Building a solid business case for Interaction Analytics in your organisation

[Last Updated: January 2017]

THE INNER CIRCLE GUIDE TO CUSTOMER CONTACT ANALYTICS BLOG: 2/7
‘The Inner Circle Guide to Customer Contact Analytics‘ (published by ContactBabel and sponsored by Business Systems) highlights the latest insights on Interaction (including speech analytics) technology. For those with a hectic schedule, we created a short series of blogs covering some of the main points covered in the guide. Please find the second in the series below.
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Depending on the type of business, the issues being faced, and the chosen technology, what may seem a reasonable business case for Interaction Analytics in one organisation, may make a poor case in another. In a nutshell – the drivers, inhibitors and return on investment, in building a business proposal for this technology varies greatly across different organisations.

DRIVERS

To build a business case you first need to consider the reasons behind why you are implementing this technology – So we’ve handpicked a couple of drivers behind Interaction Analytics, taken from the guide for you to have a think about.

Cost reduction through automating Quality Assurance

Often a popular driver – With 100% of calls being monitored and categorised, this means only the most relevant calls are passed on for evaluation, saving time and effort in the process. As a result, the insights into business processes and agent performance are far more targeted and are of a higher standard than would be possible carrying out the QM (Quality Monitoring) process manually.

Improved profitability

Interaction Analytics can uncover valuable insight into the sales techniques and particular terminology used by those agents who are deemed most successful. Wouldn’t you love to know the characteristics behind a successful call? – uncovering these insights means you can also share them amongst the agent population encouraging positive behaviours and proven sales techniques for improved customer satisfaction and ultimately profitability.

Improving operational efficiency and reducing the cost to serve

Interaction Analytics can be used to investigate the causes of longer calls and optimise rather than reduce call handle times. Each segment of the call can be effectively weighed up for profitability or any other positive element and action taken to minimise the parts of a call which add no value. It can also be used to quantify the reasons as to why customers complain identifying underlying factors, trends and spikes. According to Contact Babel’s recent report, The UK Contact Centre Decision-Makers Guide 2016 7% of UK calls received by contact centres are complaints, with around 80% of these being about problems elsewhere in the enterprise (rather than in the contact centre). Understanding as well as reacting to what is driving these complaints will essentially make a difference to cost.

INHIBITORS

Now that we’ve outlined a few popular drivers behind Interaction Analytics it’s time to think about the obstacles. We’ve cherry picked two for consideration.

Complexity 

A key inhibitor for Interaction Analytics uptake, can often be down to the culture, some organisations are simply not ready to accept speech analytics technology. Why? The organisation may not have a technologically supportive foundation in place, such as a reliable recording environment or an optimised quality monitoring process to support the solution. There may be frustration with understanding where to start with Interaction Analytics – it is not just a simple plug-and-play application and with more pressing projects taking up IT resource in the organisation, it’s easy to let the original enthusiasm for the solution drift away.

Change management 

It’s one thing successfully implementing Interaction Analytics but whether your business has the capability and enthusiasm to act upon the insight it can uncover, is a whole other matter. The greatest challenge for a business to overcome is being able to manage the change required that analytics can identify. The choice of whether or not to implement this solution should not lie solely with the IT department or business users – it is at an executive level that organisations should work together to structure their processes pre-implementation, in order to make the most out of their investment.

ESTIMATING RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI)

We’ve spoken about the drivers and the inhibitors, but how do you build a strong enough return on investment case for Interaction Analytics to get the required corporate buy-in? Some variables to be considered include:

Cost Reduction

– Reduction in headcount from the automation of call quality monitoring
– Avoidance of any fines and potential damages for non-compliance
– Understanding and minimising the parts of the call which do not add value

Revenue Increase

– Increase in sales conversion rates based on best practice across agents
– Optimised marketing messages through instant customer evaluation
– Quicker responses to new competitor and pricing information
Ultimately for Interaction Analytics to be successful you mustn’t forget one key thing– your business case should be built with support from potential end-users and the particular KPI’s they believe are crucial to contributing towards your organisation’s success.

Download the full ‘Inner Circle Guide to Contact Centre Analytics’ here >