Call Center Surveys Benefit All Parties

January 31, 2012 — Jackie

It can be exhausting opening email upon email only to find that someone else wants “five short minutes” of your time to complete a survey.  Obviously we have to pick and choose which ones we want to participate in, but I urge you to pay close attention to the ones that are directly related to your industry.  This research helps all of us figure out national trends, best practices, and tips for success.

One of my favorite reports from last year was The Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report that was researched and published by Dimension Data.  This report had representation from 546 contact centers located across 66 countries and five continents.

The report does a nice job outlining all of the key findings and summaries for the year.  For me, one of the most interesting bullet points was about turnover.

“Staff Turnover – a costly exercise.   This year’s results reflect an overall annual staff turnover of over a third, a significant deterioration since the last Report, and perhaps somewhat explained by industry-wide cutbacks over the period. For any contact centre finding itself in a growth period, the challenge of replacing over a third of its staff per year, as well as having to find new staff, can be serious and costly in terms of the loss of knowledge and experience.”

Have you seen a similar turnover rate in your contact center?  When budgets are cut, are employees the first to go?  This led to my curiosity about working from home.

“Homeworking growing in popularity. Homeworking is on the rise across every region. The US has the largest proportion of homeworkers, the number doubling since 2009, while Asia-Pacific has overtaken Australia and New Zealand, to occupy second place. The number of homeworking agents in Europe has tripled, while the number in Africa and Middle East has seen a small rise, perhaps an indicator of technology improvements and fewer bandwidth issues. The Technology sector uses the most homeworkers, while Consumer Goods and Retail and Financial Services use them the least.”

It’s nice to see the increase in organizations allowing their employees to work remotely.  I first heard of this becoming popular in the States when gas prices were soaring.  I knew several large organizations that only made it mandatory to be physically present in the office 3 days a week.  In many ways working from home is a wonderful way for organizations and employees to save on costs.  This might be worth thinking about before deciding to cut hours or workers.

Whether you’re interested in learning about the management best practices or the latest technology trends; surveys are great way to get and give vital information.  What are some of your favorites?

Posted in At-home and remote agents, Business, Call Center Management, Call Center Resources. No Comments »

Delayed Contact Resolution

January 26, 2012 — Kelly

Over the past few months, I noticed a new trend in my interactions with contact centers.  When a problem could not be quickly resolved or a question efficiently answered, agents have promised a future return call with a resolution.   In the past, it seemed that I would be on hold or find myself engaging in small talk with agents so this new trend is a marked difference.

For the most part, I have to say that I’m impressed.  The benefits of ending the first contact with a promise for follow up are undeniable for customers.  I don’t have to waste my time (or mobile plan minutes!) while the agent researches my file or finds a way to resolve the problem. The agent can then take the time to fully and accurately find a resolution.

However, there are a few key considerations that must be part of any plan to delay resolution after the first contact:

  • Adjust metrics accordingly.  Obviously, you can’t use first contact resolution as a metric; beyond that, though, there are likely other metrics you will need to adjust.  For example, how will you account for the time that agents will need to research issues and follow up with customers?  Agents will need some time available when they are not actively taking calls so that they can resolve issues and communicate with customers.  It may be unrealistic to continue to apply the same metrics.
  • Outline a clear process for resolution and follow up.  In my experience, it’s a tossup whether I’ll ever hear back from the agent with any resolution.  From a customer’s perspective, it’s much more irritating to be promised resolution and not hear back than to spend a few extra minutes on the phone with an agent!  Be sure that your contact center procedures close this loop to ensure resolution.
  • Create a communication plan between agents and supervisors.  Often, the reason that further communication is needed is because the problem requires supervisor intervention.  If supervisors aren’t quickly available during the first customer contact, be sure that the communication plan between agents and supervisors is clear for cases that are elevated to the supervisor’s queue.
  • Documentation.  Just in case there is a breakdown in the resolution process, it’s critical to ensure that the agent has fully documented the communication with the customer and any steps that have been taken toward resolution.  If the customer does have to make the follow-up phone call, at least he/she will be saved the trouble of repeating all of the details!

