The mission and goal of your call center are to provide the best customer experience, but from an analytics perspective it’s somewhat like the chicken and the egg dichotomy: which comes first, the data or its exploitation?

Report highlights a rich seam of customer revenue

According to a piece by Simon Lande in CMS WIRE, the chicken would be customer data, the egg the analytics, or ingredients of the data-rich omelet:

“Big data, advanced analytics and customer engagement get top billing in the McKinsey Global Survey report, which highlights the potential revenue boost of targeted customer engagement through digital initiatives.”

Migrating our metaphor from the humble chicken to a sturdy three-legged stool, big data is the important first leg described in a study by Gartner, which shows a “growing trend” and that says that big data “is a disruptive phenomenon destined to help organizations drive innovation by gaining new and faster insight to their customers.”

The other two legs

The remaining legs — advanced analytics and true customer engagement—are both a means and a goal important enough to get the attention of so-called “C-level executives” (CEOs, etc.). The study disclosed that 31% of CEOs are “now personally sponsoring digital initiatives, up from 23% in 2012.” Significantly, 30% of survey respondents now have another C-level executive—the CDO (Chief Digital Officer).

Advanced analytics are the step-up to helping organizations keep up. If big data is the means, the end product is, as mentioned above, new insight into customer behavior, preferences and opportunities for future sales — both in upscale and related product lines.

The challenge of big data

Big data comes with a triad of challenges that are key to the strategy and operation of the enterprise:

• The organization has to find new ways to uncover, leverage and take advantage of its information sources. Call center monitoring, albeit a data-rich resource, holds up the quantitative end of analytics, but big data — social chatter on Facebook or Twitter, for example — also needs to be leveraged.
• Data analytics has to be more than just charts and graphs. Enterprises need to find a third dimension of insight to predict future customer behavior.
• Big data is continually growing in its amount, variety and speed. This places a strain on enterprise information management and will undoubtedly drive innovation in the field of data processing.

The road ahead

Finally, the Gartner research points out that the road to exploiting big data has some distance to travel:

“There’s clearly some way to go, as Gartner’s research shows that 85% of Fortune 500 companies will be unable to exploit big data for competitive advantage for at least another two years.”

Nevertheless, exploiting big data is critical in getting to know how customers feel about their experience in the call center, as well as what they’re telling their friends and family about your products and service. More importantly, that insight has to be actionable to the extent that something positive occurs either to correct what is wrong, or do more of what is right.

Looking for new ways to leverage the call center data that may be collecting dust? What are existing and potential customers saying about your product and services in the multichannels of social media? Contact us and we’ll show you how to access, exploit and enhance your call center portal’s value to your business.