Communications reporting is one of the most useful benefits provided by cloud-hosted phone systems. If your current system doesn’t provide advanced reporting, you should get one that does. If you do have a system like FluentStream that provides advanced reporting, chances are you don’t use it much.

Now, the reasons why are pretty obvious. “Communications reporting isn’t for me,” I can already hear most of you saying. “My business isn’t big or complicated enough for tracking call statistics or looking at performance trends.”

However, the simple truth is that communications reporting truly can help any business. The logic is explained succinctly (and quite handsomely) by Brad Pitt in this classic scene from Moneyball. But, if you don’t have a few extra minutes to watch, allow me to paraphrase:

Data is the only truth when making business decisions. The more data you have, the more informed your decisions can be, and therefore the more profit you can make. By having a better understanding of your communications with customers — you know, the lifeblood of any business — you’re able to schedule shifts and allocate resources more efficiently.

Let’s get into the weeds a bit and go over the top ways communications reporting can help your business provide a better experience for your customers.

MONITOR AND IMPROVE PERFORMANCE

The first and foremost benefit of communications reporting is how much insight you gain into your team’s performance.

How many calls each rep is taking, their average call lengths, how often they let a call go to voicemail, how often they log out of the queue — all those stats and more are at your fingertips when your phone system has cloud reporting. Then, once you’ve assembled the data, you can track your team over time to see who’s doing great and who could use some additional training.

With FluentStream, you can even create custom reports that show only the specific data you’re looking for. Need weekly call totals for each of your support agents? Easy. Need Monthly statistics on how fast your salespeople are picking up the phone/closing deals? Easy peasy.

Whatever performance metrics you track, having a communications system with cloud reporting makes it a breeze to keep everyone at the top of their game.

GAIN VISIBILITY INTO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS

Obviously advertising is a great way to bring in more business. That’s why every successful company since the beginning of time has done it. However, when you’re still growing, it can be difficult to know which advertising campaigns are working and which are just a waste of money.

With communications reporting, there’s no need to hire an ad agency or pay someone else to look at your campaign performance. All you need to do is assign each campaign a different phone number for customers to call and compare the results on a regular basis.

If you’re seeing enormous call volume at one number, perhaps from Facebook or a local newspaper, you’ll know right away that next month you should take budget from under-performing campaigns and spend it where business is booming.

Plus, by running regular reports, you can see if your campaigns perform better on specific days of the week, times of the month, or even seasons of the year.

STAFF APPROPRIATELY TO REDUCE OVERHEAD

As much as you love your staff, they’re a whopping financial drain on your business. Knowing when you’ll need more or less employees to assist customers or take calls is a constant battle. Fortunately though, it becomes much easier to win when you have reliable data on when you’re busy and when you can slim the team down.

Let’s look at an example to show what I’m talking about. Say I run a bakery called Brady’s Baby Cakes that specializes in custom desserts for important events (clearly not a regular daydream of mine). Every holiday season, my team is completely slammed with back to back orders.

Naturally, I want to bring in some extra help so we can meet demand without sacrificing our signature quality. I also have to factor in time-off requests from my staff and extra coverage in case anyone gets sick or has a family emergency.

Since I have communications reporting with FluentStream, I see how many calls we received last holiday season, what times of day were busiest, how many employees I had available on those days, etc.

Sure, it’s not an exact science and every holiday season is different. But having all that data at my fingertips means Brady’s Baby Cakes can face the coming frosting storm with much more certainty — and without overspending on too many cooks in the kitchen.

Have more questions about how communications reporting can benefit your business? Want to learn more about how a FluentStream system can improve your customer experience and increase revenue? Let us know at sales@fluentstream.com or by calling 303-GO-CLOUD and selecting Option 1.