An event-based data warehouse to support decisions in multi-channel, multi-service contact centers

Multi-channel contact centers are an increasingly important component of today's business world. They serve as a primary customer-facing channel for firms in many different industries, and employ millions of operators across the globe. During their operation, they generate vast amounts of data, ranging from automatically registered logs to handwritten notes and voice recordings. Unfortunately, in most firms, data of interest is unstructured, and stored in several databases, making their exploitation very hard. This article presents a decision support system for a multi-channel, multi-service contact center for front office business process outsourcing, along with its prospective extension to a decision management system. Its core is an enterprise-wide data warehouse, based on the general concept of an event. The proposed system supports a broad new set of advanced analysis tasks, ranging from operator performance assessment to call-flow simulation and data mining, providing operational and management staff the basis for taking effective operative and strategic decisions.