Call Center Analytics Revealed

Transcription

1 Call Center Analytics Revealed Why Technology is not Your Actionable Business Intelligence Panacea Customer Relationship Metrics 1

2 Dr. Jodie Monger is the president of Customer Relationship Metrics and a pioneer in customer experience research and transformation. Her findings and insights have been part of numerous case studies and technological advances. She is recognized by many as being the most important competitive advantage in their contact center and customer experience strategy. Other titles: 11 Steps to Social Media Success for Contact Centers Get it Now Eliminating the Worst Call Center Practice: Call Monitoring Calibration Get it Now 2

3 What s in this ebook? 1. Overview of a trend that places analytics in a very compromising position. 2. A current gap in the US that is projected to continue to widen for several years to come. 3. The difference between reporting, analytics, and business intelligence. 4. The power of business acumen. 3

4 Book Chapters: Prelude Chapter 1: A Growing Analytics Skills Gap Chapter 2: What is an Analyst? Chapter 3: Hey Analyst! Does the CEO really want your Analytics? Conclusion..17 Resources About Customer Relationship Metrics

5 Prelude The U.S. education system has come under considerable scruitiny over the past several years, and not without merit. The fact is that students in the United States are falling further and further behind other countries in math and science education. As more lower skilled jobs leave our shores and the need in the marketplace for more highly skilled workers increases, U.S. businesses are experiencing a skilled talent crisis in many parts of their business. One area hit by this talent crisis is the need for more analytic thinkers. There is no supply, and the education system is not filling this need. Business intelligence (BI) technology and call center analytics tools will be of no value if there are no highly skilled analytic people to run them. During the last three times that the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) was conducted (1999, 2003 and 2007), the best ranking that U.S. 8th graders were able to achieve in either math or science was 6th. The 2003 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study, focusing on the mathematical problem solving skills of 15 year olds, found a widening gap between U.S. students and students in Europe and Asia. In the 2009 PISA study, U.S. students ranked 23rd or 24th in most subjects (even lower in mathematics, as can be seen in the following figure). 5

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7 Chapter 1: A Growing Analytic Skills Gap Both industry and academia in the United States are acutely aware of this growing skills gap. In the past few years more than a dozen analytic focused MBA programs have launched at learning institutions from St. Joseph s University to Northwestern University, University of Chicago s Booth school of business, and Xavier University. IBM recently partnered with DePaul University to launch the Center for Data Mining and Predictive Analytics, offering the nation s first Masters of Science in predictive analytics. And while this trend is encouraging, the fact is that the experience necessary to succeed and lead in analytic positions takes years of education and practice using real life datasets, not to mention understanding of the key drivers of business. This is supported by the results of a recent (June 2011) poll taken by a data mining and analytic electronic community. 7

8 When the poll results were examined by geographic region, North America (U.S. and Canada) ranked 5th (of 6 regions) in the percentage of PhD respondents. 8

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10 In a separate poll, this same community asked its members about the length of their tenure in analytic positions. A third had eight or more years of experience. 10

11 This gap in analytic skills is likely to continue to grow. McKinsey Global Institute projects that by 2018 demand for deep analytical positions in a big data world could exceed the supply being produced on current trends by 140,000 to 190,000 positions. Furthermore, they project a need for 1.5 million additional managers and analysts in the United States who can ask the right questions and consume the results of the analysis of big data effectively. 11

12 This is our CIA (Customer Insights to Action) newsletter registration. Here is what you need to know 1). As a member, you ll get access to special briefings on the latest findings on customer experience research, free training resources, and insiders insights into the myths and mysteries in contact center technology, operations, and it s role on the entire customer experience. 2.) Frequency only 3 4 times per month. (We won t bother you with dirt that won t grow anything. This will be the good stuff that creates big blooms). 3.) We guard your secrets better than the real CIA. No double agents or lost laptops here; your info is never sold to anyone. Only an act of Congress will open our vault. 4.) You can unsubscribe anytime. Use the link at the bottom of your s to go back to being lonely citizen. Ready to get the inside stuff? Go

13 Chapter 2: What is an Analyst? Webster s Dictionary defines an analyst as follows: 1. Someone who is skilled at analyzing data. 2. An expert who studies financial data (on credit or securities or sales or financial patterns etc.) and recommends appropriate business actions. 4. One who analyzes; formerly, one skilled in algebraical geometry; now commonly, one skilled in chemical analysis. The key point in the definition above is that an analyst analyzes data. In other words, an analyst conducts mathematical computations on (raw) data, transforming that data into actionable knowledge, intelligence that can be used to drive the business forward. Many organizations fail at the very preliminary steps of making data driven decisions by mistaking reporting and dashboarding with data analysis. These activities are quite different, as are the skill sets required by the individuals performing these activities! Years ago, I launched and managed a data analytics department for a third party call monitoring company. As that department proved to be in demand and profitable, I quickly acquired the reporting department as well (a hot potato of sorts within the organization). My 12

