Customer Insight
Call centres are beginning to take on some of the responsibilities for understanding customer behaviour that have traditionally been managed through Marketing. They will therefore face a similar set of technical support issues albeit their needs are more demanding since call centres operate in a real time environment.
The inflow of customer insight can come in either audio or text format from interfaces such IVR based surveys, recorded IVR interaction histories, call recording/web chat archives and web based feedback. They can be recorded as quantitative scores as in multiple choice answers or as open ended verbatim responses.
Most survey solutions provide their own analytic and reporting tools so that users are able to immediately use them to understand and chase up on issues and opportunities. However there are broader integration issues of how this information should be interfaced with existing customer information repositories such as CRM and ERP systems and their ability to be integrated into existing reporting dashboards.
The analysis of voice recording either from post call surveys or daily inbound calls raises other technical issues and choices. Now that speech analytical tools are able to process at remarkable speeds, the choice between solutions from incumbent call recording vendors or dedicated third party providers needs to be carefully evaluated.
Finally the issue of effectively following up on all the feedback that these solutions generate should not be under estimated. At some point as critical mass grows, first generation techniques of providing automated alerts via email will demand more robust case management solutions that allow for proper workflow and reporting as issue resolution takes place across the organisation. Can this requirement be integrated into existing systems or are new ones required?
Operational issues of who should own this process and how it might relate to existing programmes that support continuous improvement efforts also need consideration.
These opportunities are more fully explored in the sections below.
Analytic output from customer survey solutions will need integration into the overall reporting environment of customer services
Speech analytics is best used when there is 100% call recording availability which implies new storage requirements for those still undertaking sample recording.
The demands for historic and real time reporting in today’s customer service environment requires a data mart infrastructure.