When you take a high-level view, the concepts of business analytics and intelligence appear to be quite similar to each other. In several scenarios, both these ideas are even used interchangeably. However, for all those organizations that are dependent on contact center operations, it is vital that the managers appreciate the differences between the two concepts and become skilled in their interconnected nature for their distinct elements.
There are ways in which contact center managers can combine business analytics, as well as intelligence to attain the best possible outputs.
Time Period- Past, Present as well as Future
There are several experts who opine that business analytics and intelligence are different with respect to time. Mark Van Rijmenam, the Chief Executive Officer of DataFloq, for instance, mentioned in an article that business intelligence researches and looks at the past but business analytics predicts an image for the future.
It is true that while both these tools can be applied in the present time for gaining valuable insights, the reasons and timeliness of the outcomes may be different, based on the departmental goals and the organizational priorities as a whole.
According to Van Rijmenam, timeliness is a big difference since both the tool sets provide a call center manager with different but equally different insights. While Business Intelligence is crucial for improving the decision-making of a manager depending on past outcomes, business analytics is a great help to move ahead and know what may happen in the near future.
Both business analytics and intelligence are important for all those businesses that are seriously pursuing for their operational improvement. These tool sets are essential for getting a 360-degree holistic view of an organization and its path.
There are many business intelligence solutions like a call recording application that can provide insights into former processes and reports to the call center managers. Business analytics is a well-defined performance metrics that is used for measuring the effectiveness of the various strategies and the performances of the call center agents. When the forces of these 2 tools are used in a complementary and cohesive manner, leaders of a contact center can measure and test the various initiatives for arriving at the best possible outputs.
Contact center optimization
A modern call center operates in a rapidly paced environment and so the finest business analytics and intelligence strategies will begin with a dependent set of application that can be simultaneously supportive to both these efforts. As far as the business intelligence is concerned, the key is data available at real-time, particularly from the call recording process. The Vice President of engineering for Magnitude, Pat Roche revealed to BettrBuys that the features should be allowing individual employees to perform their job functionalities in the most effective manner.
As far as Business Analytics is concerned, there is a requirement for software that is more focused towards future like a call accounting software. Such type of a tool helps the call center managers by providing the necessary insights for structuring the workflows in the contact center and assigns them to the various representatives according to their strengths and achieves an overall better functioning by targeting particular areas of improvement.
Roche had explained that business analytics should ideally concentrate the various techniques and technologies for identifying the latest trends and understand the data that can drive the business towards a meaningful change.
Each business may have its own unique concept of what business analytics and intelligence mean and how they both should be used in relation to one another.
As far as a leader of a call center is concerned, the response can be found by deploying the right kind of software tools, call accounting for a macro level of improvement and balancing the call recording procedure.
Some of the best practices that the leaders can use for implementing BI and analytics as defined by Gartner are as follows:
Select a business problem that is easy to win initially
Leaders of Business analytics and intelligence have to work closely with call center leaders for identifying the key problems that have to be tackled. A joint review will enable to appreciate the results that must drive the operations and identify and summarize all those decisions that can offer the greatest impact or fastest payback. If the data volume is massive along with complexity and uncertainty, there is a possibility of improvement.
If a call center does not have expert analysts, it can opt for outsourcing and purchased packaged applications
Many call centers feel that they can continue with their current modus operandi i.e. with a centralized business intelligence team and applications and try to construct capabilities for advanced analytics all by themselves. But, here are other alternatives that are much more appropriate for faster wins. If a call center does not have the required skills for building advanced analytics, it can use the services of an external provider for purchasing advanced analytics software.
References:
http://www.trisys.com/call-center-leaders-must-master-business-intelligence-and-analytics/
