In the Tony Award-winning musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” Tevye, the father of five daughters, bemoaned the erosion of tradition where his daughters wanted to marry for love instead of cultural preservation. The cultural norm was to make use of a matchmaker to seek out mates that satisfied familial desires and goals on both sides. In similar fashion, more traditional queuing and routing schemes used in contact centers may get a customer to a qualified agent, but their style and approach may not produce the “magic moment” of a highly satisfying interaction.

Today, advances in processing power, software algorithms, and availability of consumer information have come together to allow for a more advanced method of matching agents with callers. Behavioral analytics applies models of behavioral styles, tracks successful matches that drive better interaction outcomes, and provides an ongoing feedback loop to tune the model for each enterprise. Case studies from Mattersight and Satmap, two vendors who specialize in this software, have demonstrated uplifts in revenues and positive impacts on handle time and customer satisfaction.

Satmap helped one of the largest telecommunications carriers in the United States boost sales conversion rates by 6%, driving $100 million in incremental revenue over a two-year period. The trial included alternating periods of turning Satmap on, and then off, to provide outcome comparisons.

CVS Caremark adopted Mattersight Predictive Behavioral Routing and was able to drive an 8.4% reduction in average talk time during their proof of concept trial. CVS is also using the data to better target training and coaching to agents.

While application development and delivery professionals who support contact center applications face a plethora of choices to drive the business technology agenda, they should consider behavioral analytics to help their firm better win, retain, and serve customers. It could very well be a chance to buck “tradition”!