Delaying resolution beyond the initial contact offers potential for the time savings for customers to translate to improved customer satisfaction; however, it is important that contact center managers fully consider the changes that may be required to successfully implement any such changes!

Posted in Call center KPIs, Call Center Management, Customer service. No Comments »

Guide Your Team to Victory

January 24, 2012 — Jackie

In the spirit of football season, it seems only natural to tie in an article by Bob Furniss titled “Coaching Champions.”  This Contact Center Pipeline article discusses the four leading principles that will help your team succeed.  Furniss writes, “I tell the managers who attend my seminars that coaching is the most important role you have as a leader.  It is THE most important part of your day.  If you don’t have time for it, then you have to find a way to change your priorities to make it happen – and happen consistently.”  He outlines four basic principles that should be taught to managers daily:

1.)    Create Clear Measurements of Success and Failure

“Consistent process equals consistent quality.”  Bob knows that when he orders a Big Mac in Honduras or Ireland, it’s going to be comprised of the same shredded lettuce and toasted bun he’s accustomed to.

The same frame of mind should be used in your contact center to ensure that each agent is gauging good service on the same scale.  Every day is a chance to tell agents exactly what they did well vs. what could have been improved upon.

2.)    Create Metrics that Measure what is Important

Much like an offensive play, it’s all about strategy.  You should spend one-on-one time each month with your agents to help them align performance with the quality of the organization.  Strategize methods for improvement.

Ensuring the metrics are tied to quality performance can often be difficult.  Furniss recommends considering these questions:

  • Is the metric linked to specific company strategies or objectives?
  • Does the metric tie to agent incentives?
  • Does the metric vary among groups, call types and agent tenure?
  • Is the metric easy to understand?
  • Does the agent know exactly what they can do to move the dial?

3.)    Personalize the Coaching Approach

“I think it’s important that you manage everyone completely differently.  Of course, fairness is always important, but managing people based on their needs, values and personalities is the best way to see people succeed.”

In this section Bob discusses the use of personality tests and finding out the best coaching method based on each agent’s strengths and weaknesses.  If you’ve made a point to watch and analyze the Patriots and Giants, you need to do the same for your own agents.

4.)    Train your Coaches to Coach

Furniss notes that less than 64% of new managers receive any formal training before assuming the role.  What a scary statistic!  If your organization is one of the many that’s guilty of this, try to master your own coaching concept following Furniss’ YMCA approach:

  • Your Thoughts. Open the coaching session by asking questions instead of delivering expectations.
  • My Thoughts. This is the opportunity to talk about behavior from your perspective as the agent’s manager.
  • Calibration. This is the time to calibrate the agent’s buy-in for change.
  • Action. In the days after the coaching session, inspect what you expect – follow up to confirm that the agent is meeting the new expectations.

Posted in Call Center Management, Performance Management. No Comments »

Capturing and Utilizing Customer Satisfaction Data

January 19, 2012 — Maureen

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure.”  As customer service professionals, we can all agree that it is important to capture customer satisfaction data so that we may improve policies that affect the customer experience.  However, there is disagreement on the best way to track and utilize that information.

A recent article from the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) discussed the commonly used post-call survey. That is, the request for a customer to please stay on the line at the end of the call to rate their experience. Call center reports often indicate low response levels, and it’s not hard to see why. First of all, participants are self-selecting and you will not get a representative sample of customers. Those most likely to complete the survey are likely to be either people with a lot of time on their hands, or people who had a terrible experience and want to vent about it.

The ICMI article suggests that the post-call survey is indeed an imperfect data source, but when data is scarce, beggars can’t be choosers. Call center managers can fill in some gaps by going to social media to unearth unsolicited forms of feedback about their company. While this method also limits you to feedback from those with extreme customer experiences (good or bad), it does provide another piece of the puzzle.

