It’s easy to get caught up in the opportunities made possible by big data in an omni-channel contact center. The information customers provide both explicitly and implicitly about their preferences and intentions can lead to valuable insights that improve how you engage with them. Once you start thinking outside the box, it seems there is no limit to what you can do with big data.

But there is, in fact, one thing that can stand in the way of your big data initiatives: your users. We can talk all day about the merits of big data and how it can improve customer satisfaction scores, but if the data is not translated into actionable feedback or the system is difficult to use, customer service agents simply won’t use it.

Your customer service agents already have their hands full building a rapport with the customer and solving a problem – in real time. Clicking through several windows in an application to learn about a customer’s last interaction with your company or translating that data into the best next steps distracts agents at a time when they should be focused on one thing and one thing only: your customer. The system you use must simplify how big data is consumed and make it easier for agents to engage with customers.

Before an agent is even connected to a customer during a service call, the IVR system should authenticate the caller, analyze his/her data and present the agent with recommendations for engaging with the customer. For example, let’s say Cathy is calling customer service to return a coat she purchased online. Once authenticated, the system determines that an order was recently shipped to Cathy. She is then presented with the option to speak to an agent about her recent purchase.

When the customer service agent connects with Cathy, the agent has this information in front of her, as well as the fact that the coat Cathy purchased has had a high return rate due to a faulty zipper. As a result, the company is giving customers their money back or offering a higher priced coat in exchange for the faulty one. The agent immediately asks Cathy if she is calling about the coat she recently ordered. She says yes, and the agent efficiently solves Cathy’s problem based on big data.

You can see how the system makes it easy for the agent to apply the business insights that are born from big data. The system you implement for big data in the contact center must do the hard work in the background so that your agents can keep their focus on the customer.