Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) have traditionally been historical in nature, feeding high volumes of data into a spreadsheet to glean cumulative reports. It is only with the advent of technology (greater computing power, affordable resources via the cloud, smarter visualisation, democratised delivery on mobile, emails, etc.) that real-time analytics in contact centres have become viable at scale.
In fact, they are more than viable – 90% of contact centres believe end-to-end real-time analytics to be an important function for their organisation.
So, how do real-time analytics differ from traditional, historical data insights?
Simply put, real-time contact centre analytics continuously maps KPIs to immediately alert you if/when a threshold is breached. You don’t receive continuous, real-time data streams – the analytics engine monitors contact centre performance continuously to give you the most relevant data points (decided as per pre-set business rules) on an interface that is accessible immediately. This could be a mobile notification, an always-on manager dashboard, or a time-stamped email.
In contrast, historical analytics maps KPIs over time and gives you a cumulative report of all the data captured within that period.
Contact centre managers can leverage real-time analytics to measure important aspects of agent performance and customer satisfaction to improve business outcomes. Here are a few examples:
Gamify workforce management with real-time analytics
In this use case, your analytics data is converted to agent goals and targets that are put up on the contact centre leader board. It encourages friendly competition, and you can even incentivise better than average performance with rewards and recognition.