Letter from the CEO - OmniTouch International

Letter from the CEO
An American citizen, Daniel brings over 25 years senior experience in Customer
focused management, training and research.
Currently headquartered in OmniTouch’s Singapore Centre for Service Excellence, Daniel
is an ICMI Certified Associate, an authorized CIAC Certification Trainer, sits on the
Board of Directors for the Asia-Pacific Mystery Shopper Providers Association, is a
Member of the Advisory Board of Contact Center Pipeline (CCP), as well as a key
and invited ICMI’s Standards Committee for the development of global Frontline
competencies and certification.
Hello again to my fellow Contact Centre and Customer Care Professionals!
We hope that you received and had the opportunity to enjoy the June 2010 Issue of the OmniTouch Journal – the
Global Resource for Contact Centre and Customer Care Professionals.
If not, just a quick reminder!
Each month the Journal will contain up to the minute intelligence on operations, technology, people management,
Customer Research and articles on regular site visits to Contact Centres around the world. Look out for one of our
Southeast Asian visits very soon!
There are so many localized or regionalized newsletters out there that seem to fill up all of our email boxes. We
couldn’t be more pleased to be operating with the Contact Center Pipeline and providing Global knowledge and
case studies which fits in well with our work in 30 countries worldwide.
In this issue we focus on Tackling Turnover (especially amongst your high performers), integrating the Contact Centre
into the Enterprise and much more.
An annual subscription of monthly receipt of the Journal by email comes to you without any charge.
You simply need to visit our website at www.omnitouchinternational.com, select our PUBLICATIONS tab and register.
Of course, if you prefer to email us with questions or comments please do so to editor@omnitouchinternational.com.
Should you prefer the option of receiving a mailed hard copy version which you can ‘hold’ and read and store at
your leisure – just let us know in your feedback.
Once again – happy reading!
OmniTouch International
Daniel Ord
CEO, OmniTouch International
1
July 2010
...operating worldwide in
over 30 countries from
eight offices around the
world.
Technology Bridges
Organizational Silos
July 2010
Retaining Top Performers
A battle for talent
is looming as
employees gear up
to explore new job
opportunities.
BY SUSAN HASH
A dismal job market has curbed
Contact Centre attrition over the past
couple of years, but don’t count on
the low turnover to continue. Multiple
studies have indicated that as many as
60% of employees are planning to look
for — or are already looking for — a
new job in 2010.
Yet very few organizations are prepared for the coming exodus. Those
that adopted a “do more with less”
approach to surviving the recession
by paring down staff, training budgets,
salaries and HR programs are especially
vulnerable to losing their top-performing employees.
“This happens in the Contact Centre
In The Journal
industry every time we have a recession, and it’s going to happen again
this time,” says Oscar Alban, principal
global market consultant at Verint
Systems. He adds that companies
can take action to minimize turn-
Performance Matters
Keep Your Frontline All-Star
Productive
over by putting training and develPage 3
opment programs in place today.
Study after study confirm that the
lack of opportunity for growth is a
top reason why employees leave,
and that is particularly
page 14
Doing More with Less
Those of us who write, speak and consult for a living
sometimes forget that reality has a nasty habit of wreaking havoc with theory. Comprehensive action plans
designed at off-site meetings might indeed carve a path
to a brighter future, yet they are often derailed by that
age-old directive that pops up at the most inopportune
moments: “Do more with less!”
Less, of course, means less money. Most of us have
plenty of different line items on the budget that we could
examine, but the cold, hard fact is that staffing typically
makes up 70% or more of Contact Centre operating costs.
If you are going to make any impressionable dent in
expenses, you will need to drive down staffing costs.
For most of us, the best option for meeting the
of “do more with less”
demands
is to reduce
workload. Workload
is the number of transactions
to complete multiplied
by
the
average handle
time
of
those transactions,
and
it
is the key driver
Jay Minnucci
behind
staffing requirements. (For an explanation of the relationship between workload and staffing hours, see
the sidebar, “How Much Workload Equals One FTE?”).
That leaves us with a pretty simple equation for success:
Reduce workload and you can reduce payroll expenses.
page 7
2
July 2010
Contact Centre personnel
often feel like the ill-fated crew
on “Gilligan’s Island” — cast away
on their own island. Lacking connection with the “mainland,” they
leverage their own resources to
devise tools and processes that
meet their immediate needs.
Absent
effective
lines of
communication,
they contend with
a host of Lori Bocklund
issues (dare we say, debris?) that
originate from the “mainland” and
wash up on their shores. Everyone
knows that this situation is far
from optimal, but the organizational chasm always seems too
broad and too much trouble to
span. No matter how daunting
the task may seem, it’s time for
the Contact Centre to get off the
island — and technology is ready
to transport them.
page 17
Simple Service Training
Look-Think-Act
Page 11
Tips from Rosaline
Is ther a ‘standard’ Myster Shopper
Service Quotation?
Page 15
Management ROI
The Lean & Mean Contact Centre:
Reactive Cost Reduction
Page 17
Forecast Focus
Stop Getting Bullied By Your WFM
Software
Page 20
Leading Thoughts
Key Performance Indicators:
Are You Measuring the Right
Things?
Page 22
Performance Matters
Keep Your Frontline All-Stars
Tips for avoiding the five biggest mistakes managers make
Aoki
when coaching high performers.Mike
Reflective Keynotes
I have a confession to make. I made a huge
mistake. It happened 12 years ago, when I managed the Contact Centre training function at a
national telecom company. I spent 80 percent
of my time coaching the lowest performing 20
percent of my team!
At the time, I just wanted to get my low performers up to an “acceptable” achievement level.
However, by focusing most of my time on the
bottom 20 percent of my team, I didn’t have
enough time left to help the top 20 percent to
make an even greater contribution to our company’s success.
I often see managers making the same mistake. The following are the five most common
oversights when coaching high-performing
agents.
MISTAKE #1:
NOT BEING ABLE
TO IDENTIFY YOUR ALL-STARS
One of the first questions I ask when I am
hired to train a Contact Centre is, “Can you name
your top-performing Contact Centre agents?”
I am shocked by the number of companies
that are not able to identify their most valuable
employees. So how do you know who your best
performers are, and how do you rate them? Do
you rank agents by their average call quality
scores, average handle time, schedule adherence, sales results or post-call Customer survey
satisfaction scores? Or do you use a combination
of factors?
Regardless of the measurements used, you
need some method of identifying the members
of your Contact Centre all-stars. These are the
agents you want to groom for promotion to
team manager, trainer or help desk, whom you
want to reward with developmental opportunities, and whom you absolutely want to retain,
once the recession ends and the competition for
top performers heats up again.
MISTAKE #2:
TAKING YOUR
ALL-STARS FOR GRANTED
“Good old reliable Angela” is a great example
of this. I worked with Angela at a Contact Centre
in the mid-1990s. She had excellent schedule
adherence, wonderful performance metrics
and top call quality scores. She was dedicated
and enthusiastic. A perfect all-star agent in any
Contact Centre. She also had leadership skills,
and she wanted to become a team manager.
Unfortunately, Angela was never groomed for
a management role. Why? Angela’s manager was
thrilled with her performance and took her for
granted. Since Angela was steady and required
minimal supervision, she also received minimal
coaching. Within that coaching vacuum, she
became discouraged. No matter how much she
developed her skills or how many courses she
took or how much she improved herself, she was
still viewed as “good old reliable Angela,” dedicated to being on the phone lines forever.
liked being able to take her last call of the day
and leave on time. At this stage of her life, job
satisfaction and stability mattered more than
promotional opportunities.
Think about the motivational differences
between Angela and Cathy. While Angela would
have been motivated by promotional opportunities, Cathy just wanted a steady job while she
focused on her own personal priorities. Both
types of motivation are equally fine within a
Contact Centre. You need the “high fliers” who
want to move into leadership roles; you also
need people who like being online and will perform well forever.
In my coaching workshops, I encourage managers to find out what motivates each of their
agents. The following questions can help to start
such a discussion:
●
Frustrated but ambitious, she began to look
for opportunities elsewhere. Being a top performer, she was quickly hired by another telecom firm, and we lost a great agent and a potentially great team manager.
Don’t assume that your most reliable and
dependable performers don’t need attention
and recognition for their efforts. Even in a recession, there is always a strong demand for top
performers. If you don’t take care of your best
people, some other employer will.
●
●
Where do you see yourself in two years?
Besides compensation, what else
motivates you to help our callers?
How can I help you to develop your
skills?
These questions focus on the long-term
picture. They are an example of “strategic”
coaching, which helps to groom your best
people for success, versus “tactical” coaching,
which solves a short-term problem.
MISTAKE #3:
NOT KNOWING WHAT
MOTIVATES YOUR ALL-STARS
While Angela wanted a promotion, “Steady
Cathy” just wanted to do an excellent job as an
agent. She was another top performer, but her
motivation was different. Cathy loved helping
callers. However, she didn’t want a promotion or
“enrichment” assignments or career pathing. She
liked being an agent.
MISTAKE #4:
NOT COACHING
YOUR ALL-STARS
Despite their ability to perform well, your allstars still require constant coaching if they are to
remain top performers. Mike Vance, the former
Dean of the University of Disneyland, developed
the “conscious competence” model to illustrate
the stages of learning. Applied within a Contact
Centre context, his model shows the lifecycle of
a typical agent:
Ironically, Cathy was a former Contact Centre
manager. She knew all about the long hours,
countless reports and budgeting responsibilities
of that position. Now that she had a family, she
1. Unconscious Incompetent.
Agents in new-hire training are still “incompetent” because they have not yet been trained to
answer the phone. This incompetence is “uncon-
July 2010
3
scious” because the trainees are unaware of the
skills that they need.
It will keep morale up and show that top performance gets rewarded.
2. Conscious Incompetent.
Once agents graduate from new-hire training and take their first calls, they become consciously aware of how much more they need to
learn.
I certainly learned my lesson 12 years ago. After
spending my first year as a manager coaching
poor performers, I invested most of the following
year into grooming my top performers for future
success. I’m proud to say that Karen, one of the best
people on my team, really blossomed after receiving more responsibility and a chance to contribute.
Her career progressed from being a trainer, to a
team manager, to sales manager — and now she
is the Contact Centre senior manager. Karen always
had the skills and ambition, she just needed the
right career path and the opportunity to grow.
3. Conscious Competent.
Once agents have been online for a few
months, they reach the stage where they are
good at their job, and conscious of the techniques they use to handle client calls.
4. Unconscious Competence.
Here is the stage where veteran agents start
to slip. After several months or years on the job,
agents can go on auto-pilot. They are no longer
consciously aware of the fundamentals, so bad
habits begin to develop. This is the stage where
coaching can help a veteran top performer stay
sharp.
To keep veteran agents from slumping, they
need to be made consciously aware of their
strengths through coaching so that they continue to perform at an all-star level.
MISTAKE #5:
NO CAREER PATH
FOR AMBITIOUS ALL-STARS
Most centers have a well-defined performance management path for poor performers,
up to and including dismissal. But how many
have a well-defined career path for their highperformers? As we saw with Angela, you may
lose your best people if you do not have a
career progression system in place.
