Being able to report, measure, review and interpret the results of your call centre campaigns is paramount to the ongoing success of your direct marketing strategy. But, did you know that 8 out of 10 businesses can improve campaign success through improved call centre reporting and analysis?

Understanding, reviewing and actioning your call centre reporting can help you to make informed decisions on improving your direct marketing strategy and outcomes.

Closed Loop Reporting

Closed loop reporting answers questions such as; which sales opportunities are being missed because we don’t know our customer’s needs?

In a large insurance company, customer feedback was being captured but not used to help tweak campaign dynamics. The introduction of closed loop reporting was used to improve campaigns and was responsible for a 2% lift in overall response rates and associated increases in cross and up sell conversions.

In addition, the focus on closed loop feedback processes, reporting and action meant more highly engaged staff, higher customer service offerings and reduced customer attrition rates.

Business Outcome Based Reporting

Traditionally call centre analytics reports include large numbers of operational variables, e.g. grade of service (GOS), average length of call (ALOC), abandon call rates, average speed of answer (ASA).

However, you need to ensure that key campaign success metrics, e.g. sales, are not compromised by too much focus on operational variables.

For example, a recent client was very focused on average call length to the point where cross and up sell opportunities were being dismissed.

However, reducing the focus on this metric encouraged consultants to prompt for up sell and cross sell opportunities and increased sales by 3%.

In another case “attempts” were not being measured leaving the organisation unable to identify the success of particular lists and the integrity of their data. Including this metric in reporting enabled the company to report on campaign list data integrity and understand the productivity levels of consultants.

Traditional Call Centre Metric Reporting

While you need to report on business outcomes ensure that you also review the traditional metrics as they can indicate opportunities for productivity and efficiency gains.

One FMCG company increased dialling times, list penetration and sales by 3% when newly created occupancy level reporting lead them to change their resource mix. The result was increased occupancy levels, operational hours and total available dialling time.

The increased dialling time meant a larger penetration rate on lists and an increase in sales of 3%.

Staff Targets and Goal Reporting

It may sound obvious but if you are going to have targets for your call centre staff you need to make sure that they are motivating. Many call centre environments simply do not utilise target and goal setting to their fullest.

One large company had a single, extremely aggressive sales target set for a large campaign. A review recommend breaking the overall target down into team, group and individual components and including fun and motivational tools. As a result the business over achieved its target by 2.5%.

Campaign Execution Reporting

Good reporting will enable you to uncover the source of a variety of campaign execution problems so you can reduce poor service provision, retain customers longer and increase repeat sales.

A large Australian company whose customers require 2nd level support for purchase resolution were not being responded to within the published time frames. This resulted in dissatisfied customers and poor repeat purchase levels.

By establishing service level agreements (SLA’s) for customer interactions and then reporting on success, the organisation exceeded their customers’ service expectations. The results were dramatic with reduced attrition rates, higher instances of repeat purchases and a 60% reduction in service complaints.

List Utilisation Reporting

List utilisation reporting helps you to understand how well are you are using your lists. It answers questions such as:

• Are lists being burnt through over dialling and chain dialling?
• How many attempts per hour per agent are being made?
• Is the penetration of a list based on capacity rather than ROI?

Ongoing dialler and ACD management within a call centre increases efficiencies and results but doesn’t always happen.

An FMCG organisation that did not have a dedicated Dialler Manager, was loading lists onto its dialler and letting them run without being properly managed. The resolution was to appoint a dialler manager to provide real-time and review reporting.

This initiative immediately resulted in increased effectiveness and efficiencies across all measurable metrics increasing penetration, contact and sales results.

Customer Service Reporting

Are the customers that are calling in to respond to an offer receiving the type of service that they should?Grade of service, abandon call rates and abandon call profiles within your inbound operation are all elements of good customer service reporting.

Our review of one Company that did not focus on their abandoned call profile discovered that calls were abandoning after more than 40 seconds. The solution was to engage the caller to stay on the line for more than 40 seconds. The subsequent decrease in abandon calls resulted in a 2.25% increase on sales for the campaign.

Quality and Assurance (Q&A) Reporting

For Financial and Insurance businesses there is no denying that compliance adherence is mandatory to the success of their business. However, some call centre environments are still confused by the difference between Compliance and Q&A reporting and don’t execute the latter.

You must ensure that you have access to call centre reports that measure if you are meeting customer service needs and if you are sending a consistent message from your business with every interaction.

One client that focused solely on compliance monitoring was just not getting the desired results. A review acknowledged that consultants were achieving 100% compliance adherence but were not focused on creating and providing the best experience for their clients. The result was a poor uptake of offers.

The Company implemented strong and formal Q&A processes and reporting, that still focused on compliance needs, and drove a 3.5% lift in responses.

Benchmark Performance Reporting

Benchmarking acknowledges service and competency variations between environments, teams and individuals. It is a strong process and reporting metric that identifies inconsistencies, effectiveness and inefficiencies both within the call centre and with best in breed organisations.

One Company recently outsourced its outbound operations to two separate vendors but had never benchmarked the two. Differences in price structures and reporting outcomes made it hard for the business to understand how successful each one was against the other.

A benchmarking review indicated the more expensive vendor was in fact the more successful both in terms of execution and response rates. The company then moved higher end campaigns to the more expensive vendor and increased their sales results by 2%.