Blog
Customer Experience Reporting and Analytics for Better CX
Published: 08/08/2023
Updated: 08/08/2023
Organizations must continually work to optimize customer experiences (CX) – and omnichannel services with unified data and customer experience reporting are the keystones.
In this blog, we explain why.
We also detail:
How typical omnichannel CX evolved and the data limitations it creates,
How CX is best optimized using an all-in-one cloud contact center because it aggregates data into a single customer data platform, and
Critical features and functions you should look for when it comes to customer experience reporting and analytics.
Omnichannel CX with Too Many Single Function Apps
Omnichannel customer experience includes all aspects and touchpoints of your organization’s relationship with your customer.
Of course, this includes in-person experiences. But omnichannel also includes modern digital communications methods that customers across generations use today. These are the interactions via the phone, texting, email, webchats, and the range of social media sites.
Right now, your customer experience technology is a fragmented ecosystem of apps that evolved over time. You likely have one tool for determining customer journeys, another for handling voice interactions, a separate tool for social media interactions, and yet another for webchat.
These individual apps come with their own integrations, data definitions, customer experience processes, IT management, reporting and their own set of agents or employees who use them.
Fragmented CX Apps Bring Data and Reporting Limitations
Worse yet, each app then produces its own data silo that completely prevents cohesive and comprehensive customer experience reporting and analytics.
Without unified data, or use of a Customer Data Platform (CDP), it is impossible to instantly report traffic spot demand spikes to adequately manage operations. Additionally, there is no visibility to report cross-channel experience analytics, let alone measure or improve them.
The result? Continual friction for agents and inconsistent experience for customers.
Optimize Customer Experience with Unified Data and Reporting
To improve it, organizations can use an omnichannel, all-in-one cloud contact center, also known as a contact center as a service (CCaaS).
An End-to-End Cloud Contact Center Serves All Channels
This contact center contains most of the features, functions, and capabilities you need in a single, easy-to-manage solution – with the ability to easily customize to accommodate legacy systems, databases, applications, and the unique needs every organization has.
Since this cloud contact center serves all communications channels – including Facebook, Trustpilot, Instagram, WhatsApp, email, webchat, text, and voice -- the ensuing interactions data is all together in one place. You get true unified customer data for powerful customer experience reporting and analytics.
Eliminate Data Silos to Improve CX
Among other advantages, this has two important consequences for both current operations and future customer journey decisions.
Customer experience reporting on dashboards shows real-time CX metrics and analytics
Service levels, agent performance, status, and other metrics are always up-to-date and accurate to the second.
Thus, with an omnichannel contact center, you can keep an elevated level of service regardless of volume. Simply because you have visibility, supervisors can make workflow changes on the fly. To keep customer queues and wait times in check, supervisors can add more human agents, deploy machine agents or more self-service, as necessary.
Understand longer-term service trends and customer issues
By using a cloud contact center with an in-built customer data platform, historical reporting dashboards can display customer experience analytics for any interval executive decision-makers need, even up to 12 or 13 months.
CX reporting enables your organization to analyze and make customer journeys improvements leading to happier customers and greater operational efficiency.
For example, after learning which inquiries are simple and high volume, organizations can offer self-service options.
Self-service can then be deployed through IVR, texts, or chatbots, and direct a customer to a given website section containing the needed information.
Critical Unified CX Data and Reporting Features and Functions
When it comes to unifying data for robust customer experience reporting, your cloud contact center should have some key features and functions.
Some are foundational, while other features and functions are useful for professionals who use the system to build on-going and on-off customer experience.
And then there is another set of capabilities. These are valuable for supervisors and executives who make daily operational decisions and customer journey improvements.
Build a Firm Foundation for the Best CX Reporting
The first ingredient is a cloud contact center with its own customer data platform that accesses all customer and communications channel data. At a minimum, your cloud contact center’s reporting and analytics should have the following capabilities, features, and functions.