Let’s take the case of Tony, another topperformer. “I want YOUR job,” Tony said during
new-hire training. Although he had not yet
taken a call, he knew that he wanted to become
a trainer. Six months after going online, Tony
achieved his goal — but not in our center.
Since the center did not have a career path in
place for top performers, he moved to the sales
department. It was a huge loss for us because
Tony had become an excellent trainer.
Every Centre needs a career path to help
ambitious top performers develop into team
managers, quality assurance coaches, trainers
and help desk personnel. Agents can be rotated
through the inbound, outbound, retention and
help desk queues to keep them fresh and give
them a solid background in the Contact Centre.
Grooming a pool of potential team managers
makes it easy for you to promote from within.
4
July 2010
Tips for Keeping Your Top Talent
The ability to retain top performers basically
boils down to one thing: good leadership, says
Loyalty Factor’s Dianne Durkin. It’s up to Contact
Centre Leaders to engage and empower their
staff, and provide opportunities for employee
enrichment, growth and development. Durkin
offers the following suggestions to help you
create the type of environment in which top
performers can thrive.
Ask, listen, engage and act. Engage your top
performers in conversation and ask, What are the
good things about your job? What are the areas
that you think we can improve upon? What are
the most challenging parts of your job? Listen
to their feedback and engage them in finding a
solution. For example, if an agent comments that
the after-call wrapup takes too long to complete,
get him involved in finding ways to streamline
the process. Put him in charge of a team to
brainstorm for suggestions. If you engage agents
in coming up with the solutions, they will feel like
an integral part of the center.
Put a support system in place. Make sure that
agents have a team leader or team captain they
can turn to with problems, questions and difficult
calls. Consider pairing up agents in teams, or
grouping them in “pods” where they can offer
immediate support for each other, for instance,
after a particularly challenging call.
Provide training on how to handle difficult
situations. Having to deal with angry Customers
from time to time is the nature of the job, but
managers can help agents to deal with the stress
by offering additional training and techniques to
handle challenging calls.
Show appreciation. Find ways to offer quick-hit,
on-the-spot appreciation if an agent handles a
call particularly well or hits a goal. In addition to
public praise, offer extra time off the phones, an
extra 10 minutes for lunch, a chocolate bar or gift
certificates for McDonalds, Starbucks, etc. Make it
personal by giving each person whatever is their
favorite (get to know your agents preferences).
PUBLISHER
Daniel Ord
daniel.ord@omnitouchinternational.com
EDITOR
Marcus von Kloeden
editor@omnitouchinternational.com
EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD
Lori Bocklund Strategic Contact
Linda Harden Publisher CCP
Susan Hash CCP
Albert Khoo OmniTouch International
Jay Minnucci Service Agility
Sarumathi OmniTouch International
Rosaline Oh OmniTouch International
Frederick van Bennekom Great Brook
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Lori Bocklund
Mike Desmarais
Brian Hinton
Lori Fraser
Rebecca Gibson
Albert Khoo
Tiffany LaReau
Beverley McClure
Jay Minnucci
Tim Montgomery
Rosaline Oh
Daniel Ord
Print and Online Advertising Inquiries:
editor@omnitouchinternational.com
(+65) 8128 8661
OmniTouch International
98B Duxton Road, 089542 Singapore
(+65) 6324 4844
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Copyright ©2010,
OmniTouch Pte Ltd
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Feature Article
Retaining
true of high performers. “Top performers are
ambitious; they’re always trying to improve
themselves,” says D ianne Durkin, president
and founder of Loyalty Factor, a consulting and
training company that enhances employee,
Customer and brand loyalty. “If they’re not continually challenged, they will leave.”
Many Contact Centres are not aware of the
underlying reasons why their top performers
choose to stay or leave. Traditional exit interviews don’t offer reliable feedback because
they only scratch the surface of the causes of
attrition, according to B. Lynn Ware, president
and CEO of the international talent management consulting firm Integral Talent Systems,
and
Bruce
Fern, an expert
in the field of
retention. In
their white
paper, “The
Challenge
of Retaining
Top Talent,”
Ware and Fern
explain that
exit interviews
Patrick O’Shea
“inevitably
fail to differentiate between the factors that
make the new job attractive to the departing employee versus the reasons why the
employee was prompted to consider leaving
his or her job in the first place.” For instance,
many employees give “better compensation” as a reason for leaving their current
job. But Ware and Fern’s research revealed
that employees who claimed better pay as a
motive were not originally dissatisfied with
their pay, at least not enough to leave their
jobs over it. Other reasons prompted the decision to leave the company, but rather than
divulge the negative reasons associated with
Be Transparent to Build Trust
What can managers do on a day-to-day
basis to build open relationships with their
agents? The key is being transparent, says
Troxell. “People often talk about work-life balance, but I don’t like that term. Work is part of
life, as are church, family, sports, hobbies —
it’s all just life. I don’t have to be different at
home than I am at work,” he says. “No matter
how large the Contact Centre is, you can create transparency that breaks down the walls
between management and associates. When
you become transparent, it opens up the communication and the trust happens.”
Troxell tries to create a sense of transparency in one-on-one interactions with agents,
as well as with the entire group. For instance,
when he’s leading a training class, he will talk
openly about his family, hobbies and home
life to create an atmosphere where agents
feel comfortable talking and sharing. He also
leverages social media tools like Facebook and
Twitter to create a deeper personal relationship with his agents, and to get insights into
their likes,
dislikes and
job satisfaction. But, he
stressses, this
approach
requires a
level of openness and participation on
the manager’s
part. “You
can’t just follow your agents. You have to put yourself out
there, too,” he says. “I have quite a few agents
on my Facebook as friends. It’s an awesome
tool because there is a caring element to it.
You can see things that they’ve posted that
they may not have talked about during the
workday.
“That is where you’re going to find out why
a person left [on a Facebook status or a Twitter
account],” he says. “If people are unhappy,
they’ll talk about it.”
Tammy Valdez
Understand the Underlying
Reasons for Attrition
their old job, they instead reported what they
found attractive about the new job.
Also, many employees are not completely
honest during exit interviews because they
don’t want to burn a bridge when leaving,
says Greg Troxell, Customer care supervisor for
United Stationers Supply Co. He feels that it’s
up to the managers to dig for the underlying
reasons for attrition. For instance, in a case of
involuntary attrition stemming from attendance problems, the manager may find that
the real reason that the agent began missing
work was because his morale was low and he
just didn’t care, or he didn’t like the environment, or there were no promotional opportunities.
Before getting to the point where a valued
agent is leaving, though, managers should
focus on creating a climate of trust that will
allow agents to be honest with their feedback
on workplace issues. Getting agents to provide
candid feedback is a process that takes stages,
says Alban. Agents will likely be leery about
your initial conversations about their jobs, but
if they see that actions are being taken on their
feedback, they’ll start to trust the process and
will begin to open up even more.
Give Agents a Voice
in the Organization
Top performers understand the value that
they bring to an organization, and they tend
get frustrated when organizations overlook or
downplay their role.
“When agents are treated like a bunch of
statistics and efficiencies, and they’re told
to do it faster, run harder, jump higher, then
they feel like a number and they’ll go after
the numbers, which is usually 30 cents more
an hour at another organization,” says Patrick
O’Shea, senior vice president of Comerica
July 2010
5
Bank’s Customer Contact Centre.
And yet no one in the organization has more of an impact on a
Customer than a top-performing agent. “They talk to 2,000 Customers
a month. That is a chance to make a lot of impressions in the marketplace,” he says. “We, in the Contact Centre, need to get that message
across and let them know that they’re important.”
At Comerica Bank, the Contact Centre is highly visible within the
organization and is actively pursued for its voice. When other departments launch a project, they tap the Centre to find out the Customer’s
viewpoint. Agents feel pretty important when they’re called upon for
special projects, says O’Shea.
The support for the contact Centre starts at the top. Comerica’s
senior executives strive to make sure that the agents understand that
they matter. How? The market president and senior VPs know all of the
top performers by name and they visit the Centre frequently, walking the floor, shaking hands with agents and spending time talking
with individuals about their particular performance and contributions.
“That speaks volumes to our staff,” O’Shea says. “It makes agents feel like
they’re a part of something bigger than themselves and that their work
matters.”
Promote the Right Skill Sets
While top performers desire opportunities for growth and development, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are cut out to become
supervisors or leaders. Promotions within the Centre are, for the most
part, still happening for the wrong reasons.
“We’re still seeing promotion based on performance,” says Alban. “But
the highest-level performer typically not does not make a good supervisor — just like great athletes don’t necessarily make good coaches.
It’s the players who are in the middle who tend to make the better
coaches.”
Alban recalls once speaking with a high performer who had just
become a supervisor, and who was incredibly frustrated with his new
job. When asked why, he replied that he didn’t understand why his
team of average performers was struggling to perform at the level that
he had performed at when he was an agent. After all, being consistently in the top one percentile had been easy for him.
“The reality is that high performers only make up 3% to 5% of the
organization. The average Contact Centre agent has to struggle to be
in the top percentile,” Alban says. “It’s really difficult to get a high performer to understand that concept.”
Putting in place a more stringent selection process that includes
behavioral interviews can help to identify top performers who have the
right leadership qualities. That is the strategy used by identity theft protection firm LifeLock. While the company tries to hire from within for
every role, as Tammy Valdez, senior VP of Member Services, points out,
“we’re not willing to have a less-qualified candidate just to hire from
within.”
LifeLock’s Contact Centre is set up in levels to allow individual
growth — agents can go from an entry-level position to quality assurance, billing, resolution and different specialty groups. Each role gives
agents a chance to broaden their experience after which they may
move up into management and director roles, Valdez says.
However, she adds, to be promoted into a leadership role, candidates have to undergo a rigorous hiring process similar to the one that
agents initially go through (see the sidebar for more on LifeLock’s hiring strategy).
6
July 2010
Agents who take on a leadership role are then monitored for their
team’s retention levels. Managers also conduct skip-level meetings
with frontline agents to identify any issues the new lead might be
having and to determine whether he or she is meeting the team’s
needs.
Supervisors Are the Glue
Studies have shown that the supervisor-employee relationship is a
key contributor to employee retention. Unfortunately, in the Contact
Centre industry, most supervisors are not equipped to manage people — many lack the leadership skills, training and time to focus on
developing their team. “They’re typically the youngest members of
management with the most direct reports and the least amount of
experience,” says Alban. “The supervisor is the gatekeeper of the most
expensive investment you have, which is your people. But the Contact
Centre generally has the supervisor managing numbers, not managing
people.”
At Comerica, supervisors play a critical role in agent development
and are expected to be on the floor, not at their desks working on
reports. “Supervisors are required to spend 90% of their floor time
actively engaged with reps,” says O’Shea. “We have a saying, ‘Every
rep, every day.’ I expect each one of my supervisors to spend quality
time with each rep on their team, whether it’s listening to a phone call
together and encouraging the rep, or showing them an easier way to
navigate the system.”
