Learn how Emite is helping a very large multinational corporation remove data silos from contact center reporting, enhance the performance of the contact center, and improve agent performance.
Learn how Emite is helping a very large multinational corporation remove data silos from contact center reporting, enhance the performance of the contact center, and improve agent performance.
Over the last 20+ years I have seen a lot of changes, including people, process, and technology. The shifting from quantitative to qualitative measures and data driven insights has been labelled digital transformation, industry 4.0 and more recently web3.0.
Overview
Recently, a critical vulnerability has been reported on Log4j, which is used by Java based applications. This vulnerability can be exploited for RCE (Remote Command Execution) depending on the configuration of the system. There is active exploitation in the wild and systems are having various Trojans, ransomware, and crypto miners loaded.
You can refer to the following for more details on the vulnerability:
Apache Releases Log4j Version 2.15.0 to Address Critical RCE Vulnerability Under Exploitation | CISA
Statement from CISA Director Easterly on “Log4j” Vulnerability | CISA
Log4j – Apache Log4j Security Vulnerabilities
Apache Log4j2 Remote Code Execution (RCE) Vulnerability – CVE-2021-44228 – ESA-2021-31
The emite application and adapters are not vulnerable to the Log4j vulnerability. As these do not use any Java or Apache-based components and have minimal third-party-based libraries (they are based on C# or .Net code base), this reduces the attack surface. However, emite does use Elasticsearch for data storage.
From the Elasticsearch Advisory
Elasticsearch
Elasticsearch is not susceptible to remote code execution with this vulnerability due to our use of the Java Security Manager.
Elasticsearch on JDK8 or below is susceptible to an information leak via DNS which is fixed by a simple JVM property change. The information leak does not permit access to data within the Elasticsearch cluster.
Mitigation for emite or Customer-Hosted Amazon Connect Environments
emite environments for Amazon Connect customers use AWS-managed Elasticsearch/Opensearch service-hosted on customer’s AWS.
AWS advised that it is rolling out a service software update to address the log4j vulnerability:
- https://aws.amazon.com/security/security-bulletins/AWS-2021-006/
- “Amazon OpenSearch Service is deploying a service software update, version R20211203-P2, which contains an updated version of Log4j2. We will notify customers as the update becomes available in their regions, and update this bulletin once it is available worldwide.”
Once you have received a notification/bulleting from AWS, apply the service software update.
- The service software updated is considered critical, and AWS will actually automatically apply the update a few hours after the notification.
- The service software update does not require any downtime, but it is recommend to apply during off-peak hours.
Mitigation for emite-hosted Genesys Cloud Environments
Most emite-hosted environments use a locally installed Elasticsearch on the customer’s emite server. Access to this Elasticsearch is limited only to the emite application within the server.
emite will rollout the following changes to mitigate the vulnerability:
- For environments using Elasticsearch 6.x (emite v7.0.9):
- Removal of the JndiLookup.class from the log4j-core jar file
- For environments using Elasticsearch 7.x (emite v7.1.0+):
- Config change on jvm.options by adding -Dlog4j2.formatMsgNoLookups=true
For some customer environments where emite uses AWS Elasticsearch/Opensearch service, emite has applied the service software update (version R20211203-P2) which contains an updated version of Log4j2 as advised by AWS.
Mitigation for Customer-Hosted/On-Premise Environments
The following mitigation steps will require some downtime – as Elasticsearch will need to be reinstalled, and emite services will be temporarily stopped during the activity.
As such, it is recommend to do the steps below during off-peak/downtime period.
For environments using Elasticsearch 5.4 / 6.3 (e.g. emite v7.0.9)
1. Stop the emite services.
- World Wide Web Service
- emite Scheduler Service
- emite Metric Service
2. Stop/Uninstall Elasticsearch windows service.
- sample powershell/command prompt: C:\elasticsearch-6.3.1\bin\elasticsearch-service.bat remove
3. Go to Elasticsearch lib directory.
4. Copy out the log4j-core-*.jar to another directory as backup.
5. Open the log4j-core-*.jar file using a zip file extractor software, such as 7zip. The jar file is basically similar to a zip archive.
6. Inside the jar file, delete the file org/apache/logging/log4j/core/lookup/JndiLookup.class.
The jar file is now updated to have that class removed.
