Real-time analytics gives your contact center the insight it needs to stay at the top of their game. As your industry and the marketing landscape shift around you, getting actionable insights faster can mean the difference between happy customers or customers who will go elsewhere.
At RingCentral, we offer a range of reporting tools and analytics to help you understand your operations, challenges, and success. With this real-time data, you can improve marketing campaigns, contact center performance, and the customer experience.
Before you can start applying real-time data analytics to your business process, however, it’s helpful to understand how these tools work.
What is real-time big data analytics?
Real-time analytics allows you to view and apply your contact center’s stats almost instantaneously. If you want to evaluate the effects of your new queue management system, for example, you can use your analytics tool to view the change in current wait times, to the minute.
This look into your performance numbers gives you the data insights you need to make better decisions. For example, when queue times begin to increase you can move agents from outbound campaigns to handling inbound calls. When your analytics software shows that the number of active users has dropped or your agent downtime is rising, you can develop more effective solutions. No matter what is happening with your contact center, you can stay ahead of major problems and disasters.
Real-time vs batch analytics
Batch analytical tools are another common method of collecting actionable insights. This type of tool analyzes data in batches, pulling historical data to provide insights. This difference in types of data used also drastically affects your ability to make effective decisions. When your tool analyzes the data in real-time, you gain greater control over your success. Rather than trying to apply older data to current situations, you can immediately act on relevant changes to stay ahead of new developments.
How do real-time analytics work?
Using an analytics tool such as RingCentral’s reporting tools is fairly straightforward, but the data science behind is a bit more complicated. Analytics applications include several components that make up the typical architecture that allows your system to handle and analyze a large amount of data.
Understanding real-time analytics systems
When viewing your contact center’s insights, your system is quickly providing and analyzing large and continuous amounts of data. To be able to receive and organize this information in a way that you can understand, several technologies come together to make analytics possible.
Aggregator
This tool works to pull real-time data from a variety of data sources, bringing it all together so you can get a full picture of your operations.
Broker
This component makes your data available for your real-time use.
Analytics engines
When your data reaches this component, it blends the different streams of data together, correlates values, and analyzes the data stream.
Stream processor
This system sends and receives data streams, executing real-time analytical applications and logic.
Processing in Memory (PIM)
To better process the data and reduce latency, the system’s processor is integrated in a memory chip
In-database analytics
This technology builds the necessary analytic logic into the system’s database, allowing data processing to happen within the same database.
In-memory analytics
Rather than storing querying data on physical disks, this technology stores this data in random access memory (RAM).
Massive Parallel Programming (MPP)
Your system uses multiple processors, each with its own memory and operating system, to coordinately process data in different parts of the analytics program.
All of these technical parts and technology are used to handle the big data produced by your contact center. RingCentral provides reporting and analytics tools that use these components to offer the most useful and powerful data possible. When you implement real-time analytics into your management, you can enjoy critical benefits throughout your entire contact center.
What are the benefits of real-time analytics?
As a contact center manager, the benefits you can receive from RingCentral analytics and reporting are nearly endless. We have designed our reporting tools to provide the in-depth information you need to make every decision you face. With our customizable analytics options, you can quickly access the data you need. From understanding the efficiency of your response times to monitoring agent performance to understanding your customer’s behavior, our analytics can easily give you an unmatched competitive advantage.
Monitor contact center performance and health
At the broadest level, your data analysis helps you understand how all of your processes and results affect the overall health of your contact center. Our customizable widget-based dashboards allow businesses to create a real-world picture of their data. View user behavior in response to outbound efforts to improve your marketing campaigns. Monitor call volume to determine if you need to add more seats to your team. Make sure you’re putting the right amount of funding and energy into the areas that need it most.
Make informed decisions
The choices you make about your contact center affect sales, marketing, and customer service. Ensure your decisions are the right ones by backing them with real-time analytics and business intelligence (BI) . Use your analytics platform to provide your analysts with secure, accurate data. Build a strong understanding of your business and contact center so you can avoid making costly errors and bad decisions.
Improve agent performance
Offering specific areas to improve is the best way to improve an agent’s performance. Use examples of real-time interactions to develop an action plan for each employee. When you identify problematic trends in their performance through tools such as call recordings and reports, you can then offer targeted feedback. If you find that an agent can’t maintain acceptable call times, for example, your supervisors can then use whisper, monitor, and barge-in tools to help correct this problem in real time. This helps improve overall performance and minimizes agent stress.
Lower costs
When you can view and analyze real-time data sets, your ability to fine-tune contact center processes skyrockets. Your real-time reports allow you to improve operations, which decreases agent downtime and makes every interaction more effective. Data modeling also allows you to understand why and how customers interact with your brand, leading to greater sales. As your contact center grows more efficient and your marketing creates more results, you can lower costs and increase revenue.
Streamline data management
We combine reporting features with data integration because we know each is useless without the other. Knowing what to do with your contact center’s numbers is one of the greatest data challenges for any business. No one has time to crawl through pages of raw data, so we present your insights in easy-to-understand, customizable reports. Whether you want to understand your contact center’s performance within a certain timeframe or in a specific area, you can view the actionable information you need.
Focus marketing efforts
Are your customers coming from a specific demographic? How many are connecting with your brand through social media versus email? What is the best channel to promote your mobile app? Believe it or not, your real-time analytics can help you answer these questions and more. Viewing geospatial data, for instance, can help you understand what works for users in a specific region. As you pinpoint the most lucrative targets for specific campaigns, you can reap greater results.
Streaming data and analyzing numbers also allows you to apply machine learning, share information more quickly among team members, and so much more. Quickly detect security breaches through statistical anomalies. Respond more quickly to emergency situations. With real-time analytics, you can make your contact center an undeniable powerhouse.
How can analytics be used in real time?
If you have been looking for a way to improve your contact center management, analytics and reporting is a great place to start. To integrate data analysis with your database management system and day-to-day operations and logistics, use the tips we’ve included below.
1. Find the right contact center provider
To enjoy the insights provided by real-time big data analytics, you first need a cloud contact center solution that provides these features. Though many platforms offer fast data access, the definitions of real-time analytics can vary among providers. Make sure the software you’re considering truly offers real-time analytics, streaming data directly to your analytics system.
The option you choose should also provide customizable dashboards that allow you to choose how you view your data. When you can gain customer data, queue information, real-time operations data, interaction data, agent performance, and other important business insights in a single glance, you can vastly improve your results and success.
2. Integrate analytics throughout your contact center
Your customer service and marketing departments aren’t the only ones that can benefit from up-to-date analytics. As you implement data analysis throughout your contact center, include your information technology and software development teams. Your IT employees are involved with the technical side of your operations, so it’s important that they understand your contact center’s data, particularly when dealing with an event such as a data breach.
3. Prepare for the future
Whether you are deciding the best way to address a change in customer behavior or preparing your contact center to meet the latest trend in communication technology, you need actionable data to make the right choice. Using your reporting features, you can gain a deeper understanding of your industry and how it affects your business. The customer service landscape is constantly changing, so it’s up to you to make sure your contact center can continue to provide a customer experience that supports business growth.
Big data analytics can also help you stay ahead of the competition. As you meet current benchmarks and trends ahead of other businesses in your industry, customers will come to view you as the best choice. You can also gather and evaluate data on your competitors’ processes and results. As you gain a deeper understanding of their reasons for both success and failure, you can further improve your own operations.
Ready to take your contact center to the next level with these features and more? Contact our sales staff for a customized demo of RingCentral’s reporting and analytics capabilities to learn just how powerful real-time analytics can be.
Originally published Jun 16, 2020, updated Aug 07, 2024