Each supervisor oversees 12 to 14 agents, so individual attention
requires a good deal of their time, but the management considers it
time well spent. “You have to build that relationship with your agent
just like you build a relationship with your Customer. If you want that
Customer to keep coming back, then you need to know them and they
need to know you. It’s the same thing with our agents. You can’t help
an agent if you don’t know where their area of opportunity is, because,
many times, the statistics won’t point you there.”
Take the Pulse of Your Culture
Who better to tell senior management what Customers want than
the people who take thousands of calls every month? Providing top
agents with the ability to pass along that information helps to instill a
sense of empowerment and appreciation.
In Comerica’s Customer Contact Centre, an agent counsel consisting of top performers meets with O’Shea every month to offer feedback, comments, suggestions and concerns on workplace issues and
the center’s culture. “It gives them another avenue to be heard, and
they represent their peers on the floor,” he says. Agents’ feedback is
responded to in a timely fashion so that they can see the impact that
they have on processes and policies.
But O’Shea and his management team don’t restrict themselves to
monthly feedback meetings with the front line. They spend much of
their time engaging with agents on the floor.
“You’ve got to get out there and let them know that you’re on the
team with them,” he says. “Most companies will say that they have an
open-door policy, but you can’t wait for your reps to come through
your open door. You have to meet them at their point of need. You
would be amazed at the positive reaction you get when you engage in
‘every rep, every day.’”
Agility Factor
Doing More with Less
Staffing and workflow strategies to help you smooth out the
downturns in your budget cycles. By Jay Minnucci, Service Agility
....page 2
still struggle with slow response time from our desktop systems,
but the problem is more prevalent than you might think. It often
can be fixed with a few upgrades, but no one is willing to spend
the money if they don’t know the payback. In all but the smallest
centers, shaving just a few seconds off handle time will more than
justify the purchase of the new equipment or software that will get
you lightning-fast response time. The sidebar below (“What Does
One Second of AHT Cost?”) shows you how to go about making
this case.
Workload Reductions
There is nothing wrong with the comprehensive approach to workload reductions, where call flows are mapped out and processes reengineered to be more efficient for both the company and the Customer.
This takes time, though, and we often do not have that luxury when a
budget crisis hits. Options with a smaller, but more immediate payback
include the following:
●
●
●
Low-value ACW. After-call work is a requirement in most Contact
Centres, but over time, it gets bloated with a lot of extraneous
documentation that offers no real value. If you have just entered
a code that identified the reason for the contact as “billing notice,”
why take another 15 seconds to type in “Customer called about
his billing notice… needed some clarifications… information was
provided to Customer’s satisfaction”? Redefine the procedure for
your staff, and you may be able to shave five or 10 seconds from
ACW with no drop in call quality.
Transfers. Most Contact Centres do not measure transfers, but
they should. A transfer is little more than wasted workload (not to
mention the satisfaction implications caused by making a Customer
repeat his or her needs to two or more associates). Reduce
transfers and you can reduce workload while improving Customer
satisfaction. The usual culprit of excessive transfers is a poorly
designed menu, so that is your starting point. Improvements in flow
and/or wording can often reduce transfers by 5% or more.
Computer response time. In this day and age, it seems crazy that we
XWhat
u
●
Self service. A complete redesign of voice and Web self service
could be in order, but that is another one of those large projects
that will not provide the immediate payback you need. Some fairly
simple tweaking to the current options is much more manageable
and may be nearly as rewarding. IVR systems can usually provide
reports showing how often Customers bounce out of each
application and require an agent’s help. You may find that some
of these bounce-outs have nothing to do with the Customer, but
are the result of changes to the environment (either to programs,
data files, products or services) that were not addressed in your IVR.
When the system encounters an “unknown,” it goes into default
mode, and that usually means a transfer to the agent.
Staffing Options
The mathematics of queuing dictate that the least expensive way to
meet a given service level is to meet it every interval of the day, rather
than masking periods of understaffing with like intervals of overstaffing. Sounds good in theory, but, once again, reality makes it difficult.
Does One Second of AHT Cost?
Knowing your cost per second of handle time can be enormously useful in meetings with your IT staff. While there are a few different ways to get to the number, I think
the most conservative way is the best approach. By conservative, I mean that you should not include any fixed costs in the calculation. Instead, focus only on agent
staffing costs — these are the ones that you can clearly point to as direct savings when handle time is reduced.
Using the conservative approach,
your calculation looks like this:
In a typical 100-seat center with a four-minute handle time,
this calculation for a week may look something like this:
Total agent cost (salary and benefits) for the given time period
100 agents x 40 hours x $15/hr = $60,000
Average handle time (in seconds) during the same time period
240 seconds
$250 per second
of average talk time per week
Multiply that number ($250) x 52 weeks a year, and you find that each second of average talk time costs $13,000 per year. So if slow response
time is adding five seconds to each call, the cost is $65,000 per year.
July 2010
7
Mastering the peaks and valleys of workload requires more flexibility in
scheduling than most centers can achieve. A few options that can typically have a quick impact in the center include the following:
●
●
●
Contingent staff. There are plenty of people in your operation who
are trained or who could easily be trained to handle calls or other
contact types. Some are in support areas in your center, such as
the training team or the QA group. One of our favorite staffing
strategies is to overload these roles to increase your contingent
staff. For example, if the amount of calls to monitor dictates that
you need three people in your QA team, consider putting six in
there and having them spend half the time on QA and half the
time on live calls. That would give you six people to add for phone
coverage during your busiest times, and all could be redeployed to
QA tasks during lulls.
Remote workers. Yes, there is an initial investment required for a
remote worker program. Yet with new technology, that investment
is getting smaller. And with experience, we are getting even better
benefits from these programs. We have learned, for instance, that
people working from home are much more open to working
short, split or odd-hour shifts. That can be a huge advantage when
trying to minimize staffing costs while still meeting service level
expectations.
Outsourcing. Plenty of organizations utilize outsourcers to meet
peak demand. It is a strategy that makes sense, since outsourcers
can smooth out their workload by pooling your resources with
other clients that have different calling patterns. With this strategy,
you can use internal staff for lower volume periods, ensuring
that your team is always productive. The outsourcer handles the
variability and the peak demand at a consistent and agreed-upon
rate. Not only could it be a more efficient way to meet service level,
but it may reduce average hourly costs if the outsourcer charges a
rate that is lower than your internal costs.
Support Staff
Saving money on support staff can be tempting, but be careful.
Sometimes cutting back on support staff can cause more problems than
cutting back on the front lines. A great example is your tier two support
or escalation desk. When times get busy, Contact Centre managers are
often tempted to use these resources to answer calls. But if a resource is
not available for a support question when an agent is in trouble on a call,
the results can be disastrous. Not only does quality suffer, but talk time
goes up as agents start walking around the center trying to find help.
Having said that, one place that you may be able to look is in the
staff-to-supervisor ratio. I visit many centers where the target is 12:1,
but due to turnover, the center usually runs at about 8:1 or 9:1. In other
words, there is often more supervisory staff on the payroll than what was
planned. If your turnover is 20% or more, you may want to set up your
teams so that they are slightly above your target ratio when your center
is fully staffed. This will normally keep you operating at or just slightly
under target, and can save some payroll dollars over the long term.
Out of Necessity Comes Creativity
Doing more with less is never a phrase that Contact Centre leaders
want to hear, but it does not have to be painful. Necessity is the mother
of invention, and some of the best staffing and workflow strategies
emerge when the pressure is greatest. Any one of the options addressed
here can help you to meet the challenge — and they may open the
door for even better solutions to appear.
How Much Workload Equals One FTE?
When I look at any kind of business case or cost justification, the most common mistake I see is the assumption that 40 hours
of workload per week equals one full-time equivalent (FTE). That simply is not the case. People get paid for 40 hours a week,
but they do not spend all of their paid time processing workload.
When you hire someone, you provide them with benefits such as paid holidays, paid vacation, and short- and long-term
disability plans. You also recognize that each person is an investment, so you spend some of that person’s time in training,
meetings, breaks and perhaps some special projects. In short, there is a lot of paid time that is not spent on contact handling.
When we do staffing models for our clients, we identify all of these requirements and group them into the three categories
below.
Category of Time
Typical Range (Percent of paid time)
Presence Factors (holidays, vacation, sick, etc.)
14% to 22%
Non-contact utilization (breaks, meetings, training, etc.)
Random factors (unaccounted for time, occupancy)
9% to 20%
10% to 18%
If you take the midpoints of the ranges above and add them together, you come up with 47%, which means that, on average,
only about 53% of paid time is spent actually processing the workload. Multiply 53% by 40 hours a week, and we find that an
FTE spends a little over 21 hours a week handling the workload. If your numbers are similar, and you are one of the many who
assumes that 40 hours of workload equals one FTE, then your business case arguments are identifying only about half of the
actual savings.
8
July 2010
Inside View
AT-AGLANCE
LOCATION(S):
Little Rock, Ark.; Spokane,
Wash.; Dallas; Amherst, N.Y.;
and Toronto
CONTACT CENTRE SIZE:
Approximately 500 full- and
part-time staff across sites
SECTOR:
Ally Bank
Banking
Online bank drives a better Customer experience through honesty,
openness and accessibility. By Susan Hash, Contact Centre Pipeline
OPERATING HOURS:
24x7
CHANNELS:
In the banking industry, consumers have begun
to look to the online experience as a key differentiator when deciding with whom they want to
do business. A recent report by Change Sciences
Group named Ally Bank as one of the top-ranking
financial services websites of 2010. The Web
research firm found that Ally Bank, although a
relative newcomer, has managed to surpass traditional top performers like Bank of America and
E*Trade by “maintaining a laser focus on helping
Customers get control of their personal finances.”
Ally Bank was launched in May 2009 to build on
the best practices of its parent company,
GMAC Financial Services.
Ally Bank’s website earned high marks
in the study for realistically reflecting the
bank’s service vision. Visitors to the website (www.ally.com) will notice a refreshing lack of “bank-ese” or industry jargon
that pervades most online banking sites. Dave
Instead, information is presented in an Vasquez
honest, uncomplicated manner that
portrays Ally’s friendly, relaxed service
culture.
Being committed to doing the right thing for
their Customers is the core of Ally Bank’s service
vision — and they drive that vision by being easy
to do business with, says Deposits Contact Centre
Executive Dave Vasquez. “We want to be true to
our Customers, and build an open, straightforward
relationship with them.”
That is evident on the website where the
Contact Centre’s toll-free number is visibly displayed on each page. Live agents are available
to Customers and prospects on the phone or
via chat around the clock. Although the call and
chat volume during the evening hours typically
only accounts for about 4% of the total volume,
Vasquez points out that the Customers who call
or connect via chat during those hours are very
passionate and appreciative of the availability of
live service reps. “We’re not just taking
a message,” he says. “We can have the
same conversation at 3 a.m. that we
can at 3 p.m.”