7. Re-install the Elasticsearch windows service.
- sample powershell/command prompt: C:\elasticsearch-6.3.1\bin\elasticsearch-service.bat install
8. Start the Elasticsearch windows service, and set its Startup Type to “Automatic”.
9. Start the emite services.
- World Wide Web Service
- emite Scheduler Service
- emite Metric Service
For environments using Elasticsearch 7.9 (e.g. emite v7.1.0+)
1. Stop the emite services.
- World Wide Web Service
- emite Scheduler Service
- emite Metric Service
2. Stop/Uninstall Elasticsearch windows service.
- sample powershell/command prompt: C:\elasticsearch-7.9.2\bin\elasticsearch-service.bat remove
3. Add -Dlog4j2.formatMsgNoLookups=true to the end of Elasticsearch config\jvm.options file.
4. Re-install the Elasticsearch windows service.
- sample powershell/command prompt: C:\elasticsearch-7.9.2\bin\elasticsearch-service.bat install
5. Start the Elasticsearch windows service, and set its Startup Type to “Automatic”.
6. Start the emite services.
- World Wide Web Service
- emite Scheduler Service
- emite Metric Service
We‘ve seen the rise of omnichannel, sentiment and artificial intelligence (AI) everywhere; vendors have thrown their weight behind these concepts — pushing them front and centre in their product offerings. However, many contact centres still measure performance with traditional quantitive metrics. This way of thinking overlooks that we have moved to new and more agile ways to work. You need an “in the moment” understanding of customers’ perceptions of their experiences throughout the entire engagement.
Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA) is used in many different industries and can also be used to describe how customers and their interactions have evolved — and continue to do so. Deploying innovative ways to engage customers is important for offering the bespoke and personalised experiences customers expect.
By combining the ever-increasing number of data sources relevant to the customers journey and ensuring it provides an appropriate level of insight, organisations can make accurate decisions on how to improve the experience as perceived by their customer. An approach overly focused on traditional operational measures could run the risk of reducing the ability to identify and anticipate the need to radically alter course “in the moment.”
Continual feedback loops, such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) and customer satisfaction (CSAT) are very important for the purpose of hearing the voice of the customer. However, these metrics are based on the overall perception at the end of the current engagement. Today, many contact centers continue to focus primarily on choices made within the IVR system — directing a call through a predefined process that’s only measured for efficiency. This creates a gap between the start of the engagement and the end.
As perception changes with each new individual experience, a customer’s perception on what is good or bad, will most certainly change. Therefore, customer engagement must become more dynamic. Generating more data throughout the engagement process will provide additional insights that can validate improvement initiatives.
Our current traditional operational focus misses this dynamic element, as the process is no longer linear and predefined. It becomes dynamic and, therefore, is continually changing. Efficiency and effectiveness are no longer enough; relevance needs to be added into the equation. This will allow you to visualize the entire journey — operationally, organizationally and from the customers perception.
Fine-Tune with Predictive Routing
Machine learning automates consistent parts of the process — and that enables the routing to become predictive. This ensures decisions are continually fine-tuned to improve the customer experience.
Integrating disparate systems lets you mix emerging technologies to gain insights quickly. As such, today’s leaders want continual innovation that meets today’s rapidly shifting business demands and increases business agility.
Developing such capability within your organisation ensures business agility while developing an ongoing future-proof platform. Using data analytics tools to provide actionable insights for both real-
time and historical data lets the user analyse the customer journey — and measure the experience in greater detail. This creates successful outcomes within digitally mature organizations.
Increase Agility and Visualise the End-to-End Value Stream
Using emerging technologies like sentiment analysis and predictive routing throughout the customer journey gives you a deeper understanding of the customer with a more bespoke and personalised journey. You do not have to wait for NPS or CSAT scores that are usually provided after the fact. In the end, these steps will empower you to better serve customers and gain complete visibility for intelligent decision-making.
Recently, Genesys asked a large group of their customers to share the biggest challenges they face in running their contact centers today. More than 55% responded that reporting and analytics are the most significant challenges being faced by contact center managers.
Why is that so important and why is it that reporting and analytics are still such a challenge?
For starters, contact center managers are constantly under pressure to meet the demands of their c-suite, their agents, and their customers. Now more than ever, as the world becomes increasingly virtual and contact centers go entirely remote, the demand to create better customer experiences in the contact center is increasingly important. We have seen that dissatisfied customers can lead to a decrease in revenue, while undertrained or overwhelmed agents can impact performance or create an unstable workforce.
