Everybody's talking about analytics these days. We have analytics for agent performance. We have analytics for customer behavior. We have analytics for team achievement, analytics for management execution, analytics for enterprise accomplishment. Seems to me the one thing we're missing is analytics for all these analytics.

Let's step back a moment and define analytics. According to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary , analytics is defined as the branch of logic dealing with analysis. The American Heritage Dictionary defines analytics as the science of logical analysis. However you define it, I think there is a strong case for applying analysis to the analyses derived from using a business intelligence or performance management tool in the contact center.

Before you begin to conjure up images of some poor manager caught in an endless cycle of analysis and an entire contact center brought to its knees by analysis paralysis, perhaps a better way of defining the problem is in order. One of the greatest attributes of performance management and one of the greatest benefits of analytics is the insight into operational performance that it provides. One of the greatest weaknesses of the analytics process, however, is the lack of guidance for the user once the performance information is revealed.

The other problem with deploying an analytics solution, so I'm told, is that it really isn't much good unless you use it. Apparently this situation is not as rare as you might imagine. “I've been in some call centers where only about a third of the supervisors are utilizing their dashboard or performance reports at any one time,” Chris Crosby, President of Latigent told me recently. “Companies go through the effort to consolidate information and make tools accessible to front-line management only to find that their investment is often going to waste.”

Many contact centers labor under the illusion that if they make data available on a day-to-day basis via a consolidated scorecard, whether for an agent or anyone else in the enterprise, that act alone will be sufficient to improve performance. Unfortunately, reality is proving that the simple application of analytics in the contact center is not the magic bullet. Instead, analytics must be applied to these analytics.

“Analytics for analytics is all about measuring impact,” said Latigent's Crosby. “Looking at the numbers provides critically important information, but it's what you do with those numbers that's critically important.”

Before the concept of analytics for analytics makes your head spin until it explodes, what we're really talking about here is making analytics ultimately useful by recognizing what you've got and taking appropriate action. In other words, analyzing the business intelligence provided by an analytics deployment and taking action where necessary will net the maximum return on the analytics investment.

The problem that is driving the need for analytics for your analytics seems to stem from the very basics of the analytics process. Many times the performance management reports and dashboards are designed and created in a vacuum, based upon requirements submitted to the Information Technology (IT) department or based upon the desires of certain executives. Oftentimes these requirements don't take into consideration how information should best be presented to those in other areas of the business in order to yield maximum results. In other words, the process is designed and implemented without consulting with those who actually have to use it. Sound familiar?

Putting a complex performance management interface into the hands of someone not entirely prepared for the responsibility of using such an interface is usually a pretty good recipe for failure. Still, there seems to be a school of thought in the industry that subscribes to the theory that simply giving someone the ability to drill down to the root cause of performance issues and slice and dice performance numbers will motivate them to take action. This is simply not the case.

The skill sets of an individual hired to coach and support agents is usually much different than the skill sets of an individual hired to crunch numbers. This may have something to do with the left brain/right brain thing, but I think it has more to do with how different people respond to the way information is presented to them. This is where analytics for analytics comes in. By analyzing the way analytics information is used in the contact center, it becomes possible to give your operation the best chance for success by ensuring that information is presented in the way it makes the most sense for individual users.

Building the right level of expectations and processes around information delivery is as critically important as getting the information in the first place. Pushing performance metrics to any desktop without also ensuring that the recipient of those metrics knows what to do with them and how to do it is an exercise in futility. A tactical analysis of the net result of an analytics initiative will show whether or not the information gathered is being put to best use, or being put to use at all. That's what analytics for your analytics is all about, and as Latigent's Chris Crosby said, it's what you do with the numbers that's critically important.

–Paul Stockford is Chief Analyst at Saddletree Research.

Copyright 2007 CMP Media LLC. All rights reserved.
3/1/07, Issue # 2003, page 10.