers. Even in B2B situations, plain English makes it easier for people to follow what’s being said, which makes closing a sale easier. Simplifying the language used in the script they use can help in this situation.

You can also look at when calls are taking place. Chances are there’s a golden hour for not just getting people on the phone, but also for getting people on the phone when they’re in the mood to buy. Your analytics data will reveal this.

Gamification Using Call Center Analytics Software

Keeping your call center employees engaged can be a challenge. Keeping an eye on your call logs and other analytics will help you know when it’s time to up the engagement of your team. If conversions start dropping or customers aren’t getting the answers they need and have to call back more than once, it could be time to find a way to incentivize your team.

Gamification is a great way to go about this. Gamification makes things fun. It creates a sense of getting a little something extra from doing a job. A little something extra can mean the difference between a mediocre experience and something people talk about for weeks after a call.

Creating leaderboards for friendly competitions can help drive sales. Making it possible for people to earn rewards, like gift cards, also creates a desire among call center staff to put their all into things.

Going Beyond Sales Incentives

In its most basic format, gamifying the outcome of calls can help drive up important metrics, like sales or call resolution. But, if you want to improve the overall quality of service, you can gamify training.

Create digital badges that people can collect as they go through training that improves their skills and abilities. Put managers in a position to know exactly who on their team is best qualified for promotions. They’ll know who can deal with the truly hard questions that come up.

Managers will be in a position to curate teams that are capable of taking things to the next level for greater sales or higher resolutions, depending on what you’re tracking.

Hitting the Call Frequency Sweet Spot

Using call center data analytics can help you figure out the call frequency sweet spot. This means finding the best possible resolution for problems, in real-time with a limited number of calls.

Ask the following questions: why are they calling back? Was there something that wasn’t resolved? Was it because there wasn’t anyone there that day who could solve the problem?

You should also take a look at the kinds of problems that result in multiple calls. Do they tend to happen at a certain time? Is it always the same problem, or is it a variety of issues that are creeping up?

In almost every instance, the solution is to create more robust training for your team. If callers aren’t getting the answers that help them solve their problems, your team needs to better understand the issue. Training can help fill that void.

If it’s a super technical issue, you can do your best to schedule a subject matter expert for the times when the calls usually occur. However, it’s often better for the whole team to know how to solve the problem.

If training is the sticking point, gamification works very well to solve that.

Getting the Most From Speech Analytics

speech analytics call center

Speech analytics can help you take things to the next level in terms of customer service. According to a 2016 report from Opus Research, 72% of companies believe that speech analytics software can help call centers improve the customer experience.

We’ve talked about how IVR can be used as a way of improving how calls are routed, leading to better service and happier customers. You can take this one step further using speech analytics.

By combining your speech analytics software with an AI platform, you end up with a system that routes calls with incredible real-time accuracy. But you also get a system that can take things like intent and the emotion of the caller into account when doing so. This helps ensure that customer interactions lead to the exact agent they need, who can calm them down or even upsell them, depending on what the AI has detected in their voice.

Use speech analytics to create a better review process

Speech analytics also help reduce the cost associated with reviewing calls. This was something identified in the Opus Research story as a bonus by 68% of companies.

Along with reducing the costs associated with reviewing, speech analytics lead to a more in-depth analysis of these calls.

Instead of manually transcribing every call, call center speech analytics software gives you the ability to look at all the data. This gives you all the calls in one place.

You can analyze intent patterns, overall customer satisfaction, as well as how well your team is performing. When analyzed, this data can be used to determine indicators for things like canceling an account or when someone is ready to upgrade their service.

This information is not impossible to figure out manually, but speech analytics speeds up the process and is increasingly more accurate.

Prioritize Customer Experience Metrics

call center analytics kpi

You need to always be working on improving your customer support approach. Your analytics tools will offer insight to improve center management, customer journey, and overall call center performance. These main metrics include first contact resolution (FCR), customer effort score (CES), and customer satisfaction or (CSAT).

First Contact Resolution (FCR)

First contact resolution is a measure for inbound call centers to measure whether or not they resolve customer issues during the first call. It’s a vital KPI to look out for when trying to improve either customer satisfaction or agent performance.

You can get a sense of this figure by dividing the number of callers satisfied on the first call by the number of overall calls.

Another way to do that is by dividing the number of callers satisfied on the first call by the total number of first calls. This gives you an accurate number to start acting upon immediately. Compare your data from successful calls with data from those that lead to repeat phone calls.

That will outline your actions to improve your KPIs.

Customer Effort Score (CES)

Your customer effort score relies on analytics created with just one simple question. Customers shouldn’t feel like they overexerted to achieve a successful result.

Offering a simple survey after they complete a journey through your interactive voice response system can give you this data. Most analytics software offers you the opportunity to ask these questions. Give them 5-7 potential ratings from “very high effort” to “very low effort” and you’ll know how your system is performing overall.

Having an artificial intelligence or IVR system is great but not if it’s causing your customers stress. This survey lets you know whether or not you have to streamline the system to work for them.

Your CES is the percentage of those who put in very low effort minus those who put in a lot of effort.

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

Customer experience metrics most watched by call center managers are those that measure your CSAT. Customer satisfaction is gathered by a survey at the end of the customer journey.

Customer satisfaction surveys are a bit of an art to execute. They need to be simple enough to get your customers to participate in giving you useful call center metrics. The language also needs to be carefully framed to give you the data you’re seeking.

Call center experience is more than just for the sake of collecting information. It all has to tie back to your key performance indicators. Utilize call recordings, text analytics, and as much information you can get through omnichannel interactions to compare satisfied customers and dissatisfied ones.

Managing the Big Data Avalanche

Call center analytics software can end up producing A LOT of data.

In the beginning, choosing a few key metrics will help learn what to look for. A more focused approach will prevent you from getting overwhelmed by all the information that analytics provides. Once you learn the ropes, you can dive right in and start implementing some business intelligence concepts.

Find a call center data analytics platform that has solid reporting features. You want something that is going to lay everything out for you visually, from agent performance to outbound call frequency. There should be a clear application of this data to your KPIs

When your analytics data is presented in charts and graphs, you can spot the peaks and valleys that indicate problems very easily. You’re looking for things like spikes in call volume, followed by a slew of hangups. This is a sign of not having enough agents active during busy periods.

The easier it is to go through your data to find those actionable insights, the more likely you are to improve every aspect of your call center operation. If you’re analyzing this data by going through a spreadsheet, you’re wasting time you could spend implementing and your attention is going to wane pretty fast.

Identify Patterns to Build a Better Call Center

Whether you run a cloud contact center or a site with on-premises call center agents, your call center analytics software should offer you useful patterns. They’re meant not only to measure individual interactions but also to lay out a roadmap of actions to take. Apply this rubric to your entire omnichannel customer experience so that you can measure your interactions on phone calls, social media, and every other medium your customers use.

Sometimes, having a theory can be the best way to start to identify patterns. If you’re getting a large volume of calls at a certain time of day or if customers are repeatedly calling more than once for the same problem, take a look at the data.

It should provide the clues you need to address the issue in an effective and efficient manner.

Some call center software providers have tiered pricing plans with many features included and others, like Five9 pricing, offer pay-as-you-go plans. To find out which call center analytics companies have the tools you need, at the right price, check out our Call Center Software Pricing guide.