14 experience in handling and organizing data prepared me well to streamline and increase the efficiency of the reporting department. So did my penchant for asking questions. Every report request was followed by a rather similar barrage of questions: How are you going to use this report? Are you sure we re not reporting this same data on another report already? How many reports are we producing each day / week / month / quarter for this client? Wow! That s a lot, is anyone even looking at our reports? While the intention behind every reporting request was the right one (to provide clients with additional insights into their business), the fact is that mere reporting provides numbers, figures, quantities, not greater understanding. Reporting summarizes and organizes data into some tabular or visual format. Reporting may alert an audience to a problem, but provides no means by which to identify root cause(s). Analysts, conducting statistical analysis and/or data mining, provide insights into the meaning and drivers behind the numbers so that the right interventions can be introduced at the right times. That is the role of an analyst! 13

15 Chapter 3: Hey Analyst! Does the CEO really want your Analytics? I remember early on in my analytics career walking into a meeting with the management team and principal of the company, elated that I had just developed a model that explained 40% of the variation we were seeing in sales conversion (quite a respectable R squared value when you consider we are modeling human behavior). The independent variables for the regression model were performance figures of agent behaviors that occurred (or failed to occur) during a call center interaction with a customer. I had the model formula, the predictive power of the model, a graph of the residuals. I was stoked!!! My enthusiasm was met with some blank stares, a few ill conceived questions, and considerable lack of enthusiasm. The model, and my recommendations based on the model, went nowhere, until I found a better way to present the information to my marketing and businessminded audience. 14

16 That experience quickly taught me how to monetize nearly any argument. I learned that managers of businesses generally don t get excited by cool formulas and residuals, and that the quickest way to find the door is to speak analytic jargon to a room full of marketing types. The fact is that many executives are not skilled at analytics either. A survey conducted by executive search firm Christian & Timbers in May of 2002 revealed that 45% of corporate executives rely more on instinct than on facts and figures in running their business. Now, they are wrong in their approach (the figure on the following page, taken from a study conducted by MIT Sloan and IBM Institute for Business Value, certainly suggests that), but you re not going to win them over by telling them this. A top notch analyst must know how to do all of the analysis and data mining, but in order for their work to be put into practice, they must also possess the business acumen needed to explain the business dynamics which humanize the analytics, and be able to speak in the executive s language. They also need to be skilled at the practices associated with influence and persuasion. Just speaking their language is not enough, unless it is the right language and put in the right context that aligns with the executive s business and personal goals. Quite a hefty order for every analyst hired. 15

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18 Conclusion Business intelligence and call center analytics solutions are projected to experience year over year growth for the next several years. The most successful organizations in the future will be those that are able to leverage their own data to gain insight into customer desires, behaviors, pain points and experiences, and act on those insights as a means of differentiating themselves from the competition. These organizations will not falsely assume the marketing hype that technology can be dummied down so anybody can use it and generate business insight. They will understand that skilled talent will be their competitive differentiator. Since there is no reliance on the U.S. education system to produce the needed supply of analysts, many organizations will be in an unenviable position having a skilled talent demand with no supply. The early adopters of these solutions are already suffering from this skills gap issue, as the top performing analysts are hard to find and retain. Use the insights in this ebook to propel your future. 17

19 Resources: Big Data: The next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity. McKinsey Global Institute, May Analytics: The new path to value. How the smartest organizations are embedding analytics to transform insights into action. MIT Sloan Management Review and the IBM Institute for Business Value. Fall Learn more about the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) Learn more about the PISA 2009 results 18

20 About Customer Relationship Metrics We make corporate missions and customer passions happen. Doing more with less means outsourcing for skilled talent and solutions that is too risky to build and that diverts from your core expertise. Customer Relationship Metrics (CRM) is a provider of Managed Business Intelligence Services founded in 1993 at Purdue University. We collect, analyze, and create actionable insights from unstructured conversations, customer comments, customer experience data, and operational data. Our SaaS based systems, combined with our academic level research methods, enable our clients to uncover otherwise hidden opportunities to improve service, sales, collections, customer retention, service recovery, and process failures. 19