With seemingly endless data fed into contact centers, coming from any and all source channels — phone calls, chats, emails, texts and social media — it is crucial to create the proper environment for all this incoming data to live.
But you can’t stop at data management. That’s only the first step. You need to evaluate how to make sense of all the data, so it can be leveraged to develop actionable insights, make informed decisions and guide your overall strategy and approach to customer care. Here are three specific ways you can begin to take advantage of data to elevate your operations:
1. Find new opportunities to create structured data.
Are you thinking traditionally in terms of what “data” actually means? For example, how do you classify the phone conversation between an agent and the customer in a contact center? New speech recognition technology can bring phone calls, which was previously unstructured data, into a structured environment. The technology converts phone call data into a text script that can be scanned or monitored for trends and commonalities, in real or near real-time. This application is especially useful within the consumer and retail industries, to assist brands in the rapid detection of positive and negative sentiment, which can allow for quick action or resolution.
2. Stop relegating data into silos.
Consider how you can integrate data sources for best results. Your data should reflect your operations, and in an omnichannel environment, customer care is delivered equally across all channels. So newly structured data, including data collected by phone, social media, and other sources, can and should be paired together in a unified format. This makes it easier to view data with a big-picture perspective and to analyze data holistically, not in separate channels. I like to think of it as a real-time consumer focus group, without the cost or long times typically associated with this type of qualitative research.
3. Ensure the data is easily accessible.
That big-picture view still needs to be easily digestible to the team, especially to those managing simultaneous, omnichannel operations. A format such as live dashboard can be most beneficial. When you and your team receive instantaneous reports across all channels, you avoid having to take care of the heavy lifting on integration. It allows you to hone in on particular areas or view by brand, channel, geolocation, type of issue or concern, or other data points, which can make your operation more efficient and insightful. For example, you can monitor for consumer reactions to promotional advertising or rapidly detect product quality complaints. Accessibility to data equals the ability to take swift action when necessary.
Big data is not a hurdle to be overcome — it’s an opportunity to leverage. By improving integrity of your data and changing the approach to how you analyze it, big data can (and should be) rightfully positioned as an opportunity to generate “big knowledge” for your brand.
