Interactive Analytical Treemaps for Visualisation of Call Centre Data

Abstract

In the United Kingdom alone, there are over one million employees working at over 5,000 call centres. Some estimates claim approximately four million call centre employees in Europe. In this unique application paper we present methods for visualising the vast amount of data generated and collected by call centres. We design the application to address the challenges of exploration, analysis and visualisation of complex, time-dependant call centre data, and aim to maximise the utility the software contributes to the business stakeholders in the industry. The application implements a custom, interactive analytical treemap view that presents an overview and details of the data on demand. We implement a smooth temporal navigation system to allow the user to zoom the visualisation to a higher resolution of data. Then an interactive multivariate focus and context analytic filtering interface provides the user control over caller subsets they are interested in for analysis. The software is designed in close collaboration with industry experts. This application reveals new insight into call centre events and behaviour that traditional forms of analysis do not as quickly, nor as easily. We also report the positive reaction of domain experts to our visualisations.