Without these customer experience analytics tools, your contact center could be flying blind

Contact centers collect and generate huge amounts of customer data, but without the right technology it can largely go to waste. That's kind of like keeping a priceless Monet in the attic because you just can't find the right frame for it.

With the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), there's really no reason for businesses to not fully leverage this customer information. Modern customer experience analytics solutions can corral all that data and turn it into useful insights that everyone in the business can see and use—kind of like finally putting that Monet on your wall so everybody can benefit from its beauty.

Most contact centers have gotten used to doing without some of these insights—just think about QA scores that are based on small sample sizes and customer satisfaction scores that are calculated from low survey response rates. Traditionally, using limited data has been "good enough" because there weren't any alternatives. However, now that there are effective options, flying a little blind isn't good enough anymore.

Customer experience analytics tools can fill in data gaps so that contact centers can gain a holistic view of operations and the customer. As a result, the entire organization will benefit.

Why do contact centers need customer experience analytics?

While not solely responsible for the brand's CX, call centers play a vital role in delivering satisfying and differentiating customer experiences that strengthen relationships. For example, our research revealed that 95% of consumers said customer service has an impact on brand loyalty.

Today's CX efforts are highly data driven. Additionally, Gartner found that a large majority of brands now compete mostly on the basis of CX.These two factors make it imperative for contact centers to have smart customer experience analytics tools so they can make timely, data-driven decisions.

Insights from the best AI-powered analytics are relevant, easy to consume, and actionable. They help customer service leaders identify and improve key drivers of satisfaction and pinpoint improvement opportunities. For example, analytics tools can highlight agents who need more training in specific topics.

Customer experience analytics solutions can also help contact centers resolve the following issues:

• Too much data, and too many different formats. One of the reasons contact centers don't fully leverage their customer data is that there's simply too much of it to analyze. Plus, the formats range from highly structured numerical scores from customer surveys to completely unstructured data from voice interactions. Fortunately, artificial intelligence can solve both problems. AI has a voracious appetite for data and becomes more effective as it consumes information, so a huge amount of data is actually a good thing. Additionally, customer experience analytics solutions that use natural language processing (NLP), a form of AI, can analyze both structured and unstructured data in near real-time.

• Difficult to identify performance issues and spot changes. Some contact center analytics tools aren't robust enough to identify changes in the nature of interactions. For example, if conversations begin to suddenly shift to the topic of website issues, this prevents leaders from alerting agents in a timely manner and proactively addressing the problem. Additionally, sometimes, with the wrong tools, performance issues remain hidden unless someone is specifically researching them. The best customer experience analytics solutions shine a light on changes and issues so leaders aren't caught flat-footed.

• Nearly impossible to know how customers are really. Some contact centers rely on customer surveys to tell them how their customers are feeling, but survey results can be skewed by really happy and really angry customers. The ideal solution is to review every interaction to determine customer sentiment based on what customers are saying and how they're saying it, but that task is really beyond human capabilities. It would take a small army of analysts to review every voice and digital interaction, and who has the budget for that? Instead, contact centers should use tools that can analyze 100% of interactions and give managers instant insights into customer sentiment.

Overview of customer experience analytics solutions that will end the need to fly blind

When contact centers decide it's time to gain more visibility into performance and customer needs and opinions, they have several good options to choose from, including the following:

Interaction analytics

Interaction analytics is the data analyst most contact centers dream of having on staff. These solutions are capable of analyzing all interactions from all channels to generate insights such as:

• Customer sentiment
• Emerging problems
• Contact drivers
• Trending topics
• Root causes
• Potential compliance issues

When combined, this set of insights empowers contact center leaders to better manage operations and the customer experience. Here are some examples of what contact centers can do with this information:

• Provide targeted training to agents. The best interaction analytics solutions calculate customer sentiment scores at the aggregate level, but also allow supervisors to drill down to the agent level to identify agents who need coaching or training on skills that will improve CX.

• Proactively manage problems. All too often, new problems go unnoticed until they become big enough to affect a lot of customers. By then, significant damage has been done to CX. Interaction analytics enables contact centers to avoid this trap by identifying issues when they begin. Once a solution has been implemented, managers can also use the tool to make sure the problem is truly resolved.

• Stop and correct compliance issues. Depending on their industry and location, contact centers can have plenty of laws and regulations they need to comply with. Not doing so can lead to fines and uninformed customers, making timely intervention crucial. Interaction analytics can help contact centers identify potential violations as well as any agents that are causing them.

Reporting and business intelligence (BI)

Great reporting tools are an essential part of customer experience analytics. As data driven as contact centers are, not all of them have easy access to operational data. Many of our new clients have switched from legacy systems that only provided rudimentary reporting and locked data in a virtual steel vault. For them, switching to a solution that has robust reporting is like moving from flying blind to having full visibility of performance. It's a game changer.

In order to effectively manage operations and CX, contact centers need flexible reporting tools that provide real-time, easy to consume information. Industry-leading reporting systems include the following capabilities:

• A multitude of pre-built reports that incorporate best practices
• A design studio that enables end users to easily create their own reports
• Role-based dashboards that deliver performance insights that are relevant to the user
• Graphical presentation of data that enables users to quickly identify areas that need their attention
• The ability to consume data from other sources to provide more holistic insights
• The ability to export contact center data in order to support enterprise CX efforts

Contact centers are operations where conditions can change in an instant. Having strong reporting tools enables leaders to quickly react to changes so they can preserve the customer experience.

Customer journey analytics

Modern support journeys typically involve multiple channels and touchpoints. For example, a customer with an issue may first try to resolve his problem by searching an online knowledge base, then progress to an online chat with an agent, and finally get a resolution by talking to a phone agent.

The proliferation of so many digital channels has given consumers choices, and they are taking full advantage of them. For example, Salesforce found that, "The average customer now uses 10 different channels to communicate with brands." When customers use multiple channels within the same transaction, it creates a more complex customer journey that must be closely managed.

Customer journey analytics is a solution that allows businesses to continuously monitor and optimize customer journeys. By connecting disparate interactions, this tool provides an end-to-end view of the customer journey, which makes it much easier to identify underperforming touchpoints and handoffs.

These insights can ultimately lead to reduced customer effort and a better understanding of CX quality. As an example, NICE's customer journey analytics solution produces a Journey Excellence Score (JES), which measures the quality of omnichannel customer journeys. Different components of the journey are scored, which makes it easy to identify areas that need refinement.

This collection of customer experience analytics solutions makes flying blind obsolete. To keep up with customer expectations, contact centers need timely insights that allow them to zero in on the levers they can pull to improve the customer experience and effectively react to changing business conditions.

Learn more about how NICE's suite of customer experience analytics solutions can transform the way your contact center performs

With NICE, it’s never been easier for organizations of all sizes around the globe to create extraordinary customer experiences while meeting key business metrics. Visit our product page to find out how our customer experience analytics tools can help leave flying blind behind.