Mining for Gold
Data
Mining for $$$
There
are some very interesting things that people and businesses can do with data
mining
http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/jason.frand/teacher/technologies/palace/datamining.htm
Data
mining is certainly not a new topic and certainly not new to the answering
service industry. Just as answering
services were the first, and still the best (pardon the shameless plug), voice
to text solution available, answering services were one of the first businesses
to amass data for hundreds, thousands and now millions of businesses.
What is
all this information?
# of
calls received by day / hour / 15 min. increment
% of
abandoned calls
% of
calls that result in a message
% of
calls on hold < 1 min. or > 5 min.
This
information is of great use to determine proper staffing rates and to show a
client the service level metrix are being met.
This information, however cannot be sold. It can be used to help sell a prospect and
close a deal and keep a client but the data in itself is not designed to be
monetized.
What
information then is available to be monetized?
The
first piece of information that comes to mind is types of calls received.
How
valuable would it be for a Dr's office to know that they receive a large number
of 
appointment cancellations on Friday night after the office is closed?
Wouldn't the Dr's office then be able to put a protocol in place to make appointment
confirmation calls on Thursday so that they would be able to fill those cancellation slots beginning Friday AM instead of waiting till Monday AM to
start trying to fill the appts for the week ?
Many
companies are now tracking calls that do not result in a message.
What
information can be gleaned from this forward thinking practice?
For
medical offices that request that people calling for RX, APPTS and REFERRALS
call back the next business day, letting them know how many of these calls you
are actually receiving would be very useful.
If the office knew they were getting a number of appointment calls after
hours they might consider letting their vendor have a few time slots to book
after hours, or allow access to their on line appointment book.
For
Funeral Home clients, letting them know how many calls are received that are
looking for directions or information about parking might prompt them to put this
information on their website, or be open for a vendor's staff to access Google
Maps and actually "walk" them to the door.
Thousands,
tens of thousands, hundreds or thousands and even millions of messages are
taken every year. Contained in those
millions of messages is GOLD and is far more then Name, #, RE:
Time to
get Digging!!
Have
you started your mining operations?
What
information surprised you?
What information surprised your client(s)?
Share a
Case Study with askmark@atsi.org
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