The Contact Centre is also very open
with Customers about call wait times
— in fact, the current call wait time is
prominently displayed on every page
of the website. Likewise, Customers
who opt for chat are informed up front
where they stand in the queue, as well
as the wait time to chat with an agent.
Forecasting for 24x7 Service
Ally Bank’s inbound volume is spread across five
Contact Centre sites, which are located across the
country to ensure protection against outages due
Phone, chat and email
VOLUME:
Approximately 180,000 to
200,000 contacts per month
(phone and chat)
TOP CHALLENGE:
“Aligning the needs of the Customers and the desire to differentiate ourselves in Customer
service with good planning
and effective forecasting. It’s
a balance to make sure that
we’re driving the right Customer
experience and right associate
experience with the appropriate
forecast plan.”
KEY STRENGTHS:
“Being very open, transparent and straightforward with
Customers. Our Customers
appreciate that and measure
us against their expectations
for it. Also, our accessibility —
our Customers can reach us,
regardless of channel, time of
day or day of week.”
July 2010
9
to severe weather or natural disasters that may
occur in one location.
The bank’s forecasting strategy is simple: To
make sure that enough people are available to
answer the phones, 24x7, to maintain a maximum wait time of about a minute. “Making
sure that people are available is an important
part of our brand,” Vasquez points out. “If a
Customer wants to touch Ally, they’re going to
have to pick up the phone since we don’t have
brick-and-mortar sites.”
While the Contact Centre staff generally are
dedicated to a particular channel (phone, chat
or email) to ensure the best possible Customer
experience, if Customers begin to queue for
longer than a minute, chat and email staff are
immediately pulled over to the phone channel
to ensure that callers can quickly connect to a
Customer advocate.
Currently, 80% to 85% of inbound contacts
are phone calls, although Vasquez says that
chat volume has been steadily growing each
month as Customers become more comfortable with the channel. Ally makes chat available in both the authenticated and unauthenticated parts of the website so that prospects
can use it for inquiries about the bank’s products and services, while current Customers
can access the channel through the secured
portion of the site to ask questions about
their accounts. In fact, that is where the channel is experiencing the most growth, Vasquez
says, with more Customers using chat to
transfer funds and conduct other accountspecific actions.
listen for clues as to how much time the
Customer has to spend on the interaction. Calls
are largely unscripted, except for certain legal
disclaimers and regulatory information specific
to the banking industry. Ally aims for a natural
conversation approach, so advocates are given
a few talking points and are encouraged to let
their personalities come through, he says. A key
focus is on demystifying banking jargon and
using terms in a simple conversational style.
While the traditional operational metrics like
average handle time, call arrival and talk time
are tracked, the metrics are mainly used to
ensure adequate staffing. The Customer advocates’ performance is not measured by operational metrics, such as AHT or number of calls
handled. Instead, they’re measured by quality
and Customer satisfaction scores, “which will
help us to drive the optimal Customer experience,” Vasquez says. “We use the group and
aggregate metrics directionally, but at the
advocate level, it’s all focused on the quality
and the Customer experience.”
360-Degree Feedback
Ally Bank’s frontline staff are referred to as
“Customer advocates” because that is their top
responsibility. Company leaders understand
the value of that role and make sure that people feel supported to drive the right Customer
experience. Ally’s various department heads
engage frontline staff on a regular basis, listening to calls and sharing their feedback with the
Contact Centre. “It’s invaluable,” Vasquez says.
“That helps us to understand the business
owner’s or product team’s perspective, and
what their expectations are. We support a lot
of different products in our lines of business,
and there are always new products — it’s not
a static environment. It’s a challenge to keep
the conduits of information flowing so that we
can ensure that associates are kept abreast of
all the change that’s going on.” Daily pre-shift
huddles help to share new information and
bring up any issues that the previous shift may
have noticed.
Company leaders view the voice of the frontline advocate akin to the voice of the Customer,
so each week they spend time with each
Contact Centre to conduct “voice of the associate listening,” says Vasquez.
“We want to hear what they’re hearing from
Customers — what’s working, what’s not and
points of pain,” he says. “We bring that feedback
to our product divisions to ensure that we’re
addressing any issues or points of confusion
that Customers may have by updating information on the website, posting a help icon, or
even fundamentally changing how parts of the
website operate.”
Importantly, center management reports
back to frontline staff how their feedback was
used. “We want our people to see that we’re
committed to continuous improvement, and
that we’re committed to making changes
based on things that they’re bringing forward,”
says Vasquez.
Focus on Solutions, Not AHT
Ally Bank’s service level goal is to answer
90% of calls within 30 seconds. Service level is
measured daily rather than weekly or monthly
because, as Vasquez points out, “Customers are
calling us daily, so we measure it daily — and
we’ve hit that number religiously since we
launched last year.”
Once Customers are on the line with a
Customer advocate, though, the focus turns
from speed to solutions. Vasquez calls it
a dialog strategy — “we try to make sure
that we can build trust and rapport with
each Customer, and that we’re meeting the
Customers’ needs,” he says. “We want to be
solutions-oriented.” To that end, Contact Centre
staff are empowered to spend as much time as
the Customer needs, and to take ownership of
the issue.
To do that, advocates are encouraged to
10
July 2010
Contact Centre
Association of Singapore
www.ccas.org.sg
Contact Center Pipeline
www.contactcenterpipeline.com
International Customer
Management Institute
www.icimi.com
Customer Relationship Management and Contact
Centre Association Malaysia
www.ccam.com.my
Great Brook
www.greatbrook.com
ServiceWinners International
Service Made Easy
Look - Think - Act
Service Techniques to Improve Customer Experience
By Daniel Ord, OmniTouch International
The Answer is easy...
In Singapore the Singapore Government takes the quality of Service
Delivery very seriously.
Nearly every day our newspapers, TV reports and magazines publish
the country’s worldwide ranking for the provision of Service as well as
providing significant rebates and programs for Training individuals in
Customer-facing roles.
As one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations, Singapore
has traditionally been known for its efficiency, cleanliness and its almost
miraculous growth from a 3rd world island location into a 1st world
nation that tops economic, transparency and innovation lists amongst all
nations in the world.
But Service remains a problem...
Ask nearly any Singaporean or Resident of Singapore about local
Service and the horror stories take up hours to share.
Essentially, we are talking about Service staff that totally forgot, or
perhaps never even knew, that their entire job-role revolves around
the Customer and not (as many Singaporeans will tell you) around the
process that contributes so well to our well deserved reputation for
efficiency.
Sometimes I call this “The Power of Process over Common Sense”. Let
me share some examples:
1.
The Waiter that spends their time resetting a dozen tables
before coming over to take your order – even though you are ready to
order and have only a certain amount of time available to enjoy your
meal.
2.
The Washroom Cleaner who pushes the mop in between your
legs when you are taking care of your natural body functions and the
moves on to mop between the next person’s legs.
3.
The Taxi or Bus Stand Cleaner that makes everyone stand up
and get off their seats in 330 Celsius weather so they can polish the aluminium posts and seats and move on to their next location (in calculated
order).
We all certainly understand that the provision of Quality Service varies
widely from one industry to another. Just consider – what you expect
from your dentist is very different than what you expect from your ATM
Machine.
So in this discussion we are going to focus on the routine, non-complex, day to day Service interactions that we all encounter such as:
•
•
•
A visit to a restaurant
A taxi ride
An experience inside the department store
Our proprietary service solution is called LTA or
Look...Think...Act.
How does Look...Think...Act work?
Look: The Waiter that is so busy setting the table that you could
practically walk on your hands around the restaurant while juggling balls
with your feet does not even notice you.
Why? Well, they have tables to set – that’s the process!
Look: The Department Store Greeter who sees that you are carrying
about 56 shopping bags but does not open the door for you (assuming
the old fashioned non-automatic door).
Why? Well they are supposed to smile and greet – that is the process!
The 56 shopping bags just means that you have the Singaporean
hobby of shopping given the hundreds of shopping malls and options
available.
Look: The Taxi Driver who, after you land at 4AM after an 18 hour
flight, waits while you struggle to pull your bags out of the boot (trunk)
of the taxi – all the while waiting for you to finish so that they can move
on to their next fare.
Why? Time to get more money – and they can’t get more money until
they can take off!
July 2010
11
Service Made Easy
Our Body Language
When I am travelling overseas, one of the ways I can always spot
a Singaporean or Resident (such as myself ) is through what I call
the “Orang-utan Move” (an Orang-utan being a rather adorable
monkey creature that features as a mascot at the Singapore Zoo).
This move involves pointing and waving both arms in the air (often
including violent bone cracking) until you manage to draw the attention
of someone that can help you (this precludes those other Customers
around you who simply question your sanity).
Even overseas, the Orang-utan move is so deeply engrained in our
minds that we can’t help ourselves.
It is often assumed that when the Service Staff does not ‘think’ that
they are not service oriented.
We disagree
Every Customer facing industry has the opportunity to help brainstorm, define, train and coach their staff as to what they can or should be
thinking about in order to make the Customer Experience special.
Just leaving it up to the individual is unfair – but building it into the
process and helping develop the individual is more than just fair – it creates Service mindsets.
We now have come to our 3rd and last step…ACT:
So Step 1 is easy – Look.
We’ve looked, we’ve considered what can and should be done and
then (well) we do something. We act.
Oftentimes doing nothing is the easiest option of all. In the same way
as saying ‘no’ is oftentimes easier than saying ‘yes’ simply because saying
‘yes’ may mean you have to do something.
But doing something that you have noticed and thought about in
advance will make you special. Some Customers may be effusive in their
thanks and appreciation – others may simply take it for granted and walk
on by – but they are the Customer – they do what they want for countless reasons.
You on the other hand are indeed special and no one can take that
away from you.
Let’s go to Step 2...Think
Think: Congratulations – now our Service Provider has looked but
that’s only the beginning.
So Step 3 is easy – Act.
By looking they are likely to have seen something – a Customer in
need or soon to be in need. That’s their job – think – what will that
Customer want or need either now or in the next few minutes? More
water in their glass? Help with their bags? A place to sit down and rest?
A map of the Shopping Centre?
So Step 2 is easy – Think.
In Conclusion
So Singapore – let’s not make it so complicated –
Look, Think and Act. And put us amongst the best in the world.
Note that the Author is an 11
year Resident of Singapore.
12
July 2010
Tech Line
Technology Bridges Organizational Silos
Contact Centre applications pave the way by connecting centers that were once isolated
to all parts of the enterprise. By Lori Bocklund and Maren Symonds, Strategic Contact
page 2
The business basis for operational integration across the enterprise has never been
stronger. Contact Centres have become strategic assets that are interdependent with their
corporate counterparts. As a Customer-facing
organization, their performance has a direct
bearing on Customer acquisition and retention. As a key element in the “supply chain,”
what they do — or don’t do — impacts the
efficiency and effectiveness of all other parts
of the business. The same can be said of other
groups, such as marketing, sales, product management, engineering, field operations, and
fulfillment or other back-office functions. The
bottom line: A stellar contact in one organizational domain won’t carry much weight if the
Customer’s end-to-end experience falls short.
