| | June 20198KNOWLEDGE: THE DRIVING ELEMENT FOR TODAY'S CONTACT CENTRESBy Peter Quinlan, VP - Unified Communications & Collaboration Product Management, Tata CommunicationsIn his career spanning over three decades, Peter has held significant roles across an array of companies that include Dell, Gateway, 3COM, Getronics, and Quinlan Consulting, prior to joining Tata Communications.IN MY OPINIONhe medium is the message' ­ a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan to emphasize that the medium of communica-tions is equally important as the content it delivers. To-day, organisations globally are real-ising the true meaning of this phrase, as customers have become highly spe-cific about the media they choose to communicate with.Forrester Research has found that 95 percent of customers use more than one channel to connect with organi-sations. Customers not just want one option for their queries or feedback, they want to be able to get in touch any way that suits them ­ whether that be voice, video, chat, email or social media.The organisations that are rising to this challenge effectively are using cloud technologies to deliver seamless communication across every channel. That doesn't just lead to an enhanced customer experience, it can also trans-form performance on an ongoing ba-sis, as the data their contact centres harvest leads to ever better under-standing and precision.Analytics will Change EverythingWith an intelligent contact centre, organisations can use analytics tools to understand customers individual-ly, building-up a full picture of their needs and desires. The results could transform customer service. For exam-ple, a credit union discovered an issue with their ATM policy when searching for calls in which the customer asked to speak to a supervisor. As a result, they adjusted the policy and recouped over a billion dollars in lost revenue.Research conducted by contact centre solutions experts, Calabrio, shows that 34 percent of contact cen-tre agents feel the lack of customer data available to them at the time of a customer's request means they're un-able to fully deal with their query. But with access to better data and support, agents can handle requests efficiently and keep customers satisfied.Analytics solutions can also help contact centres increase operational efficiency by identifying trends and bottlenecks ­ from lethargic systems to cumbersome processes. Managers can then seize opportunities to stream-line workflows and extract insights that drive better, faster service.Yet, many organisations are drag-ging their feet. Currently, the average contact centre only analyses two per-cent of all customer interaction data. Traditional contact centre metrics are limited to average handling time and script adherence, neither of which ac-curately reflects the quality of the cus-tomer service provided. By harnessing modern analytics, a contact centre can put those metrics into perspective by combining them with customer eval-uation scores. Add that to an analytics solution that integrates performance with sales and marketing systems, an 'T
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