How to track how busy a customer service point really is?

February 28, 2006 7:27 AM

Is there an application that will run on a desktop that will record the number of times a button is clicked, the time and date that it is clicked, and will export that information into an Excel spreadsheet?

I'm trying to set up the optimum staffing level for a customer service desk. To do this, I need to get some actual data of how busy the desk really is. If I ask the people who staff the desk, they say it is always super busy. If I ask upper management, they say the desk isn't used at all. The truth must be in between and I need the stats to back it up.

Rather than have people at the desk record how many times per half hour they deal with a customer, I was wondering if there was an easy technical solution to this that could run on the Windows workstations. When staff is done helping a customer, be it in person or by phone, they simply click on a button and the interaction is recorded. I could then go back later, download the records, and produce a nice Excel sheet and from there figure out the busiest times on the desk, how often both people on the desk are helping customers at the same time, and so on.

Cheap as in free, easy to install, and easy to use are all pluses. This is for an academic library.

posted by robocop is bleeding to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

I don't really have a solution to this, but it seems to me that the desk staff has some serious motivation to be clicking that button all day, every day, regardless of whether or not they are helping anyone.
posted by antifuse at 7:55 AM on February 28, 2006

You could script it with autoit.
posted by bigmusic at 8:02 AM on February 28, 2006

Response by poster: antifuse, you are correct. However we have some other checks in place (gate counts, phone records, etc) that we can use to check up on suspicious numbers. I know who is on the desk when, so if a flurry of activity seems to follow one staff member about, then I'll know enough to be suspicious.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:06 AM on February 28, 2006

What does the button do, exactly? It might be easier to monitor what it affects (watch a file that is modified, monitor network activity, etc.) than to monitor the button itself.
posted by ducksauce at 8:16 AM on February 28, 2006

Response by poster: The button would just record when it has been clicked. It's basically a counter, hopefully automated on a desktop.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:19 AM on February 28, 2006

Sounds like you want something that's already been created for this purpose, but wouldn't this be a good function of a simple Perl or PHP script? Surely your employees have a web browser running, so why not just have them click the "I helped a customer" when they're done helping a customer? The script could just write dates, times, and the computer's IP address (if you have more than one employee/computer working at a time) to a text file which you could retrieve periodically. Anyone with a little scripting experience could whip up something quick and dirty in no time. At an academic library, there are probably tons of folks like that.
posted by heydanno at 8:39 AM on February 28, 2006

You can do this yourself easily enough.
e.g. I just wrote an application to do this in 10 mins. It's called clickr. Click on the button, and the date, time and user will be stored in a file in the same folder as the application.

Of course, I wouldn't recommend you just download random shit off the internet. Because that would be dangerously stupid.
posted by seanyboy at 8:47 AM on February 28, 2006

Response by poster: Oof, so after trying to learn to fish with AutoIt, seanyboy comes along with a delicious red snapper. Temptation!

Seanyboy, what did you use to create clickr?
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:31 AM on February 28, 2006

Response by poster: Okay, so I have the GUI looking like I want it to, it's just the functionality that needs to be added.

#include

GUICreate("eTracker", 110, 30) ; will create a dialog box that when displayed is centered

Opt("GUICoordMode",2)
GUICtrlCreateButton ("Desk", 5, 5, 50)
GUICtrlCreateButton ("Phone", 0, -1)

GUISetState () ; will display an dialog box with 2 button

; Run the GUI until the dialog is closed
While 1
$msg = GUIGetMsg()

If $msg = $GUI_EVENT_CLOSE Then ExitLoop
Wend


Ideally, clicking on "Desk" will add a line with the date, time, etc to a file called desk.txt, while "Phone" will do the same for phone.txt. This is using Autoit.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 11:23 AM on February 28, 2006

clickr is written in Delphi.
posted by seanyboy at 2:29 PM on February 28, 2006

Best answer: The advantages of delphi is that you don't have to install a client or runtime on each machine. You can pop the .exe on the server and give everyone a shortcut to it. I've zipped the source code, etc up. You can download the clickr source code and latest executable (phone + Desk) here. If you trust my name, you can trust the executable. The coding isn't great. Delphi is not a language I know very well at all.

You used to be able to get a free version of delphi, but I can't see it anymore. You could try lazarus as a free Delphi, but I don't really know anything about it.
posted by seanyboy at 2:06 AM on March 1, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks again, seanyboy. We're already starting to pull up some interesting information from the clicker tool!
posted by robocop is bleeding at 12:08 PM on March 3, 2006