Our team at emite has been working with contact center managers throughout the world to help identify the biggest obstacles to better reporting and assisting them in overcoming these obstacles by streamlining reporting processes, eliminating data silos, and creating a solution that handles a complex reporting environment.
Below are five reporting challenges faced by contact center managers, with tips from our team on how to resolve the reporting challenges, and advice on how to leverage better reporting to create a world-class contact center experience for your customers:
- Visualizing Data in a Single Pane of Glass
- Simple and Efficient Reports
- Real-Time Reporting Capability
- Custom KPIs and reports for your exact needs
- Omnichannel Reports
Let’s dive in…
#1 All Your Data in a Single Pane of Glass
One of the biggest challenges in reporting is the ability to manage multiple data sources and having a holistic understanding of how your contact center is performing both historically and in real time—especially if you have a large, complex contact center ecosystem.
Having to log into multiple reporting tools is time-consuming and creates inefficient data-silos. On top of that, it is a nearly impossible task to make sense of, organize, and present the data to the c-suite in a way that tells the full story of your contact center’s performance.
The solution? Adding emite to your tech stack will give you the ability to combine all your data sources into a single pane of glass.
By adding a reporting and analytics tool that can integrate data from multiple sources, contact center managers can help eliminate the need to use multiple tools like Salesforce, Zendesk, Google Sheets, Excel, or CSVs when creating a complete contact center performance report. Creating a clear, single view of your data sources on a dashboard or wallboard enables contact center managers to quickly and easily analyze agent performance, current support, ticket statuses, and other critical KPIs to paint a better picture of overall contact center performance. This immediate access to actionable data provides the type of real-time insights that allow contact center managers to make informed decisions faster.
The ability to integrate multiple data sources – which we refer to as Adapters at emite – not only helps contact center managers understand how their agents and contact centers are performing both historically and in real-time, but by visualizing all of the data in one place, organizations can see where they can improve, areas where they excel, and ultimately how to optimize their contact center and help their agents create the best experience possible for the customer on the other end of the call.
#2 Making Reporting Simple and Efficient
At emite, we recognize that getting the data into one dashboard is not always enough to satisfy the c-suite, executives, or stakeholders who want to know how the contact center is performing. They want to know exactly how the contact center is impacting revenue, how calls are influencing the company’s NPS (Net Promotor Score), what can be done to optimize agent performance, and they want the data to correlate to specific business KPIs.
This ask can be overwhelming for the contact center manager.
Reports should be able to meet the reporting needs of your organization, be easily available, and quick to deploy – which can be incredibly challenging with harder-to-use reporting platforms like Salesforce that hold important sales and revenue data in tandem with support system data (ITSM).
The solution? With emite, your out-of-the-box and customizable reporting options are ready to go.
Our team at emite has spent years working with customers and contact center managers on a simple solution to the c-suite reporting challenge. What we learned is that having access to out-of-the-box reports is critical, but even more important is the ability to easily create customized dashboards and reports that match to the KPIs the c-suite cares about; all with the added ability to create the custom reports without an IT bottleneck.
The goal is to make it simple.
Rather than trying to Frankenstein together a Salesforce ITSM report, a Salesforce sales/revenue report and a Zendesk report with custom CSV, all to get a holistic view of how your contact center is performing, invest in an end-to-end reporting and analytics solution that not only can integrate all this rich data into one place, but will allow you to filter out the noise and only report on the KPIs you need, all in one easily digestible view.
If you want to add an emite Adapter to your instance of emite, get in touch with our team.
#3 Real-Time, Actionable Data
Do you know how your contact center is performing right now? The ability to look at a single source of truth for contact center performance is invaluable to a contact center manager.
Imagine a scenario where you, as a contact center manager at a major insurance provider, are asked by your executive team for an immediate report of how the contact center is performing because there has been a natural disaster and calls are anticipated to skyrocket. Your company needs real-time data and it needs it to be accurate so that calls can be reallocated, messaging can be communicated effectively, and agents can provide the highest level of support possible to customers. Panic would probably start to set in if you didn’t have a solid reporting solution already in place.
The solution? emite’s real-time reporting capabilities, combined with historical reporting, will future-proof your contact center and prepare for events that will impact your contact center.
