Competing on Analytics

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By Ricky Cannon, Katalyst Consultant

Firstly, what is or are “Analytics”?
Let’s not dwell on an OED definition, let’s instead look at what Analytics is to the Contact Centre. For our purposes it’s the extensive use of data, statistical and quantitative analysis, explanatory and predictive models, and fact-based management which drive decisions and actions. Basically, it’s about taking a lot of data (“Big Data” if you prefer the IT-speak Americanism), identifying patterns and producing meaningful information on which to act, whether by human or automated means.

Why might you need to Compete On Analytics?
In today’s business world, accessibility to information and the sharing of knowledge is wide spread (you’re reading this on the internet, our biggest sharing mechanism after all!). Availability of resources is abundant and the cost of IT equipment has reduced, thereby making it accessible to all businesses. With these advances, the ability to gain a competitive advantage or differentiation through “traditional” means is becoming ever more challenging.

Those who want to stay competitive, or better still, outperform their competition, need to find new ways of differentiating themselves within the market place, and maximising the efficiency of business processes is one of the last remaining areas of differentiation. Using data to find areas of loss hidden within the business (whether in processes or resources), and then optimising those areas of loss, allows the organisation to find areas of savings as opposed to relentlessly expanding the organisation in an attempt to increase profits. True “Analytical Competitors” are able to wring every last bit of efficiency from their business processes and decisions using analytical data and methods.

Many executives are realising this shift and have started to turn their attention to the vast amount of data their organisations collect and how it may help them improve the way they operate. Once the executive mindset has changed to accept this need to change the way decisions, the next step is to implement a process for collecting and analysing the available data.

In the Contact Centre world, many organisations probably feel that they’re pretty good at analysing data, but the prevailing reality is that they’re good, but only to the extent possible with the tools which they are using. The majority of Contact Centre executives are relying on spreadsheets and rudimentary charting tools to get their insight into what’s happening in their operation. Since almost everyone has either Excel or an equivalent, where’s the competitive edge? The two-dimensional capabilities of spreadsheets haven’t really progressed for two decades, and many would argue that some of the tools now long since dead – SuperCalc, for example – were superior products that lost out in a world dominated by the commercial leverage of Microsoft and Lotus (now in IBM) rather than technological superiority.

This need to differentiate is driving executives to look beyond their current tools, and many are considering “Big Data” solutions as possibilities. What most find on closer inspection, however, is that off-the-shelf Business Intelligence tools require expert users, a lot of expensive configuration, and in many cases they don’t offer much more than replicating what you’re doing today (usually with a higher operational cost).

What does Best Practice look like?
This situation prompted Datapoint’s R&D team to examine what best practice might look like. The result is a solution that pulls together all of the disparate information sources into one place, and then presents it back to the user in a simple-to-read format. What that achieves is a reduction in collection and presentation effort and cost, and it also reduces the reporting cycle from weeks to minutes. Perhaps that’s enough to justify a business case to do things differently; however, it was important to take the science of Contact Centre Analytics forward too.

The team figured out that what the Contact Centre executive and management need is guidance on where to apply changes in order to use limited time and resources most efficiently. This means applying real expertise from running Contact Centres to derive measures which can be taken, and advising what any given change’s impact might be. Then, having made any changes, you would need to understand if the expected results were being achieved. A constant cycle of improvement can be commenced, together with delivering a deep understanding of what really makes the difference – especially insight from new correlations between disparate data sources – to enable the Contact Centre executive to improve significantly and exceed those all important KPIs.

So, how do you know if your Analytics are fit to compete?
We think that there are five stages on the journey to an elite standard of Analytical Competitiveness:

  1. Analytically Impaired
    Your organisation does not use any analytics at all. Any information gathered remains unused and filed away never to be looked at.
  2. Localised Analytics
    Your organisation has one or more localised spreadsheets or databases, but they are isolated within individual departments or only used by individual employees.
  3. Analytically Aspirational
    Your organisation has started to integrate their sources of analysis and can answer questions such as “What is happening now and can its impact be extrapolated?”
  4. Analytical Normality
    Your organisation has broad analytical capabilities and can answer questions such as, “How can we innovate and be different from our competition?”
  5. Analytical Ninja
    Your organisation has fully integrated its data sources and has the data inter-dependencies figured out. You can gain insight which others cannot, and are both the most efficient and the most innovative in your industry. You can answers questions such as, “What’s next for this industry?” and “Is this possible based on our data?”

