Businesses thrive on statistics. At all levels of an organization, leaders make key decisions based on what the numbers say. Entry-level workers win affirmation, supervisors receive bonuses, and managers earn raises all courtesy of numeric results. While all businesses produce reams of statistical data in the course of their daily operation, this is perhaps most pronounced in the call center and telephone answering service industry, where each call possesses scores of data points, upwards of a hundred or more. Although more data can result in a greater understanding, the level of complexity that comes with massive amounts of information becomes a management challenge. However, raw numbers mean nothing. To provide significance, this plethora of data must be merged and massaged into accessible, comprehensible reports that people can actually understand and correctly apply. They want meaningful output with actionable data. Here are five reports that every call center must have: Key Performance Indicators: With a wide array of possible performance indicators to consider, no call center can hit every one of them. In fact it’s impossible, especially since some statistical goals are mutually exclusive. That’s why call centers pick three to five metrics they deem essential, their key performance indicators (KPIs). Once identified, the KPIs must be carefully tracked and diligently pursued. Of course being able to quickly and easily monitor KPIs is crucial. As such, a comprehensive data portal becomes a critical KPI tracking tool. Quality Assurance: A call center is only as good as its agents. And while everyone says they provide quality, a formal quality assurance program is an essential step from turning claims of quality into reality. A QA (quality assurance) merges all needed stats from various sources to allow QA managers to effectively and accurately assess agent performance. A holistic QA reporting module offers an ideal way to perform, review, and follow agent evaluations. Operation Stats: In addition to QA evaluations, agent effectiveness rises as a companion piece of the call center puzzle, contrasting agent quality with productivity. In addition to a statistical analysis of individual agents, supervisors want a composite of their entire shift, while managers seek the aggregate across the entire operation. These agent and system stats include average time to answer (ATTA), caller abandons, hold time, occupancy, and so forth. To be of practical use, these metrics must be easily assessable, in real time, from a data portal dashboard, as well as in tangible reports. Traffic Reports: Similar to agent and system stats are traffic stats, such as the number of calls, calls answered, abandon calls, holds, and so forth. Real time views provide supervisors with instantaneous data to make immediate decisions, while historical reports provide the information schedulers require to accurately forecast future demand in order to appropriately allocate staff. Enhanced Call Detail: The final item necessary to call center success, and the fifth of the five must-have reports, is comprehensive call detail data merged with voice recordings and coordinated screen capture. This provides a complete view of the call to determine precisely what happened. Learn more about having accessible, actionable call center and answering service statistics—provided by Call Center Sales Pro’s Fuzion Portal—at this year’s NAEO conference, March 12-15. Janet Livingston is the president of Call Center Sales Pro, a premier contact center consultancy that offers telephone answering services their exclusive CCSP Fuzion Portal, the next-gen portal for actionable analytics. Contact Janet at contactus@callcenter-salespro.com or 800-901-7706 to learn more.Peter Lyle DeHaan is a freelance writer from Southwest Michigan.