How can customer service managers improve response rates for satisfaction surveys? Incentives are a great way to do just that. I usually won’t take time out of my busy schedule to offer feedback to a company…unless, that is, I am entered into a raffle to win a great prize or receive a coupon off a future purchase. A small incentive can yield large dividends in terms of response rate.

Another way to up your response numbers, and thereby improve accuracy of the information, is to rely on multiple media for feedback requests. Maybe a customer doesn’t have time to stay after the call to offer feedback, but they would be responsive to an email request received in their downtime.

Status bars on online surveys always keep me motivated to continue. If I know I’m 80% done, I’m more likely to push through and answer the last few questions. However, if there is no status bar, I may fear that there are too many more questions left and decide it’s not worth my time to stay and find out.

Responding to customer feedback is an excellent way to let customers know that you value their time and opinions. If the customer thinks his feedback has gone into a black hole, they are less likely to offer feedback again. Responding to feedback is also a great way to relationship-build, because the customer begins to see the company as a partner, engaged in two-way dialogue and responsive to their needs.

How does your company use call center analysis to interpret customer satisfaction data?

Posted in Call Center Management, Customer service. No Comments »

LightLink Display Groups and Virtual Displays

January 17, 2012 — Kelly

Many Inova LightLink users manage large numbers of displays, in a wide variety of physical locations.  Thankfully, LightLink has built in capabilities to help these users manage messages and data for these displays.  Through the functionality of display groups and virtual displays, users can more effectively communicate vital information to contact center personnel.  These features are key, particularly for agent desktop applications and LED wallboards.

LightLink display groups are used to combine separate display devices into a group so one message can be sent to multiple displays.  This is especially useful if you have a large number of displays and often wish to send messages to select groups of those displays such as specific agent groups, physical locations within your building, or even certain geographic locations.  Once you have created a display group, you can then select that group as a destination for relevant messages.

LightLink virtual displays allow you to divide a single display into different grids.  In effect, each grid can then be treated as a separate, or virtual, display.  This is helpful in a wide variety of situations because you can send messages to individual lines of a display or even send the same message to the top line of one display and the bottom of another.  Possibly the most useful application of a virtual display is that it allows you to lock certain regions of displays so that other users cannot make changes.  If you haven’t already done so, once you’ve devoted the time to creating just the right display of data on your display, you’ll understand the criticality of being able to lock that region!

Creating and managing display groups and virtual displays is a relatively straightforward process.  It is well-documented in the LightLink materials; in addition, this month’s LightLink OnCourse Complimentary training will be devoted to helping you understand the process of creating and managing both of these LighLink functions.  Customers with active support agreements should look for an email invitation to join us at 2:00 pm EDT on January 19 to learn more about these incredibly useful capabilities.

Posted in Call Center Resources, LED displays, News and events, Training. No Comments »

Call center outsourcing debated in Washington

January 12, 2012 — Camille

In a post last month at the Destination CRM Blog, Leonard Klie discusses legislation introduced in Congress on December 7, 2011 called the U.S. Call Center and Consumer Protection Act.  This bill seeks to ban companies that outsource call center jobs overseas from receiving federal grants and loans for five years. Klie says the proposed bill would “require overseas call center employees to disclose their locations to U.S. consumers and give customers the right to be transferred to a U.S.-based call center upon request. It would further require companies to notify the U.S. Department of Labor 120 days prior to any proposed moves offshore and require the list of companies that offshore call center work to be made available to the U.S. public.”

Although a number of companies have begun to bring call center jobs back to the US, such as Delta, there are many companies still sending jobs overseas.  Politics aside, Klie points out several disasters that have impacted US companies with overseas call centers, including:

  • Typhoon in the Philippines
  • Military coup in Thailand
  • Terrorist bombings in Mumbai, India
  • Earthquakes in Chile
  • Swine flu epidemic in Mexico.

Klie suggests hiring work-at-home agents rather than outsourcing which results in large savings through real estate and infrastructure.

