RiverState: A Visual Metaphor Representing Millions of Time-Oriented State Transitions

Abstract

Developing a positive relationship between a business and its customers is vital to success. The outcome of any customer interaction can determine future patronage of the business. Many industry's only point of interaction with their customers is through a contact centre where everything from sales to complaints are handled. This places tremendous importance on the operational efficiency of the contact centre and the level of care provided to the customers. These customer interactions are recorded and archived in large databases, but undertaking insightful analysis is challenging due to both the size and complexity of the data. We present a visual solution to the tracking of customer interactions at a large scale. RiverState visualises the collective flow of callers through the process of interacting with a contact centre using a river metaphor. We use finite state transition machines with customised edges to depict millions of events and the states callers go through to complete their journey. We implement a range of novel features to enhance the analytical qualities of the application, and collect feedback from domain experts to analyse and evaluate the use of the software.