Would You Call Your Own Contact Centre?

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Avaya’s newly published thought leadership journal The Avaya 2013 Guide to Collaboration Trends has just been published. Datapoint is featured in “Would you call your own Contact Centre? The nine hurdles that contact centers place in front
of their customers—and how to overcome them.” on page 116. And we’re proud to be the only Avaya Partner in Europe to be featured.

View The Avaya 2013 Guide to Collaboration Trends here

The Avaya 2013 Guide to Collaboration Trends

The Do’s and Don’ts of Performance Dashboards

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by Alec Christie

Crossing the Gulf
Wayne Eckerson describes performance dashboards as, ‘a full-fledged business information system built on a business intelligence and data integration structure.’ Performance Dashboards 2011.

The emergence of BI platforms in the 1990’s, as a distinct discipline, has lead to many organisations undertaking their own BI projects. Even after two decades, most organisations’ performance management systems still suffer the requisite growing pains. Eckerson helps elucidate this issue in the BI maturity model (See Figure 1.0) where most organisations have reached, at best, stages 2 or 3. In the Contact Centre Market however, many remain in the infant stage of maturity where, characteristically, spreadmarts wreak havoc amongst the Analysts and the executive. Spreadmarts are spreadsheets on steroids. They are shadow data systems, renegade data marts, if you will where each spreadsheet contains a unique set of data metrics, and rules that do not align with other analytical systems in the organisation.

BI Infrastructure Maturity
Figure 1.0

To cross the ‘gulf’ from infant to child and beyond, organisations face many challenges when trying to launch a BI programme. Such BI programmes can be created ‘in-house’ or can be ‘off the shelf’ products suited to the business. In the Contact Market, spreadmarts strangle most BI initiatives, with most analysts spending inordinate amounts of time collecting and integrating data, allowing no time to fabricate any form of performance management tool internally. When the decision finally arises to cross the ‘gulf’ and deploy a new BI system, the eradication of spreadmarts can be highly beneficial.

A panoply of benefits for Business Performance Management:
First and foremost, an effective business performance management system can offer strategic value to the executives, enabling them to create and refine strategy based on live and transparent operational intelligence data. This consistent view of the business offered from well designed dashboards increases the visibility, coordination and motivation for all users. Moreover, it empowers the user to make informed decisions based on the actionable information delivered.
Dashboard architects therefore, need to consider these benefits to deliver an attractive, interactive, and high-performance user interface.

Key Business Performance Management Architecture Considerations
Every application, including a performance management system requires data access, transformation and management encapsulated within a solid infrastructure architecture. IT managers must be able to identify the most reliable sources of data streams of which validity, appropriateness and dependability are key characteristics. Performance dashboards leverage business intelligence infrastructure to help organisations monitor their progress toward achieving strategic objectives as measured by KPIs. A good performance management metric should tell the user what the problem is through analysis, who is causing it through means of ranking and league tables, and finally whether or not they’re improving through trend-lining.

Cisco systems, a metrics driven organisation, outline 5 traits of an effective performance metric:

  • Is it scalable?
  • Can it be normalised?
  • Is it accountable?
  • Is it goalable?
  • Is it actionable?

However, without effective display and charting of the metrics, the prescribed metric attributes becomes irrelevant. Dashboard design is not about making something visually pleasing or pretty. Rather, it’s about enabling the user to quickly assimilate the current condition of the business. An effective display should be intuitively laid out, where the page remains uncluttered. A sparsely filled screen where the user can construe conclusions from the summarised information, will lead to succesfully integrated and adopted BI projects.

