How Data Analytics Is Transforming The BPO Industry?

The phrase outsourcing first appeared in our lexicons in 1981. After two decades, India, China, and the Philippines experienced a BPO boom, with call centers cropping up on every street corner. Now, in 2022, the sector is entering an era of analytics, aiming to harness their vast amounts of data in order to increase profitability, efficiency, and customer satisfaction.

This article delves into the specifics of what this data analytics solutions is, the issues it presents, and the important business areas that might benefit from analytics. We also discuss our experiences developing these tools and how they have benefited our BPO clients.

The Ocean of Information

BPO agents' interactions with consumers generate massive amounts of organized and unstructured (text, audio) data. On the one hand, there's call data, which tracks things like the number of incoming calls, the time it takes to resolve issues, service levels, and the ratio of handled to abandoned calls. Customer data, on the other hand, can be used to gauge satisfaction and sentiment.

More call resolution, lower contact time and volume, agent and customer happiness, operational cost reduction, growth prospects through cross-selling and upselling, or improved consumer joy can all be aided by the insights gained from this data.

The trick is to strike a balance between supply and demand (customer calls) (agents). An imbalance can lead to revenue losses and unproductive costs, and processes and technology can help to enable this dynamic.

Data Handling Challenges

When dealing with massive amounts of data, the problems might be numerous.

Our clients fight to manage these massive numbers, harmonies internal and external data, and extract value from them on a regular basis. The major goals for those that have already started their analytical journey are to determine the relevance of what they've built, increase scalability, and leverage new-age prediction techniques to increase ROI.

Adding Value to the Company

According to our experience, the business value produced by advanced analytics in the BPO area is undeniable, comprehensive, and primarily influences the following critical aspects:

Call Handling

Agent resource planning based on demand (peak and off-peak) and skillsets factoring for the time it takes to handle issues can have an impact on business costs. AI can assist in automating the process and lowering costs. We developed an automated and real-time scheduling and resource optimization tool that resulted in a 15% cost reduction for one of our BPO clients.

The Client Experience

Data analytics services provide agents with crucial data and insights that allow them to perform more efficiently and effectively, strengthen customer connections, and drive growth. Instead of generic offers, analytics can help you understand a customer's/similar customers' historical behavior and recommend products or services that are most relevant to them. It can also anticipate which consumers will require proactive management. Our real-time cross-selling analytics have resulted in a 20% revenue gain.

Resolving the Problem

The percentage of cases that are resolved within the first call between the customer and the call center is referred to as first-call resolution. By creating a predictive model, analytics can help automate the categorizing process of contact center data. This can aid in the development of a stronger customer service model by accurately capturing the intricacies of consumer interactions with call centers. This indicator is critical since it aids in the reduction of customer attrition.

Agent Efficiency

Data analytics solutions when comparing top-performing call-center agents to those who had a low resolution rate or were spending too much time on minor issues, analytics can help categories those who had a low resolution rate or were spending too much time on minor issues. This aids the call center in resolving gaps or systemic issues, identifying agents with leadership potential, and developing a development plan to lower attrition and boost productivity.

Routing of Calls

The idea behind analytics-based call routing is that records of a customer's call history or demographic profile might reveal which call center agent(s) has the correct personality, conversational style, or mix of other soft skills to best satisfy their needs.

Speech Recognition

Detecting patterns in customer interactions and analyzing audio patterns to understand emotions and tension in a speaker's voice can help minimize customer turnover, enhance contact Centre productivity, and cut costs by 25%. Clients have used our techniques to predict member unhappiness, resulting in a 10% reduction in first complaints and a 20% reduction in recurring complaints.

Automation and Chatbots

We can now improve the user experience by providing tailored attention to clients available 24/7/365, thanks to the wonders of automation. Profitability is improved by shorter average call duration and lower wage costs. Self-service channels, such as the help center, FAQ page, and customer portals, enable customers to fix simple difficulties on their own, reducing the number of cases that need to be handled by the organization. Our AI-enabled chatbots aided in increasing engagement and resolving 80 percent of consumer queries faster.

Philippines teaches us a lot

We recently completed a six-week Data & Analytics Assessment for a technology-enabled outsourcing organization in the Philippines in conjunction with Microsoft. Complex ETL processes, resource limitations on legacy servers, and a lack of UI for debugging plagued the client, causing resolution delays and latency difficulties. Tiger Analytics was hired to examine their data landscape.

To improve scalability and flexibility, reinforce data governance and security, and improve operational efficiency, we advocated an Enterprise Data Warehouse modernization method.

We conducted a thorough analysis to learn about the client's environment, critical challenges, data sources, and current state architecture. We developed a blueprint for a future state data infrastructure that would enable efficiency, scalability, and modernization through interactions with IT and business stakeholders. We also created a strategic roadmap that included 20+ analytics use cases with potential ROI in HR and contact center activities.

A New Era Has Begun

The Philippines is now known around the world as the world's BPO capital. Both new and established players will increase the level of competitiveness. A digital shift is currently taking place with the help of data analytics services. Companies that can turn their massive amounts of data into meaningful and practical change will win in this competitive area.