“Making Your Call Center Relevant” Series Part 4

4 – Navigating Common Landmines

While there are a wealth of benefits, crossing multiple compliance, optimization and revenue generating metrics that justify the deployment of Interaction Analytics – which we will discuss in the next part of this series – there are also ample examples of failed deployments from which we can learn from and plan to avoid so that we can realize those benefits.  There are three common missteps that I want to highlight:

• A failure to understand and adhere to the project’s strategic objective – Understanding and adhering to the project’s strategy is such an obvious facet to success in any business endeavor that it amazes me how frequently the failure to do so occurs. Everyone goes into these initiatives with good intentions, but somewhere along the road and for many different reasons, the project strays from its strategic objective.   Keep in mind when I say project, I’m not limiting my definition to the time in which the actual implementation of this technology begins – I’m also including the discovery stage.  Often times the project has fallen off the rails even before a product has been selected.
• Purchase decision is made because it is a throw in as part of a WFO Suite – All Interaction Analytics solutions are not alike and the benefits to selecting the right solution heavily outweighs the consequences of making a decision that is based on simplifying the procurement and administration.
• No dedicated and qualified Analyst Team planned or in place – While an exciting advance in technology, it’s not magic. Failure to budget dollars that include a qualified team of Analysts is a non-starter.  Don’t hand the application over to your QA team unless they demonstrate analytical skills and are properly trained.  It’s imperative that you budget qualified analysts who not only understand your business but also have the skills to uncover, track and correlate trends, and are able to understand and accurately demonstrate the meaning behind the data (what the data is saying).

The above are just three potential impediments to successfully implementing Interaction Analytics in your call center but there are more.  Where at all possible, I strongly recommend that you reach out to and consult with some of those early adopters – both those that were successful and those that have failed to understand the reasons for their outcomes.

One other consideration – because the application crosses multiple lines of business (Customer Service, Sales, Marketing, Operations), it may be enticing to bring in other lines of business to share in the budget spend.  However, depending upon the structure and culture of your organization, you may want to avoid this as it can easily result in muddled objectives and delay the initiative.  I would certainly recommend consulting other lines of business and make the appropriate considerations in your business case, and where there is no conflict with or weakens the Center’s objectives, choose a solution that will scale in support of these objectives down the road.

Additionally, I would also strongly recommend that you target a single channel for the initial deployment.  In most cases, telephone calls are the most predominant call center interaction and I would consider initially implementing speech analytics; let it soak, then measure the outcomes and adjust any shortcomings before expanding the solution to other channels.  This is not to say that you should minimize other electronic channels in your evaluation of solutions, as current trends suggest, the volumes of interactions from these channels will increase in the years to come and you need to ensure that any solution you implement today, will seamlessly and transparently support them.

In our next and final installment we explain where the return on the investment will be.  We will discuss which key performance Indices Interaction Analytics will power to drive revenue and operational efficiencies.