Amid all this business opportunity, technology has become an impetus for operational
integration. Today’s technology includes solutions that enable rapid deployment of new
programs or capabilities, process optimization and cost savings in addition to quantum
improvements in Customer service. But this
technology only achieves its full measure of
value when organizations consider enterprise
opportunities and needs and institute processes that integrate Contact Centre operations
with the rest of the organization. Technology
is the much-needed catalyst and enabler for
building these long-awaited “bridges” between
the Contact Centre and the enterprise.
Taking an Enterprise View
of Technology
Several technologies on the Contact Centre’s
radar demand an enterprise view. Voice over
Internet protocol (VoIP) certainly heads the list.
It changes the core technology architecture
from a switch per site to a shared telephony
and applications infrastructure that is geographically independent. This evolution presents a huge opportunity for small and informal
centers to gain access to “bells and whistles”
that were previously beyond their purview.
It also creates the opportunity for other parts
of the business to lend a hand with Customer
interactions — for example, during peak traffic
periods, or as a second tier of support for the
most difficult and perhaps important contacts.
Unified communications builds on the VoIP
architecture by delivering a set of tools that
make it easy for people to work together,
across media, regardless of location. Agents
can use presence and instant messaging (IM)
to query their peers, their supervisors and/
or subject-matter experts to fulfill Customer
needs. They might use conferencing and collaboration tools to complete transactions,
guide Customers through Web-based activity or even demonstrate or display information via video. eLearning applications deliver
training and valuable product or service
information to the agent desktop. All of these
features contribute to elevated first-call resolution and Customer satisfaction while bolstering service rep competency and morale.
And they all potentially engage resources
beyond the Contact Centre.
A whole range of business process optimization (BPO) tools have “workflow” capabilities
that trigger process steps based on actions,
events or outcomes. For example, a service
rep could conclude a Customer contact with
a request for further action or follow up. A
communications-enabled business process
(CEBP) tool would move that task into the work
queue for the appropriate person or group and
provide reminders and tracking to ensure task
completion. While such tools certainly drive
efficiencies within a given organizational silo,
the larger gains accrue when organizations
carry the processes and the tools across the
entire enterprise.
The explosion in social media creates yet
another reason to tear down organizational
walls. In most companies, marketing seems
to have stepped to the fore to drive activity
and monitor what “fans” say about the company’s products and services. Yet the Contact
Centre is arguably the appropriate channel
to respond to specific comments or provide
opportunities for participants to engage with
the company by actually talking (or emailing or chatting or tweeting) with someone.
Clearly there’s a warrant for coordinating content and sharing responsibilities and results
across departmental lines.
New breeds of Contact Centre performance tools cross interdepartmental lines to
inform actions and decisions in other areas.
For example, speech analytics processes mass
quantities of voice recordings to extract useful
information about the content and emotional
character of interactions. When used in a
Contact Centre environment, it could generate hard data to convince marketing that
their messages confuse Customers, product
management that their product creates an
inordinate number of service calls, and training
that the reps are in fact not complying with all
the defined steps and statements. If no action
steps emanate from these revelations, there’s
limited value to the insights that technology
can provide. Other projects may emanate
either from the center or other departments —
data analytics or business intelligence efforts,
eLearning tools for a “corporate university” or
Voice of the Customer programs that take the
Customer’s pulse on any interaction with the
company. All of these efforts provide greater
value when looked at across the organization.
Contact Centres with ambitions in any of these
areas should start with a survey of what plans
or projects are underway elsewhere; too often,
the center is an afterthought in these important projects.
Customer relationship management (CRM)
and knowledge management (KM) are, by
July 2010
13
nature, enterprise plays. Both are rooted in
a Customer lifecycle, an information lifecycle
and a coordinated set of end-to-end processes.
Clearly, the contact center is not the only organization that interacts with customers and has
need for information on customers, products,
services, problem resolution, procedures, etc.
Likewise, contributors to, and users of, KM
systems vary widely and go far beyond the
contact center. They may even tie into social
media through Wikis. Interested parties need to
collaborate to design, build and populate tools
that leverage common information repositories
while meeting distinctive needs.
Even technology sourcing decisions have
taken on an enterprise character. It’s too expensive, complex and demanding — both in terms
of implementation and support — to duplicate
application environments across organizational
silos. The IT department is too overbooked and
too understaffed to countenance unnecessary
demands on its time, to say nothing of the
impact of isolated applications or data repositories on customers and the business. With a
new array of “cloud computing” (aka hosted or
SaaS) and managed services options, departments can join forces to find economical solutions to common issues without overburden-
funding sources create a barrier to crossdepartmental collaboration. Once you’ve tackled the
funding question, you also need to define the
Working Together to Build
total cost of ownership and the business case.
Make sure you consider resource requirements
Enterprise Solutions
for implementation and support, as this may
require multiple departments to ante up new
As you migrate toward enterprise-level tech- staff positions or roles and responsibilities to
nology implementations, you’ll need to build derive business value from the technology. The
bridges to your colleagues in other parts of the business case should be more compelling with
organization. Start by finding a mechanism to an enterprise view.
work collaboratively on the project at hand.
Before you entertain vendor meetings, take
Your IT group and/or project management the time as a team to architect your future
organization (PMO) may serve as the unifying working relationship and the organizational
agent. You may find a meeting ground for spe- and process elements that go with them. You
cific projects through other shared services that don’t need to “stop the presses” while you work
provide support, such as training or business through all of the details, but you should at
analysts. Or, you may decide that the organiza- least define clear high-level requirements, protion that has the most at stake or largest pro cess flows, and roles and responsibilities. This
rata investment should lead (own) the project exercise will help you to focus discussions with
and gather input from all other interested par- vendors on what you need, not what vendors
ties. You could bring in a third party to serve sell. The world is swimming in overbought
as champion of the enterprise view and/or technology that fails to deliver business value
mediator of competing perspectives.
and creates unnecessary support and stability
Equally important — you need to figure out issues. You don’t need to drown in technology
who the “buyer” will be. Will IT write the check? right out of the starting blocks.
Your enterprise-focused team will not be forA specific department? A combination of
departments? Don’t let the hurdles of multiple eign to vendors. They’re ready for you! Contact
center vendors have expanded their products
and services to support enterprise needs.
The Contact Centre and Enterprise Can Live in Harmony
They’ve seen the challenges and opportunities
If you think it’s impossible to achieve harmony in pursuing and applying technology effectively across the
enterprise, think again. Here are a few examples where we’ve seen companies reach new levels of business value that interdependency creates across a broad
range of companies. Enterprise vendors recby taking a broader view than just their Contact Centre.
ognize the strategic importance of the contact
A financial institution tackled a speech analytics project as a joint effort by marketing, the Contact Centre, and
center and have developed specialized capaproduct owners. All teams were part of the requirements and evaluation, and then provided resources to apply
the technology. The Contact Centre led the way in the project throughout, but knew that the ultimate success of bilities to meet their needs. The boundaries
between voice and data are gone. Traditional
this high powered technology relied on engagement of their peers in other areas.
voice vendors offer robust applications (e.g.,
In developing their VoIP strategy, the IT department of a travel company served as the catalyst to bring people
multimedia, BPO, mini CRM) and data/applicatogether from the various centers (reservations, reward programs, etc.) and other parts of the organization
tion vendors a la Cisco, IBM and Microsoft have
that might leverage some of the capabilities of their improved voice platform and associated applications. The
moved into multimedia communication with
previous environment of a switch per location changed dramatically as all operations migrated to a shared
out-of-the-box applications that can be enterinfrastructure. The smaller centers and informal centers now had the quality monitoring and screen pops they
prise focused but meet contact center needs.
had always wanted. The business case was more compelling by looking at the value across many sites and
departments.
So with all these blurred boundaries, your
Knowledge management (KM) has arguably some of its strongest opportunities in manufacturing and highteam
will get to decide: Do we find a specialty
technology environments. One company used that opportunity to look across their enterprise at all the groups
application
for the contact center and extend it
creating, maintaining and using large volumes of parts books, equipment manuals, repair guides and other
to the enterprise? Or do we find an enterprise
“knowledge” that resided in heads, stickie notes and cheat sheets. The project grew out of a transformational
application that does a good job in meeting
Contact Centre initiative, but had wide-ranging impact as they saw how many resources — or keepers of
knowledge — the centers depended on that were outside the centers. These other groups quickly became a
contact center-specific needs? Can we have it
critical part of the project and important knowledge contributors. Today, the Contact Centre, engineers, sales and all? Possibly, but the team should focus on findmarketing, and other subject-matter experts use the KM solution.
ing the solution that meets the most common
An insurance company sought a hosted service to deliver their Voice of the Customer (VOC) capabilities. A project and important needs (80/20 rule) rather than
spiraling into an endless search for the perfect
that started with a focus on the Contact Centre quickly moved into branch offices, as well. The opportunity to
capture Customer perspectives on all interactions continues to offer additional opportunities to gather and
solution.
analyze important Customer insights. A dedicated group with the VOC role brings the various departments
page 22
together to ensure an enterprise view of the Customer experience.
14
July 2010
ing the IT department, and glean the results of
those applications relatively quickly.
Tips from Rosaline
Is there a ‘standard’ Mystery Shopper
Service Quotation?
Rosaline Oh,
Omnitouch International
Director, Client Service, OmniTouch International,
Column by Rosaline Oh
As the Director of Client Services, it is extremely common to receive very brief requests from potential Clients asking for our ‘standard’ Mystery Shopper Program pricing and/or quotation.
We fully understand that for many of these people, it may be their first time looking to conduct a Mystery Shopper Program or realizing that the best practice is to outsource Mystery Shopper Programs to a professional provider.
At the same time, the fact is that there is no ‘standard’ budget or quotation for a Mystery Shopper Program. So the question is – why
not?
Mystery Shopper Programs involve many Factors
There are so many factors that impact Mystery Shopper Program budgets that without working through some of the most
critical factors, even if they involve assumptions, it is risky to ‘throw numbers’ to create a Quotation.
So what do I need to provide and/or discuss to get a realistic Mystery Shopper Program Quotation?
The list below represents some of the key factors to consider and discuss so that the Mystery Shopper Provider can provide
your Organization with a realistic Budget or Quotation.
On top of that, working through these key factors allows the truly professional Mystery Shopper Provider an opportunity to
talk about ideas and recommendations for the Program right at the outset.
•
What is the objective of the Mystery Shopper Program?
In other words, what does the Organization want to learn as a result of the research? We typically ask our Clients
(and assist of course) to write a 1 – 3 sentence Statement of Purpose for the Mystery Shopper Program(s).
•
How frequently do you want the Mystery Shopper Program to be conducted?
Monthly, Quarterly, Bi-annually or other time frames? Again, if you are not sure, we can help – but it is perfectly ok to
make an assumption at the outset to get a realistic Budget or Quotation.
•
Is this Mystery Shopper Program geared to Prospective Customers or Existing Customers or both?
(regardless of whether you are considering Business to Consumer or Business to Business Customers)
•
What kind of scenarios are you considering for the
Mystery Shoppers to execute in their fieldwork?