Cardinal sins which can turn a performance dashboard into a performance quagmire:
Remember, less is more. As outlined in the previous paragraph, we’re not talking about a visual masterpiece. There needs to be a balance between sparsity and density. Displaying too many metrics will impede quick assimilation of the information and, although there is no limit to the number of objects on a performance dashboard, the screen must remain easily accessible and legible. Accountability is a vital part of any performance management system: without which behavioural change that’s associated with adoption of BI tools will not happen. Consequently, the metrics chosen to be displayed on your dashboard should be empowering to those held accountable for them, rather than punishing.

Contact-Optimisation Dashboard

Top Ten Eleven for 2013

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Everyone loves a countdown for the New Year, so what does Datapoint think will be the Hot Technologies in the Contact Centre in 2013? (BTW, after much arguing about what should be in our Top Ten, we decided to make it a top eleven before we all fell out!)

11. Multi-What?
This year will see the acceleration of the use of multiple channels to interact with customers according to their preference, opening up new ways of providing a strong user experience whilst becoming more efficient. But here’s the trick: consistency in communications across these channels is essential for success. Using unified desktops with interaction histories and reporting across multiple channels is the answer. Traditional tech requires time-consuming integration and development to implement in this way, so we expect to see more Cloud and on-premises deployments of functionality to deal with integrated multiple channels.

10. Go forth and update
There’s only so much sweating the asset that can be done before the business is adversely affected. After several lean years of making do with old, outdated and often unsupported technology, 2013 will see infrastructure and telecoms managers given the remit to bring their Contact Centre and enterprise telephony estates up to date. Don’t expect a rush as corporate cautiousness still prevails, but when your competitors’ services make yours look ancient, it’s time to re-invest

9. Getting Call Routing and IVR to work for the customer
Are your customers fed up getting lost in the IVR maze every time they call you? Call Centres need to take time out to fine tune their existing IVRs or look to upgrade to a new generation of technology. Most customers’ first exposure when calling to buy or receive service is a computerised voice menu structure with strange vocal intonation and several layers of menus and options. When 2013’s consumer wants to speak to someone, they want to do so now, and they want to speak to the right person. Expect use of voice biometrics and natural language selection to increase.

8. Speech Analytics as a strategic tool
The technology is maturing nicely and once you’ve overcome the barriers of security and accessibility to call recordings you’re nicely on the way to analysing calls to Contact Centre, right? Wrong! There’s a lot of tweaking and applied thought required to make speech analytics give you a return on your investment. We think that 2013 could be a breakthrough year for organisations that understand speech analytics’ potential and apply it to the right business problem.

7. The Trip to SIP
Session Initiation Protocol sounds completely dull, but the savings and freedom it can offer a business are becoming just too powerful to ignore. Whilst the theory says that it’s simple to adopt, we recommend specialist advice and experienced programme management to get the best out of a new SIP infrastructure. Take it one step at a time, but most mid to large organisations should expect to realise savings and gain flexibility.

6. Pro-Active Managed Services Using Central Hubs
Too many organisations pat themselves on the back for fixing problems quickly when they break. The Unified Comms world is currently fuelled by “break-fix” support contracts, but wouldn’t it be better to anticipate and avert that crisis before it happens? The application of sophisticated monitoring technologies by specialised Managed Services Providers is a great way to avoid that bunker mentality and improve reliability.
Check out nectarcorp.com/converged-network-monitoring, we think this is one of the best solutions around and use it ourselves.

5. Low Cost small-to-mid sized solutions
One of the strong growth areas of 2012, we expect to see continued investment by small to mid-sized companies in low-cost SME solutions like Avaya’s award-winning IP Office www.avaya.com/usa/product/ip-office. Don’t be fooled by the price tag, these solutions deliver a powerful bang for your buck.

