If you are a business owner who has outsourced call centre function to call centre service providers or are someone who has worked in close association of call centres, then you will agree with us that a call centre function produces huge amount of data. On one hand this data adds value, while on the other hand it creates challenges in front of the organisation. As a call centre executive enter new information into system, it goes into master data systems. The master data system act as a locomotive that pulls different operations of a business. Internet is flooded with reports that suggest as much as 20-25% of the data in repository of a company is either inaccurate or duplicate. This inaccurate/duplicate data can cost a business dearly. For e.g., gathering useful information from inaccurate or redundant data during a call can significantly increase call handling time; a missing/inaccurate/wrong address can result in non-delivery or delayed delivery of a shipment. It is clear from the above sited examples that having inaccurate data can negatively impact on customer retention and cost a business dearly. Thus, it is important for organisations that manage their call centre functions in-house and equally important for outsourced call centres to ensure that they manage and maintain their databases effectively and ensure that there is no inaccurate, missing or unverified information in their databases because the longer such inaccurate information stays in the system, it becomes a challenging and expensive task to correct the information.
Considering the consequences that bad data can have, it is advisable that organisations managing in-house call centre functions and outsourced call centresmakeoptimal use of tools and technology and pay heed on data verification and validation.
Following pointers can help companies and call centresmaintain quality data, which cut down the expenses and frustration and improve call centre process and operations.
ImplementData Quality Filter:It is important to capture accurate information at initial step. This will not only help in reducing expenses in the longer run, but will also empower calling agents with to deliver quality services. To ensure that only accurate data gets fed into master data system, call centres need to leverage the tools and technology and apply a filter or create a firewall. This can be done by implementing tools that can verify and validate data and reflect changes in real time.
Update Data and Fill Missing Data Fields: There is no denial to the fact that most of the call centres operations are CRM-focused. To maintain and manage customer relations, successful outsourced call centresapply some validations that evaluate the data that has been fed into mandatoryfields. It ensures that no important field can be left blank. For e.g.: a customer record like a record of exhibition attendees has a field for names, e-mails, phone numbers and addresses. If a customer chooses not to filed an important field like name or phone number, then this list hold little or limited value. Agents cannot use this list to make telemarketing calls or to run a multi-channel campaign. Therefore, it becomes important for call centres to obtain as much information that they can gather, verify mandatory data fields and update their database in real time.
Reduce Redundancy: Data redundancy or duplication of information is as bad as missing information. Redundant data not only occupies space in database, but also makes data mining a time consuming task and results in increased call handling time, which lowers the customer experience and satisfaction level. Therefore, it is important for outsourced call centres to implement software that declutters the database and reduce data redundancy.
These are the three practices that can help you improve the performance of your call centre with quality customer data.