Call centres fail to integrate intelligence

Contact centre heads are blaming time pressures for blocking progress on integrating business intelligence into their call centre systems, according to research from ProtoCall One.

The survey was conducted at the end of the latest ProtoCall One Genesys Workforce Management (GWFM) user group meeting in February.

The user group members are senior heads from leading UK businesses and their organisations account for around 25 per cent of all GWFM UK users.

The afternoon session focused on the challenges of successful BI integration.

The members of the group were asked for views concerning their experiences of BI and their plans to pursue BI in their organisations.

Lack of time was the key blockage to achieving BI for 63 per cent of those surveye.

Highest priority for all group members was to use BI to measure call agents based on business focused objectives instead of standard call metrics.

Some 75 per cent of those surveyed are now looking to integrate customer data for their BI use from their customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

Some 75 per cent of respondents used only historical rather than real-time data to track agent performance.

Meanwhile, 37 per cent of respondents stated that BI and agent performance reporting was still treated separately.

Manual workarounds still prevail but time spent by agents is minimised, with 50 per cent stating that less than 5 per cent of agents' time was spent on manual workarounds such as completing forms and reports, but 25 per cent have agents spending 10-20 per cent of their time on non-automated processes.

With call centre agent salaries averaging GBP15,4581 per year, agents spending just 5 per cent on manual workrounds would equate to a total annual cost of GBP77,290 for a one hundred-seat call centre.

Overall key challenges included agent productivity and high agent turnover or 'attrition', both scoring 62 per cent respectively.

To give agents more flexibility and control around their work, 38 per cent of user group members reported that they were using web applications to allow staff to specify shift preferences and then trade shifts with colleagues.

Chris Rodwell, practice head - business intelligence, ProtoCall One, commented: "Our user group meeting and the survey results brought up interesting issues with regards to integrating BI into the contact centre.

"There is a genuine shift away from old ACD metrics to business-linked KPIs, but this obviously requires a commitment to effective BI integration.

"This is an area that will pay dividends for organisations and although time and resources are tight, these companies want to progress with real-time agent performance tracking and linking in customer data with BI.

"All this can now be achieved with the technology from the likes of Genesys and Oracle".

Back to top