4. Using the Cloud for Flexible Capacity
To Cloud or Not To Cloud, that has been the question, but no longer. Now you can mix and match before giving up your own infrastructure, meaning you’re not the one staking your career on a leap of faith by using cloud technologies. Presence Technology is a banker for any organisation already sporting Avaya technology, and a strong contender for all others. www.presenceco.com

3. Video Collaboration (Yes it’s back!)
Avaya’s acquisition of Radvision in 2012 will cause major upheaval in the video collaboration world. Industry leaders for many years, Radvision are the black-boxed technologies of many video conferencing solutions. Now they’re in the heart of one of the leading Unified Communications technology firms, we expect to see a raft of new functionality from Radvision. We’re especially excited about affordable telepresence and taking mobile devices to the next level as THE productivity tool for business www.radvision.com/Products/Telepresence/

2. Agent Intraday Management
New year, new name. Knowlagent has become Intradiem, but we still love what they do and we expect to see increasing take up in 2013 as organisations see the light. Harvest all those fragments of lost agent time every day and use for productive work. Automatically flex your call capacity according to demand. Improve productivity and agent satisfaction. All in a SaaS model. We think this is a no-brainer. www.intradiem.com.

1. Using Metrics to Drive Efficiency
Think you’ve squeezed every last drop of efficiency out of your Contact Centre? Think again, because you don’t know what you don’t know. Hidden inefficiencies in your operation are costing you thousands of pounds a day and you don’t even know it. Building spreadsheets just won’t scale to the needs of 2013 when we will see the advent of a new breed of specialised “Big Data” solutions able to microscopically inspect Contact Centre performance. We’re leading the way in the Contact Centre with Katalyst: datapoint.com/katalyst.

Big Data. Big Deal?

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A common theme that we pick up in every Contact Centre is that they track their KPIs. Assiduously. No, fanatically. In fact, a cynic might say that the Contact Centre is set up to serve its KPIs and not its customers.
Traditional theory is that if you hit your KPIs then you’re doing well in the Contact Centre. And once you’ve hit them, then let’s raise the bar a little more and we’ll be doing even better. Let’s add to that a high positive Net Promoter Score, and all’s well. Or is it?

We’re starting to see a new theme developing and it’s that of discovery. Yes, KPIs matter, but, to coin a phrase, you don’t know what you don’t know. So slicing and dicing what’s going on in the Contact Centre requires a different method of analysis.

The Way Forward

Almost all KPIs are based on some benchmark of achievement for transactions tracked in a database. Mining this data requires a hypothesis of what to look for. For example, the shorter the calls in an inbound call centre, the more efficient you are at handling them. Right? Perhaps, but how do you cater for correlation of resolution of the customer’s problem with the call duration?

What most Contact Centre managers have at their disposal is a set of standard reports. It might be possible to vary these slightly, but in the red hot heat of your average operational day, let’s be honest, you don’t get the time to go off piste and start to apply the grey matter. Instead, what happens is that assumptions are made against a theory about the cause of a problem, and poor decisions are made. The outcome of this is that many Contact Centres are constantly tweaking and changing but rarely do they get the source of a problem.

Even if you do get the time to do some proper discovery, good analytical skills of the sort needed to splice together many different sources of data are not easy to come by, and are generally not possessed by your every day Contact Centre management team. The result is that many organisations hire teams of financial analysts who take away the data, drop it into spreadsheets, and then a few weeks later they emerge with a report that tells you something that happened last month.

A perpetual guessing game against out of date spreadsheets really can’t be the way to run a multi-million, customer-facing investment, but for so many organisations that run Contact Centres, that’s BAU.
So what to do?

The Business Intelligence (BI) market has some amazing tools. They are well-established, proven, and backed by armies of men in grey suits with PhDs. Great empires have been built on them (Jim Goodnight, who built and owns probably the most technically advanced analytical vendor, The SAS Institute, is reputedly worth around seven billion dollars). But when you get started, how long before they actually deliver return on the not insubstantial investment? Even if you have the licence to use the products in your company already, what do these vendors know about running a Contact Centre? Not a lot. They can dazzle you with number wizardry that would make Dumbledore look like a remedial student, but the vast amount of customisation required to even get to first base really just doesn’t make good financial or operational sense. And even then, could they take you significantly upstream of your current measurement of KPIs?

