A dashboard! My call center kingdom for a dashboard!

I love dashboards. Not the kind you have in your car, although I like those, too. I mean the kind that come with certain contact center software solutions, so you can see graphically where you are: calls in queue, how long the next customer in queue has been waiting, queue imbalances, agents online, agent call times, number of sales made. The first thing I ask many call center solutions providers, with child-like eagerness is, "Do you have dashboards?" (I promise, even if you don't, I still pay attention at your briefings.)

I also like real-time alerts that are based on up-to-the-minute contact center intelligence. The kind of notifications that tell a supervisor that the threshold of the acceptable number of callers in queue has been breached, so therefore it's time to open the window and yell to agents taking a smoke break on the sidewalk downstairs that they'd better get inside and in queue, pronto.

Modern contact center technologies that leverage real-time intelligence can produce dashboards and alerts that allow agents and supervisors to make decisions and effect changes on-the-fly, improving the customer experience immediately. Not very long ago, this information was generated at the end of the day, or worse, at the end of the week or month, so supervisors were limited to determining where the problems were ... not where they are at the moment. Beyond that, it generally wasn't the supervisor herself who discovered the problem, it was usually a QA worker who found the problem, informed his boss, who informed her boss ... and the supervisor found out about the problem only after being called onto the carpet. Problems undetected are problems that go unchecked and that, in turn, create bigger problems, as anyone who has ever missed a few oil changes knows.

The first companies to begin using dashboards and real-time alerts in their products realized how inefficient it was for problem detection to reside at the top of the pyramid, at which time it had to trickle downwards throughout the organization, becoming diluted and confused along the way. By the time the call center was able to put fixes in place, there were new problems heading upstream, passing the resolutions to previous problems on their way down. By giving managers, supervisors and even agents the ability to quickly spot changes and inefficiencies, newer contact center solutions enable front-line workers to find and diagnose issues and implement changes before problems grow beyond the bud stage. When contact center employees can "take ownership" of small crises before they become big and scary, they have a vested interest in curing what ails the contact center before the malady becomes fatal. In essence, everybody in the call center becomes a QA officer.

I find myself wishing I had dashboards and instant notifications. Though they really don't apply to my job, it would be nice to have them, anyway. To suddenly get a screen pop that says, "Tracey, you are so behind on writing copy for the September issue, it is suggested that you not even stop to eat until dinnertime next Tuesday in order to make the deadline" would be massively helpful. As would a dashboard that showed me, at a glance, not only how many unread proposals were sitting in my inbox, but the anxiety level of those whose proposals I haven't yet evaluated, and the estimated number of follow-up e-mails those delays were likely to generate.

Even beyond work, imagine how useful personal dashboards and notifications could be. Think how they could lead to relationship harmony: you might get a notification that indicates, "Alert! Spouse has cooked the last 11 dinners in a row," plus a dashboard that indicates that spouse's annoyance level was at 72 percent and rising; only three points away from entering the critical "Spousal Irritation Red Zone."

Or perhaps an alert to inform me, "Have not phoned mother in 17 days. Repeat: No maternal contact since March 12th." The dashboard might inform me that the Maternal Indignation Meter had just surpassed the "Cold Shoulder" mark and was rapidly moving through the "I Gave Birth To You In Pain And Suffering" zone, soon to pass the dreaded "Insincere Threats of Disinheritance" red line. [Editor's note: This is just a "what if" scenario, let concerned readers be assured I spoke with my mother yesterday. Or the day before. I forget.]

But until some enterprising inventor can think of a realistic way to work dashboards and notifications into our personal lives, we'll spend our time admiring the ones that can help turn contact centers from anecdotal "what was" entities into "right now" resources.

The author may be contacted at [e-mail], unless you are her mother, in which case, she'll call you next week.

By Tracey E. Schelmetic

Editorial Director, Customer Inter@ction Solutions

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]