For example: The Mystery Shopper has to purchase a mobile
phone, then enquire on the value added services and then
pretend that their new mobile phone is not working. This
scenario involves (3) different actions and each Touchpoint
may have its own ‘script’ or approach.
July 2010
15
Tips from Rosaline
Scenarios serve a critical purpose – they allow the Organization and its Employees the opportunity to demonstrate the specific
behaviours or actions that are under review. In addition, additional information can be ‘picked up’ that was not even initially
planned in the Program – we call this the Magic 20% and it adds real value to the Research findings.
•
What channels/Touchpoints are you considering for the Program?
For example: The Mystery Shopper has to visit an outlet to purchase a mobile phone, then they call in to the Call
Centre to enquire about value added services and then they email to ask about additional promotions for their friends
and/or family. So you can determine what Touchpoints are important for your Program.
•
What are the attributes or key performance indicators (KPIs) that you want to examine for the various
Touchpoints?
Each Touchpoint likely has its own processes and behaviours designed to be in place to create a great Customer
experience.
In conclusion, we hope that it is clear as to why there is not a standard for providing a Mystery Shopper Budget or Quotation. In fact
you should not want a standard in any case.
Your Mystery Shopper Program should be designed and planned around what you and your Organization want to learn. And that
will make your Program much more valuable and actionable and (for many Clients) allow for improvements in processes, training,
coaching to enhance the Customer Experience and ensure Organizational requirements are actually ‘happening’.
Rosaline has more than 10 years of experience in planning,
executing and analyzing Mystery Shopper Programs for
Clients locally, regionally and globally.
That’s all for this month, look out for my tips column in
August!
Subscribe now....
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Centre and Customer Care.
OmniTouch International is a global Team of professionals sharing their long-standing experience and expertise in driving successful Contact Centre directions and decisions and includes such leaders as Daniel Ord, Albert Khoo, Rosaline Oh,
Sarumathi, Linda Harden, Susan Hash, Jay Minucci, Lori Bocklund, Fred van Bennekom and many more.
The Advisory Board, Editor, writers and contributors are known for their unique understanding of what makes the Contact
Centre the organization’s driving force for attracting and retaining Customers and Employees, and ensuring long-term
Organizational success.
Options of subscription:
Marcus von Kloeden is Editor of
the OmniTouch Journal
editor@omnitouchinternational.com
(+65) 6324 4844
16
July 2010
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Hard copy (12 months) available soon
To subscribe for the soft copy, please log on to
www.omnitouchinternational.com and click on the
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Thank you.
Management ROI
The Lean & Mean Contact Centre:
Reactive Cost Reduction
Reactive cost-cutting measures that ignore the Contact Centre cost
hierarchy rarely achieve their intended financial results.
Most
contact
Centres have experienced a budget
cut. Budget cuts can
take different forms,
including denial
of a request for a
budget increase or,
a reduction of next
Martin Prunty
year’s budget, or an
Contact Centre
outright reduction
Professionals
of the current budget. Each option has an impact since, in most
cases, they require the contact Centre to “do
more with less.”
In periods of economic decline, there is a
greater likelihood that a contact Centre will
experience an actual budget cut that reduces
the funds available from the previous year.
Unfortunately, the impact of arbitrary budget
cuts is not always fully understood by management until its impact is actually experienced.
There are two approaches to cost reduction.
The first, known as the Reactive Cost Reduction
Method, is described in this article. The second, called the Proactive Cost Reduction
Method, will be addressed in the next article
in this series, which will be published in the
September issue.
When a decision is made to cut contact
Centre budgets, it often takes the form of a
directive to cut budgets by “X%.” In theory,
management assumes that a 10% across-theboard staff reduction will result in a predictable,
equivalent reduction in the overall budget.
Unfortunately, when other factors are considered, many cost-cutting measures do not
achieve their intended result.
Arbitrary Staff Cuts
An arbitrary reduction in staff can have a
devastating impact upon the contact Centre
if it is done without considering other factors.
In most cases, the budget-motivated staff cut
will rarely achieve its expected financial benefit. One key reason why it fails is that it ignores
the contact Centre cost hierarchy, which was
described in the April issue. Let’s take another
look at it.
As Figure 1 illustrates, the primary force driving contact Centre costs is Customer demand.
The number of transactions (and the time
it takes to handle them) is a product of this
demand. It therefore must be used to determine the number of labor and technology
resources required to respond. These labor and
technology resources in turn dictate the levels
Financial and Performance Model
Setting aside the cascading list of problems
that can result from an arbitrary staff cut; let’s
take a look at the financial and performance
implications of this approach. To do so, a model
has been prepared that compares three different scenarios.
1. Scenario 1 calculates the approximate
Figure 1: Contact Centre Cost Hierarchy
Reactive Cost Reduction Methods
and Consequences
Put yourself in the place of senior management for a moment. When revenues drop, it
becomes necessary to cut expenses in a way
that helps preserve profits, cash flow and the
viability of the business. When it becomes
necessary to cut costs, a review of budget line
items typically occurs as management searches
for opportunities for trim costs. Unfortunately,
the contact Centre, which is both costly and
labor-intensive, often finds itself in the crosshairs.
of management and support that are required.
Cutting staff to reduce contact Centre budgets without considering Customer demand is
a little like reducing the size of the fire department to cut costs during wildfire season. An
arbitrary staff cut ignores the relationship
between Customer demand and costs, and can
result in a cascading series of problems that
take a bad circumstance and make it worse.
Figure 2 represents the typical result of an arbitrary staff cut when Customer demand is not
considered.
As the illustration suggests, a staff reduction
can trigger a sequence of events that cause
service quality to take a steep, downward spiral. What may have appeared to be a logical
decision intended to cut budgets can easily
become a “perfect storm” that results in a contact Centre melt-down.
CUSTOMER VISION AND STRATEGY
Management
& Support
Live Agent
Transactions
Labor
Resources
Customer
Demand
Operations
Self-Service
Transactions
Technology
Resources
Technology
& Processes
July 2010
17
While this addition is relatively minor, any
increase in handle time results in demand
for more staff.
Figure 2: Impact of Arbitrary Staff Cuts
●
●
half-hour costs of a Contact Centre that is properly staffed without a staff reduction. This scenario serves as a baseline for this comparison.
2. Scenario 2 uses the same call volumes and
costs as Scenario 1, but reduces staff by 5%.
Since a staff reduction will increase the average time a caller spends in queue, Scenario
2 assumes that 10% of callers will complain
about the longer wait once they are answered,
adding 30 additional seconds to those calls.
Average handle time of all calls increases from
240 seconds to 243 seconds as a result.
3. Scenario 3 assumes a 10% staff reduction using the same variables. Since average
wait times increase substantially in this scenario, 25% of callers are assumed to complain.
Average handle-time of calls in this case
increases from 240 to 248 seconds.
Centre for 30-minute period.
●
●
●
●
Assumptions
The assumptions shown in Table 1, on page
20, describe the data used in the financial
model for each of the three scenarios.
Financial/Performance
Model Results
SCENARIO 1
The first scenario calculates the cost and performance results of a properly staffed Contact
Average speed of answer is 11 seconds,
which is very acceptable to callers under
most circumstances.
Agent occupancy rate, which measures
the efficiency of the agent group and its
pace of work, is a manageable 85.5%.
During this half-hour period, each agent
handles an average of 6.4 calls with 41
seconds of idle time between calls.
●
●
●
●
●
●
Service level objective has dropped from
84.2% to 63.6%, an indicator that a higher
number of callers are placed in queue.
Average speed of answer has increased
from 11 seconds to 35 seconds. With
fewer agents available to answer calls,
callers must wait for longer periods before
being answered. As ASA rises, the cost
of toll-free service increases from $28.53
for this period to $36.31 for this half-hour
period.
As ASA increases, we have assumed
that 10% of callers complain, adding
30 seconds to the handle time of each
complaint. This results in a higher overall
average handle time of 243 seconds.
Considering network and labor costs,
Scenario 2 results in an estimated savings
of 3.2%, below the expected 5% savings
expected.
SCENARIO 3
With a 10% reduction in staff, a “worst-case”
scenario begins to unfold.
Using the variable “Abandon Threshold” of
180 seconds, which assumes that callers
will abandon if queue times exceed this
threshold, only one caller abandons in this
scenario.
SCENARIO 2
With a 5% reduction in staff, deterioration in
the overall performance can be seen as follows:
●
Using the Erlang C staffing formula and the
assumptions previously defined, the cost comparison in Table 2, on page 20, illustrates the
impact of staff cuts of 5% and 10% in comparison to a properly staffed Contact Centre for a
30-minute period.
The comparison of the three scenarios
makes a powerful statement about the impact
of an arbitrary staff reduction, which are summarized as follows:
Service level achieved is 84.2%, which
is slightly higher than the actual service
level target of 80% in 20 seconds.
Agent occupancy rate has climbed
to 91.1%. In this half-hour scenario,
each agent handles an average of 6.74
calls with 23.7 seconds of idle time
between calls. In cases where occupancy
rate is consistently higher than 90%,
agent morale can experience some
deterioration.
●
●
Service level objective now drops from
84.2% to 17.1%, resulting in far more
callers being placed in queue for longer
periods.
Average speed of answer has increased
from 11 seconds to 331 seconds (over 5
1/2 minutes), which is very unacceptable
to most callers. As a result of longer queue
times, the total network cost per half-hour
rises to $145.44 in comparison to $28.53
for a properly-staffed Contact Centre.
Since there are fewer agents available, the
wait time increases resulting in a higher
percentage of callers who complain. In
this case, we assume 25% of callers will
complain about the longer queue times,
resulting in an increase in overall average
handle time from 240 seconds to 248
seconds. Once again, longer handle times
result in demand for additional staff.
54% of callers abandon. Since a
percentage of callers who abandon
will try again, the total number of calls
received is actually higher than the
number of “first-time” callers.
Agent occupancy rate climbs to 98.1%.
In this circumstance, agents are required
to handle an average of 7.4 calls each,
averaging only 4.8 seconds of idle time
between calls. In actual cases where
insufficient idle time exists, agents
respond by giving themselves “breather
time,” placing callers on hold, increasing
after-call work, and using other methods.
Ironically, Scenario 3 turns out to be the
most expensive option, costing 13.9%
more than a properly staffed Centre.
page 22
18
July 2010
Forecast Focus
Stop Getting Bullied
By Your WFM Software
Not getting the results you expected from your WFM software?
Here’s how to stand up and take control of your forecasts.
If your Contact
Centre uses workforce management
software, chances
are you were told
optimistic tales
about a high ROI.
But the stories may
have left out a few
Tiffany LaReau
pieces of informaHuman Numbers
tion that are key to
WFM success —
like the large amount of infrastructure that is
needed to support the system, the collaboration of efforts from different business units
needed to identify proper assumption sets to
enter, and the lack of flexibility in forecasting
algorithms that are available to the forecaster.
The truth is, WFM applications can be complex
and time-consuming to use, the forecasting
methodology is not open-source code for the
forecaster to manage, and the software forces
the users to work around a pre-programmed
rule set.
