I love data. I get to use it every day to help organizations create exceptional experiences for their customers. I am a hugger and high fiver and have to resist the urge for said hugs and high fives when we discover how data an organization has – or can easily obtain – can be analyzed and acted upon towards a positive business outcome.
Just this week I was reminded that it’s just as much a joy when I am on the receiving end of benefiting from data. I found myself with a break between meetings and decided to spend half an hour in Salesforce.com chipping away at an item that’s been on my to-do list too long: cleaning up a few sales KPI reports. As I wrapped up and moved on with my day I felt a huge weight off my shoulders. The analytics had verified a few hunches I’d had around some current sales trends – namely that the type and source of our revenues were shifting as we’ve maneuvered into some different sales and marketing focus areas. I felt a bit freer because that data which had been sitting there, unorganized and useless to me until I spent the time to put it in a usable format for consumption, now allowed me to analyze it to know we were on the right track and also where we could use some improvement. It also gave very concrete material to bring to the sales team to encourage a continuation of their focus.
Simple right? And that’s really the point. If that data was there but would have taken me four hours to make usable (modifying a few report fields, adding some formulas, automating a schedule, etc.) then I likely wouldn’t have “found the time” to let it help me. Fortunately more and more of our core business applications are moving towards an ease of use mantra. In the call/contact center space where I work, there continues to be huge strides forward by some of the main software players in this industry. Applications made with end users in mind (what a novel concept, right?!) allow us to jump right into the analytics and start providing significant positive impacts to the business instead of spending our limited time figuring out how to get, sort and dissect data within the application.
And this trend of an increasing importance on analytics in the contact center isn’t going anywhere – read more about the importance of data in our previous blog posts here and here. Or download our white paper, Leveraging Contact Center Data for Dynamic Results which highlights many specific examples of how data can catapult your business into success.
Reviewing your data will not only paint a clearer picture of what’s going on in your company right now, but it will light the way to improvements for tomorrow. And being able to get that info quickly? Who wouldn’t want to high five that?
About Inflow
Founded in 1997, Inflow is one of the nation’s top Unified Communications and Contact Center consultants in today’s market. Pioneers in cloud unified communications and cloud contact center success, Inflow is the first company to provide contact center consulting and training focused solely on helping you elevate your customer experience.
With over 200,000 endpoints supported under Inflow’s innovative success programs around the world, Inflow built its brand and reputation around providing unrivaled customer support. Inflow is in Mitel/ShoreTel’s top 2% in global customer satisfaction, and quickly acquiring a top spot with RingCentral, Genesys PureCloud and NICE inContact.
By partnering with Inflow, you can expect the highest level of strategic consultation, execution, and optimization available in the industry.