Enter stage left, “Big Data”. But let’s be honest, is this any more than just a cool new epithet for the old analytical tools and data warehouses? In the majority of cases, probably not. However, where I do agree with exponents of Big Data is their assertion that when combining and analysing multiple data sources in new ways, often you can make startling new discoveries that you couldn’t possibly have seen before.

We’ve recently been working with a client, a Business Process Outsourcer. To them, KPIs are absolutely everything. They aren’t just fanatical, they follow KPIs with a truly religious zeal because if they don’t hit the right service levels, then they don’t get paid. When we first approached them, they said to us that they have their KPIs fully under control and understood. When pressed, they would admit that they had a team of people using Excel to assimilate the data, and when they finally received the reports, they were a month out of date. On the issue of contemporary reporting alone, they became interested in what specialised “Big Data for the Contact Centre” might reveal to them, so we embarked on a project to analyse just a couple of data sources.

Constrained by their fervour for the existing KPIs, we replicated those using our new method and tools. What followed, based on just a month’s data, was astounding. We were able to replicate the KPIs fairly simply, but what was fascinating was that we were also able to correlate data between different sources and pick up previously unseen causes of poor performance (down to a detailed level). They really could not have done this using the tools at their disposal today.

This one short project revealed three key pieces of insight, resulting in efficiencies of just a few percentage points, but monetarily, well into six figures. As we develop the project further, and unleash the remaining 80% of the product onto their data, we expect to be making annual savings into seven figures.

As just one Contact Centre in a UK market of about 6,000, I feel pleased that we can help them take their operation to a new level of productivity and service. But there’s much more to do on my mission to improve the industry. In the UK, “Call Centre Operator” is currently the single most common profession, applying to about a million people, not far short of 5% of the working population. The industry is horribly inefficient and comparable to the cottage industries of the 1900s when labour was cheap and the way to scale a business was to throw more bodies at it. What our industry needs is the application of understanding and knowledge to drive improvements in efficiency in the same way that the great engineers drove the industrial revolution. In that way businesses will rein in the spiralling costs of customer contact and maybe actually improve their service at the same time. And who knows, perhaps their KPIs might improve too?

How was it for you?

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There is little logical about customer relationships. It can be easily overlooked when booking at a sales return but customers are people and people are complex. “Fire and ice within me fight” wrote the poet A.E Housman in describing how his emotional and the rational ‘sides’ were battling for control of his actions some 100 years ago. But today, in the age of science and pseudo-science business all too often assumes that customer actions are rational and can be predicted and programmed. People feel just as much as they think and, while it may be relatively easy on a one-off basis to plant an idea in a customer’s mind and get the response of a sale, winning loyalty to get repeat sales depends on how they experience the event – it’s the difference between a one night stand and a relationship.

Most of us have felt let down by at some time in our lives and can recognise the disappointment we experience as a result. How deep this disappointment goes and how it is expressed depends on how much we feel we’ve invested in the relationship and how much we feel we’ve received in return.

In our purchasing relationships bad experiences encountered in low value or occasional purchases can be shrugged off with the simple resolution of ‘never using them again’, but when it comes to buying high value items or things that we really do need we invest those decisions with our emotions. We buy into the product, we buy into the brand, we buy into the company and when we’ve made that commitment the sense of betrayal when things go wrong goes far deeper. Rather than quietly putting it down to experience we tell the world of our disappointment.

Studies by US customer experience specialists TARP found that only 4% of customers take the trouble to complain – 96% simply defect. If that is not bad enough, the average disappointed customer tells five others of their disaffection and 20% tell 20. The 20:20 effect doing disproportionate damaging to brand reputation.

Datapoint Katalyst enables enterprises to track customer emotion and its relationship to the effort that customers have to make in transacting with you within its customer experience model, ensuring that enterprises have the opportunity to address any issues that impact negatively on their relationship with you.

It’s good for business to be in touch with your customers emotions.