There are often other pitfalls, too. Your
software may be stubborn about the interval
span that it allows (e.g., everything has to be in
30-minute increments). The way it collects raw
data from your phone switch contributes to
poor data mining habits; some software automates this process completely, preventing the
user from normalizing aberrant data with outliers. It doesn’t always provide an easy path to
document disaster recovery or special events
from the interchangeable forecast types, so
capturing and documenting anomalies must
happen outside the system. Some software
always try to use the most recent handle time,
which robs the forecasts from handle time
seasonality. It is hard to develop and track newhire AHT curves, especially when you have
to consider the class size, the timing of the
impact, and any other special events that are
happening at the same time.
Combine Automated with Manual
Methods for Consistency
It’s my opinion that the most rigid and
harmful rule in WFM software is the single
forecasting methodology. Most vendors
use time-series forecasting, which is great
if: 1) You have more than 24 months of data;
2) your call groups are very stable (meaning, they are not reassigned to represent
different groups of Customers); and 3)
your volumes have static, simple drivers.
I’m a fan of time-series calculations. It’s typically my first choice in building a forecast, but
I can’t remember a single instance in which
time-series alone was able to produce a satisfactory forecast. It always requires a combination of time-series plus some sort of regression,
some factor of adjustment (with a specific
start/stop range), some artfully applied measurement provided by someone in marketing,
and then whatever the current seasonality happens to be, based on the economic climate.
This combination has to be carefully balanced
on an ongoing basis: New elements to the
forecasting dynamic are introduced and then
removed, and this doesn’t happen in a neat,
sequential way.
A more responsible approach to forecasting
is to start with the solid statistical forecast with
normal intelligent assumptions, then pile on
marketing and events, the results from internal and external collaboration, and finish it off
with some sort of reconciliation process. This
method will give you much more consistent
(and actionable) forecasting results. It’s always
a fun exercise to generate a forecast manually
and compare my results against the machine,
just like John Henry.
Yet WFM vendors always like to say, “You
can’t create a good forecast using a tool like
Excel. You need OUR product to do a good job
with that.” I was at the Forecast Focus conference in Las Vegas in March (no WFM vendors
present there), and it was interesting to hear
that the majority of the members present also
liked to use Excel to forecast. Some had addins and macros built in (like the ones I use),
but still the forecasting methodology was very
advanced and well articulated. Also, the methodology focused heavily on the forecasting
results — were the results accurate or wrong,
and if wrong, which tools were used to identify
it as quickly and correct it going forward —
another feature that is lacking in WFM toolsets.
Be Aware of Software Limitations
The evolution of WFM software has finally
resulted in a compromised version that allows
the end-user to manually enter, or even import,
better choices for historical data sets, handle
times and forecasts than what the system
can produce on its own. The value in using
imported data for forecasts is that you can
use your own expertly created forecasts, and
still make the WFM application perform the
mind-numbing tasks of breaking down daily
data into interval-level patterns, generating
schedules, managing intraday tracking and
employee schedule exception databases. For
these purposes, WFM software is perfectly
suited, regardless of the Contact Centre size. It’s
really just a matter of understanding the software’s limitations.
The main limitation is that the systems
do not check for reasonability in the same
intuitive way a person can. Automating the
forecast eliminates the reasonability check.
For example, I once ran a system-generated
forecast using WFM software for a two-year
period on a group that was experiencing a
sharp decline in volumes. By the 15th month
July 2010
19
Combining a good infrastructure that supports intelligent data
cleaning with an experienced team to interpret the data is
critical to creating good forecasts.
in the forecast, the system had decided my
group would be receiving zero calls. In the
16th month, it expected my group to receive
a negative number of calls. To make matters worse, the budgetary reports that the
system produced turned the costs associated with these months into profit numbers.
These over-simplified WFM system algorithms
can’t get the job done in multi-generation
caller groups. As new events get rolled in, there
could be a lagged reaction, and it’s necessary
to adjust the right amount of trend, diffusing some, and curve-fitting others. The WFM
application may not know when to apply
each, but a forecasting expert will have an
idea. Removing the event is just as important;
it doesn’t just suddenly stop, it needs careful
handling to ramp down properly. Once the
model is stable, a simple forecasting approach
may work, but when there is a lot of volatility
affecting the quantities, a more mature model
is needed.
What to Consider Before You Buy
If you’re in the market for WFM software, the
following are two suggestions for you to
consider before you buy:
Use a WFM request for proposal
(RFP) questionnaire with multiple vendors.
The questionnaire should be developed with
the highest weightings given to your most
critical priorities (anything that you cannot live
without). For example, if you are an outbound/
inbound blended center, you should consider
outbound functionality as a PASS/FAIL category
on the questionnaire, not just a very highly
weighted section.
Have vendors participate in a
“Forecasting/Scheduling Taste Test.”
Supply each vendor with an identical raw
data set of your data to use in their demo. This
The Global Service Index
will give you an idea of the kind of workload
tasks you have to look forward to if you select
them to be your vendor. If their forecast results
are too generalized, you’ll have an idea of the
additional effort you’ll have to put in outside
of the application. Take a peek at the sample
schedules to see if they are schedules that your
agents are willing to work. Comparing one
vendor’s results against the rest will make it
easier to select a winner.
Once you purchase the software, you’ll need
to visualize what you expect it to produce,
and then be responsible for getting all the
knobs and dials tuned to the right setting. This
requires running your data through a series of
tests until it performs in an acceptable way.
There is no artificial intelligence in WFM software — it will only do what you tell it to do.
You will also need to take on some of the
burden of keeping the vendor/client relationship in a happy state. When they ask for your
feedback, give them your fully concentrated
effort. Join user groups, and stay up to date
on WFM topics. Also, attending vendor user
conferences is a great way to get fresh training,
stay up to speed on upgrades, and network
with people who have similar challenges.
It is important to note that public presentations and issuances of GSI results do not include the names of the companies
included in the study.
However, if your company is interested to ‘opt–in’ to the GSI study
and gain a personalized and detailed report of findings for your
company as compared to others in the study, please email us at
contactus@omnitouchinternational.com for more information.
GSI results are made available on the following basis:
From programs that span the world to evaluating service in the shop down the road, OmniTouch has mastered
the art and science of Mystery Shopper design, delivery
and assessment.
The Global Service Index (GSI) is a Mystery Shopper based
assessment of Contact Centre service practices across selected
countries including Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Singoaporek the U.K. and the U.S. with more countries being
added on an ongoing basis.
Published regularly in ICMI’s Customer Management Insight
newsletter, GSI rotates its focus across specific vertical industries
to uncover differences in service trends across countries as well
as differences in company performance within each country.
• To obtain copies of the Sector Snapshot articles that
are published
• If you are a conference organizer that is interested to
have us present GSI findings at your event
• If you are interested in the overall results or findings
from an industry or governmental perspective, please
email your request.
There is no charge for these articles and we do request the
name, designation, email address and company name and
location to forward this information.
.....www.omnitouchinternational.com for more....
20
July 2010
Leading Thoughts
Just because you can measure it, doesn’t mean you should. Just because
you ought to measure it, doesn’t mean that you can — at least not easily.
KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS:
Are You Measuring the Right Things?
Focus on the KPIs that meet the most powerful needs of your key
stakeholders. A look at nine metrics that contribute to company success.
Contact Centres
are the most measured and analyzed
operations in many
organizations. We
have systems that
turn out an array of
Maggie Klenke
data and a wealth
The Contact Center
of statistics. We
School
benchmark our
operations against
other Contact Centres to see if we are measuring up. But there is an old axiom that says, “Just
because you can measure it, doesn’t mean
you should.” The corollary of that is also true,
“Just because you ought to measure it, doesn’t
mean that you can — at least not easily.”
In determining the metrics that would provide the most useful information, we need to
think about who our stakeholders are: They
are the Customers/callers, the management
and the staff. Each has a perspective on what
is important, and some of them will be in conflict. Let’s take a look at the top three issues for
each of these groups.
Customer KPIs
BE THERE WHEN I WANT YOU
This is focused on having hours of operation that make the center available when
the Customer chooses to call. Some centers
need to be open 24x7, while others do not.
Measuring the demand before and after hours
and during the first and last hours of the day
can reveal changes needed to your operating hours. Being there also means having the
agents with the right skills in place to meet the
needs of the callers. For example, there might
be more demand for technical support in the
evenings and more billing questions during
the day. It also means offering self-service
options that Customers will find useful so they
can be accessed at any time. Finally, there is the
need to answer the call in a reasonable time
frame.
For most Contact Centre operations, speed
of answer is the driving statistic. Whether it is
service level (X% of calls answered in Y seconds) or the average speed of answer (ASA), it
is the statistic that focuses the organization on
getting the right number of people in the right
place at the right time to meet the Customer
demand. But is speed of answer the most
important factor to Customer satisfaction or to
the company’s success, or is it simply because
it’s easy to measure and “we’ve always done it
this way”? Sure, Customers don’t like to wait,
but when asked to identify the things they
would like to see improved, 74% said they
wanted easier and more convenient service
and 67% asked for a more knowledgeable representative (Accenture 2009 Global Consumer
Satisfaction Report).
What Customers seem to really want is quick
resolution of their problem. Answering the
phone is only the beginning of that process. It
is more important to set callers’ expectations
with consistent wait times, rather than providing very fast service some of the time, slow
service another time, but “on average” making
the goal. We see a movement in the industry
to measure consistency of service delivery as a
result. Metrics like 80% of calls answered within
30 seconds in 85% of the half-hours are beginning to appear.
SOLVE MY PROBLEM IN ONE CONTACT
What many Customers want is fast resolution of their problem and no ongoing hassles.
Sure a quick answer is nice, but the real issue
is, did we make the problem go away? We
typically refer to this as first-call resolution
(FCR) or “one and done.” The challenge is that it
is not easy to measure and there is no standard
formula that works for different companies or
even different call types in the same center. It
is interesting to see studies that look for the
root cause of failure to complete in one contact. Some show that about 17% of the issues
are Customer problems (e.g., didn’t have all the
information when the first call was made), 37%
are organizational issues (i.e., poor communication, broken processes or procedures), and
44% are caused by the representative. We only
make the experience worse when there are
different numbers to call, complex IVR menus
and call transfers.
Some would suggest that the best way to
achieve FCR is to ensure that reps are fully
trained, have solid reference tools available,
and have flexibility in their responses to
Customers (perhaps with real-time guidance
on desktop screens offering multiple explanations or solutions). A clear and believable
explanation is the key to Customer acceptance, so we need to equip reps with the tools
to make that happen.
Measuring FCR gives us some important
information, but only if we take it to the level
of root-cause analysis. We need to know if the
failure was unavoidable, reveals a process that
is not working properly, or the rep just didn’t
handle it well. Then we can focus our energy
on the right fix.
