Joined-up reporting: making the most of your data

“Business reporting is not dealing with objects, it’s dealing with relationships between objects.” 

Those are the words of tech billionaire Hasso Plattner – someone who knows a thing or two about running a successful business.

But for too many organisations, data is read only by the team which collected it, then vanishes into an organisational black hole! Any relevance for other teams is lost.

So let’s explore how you can overcome data silos and piece together the whole picture across your organisation. 

Silos: where your data goes to die

Your marketing and communications teams should work hand-in-hand with your ops or contact centre teams. But is that the case?

Think of your marketing team’s metrics. They should measure fundraising efforts, publicity drives, website interactions, social media campaigns and so on. 

Now think of the operations side of things. You’ll be looking at call volume, frequently asked questions and a multitude of other metrics.

But are you marrying up these figures? Because your ops team’s data is like gold dust for your marketers – and vice versa. 

A problem shared

In many organisations, there’s a communications gap. You’ve got your marketing team acting as your voice, and your helpline or operations team acting as your ears!

For example: suppose Connect Assist has a contact centre contract, and I report back to the client to say that there was a 50,000 spike in call volume, and every ‘reason for call’ was recorded as ‘other’. That could leave us all scratching our heads.

But the client’s website or marketing team might see that 50,000 visitors clicked from one particular page to the ‘contact an advisor’ page. The client now knows it needs to overhaul that page, perhaps by making the information clearer or adding a new FAQ. Mystery solved!

By sharing reports between teams, you close the circle and gain a rounded picture of your business. That reduces guess work, and enables better strategic planning across the board. 

It also improves provision and reduces frustrations for service users, and frees up your advisors for the trickier calls that no FAQ can answer. 

Marketing campaigns

Circling back is especially crucial when it comes to marketing campaigns. As I’ve said countless times, it’s essential that the ops team is involved in planning these, so they can take on extra call handlers or extend their hours. Failure to do so will undermine the campaign, and damage your organisation’s reputation.

Ops team data is also vital for the marketing team. For example, data driven marketing could include your team reporting back any common queries, complaints or sticking points, inspiring the creation of longtail-led content that tackles these topics or website tweaks which break down barriers.

There’s no magic bullet for marketing: it’s all about experimentation and seeking what works. And for that, you need to track progress through data – including by measuring call volumes.

Plus, another vital ingredient for the marketing mix is case studies, and there’s nobody better placed to identify these than your call centre team – if they know what they’re looking out for. 

Or suppose you’re launching a new tech service to support the contact centre. Your marketing team needs to know about it in advance so they can promote it, driving traffic towards the service and ensuring a good return on your investment.

You’ll need to choose metrics that measure progress for all stakeholders involved, and share the resulting data. Think of it like impact reporting, but on an internal scale. 

Connect Assist: your outsourcing partner

When you outsource your contact centre operations, it’s especially important to have robust internal communications in place. 

At Connect Assist, we love to build close links with your marketing, as well as your contact centre teams. We’ll act on any info you provide, feed back vital data, and give you our recommendations for action. 

It’s all about taking a joined-up approach. In fact, we often act as the glue that binds the disparate teams of our partner organisations together. 

Give us a bell today and let’s chat through how we can all work with each other. There really is strength in numbers!