Brief article on best practices for collecting data in a contact center. Following some procedures will provide you with more security and faster collection speeds.

1. Best Practices – Contact Center Data Collection
October 2014
The purpose of Call Centre Best Practices is for managers to be able to improve the call centre
productivity and efficiencies. Productivity and efficiency improvements begin with the agents.
By following best practices for each application the call centre improvements will happen. The
best practices will help you run an effective inbound, outbound or blended call centre.
This is an enewsletter copy of the Best Practices for Agent Desktops. Visit the Spectrum website
or SlideShare for the full version.
Data collection is one of the key points to contact center reporting. Prior to just going ahead and
building your reports, investigate the data, the methods and the outcome of the collections. By
taking these few steps your contact center report will have more value to you and others that take
advantage of the reports.
· Collect the data that will show you key information
· Use the right methods to collect the data
· Disregard data that has little value to the reports
· Security during data collection and new storage
With new technology we are able to collect a lot of data from almost any application we use in
the contact center. These applications are storing data that can be very helpful to the agent,
supervisor and managers. The challenge for the contact center is having that amount of data and
knowing what should be captured for multi-channel reporting.

2. The data that is collected and added to the reporting should be data that is targeted to help
resolve internal contact center challenges. The challenges may be real time (calls waiting), daily
(schedule adherence) or historical (working or non-working state time). It is dependent upon the
managers to determine the challenges and learn what data is associated with these challenges.
Data from multi-channel applications is available and some of the data is critical and some of it
is nice to have at times. The best practice for managers is to ignore some of the data on specific
reports. Target only the data that will help with the daily challenges in the call center. Learn to
ignore and not pay attention to nice to see data that will not resolve the problems.
Another way to look at the data collection for the reporting is to think about the goal for the
report itself. Now go into detail about what is necessary for you to see on that report to help you
meet your goal. Don’t be vague about the details go into specifics. You need to be able to
clearly state exactly the data you need to see not the category of the data you need.
The data could be real time, for the interval or for the day. What data do you truly need on this
report? If you need all three then create three tabs to this report which will show you the results
for each time slot on a separate tab.
Using the right methods to collect the data will:
· Be more secure;
· Prevent other problems with the data source;
· Improve the end results of the report and
· Will be faster and more reliable.
A good example of using the right methods is with screen scraping (AKA data emulation). A
text file can be scraped and all of the data taken from the file and stored in a database. If this file
is a real time data file many problems can occur.
The software used to capture the report screen can write the text file to a location that could
either be local to the primary software suite, or on a network share. In either case, the software
creating the file must have adequate permissions on the local machine, and network share to
successfully create, modify and delete. If the user account assigned changes for any reason, the
method could be broken.
When screen scraping a unique starting point word and ending point word must exist. This
typically means creating a new report. Now your system will have multiple reports running just
so you can screen scrape the data. Then if there is a request to capture new data the report has to
be written again. Multiple reports running on some systems will slow the system down.
Very often when creating a text file from a screen capture, the program creating the file may be
attempting to update the file at the same time another program is attempting to read the file.
Only one application can read / modify the file at a time, and although this happens quickly,
these collisions do occur. In most cases this simply means that the data will not be refreshed on
this interval causing data to be stagnant until the next refresh, which increases the total refresh

3. time. Another result is the data is not available so it will be captured as a blank. The data may
also be refreshed on part of the report but not on another part of the report.
This is an example of screen scraping and the real time report. The blank rows and column are
due to the data source and the screen scraping collision. The data that is blank is due to the
collision between the collection and refresh. Instead of an integer the value is null and therefore
voided.
Disregarding data that has little value to the report will improve the report refresh rate, make
the reports smaller and less confusing and will improve the end result value. There is the
potential that the calculations will improve as well when certain data is left off of the report.
When building the report being able to ignore data that is not truly needed so your report will
show you the cause or symptoms of the problems you are having in the call center. Too much
data on the report can be confusing and lead you down the wrong direction to problem solving.
Who is the audience for the report? The audience will help determine the right data that should
be captured and displayed. What do you need to see and what does an agent need to see? Are
they the same, of course not therefore for the agent reports do not capture the same data only
what is needed for them.
Security during data collection and storage is important. Data that is collected should be done
so that the data coming across the network and being stored is encrypted. If the data is wide
open anyone can see it and at a minimum visually obtain information. Worst case someone can
hack into the storage of the data and if it is not encrypted steal the data to be used against the
business. Data should always be encrypted when it is being transmitted and stored.
However, be aware that strict security measures can change data refresh rates and can block data
collection altogether. If the data collectors have to go through many gateway nodes (hops) these

4. hops can slow down the process of data collection. If the data collection is slowed to an extreme
your data collection software may shutdown this collector to protect the software engine
application from failing. Most ACD platforms have this protection in place as well to prevent
the ACD system failure because of report overload or security restrictions.
The amount of data on the report can require multiple reports running on the ACD. Each ACD
report that is functioning can cause multiple problems for the main server.
1. Slow down the processor on the server as it maintains all activities.
2. Failure of the reports or causing the reports to shut down.
3. Slow down the refresh rate of the reports.
Another problem that occurs is the poor quality of the reports. Some employees build their own
reports but do not do a good job. Simple errors happen that make the report useless to the end
user. A math error which causes the report to fail and rather than deleting the report the
employee will leave it as is and build another report. Each report running will add work load to
the processor.
On a regular basis your IT department should be checking the number of reports that are running
and make sure they are accurate and being used and if not delete the report. Reducing the
amount of reports will improve processor power.
The process of collecting data for reporting needs to be done efficiently so as to ensure the
reports are accurate and meet the needs of the users. Following best practices on data collection
will also help the ACD processor so it is able to function properly.
Spectrum is a leading provider of Unified Contact Center Reporting. Contact Spectrum today to
discuss best practices. For more examples of reporting visit our website and the products page.
http://www.specorp.com/products
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Dan Boehm
VP Sales and Marketing
Spectrum
dboehm@specorp.com
+1 713 986 8839