An intuitive and flexible graphical report builder interface. A user interface should be easy to use, so organizations can quickly and easily generate reports,
Real-time reporting. It should be accurate up-to-the-second, so your organization can monitor agents and manage outbound campaigns.
Standard, out-of-the box historical reports and templates. These are valuable for efficiently getting your customer experience team productive as soon as possible.
Flexibility to work with any existing legacy asset, including network infrastructure, database, external or proprietary app, or CRM. Data useful for customer experience management and reporting comes from many sources. Your cloud contact center should be able to integrate and operate with any legacy resource or existing application that customer experience analytics require.
Easy data exports and downloads in spreadsheets or graphics. If your company uses third-party tools like Tableau or Microsoft Power BI, or needs to monitor your customer experience analytics over years, then you will need the ability to easily export your CX data.
Flexibility to build the reports that work best for each individual user. Regardless of whether your employee is an agent, supervisor, or executive, anyone should be able to re-order the screen, or interface, to show your customer experience reporting and analytics that best makes sense to them. This helps make your workplace as productive as possible.
Report Builders Should Have Complete Flexibility and Control
Report builders configure cloud contact center reporting and analytics according to your organization’s requirements.
Permissions that restrict report building to a select group of users. While users should have flexibility to order screen tiles that best help them to their jobs, there needs to be a standard set of reports, metrics, as well as look and feel. Report builders are authorized to create them.
Complete flexibility in dashboard creation. Report builders can build customer experience reporting and analytics to suit any CX need. They can choose to show stats by agent, group, or department. They can create change colors to align with brand guidelines. They can select the graphics. For example, report builders can use bar charts showing defined events in horizontal bars, pie charts for real-time events as a proportion of a combined total value, and line charts that show a single real time event over the previous 15-minute rolling period.
Ability to easily customize historical reports from standard reports, metrics, and filters. Standard historical reports and templates help your team be instantly productive. To meet your organization’s unique needs, you can easily customize standard reports and templates.
An enormous range of standard metrics. Your cloud contact center’s customer experience reports and analytics should include all the standard metrics companies might use. This includes the common ones like service levels, failed calls, answered calls, dial calls, failed dial calls, total incoming, total outgoing, logged on, etc. But it should also include both set up and current channels an agent is working, such as chat setup/chat, Facebook Setup/Facebook, email setup/email, etc. All metrics should be available by agent and by group, however your company defines groups.
Ability to pull in data from any source. Since your CX might include a proprietary database, your cloud contact center’s reporting and analytics functionality should be able to import any data source related to customer experience reporting.
Separate metric calculations for live vs. non-live channels. Live communications and voice and webchat) communications usually indicate an urgent request while those that come in on non-live channels many not have the same urgency, and often, agents can work multiple non-live inquiries at the same time. For this reason, there needs to be separate metrics and calculations for live channels and the non-live ones, like text, email, and social media.
Custom metric calculations. No two industries and organizations measure their customer experience the exact same way. Thus, customer experience analytics and reports should include the ability to create customer metrics.
It Should be Easy for Supervisors and Executive Managers to Get CX Reports and Analytics
Managing your CX operation always requires exceptional efficiency. For this reason, whether a report is near-real time or historical over a quarter or a year, your cloud contact center’s customer experience reports and analytics should be accessible to the decision-makers when they need it.
Automated report distribution. Automatically distribute reports via email or Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP).
Customizable report sharing Set up customizable access permissions and use editable templates to automatic sharing across your organization or with specific users.
Alerting via any channel. You can customize alerts to show status like agent availability, and queue wait times or sizes. And those alerts can be distributed to any channel including Facebook, Instagram, and many others.
To sum it all up, unified data and its advantages for customer experience reporting is a main reason so many companies and government agencies adopt a customizable, all-in-one cloud contact center. Because it easily integrates with legacy resources, apps, and platforms you use – your organization can cost-effectively offer a better customer experience
Ready to learn more from the world’s leading cloud contact center?