The ability to understand how your contact center is performing in real time is invaluable to a contact center manager who needs to optimize agent performance, re-allocate resources, and make decisions that help increase productivity and efficiency, and enhance the customer experience. With a real-time dashboard or wallboard designed to show your most important KPIs in real time, a contact center manager will be able to do their job effectively in the moments when your contact center needs to be performing at its best.
When combined with a historical look on performance data, a reliable report can make the difference between demonstrating success or failure to show how you as a contact center manager made decisions that helped your contact center.
#4 Custom KPIs – For YOUR Unique Contact Center
Customer expectations continue to rise, and it’s increasingly difficult for the contact center to meet their demands — especially given the growth in available service channels. This makes it more important than ever to know what delights your customers and how your employees can achieve it. But to gauge customer satisfaction, it’s important to look beyond traditional key performance indicators (KPIs).
Genesys
How are your agents performing? What is your average response time? How many calls are being handled? What are ticket statuses?
Every one of these call center metrics tells a story about contact center performance, customer satisfaction, and seeing the big picture. They can be the difference between dollars in and dollars out. The challenge is not only being able to identify those unique KPIs and report on them, but also being able to create that level of reporting without the knowledge of custom coding or pulling in IT support to create the custom reports or add/amend them as needed.
The solution? emite allows you to create custom KPIs, easily and efficiently adjust KPIs and dashboards as your business goals change, and easily run custom KPI reports.
In isolation, each individual KPI may not give you all the information you need to understand where improvements need to be made, and the steps you need to take in creating the type of customer experience that will set your company apart from your competitors. The ability to connect the dots between all your most important KPIs is crucial to supporting the growth and continuous improvement of your contact center.
One thing we learned by working with contact centers across the globe is that there is not one universal set of KPIs. Each contact center has performance data that is uniquely important to them, whether that is influenced by the type of industry they are in, their geographic location, their product or service, or even the unique challenge they may be facing in each time or season. Just think about the chaos of managing a retail contact center during the holiday shopping season or a critical services provider during a natural disaster. Perhaps even tracking calls related to a virus during a global pandemic.
In the end, if you do not have the ability to report on the data that makes an impact to your business, your reporting tool may be hurting your bottom line.
#5 Omnichannel Views and Reporting
Contact centers today operate across multiple channels to communicate with customers, and the number of channels is only increasing as contact center technology expands to adjust to the market and customer needs.
Omnichannel experiences effortlessly unify inbound and outbound communication to deliver proactive, contextual interactions to your customers. Create seamless, personalized engagements across all channels throughout the entire customer journey.
Genesys
This expansion of communication tools is incredibly beneficial for the contact center and customer, but this omnichannel expansion also creates an additional reporting challenge.
The solution? emite offers a reporting solution that integrates the data from the different channels your organization utilizes into a single view.
Companies that can deliver a seamless omnichannel customer experience (CX) across multiple channels and touch points can develop a significant competitive advantage, reduce customer churn, and increase profit. But without a tool that helps to report and analyze those channels, there is no way to effectively measure, optimize, and make business decisions to help create that all-so-valuable omnichannel experience.
With an omnichannel reporting tool like emite, you can support an omnichannel experience by integrating all the data into a single view.
We keep coming back to the phrase a single view for a particularly important reason – a solution that gives all of your data in a single pane of glass is what the contact center industry needs. There is so much tech, so many tools, and so many channels that reporting and analytics has become the #1 pain point of all business units across all industries. It is time-consuming, it is difficult, and it is nearly impossible to keep up with the endless updates, migrations, and tech stack add-ons that all companies are adopting to keep up with customer needs.
Bringing it all together: emite + Genesys
Creating a world-class contact center in an increasingly complex, remote, and omnichannel environment is difficult enough – adding on the ability to report on your contact center performance effectively and efficiently has become infinitely more difficult.
How do you improve you contact center reporting performance?
By making sure you choose a reporting and analytics platform that integrates seamlessly with your current tech stack and contact center platform is essential in preventing future reporting headaches, migration issues, and making sure you get to ROI as fast as possible. For Genesys customers, emite can solve all the reporting challenges we have addressed and create a reporting solution that can remain reliable as you migrate contact center platforms, move to the cloud, or add on additional data sources or tech.