TREAT ME AS A VALUED CUSTOMER
When Customers feel valued, they tend to
respond positively. We need to do more than
tell them we value them, we need to act that
way, as well. One way that we can do that is to
truly listen to them and use their feedback to
improve the company processes, products and
services. Contact Centre reps will talk to more
Customers in a day than most employees will
July 2010
21
page 13
Technology Bridges
Organizational Siloes
nature, enterprise plays. Both are rooted in a
Customer lifecycle, an information lifecycle
and a coordinated set of end-to-end processes.
Clearly, the Contact Centre is not the only organization that interacts with Customers and has
need for information on Customers, products,
services, problem resolution, procedures, etc.
Likewise, contributors to, and users of, KM
systems vary widely and go far beyond the
Contact Centre. They may even tie into social
media through Wikis. Interested parties need to
collaborate to design, build and populate tools
that leverage common information repositories
while meeting distinctive needs.
Even technology sourcing decisions have
taken on an enterprise character. It’s too
expensive, complex and demanding — both
in terms of implementation and support —
to duplicate application environments across
organizational silos. The IT department is too
overbooked and too understaffed to counte-
page 17
The Lean & Mean Contact Centre:
Reactive Cost Reduction
How Come There Aren’t
Greater Savings?
Why don’t Scenarios 2 and 3 result in
greater cost savings? There’s a simple reason in this example. Since all three scenarios use toll-free service, average speed
of answer, or the average time callers
spend in queue, must be considered. As
average speed of answer rises, network
costs increase since it doesn’t matter if a
caller is speaking with an agent or waiting on hold. When comparing Scenarios
1 and 3, half-hour network costs increase
almost $117 as a direct result of increased
ASA, eliminating all possible savings.
Table 1: Staff Reduction Model Assumptions
Summary of the
Reactive Cost Reduction
Method
Assumptions
The arbitrary staff cut is only one reactive method of cost reduction. Others,
such as arbitrary outsourcing, can have
a similar impact. The important point
to remember about any reactive cost
reduction method is if it circumvents
the Contact Centre cost hierarchy, where
Customer demand drives resource
requirements, it is not likely to achieve
its intended results. When resources
are reduced in deference to Customer
demand, the expected cost savings are
not often achieved. In some cases, such
as Scenario 3, costs can actually increase.
While one can debate the financial merits of reactive cost reduction measures,
there is little dispute regarding the
impact they can have upon Customer
and employee satisfaction.
Editor’s note: This article, the second of a three-part series, is an excerpt from Martin Prunty’s
upcoming book, The Lean & Mean Contact Centre: How to Trim Your Budget without Starving
Service Quality. Part 1, Understanding Contact Centre Costs, appeared in the April 2010 issue.
Part 3, which will be published in September, will describe the proactive approach to cost
reduction.
1
Service Level Percent
80%
2
Service Level Seconds
20
3
Call Volume (Half-Hour)
250
4
Average Talk-Time (secs.)
210
5
Average After-Call Work (secs.)
30
6
Average Handle Time (secs.)
240
7
Average Length of Complaint (secs.)
30
8
Complaint % Threshold 1
10%
9
Complaint % Threshold 2
25%
10
AHT Adjust Level 1
243
11
AHT Adjust Level 2
248
12
Abandon Threshold
180
13
Retry Rate
50%
14
Average Agent Hourly Rate
$18.00
15
Average Supervisor Hourly Rate
$22.00
16
Ratio of Agents to Supervisors
12
17
Benefit Cost %
22%
18
Adjusted Hourly Agent Cost with Benefits
$24.20
19
Network Cost/Minute
$0.025
20
Network Cost/Hour
$1.50
Offered Calls
Abandoned Calls
Retries
Carried Calls
Avg. Handle Time
Agents Staffed
Avg. Speed of Answer
Actual Service Level
Occupancy Rate
Labor Cost (1/2 hr.)
Network Cost (1/2 hr.)
Total Half-Hour Cost
% Savings
Table 2: Staff Reduction Scenarios Cost Comparison
Scenario 1: No Reduction in Staff
250
1
0
250
240
39
11
84.2%
85.5%
$471.84
$28.53
$500.36
0.0%
Scenario 2: 5% Staff Reduction
250
10
5
245
243
37
35
63.6%
91.1%
$448.24
$36.31
$484.56
3.2%
Scenario 3: 10% Staff Reduction
250
136
68
182
248
35
331
17.1%
98.1%
$424.65 $145.44 $570.10
Arbitrary Staff Reduction
22
July 2010
-13.9%
all year, so we need to gather that input and
use it effectively. Are they telling us a process
is broken, a form is confusing, the competitor
has a feature that we are missing? We need to
gather that information in sufficient detail and
pass it to the departments that can act on it.
For example, one financial institution started
gathering and analyzing Customer input and
found that a significant number of calls were
complaints about a fee that was charged.
Further analysis revealed that the cost to
handle the complaints exceeded the total
revenue from the fee, not including the angry
Customers who took their business elsewhere,
so the fee was discontinued.
Management KPIs
RETAIN AND GROW CUSTOMERS
Management is putting more and more
pressure on the Contact Centre to increase
revenue. Retention of Customers is fine, but
increasing “wallet share,” selling add-ons and
renewing contracts will accrue directly to the
bottom line. Who better than the rep who has
just solved a Customer’s problem to sell them
on that next item? While people hired for service jobs may not embrace it with open arms
at first, there is no resisting the need for the
Contact Centre to generate revenue. Making
the transition from service to sales is not
optional anymore. Measuring conversion rates,
percent of calls with an add-on sale, and sales
revenue per call or minute may be important
metrics to consider.
RETAIN AND GROW EMPLOYEES
Perhaps the most important statistic in this
area is turnover rate. It is important to analyze
this to a finer level of details than we typically
see done. The total for the center is useful, but
what about by call type, shift worked, supervisor team, tenure and even performance level?
If you are losing your best performers, it is a lot
more painful than losing those at the bottom.
If one supervisor seems to stand out by either
never losing anyone or having trouble holding
on to anyone, some coaching or rewards may
be appropriate.
Performing an employee satisfaction survey
from time to time is also valuable, but only if
you put the feedback into action. Don’t wait
for exit interviews to find out why people
leave — ask the ones still on the job why they
are staying!
TOP ISSUES FOR YOUR
KEY STAKEHOLDERS
Customers
– Be there when I want you
– Solve my problem in one contact
– Treat me as a valued Customer
Management
– Retain and grow Customers
– Retain and grow employees
– Maximize profitability
Frontline Staff
– Work when I want
– Fair treatment
– Opportunities
MAXIMIZE PROFITABILITY
Profitability has two primary components
— revenue and cost. In the Contact Centre,
our primary resource is people and it is also the
majority of cost. Understanding staff shrinkage,
occupancy levels, scheduling efficiency and
self-service utilization will help to focus energy
on the cost issues. An overall statistic to track
is the cost per call or contact. While there is
no one right way to calculate it, consistency
in what is included from month to month, site
to site, and operationally will provide a better
view of the trends. Comparing your operation
to another Contact Centre is futile since what is
included may differ, the cost of living varies, call
types handled may have very different AHT, etc.
An important way to maximize profitability
is to go beyond managing costs and contribute to the overall enterprise success by serving
as a conduit for Customer input to reach the
other departments within the company. This is
driving the desire for analytical tools that can
mine the “unstructured” data found in recorded
conversations and email text. Measuring the
input the Contact Centre passes on and how
it accrues to the benefit of the organization
would go a long way to cementing the center’s
value in the minds of senior management.
Frontline Staff KPIs
WORK WHEN I WANT
After the paycheck, the most important
issue for reps is the schedule. We hear all
about “work-life balance” and how it is becoming more important to younger workers. The
challenge is getting people to work when
Customers call. This may require some creativity in scheduling options, part-time, home
working, time-off management, etc. But
finding a match of people to workload with
a happy employee base is the product of a
well-run workforce management operation.
Forecasting accuracy, schedule efficiency and
operational effectiveness in implementing and
adjusting the plan as needed are the metrics
that will help us to find the right balance here.
FAIR TREATMENT
Does one rep consistently take fewer calls,
have more time off, get better treatment
from the supervisors or get a better schedule for reasons that are not obvious? People
notice any differences that occur. Sometimes
things are not fair for a reason and if that is
well-understood, it may be acceptable to the
employees. This is a situation that can be identified through employee satisfaction surveys.
Generally when there is unhappiness, absenteeism begins to increase. If not addressed,
turnover follows pretty quickly. Watching for
changes in absenteeism can be a good way to
keep a finger on the pulse of rep satisfaction.
OPPORTUNITIES
It is probably fair to say that only a few of
your reps want to stay on the phones for their
entire career. For the rest, some kind of development opportunity is expected. While some
reps will be good candidates for a people management role, others would be happier and
more productive in a role that doesn’t require
supervising others, such as quality assurance,
workforce management or training. It is important that a career path be discussed with each
employee and the progress toward individual
goals is tracked, as well. It would also be nice if
the career paths offered the opportunity to stay
in the center and not force people to take jobs
elsewhere in the company.
Once the center has put in place metrics
and measures that focus on the nine items
listed in this article, it will be focused on the
most important things that contribute to the
company’s success. There will typically be some
sub-items under each of these, but it is best to
concentrate on no more than 10 metrics at a
time. When there are only a few things to focus
on at one time, the chances of achieving those
goals increases dramatically.
July 2010
23
Coming next
24
Issue
Content
August
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Feature: Drive Customer Loyalty through Employee Engagement
Doing More with Less: Staffing Options
How to Sell Your Leadership on Your Technology Wishlist
The Three Phases of Performance Management
Tips from Rosaline, Dircetor, Client Service
Schedule Adherence: An Exercise for Your Agents
Proving Quality: Take Your Program from Employee-Centric to Enterprise wide Value
September
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Feature: Monitoring the Voice of the Customer Across Channels
Optimal Agent Desktop (strategic view)
Optimal Agent Desktop (technology view)
Coaching Best Practices
Tips from Rosaline, Dircetor, Client Service
Secrets of a Forecasting Junkie
Moving from Planning To Action
October
•
•
•
•
•
•
Feature: Provide a Seamless Service Experience Across Multiple Sites
Supporting the Front Line through Executive Interaction
How to Write a Good Statement of Work when Purchasing Technology
Tips from Rosaline, Dircetor, Client Service
Managing Change: Supporting Employees through Turbulent Times
Choosing the Right WFM Metrics
November
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Feature: Seasonal Service: Strategies for Staffing High-Volume Periods
Analysis and Reporting Techniques (strategic view)
Analysis and Business Intelligence (technology view)
Frontline Training Tips
Service Level vs. ASA: Impact to WFM Decisions
Tips from Rosaline, Dircetor, Client Service
Demonstrate the Value of Your Centre at Budget Time
December
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Feature: The Call Centre Leader as Change Agent: Getting Company wide Buy-in for Customer-Centric
Initiatives
Agents Who Stay: Ideas for Reducing Turnover
A Look at Hot Technologies for the Contact Centre
Career Planning and Professional Development for Managers
Tips from Rosaline, Dircetor, Client Service
WFM Best Practices, Part 1
Services vs. Experience
July 2010