• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, November 27, 2013

More than 25% of contact centers suffer from data overload -- and an even higher percentage of service reps who have access to customer information don't use it to the fullest to support calls, according to a study released by the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) and WhitePages PRO, "A Wow Customer Journey: Actionable Data in Today's Multichannel Contact Center."

Nearly 48% of contact centers collect satisfaction data, but few use this information. About 36% of agents don't collect data around customer satisfaction. Some 51% of call centers do not ask for customers' channel preference, while 32% of contact centers report collecting preferred channel preference information from customers.

The study blames data overload on the inability by brands to manage unstructured data. Structured data comes from call records, quality assurance scores, workforce management statistics, and reports generated from HR, CRM and ERP systems. Unstructured data belongs in the category of raw or undefined information.

Contact center managers named the five metrics most often collected are average handle time, abandonment rate, average speed of answer, after call work, and quality.

Surprisingly, more than 60% of contact centers cannot provide customer information proactively to a rep because of the inability to process the data. Some 40% of customer contact information is still manually inputted by a rep, rather than being fed through an automated API or Web-based system.

The study, conducted among 542 contact center professionals, found 67% of the data is used to manage overall agent performance, compared with 48% identifying customer satisfaction survey improvements. Improving customer experience results, maximizing contact center operational efficiency, and streamlining customer experience consistency are the top three ways companies use data generated by contact centers.

When it comes down to the basics, some 49% of agents report overall productivity and efficiency challenges because they must ask customers for basic contact information, rather than it being in front of them. And one fourth of agents must continually  learn new technology or processes to support their contacts.