Customer contact center data contains hidden nuggets of insight about customers,

products, and business operations, and it provides the foundation for effective

customer relationship management (CRM). Mining this data for insights can be

daunting, however.

The databases that support operational activities such as call center operations are tuned

for the performance of those operations and are usually inappropriate for data analysis.

The database structures are designed for transaction processing. The databases themselves

contain limited historical content because data retention is typically limited to a

maximum of three to six months. And the data in them is only a subset of the total

contact activities the business handles, either because geographically dispersed contact

centers handle enterprise contact activities or because different applications or divisions

handle telephone, e-mail, and Web-based contacts.

Deriving the full value from customer contact data requires the integration of all contact

records, regardless of how or where they were received. Data might represent phone

contacts routed to a regional call center, e-mails sent to a service organization, or Web

interactions between sales agents and prospects surfing a company's Web site. The ability

to optimize the business to better meet the needs of customers depends on knowing

what those customers are doing, regardless of the communication channel they use and

regardless of how or where their contacts were routed within an enterprisewide contact

infrastructure.