Contact Center Reporting Comparison

By Ryan Ayers
Updated: April 08, 2011

Contact centers, like many other business systems, are only as good as the tracking and analytics capabilities that they are equipped with. An effective contact center/CRM solution is capable of tracking a multitude of measurable aspects of performance, and allows the opportunity to refine service details to create more effective customer interactions. Most contact centers come equipped with reporting capabilities of some kind out of the box, and many more offer customizable reports and menus to more effectively track performance.

Why Reporting Matters

Reporting in your contact center management system should allow your business a glimpse into the dynamics of a typical customer contact. These reports should be able to define areas that typically leave customers dissatisfied, or areas in which employee performance can be improved in order to streamline your handling processes.

Without these reporting tools, your business cannot begin to effectively monitor and improve call handling. These systems are designed to help reduce expenses and to improve customer satisfaction and allow you to have access to the data that will let you make informed decisions.

Common Reporting Options

Most contact center/CRM solutions will contain some variation of basic reporting such as call times, service quality aspects, and other essential information. These allow your business to ensure that your employees are making the most efficient use of time and resources to satisfy customer needs and generate new business.

Some of the more common reporting options available out of the box for most contact center management systems are:

  • Call time metrics
  • Call quality
  • Agent scripting
  • Service quality
  • Conversion rates

These are examples of the basic mechanisms that enable your business to effectively track the performance of both your representatives, and your approach in dealing with your customers. These reporting options can give you a glimpse into the efficacy of your strategy and approach while allowing performance transparency and an increased level of accountability.

Detailed Reporting

More and more contact center management and CRM systems incorporate intensely detail oriented reporting options to better understand the dynamics of customer interactions and to help suggest areas for improvement. Some of these options are available out of the box with certain systems, while others are custom created from a wide variety of options available with more detail oriented systems.

While there are an infinite array of possible reporting options that can be created, some that have already been deployed and created are:

  • Detailed reporting on abandoned and rejected calls
  • Employee coaching
  • A wide variety of goal setting/tracking options
  • Peak call statistics by application
  • Employee recognition

These detailed reports allow businesses to effectively target specific aspects of the contact process and analyze them in order to improve performance or to reveal consistent breaks in process.

Depending on the size and scope of your business’ contact center and staff, different reporting options and packages may perform differently. Isolating the specific areas that you would like to monitor for improvement should provide a starting point for the types of reporting that will be necessary for your contact center management suite.