For more information on the U.S. Call Center and Consumer Protection Act, visit:

If this bill is passed, how do you think it will impact the call center industry?

Posted in At-home and remote agents, News and events. No Comments »

2012 Contact Center Resolution: Improve Integration

January 10, 2012 — Kelly

After a quick review of the 2011 postings, it was easy to identify a consistent theme: integration and alignment!  As the new year begins, now is a great time to assess integration within your contact center.

Integration between customer service, marketing, and product management

Have you made any strides in integrating your customer service department with your marketing department?  Strong relationships among your departments will both make your contact center more productive and increase the success of other company departments.

Ultimately, this integration will allow you to pursue options for proactive customer care, which offers the potential double whammy of increased customer satisfaction and additional revenue:

Integration of agent training and tools

Are your agents fully equipped to handle all of their customer contacts?  Providing them with training to enhance the appropriate depth of knowledge as well as the proper tools to do their jobs will have clear impact on your contact center productivity.

Integration of smart phones and other devices

With the increasing trend for smart phone use, it is critical to find ways for you, your customers, and your employees to integrate these devices.

Posted in Business, Call Center Management, Call Center Resources, Customer service, Miscellaneous, Training. No Comments »

New Year’s Resolutions for the Call Center

January 5, 2012 — Maureen

It’s a new year, the time for fresh starts. Employees are recharged from the winter break and ready to make 2012 a success. Perhaps it’s also a good time to take a look at your call center performance metrics to identify areas for improvement. Which KPI has been concerning you and upper management lately? Make a resolution to address that nagging problem this year with a few simple, low-cost steps.

  1. Unpredictable call volume.  If your call center has difficulty maintaining correct staffing levels due to fluctuating call volume, historic call center reports may only be one piece of the puzzle. Don’t forget to utilize real-time call data to adjust agent skill group assignments on demand. For example, when your LED wallboard alerts you to an unusually high number of calls waiting, you can reassign agents from an idle queue to the overloaded queue to handle more calls with lower staff levels. And when call volume is low, send agents a message via call center software to use that time to complete after call work.
  2. Abandoned calls. There is nothing more frustrating to a contact center manager than to lose a potential customer due to long wait times. To prevent that customer from hanging up and calling your competitor, use call center software to automatically alert agents when the number of abandoned calls exceeds your pre-defined threshold. If agents are aware of this, they can wrap up their existing calls or after call work to prevent abandoned calls and lost customers.
  3. Agent attention and morale. We all know that call center agent work can sometimes be monotonous. This year, try keeping your agents attention by delivering news, videos, contests and other real-time content on large screen digital signage displays. Update content frequently to keep agents looking at the displays, and add real-time call center metrics information as a productive addition.

What problem areas do your 2012 call center resolutions address? How do you plan to tackle them this year? Share your ideas here!

Posted in Business, Call Center Management, Performance Management. No Comments »

Integrating Customer Service

January 3, 2012 — Kelly

A brief article in the January 2012 edition of CRM Magazine discussed the “complex ecosystem” of modern call centers; one of the key findings was the inconsistent integration across communication channels.  The article sites a recent report that found that “transactional history and customer histories are often unavailable and inconsistent” and “ninety percent of companies do not have full integration across all…interaction channels, which include phone, email, chat, and Web-self service.”

Take a look at your own contact center.  Do your employees have access to the full range of customer information as well as any necessary or helpful product or corporate documentation?  Is your information maintained in separate silos, making it difficult for CSRs to access it efficiently to best serve your customers?

The benefits of full integration are unmistakable.  Agents with access to customer history can better understand the background and can more efficiently close the most recent contact.

  • Improved customer satisfaction – We’ve all been on the customer side of a conversation, where we find ourselves repeating the same information several times.  Full integration reduces, or even eliminates, this need and thereby reduces frustration for customers.
  • Improved employee morale – Employees who are better equipped to do their jobs well will find more pride in their work.  Additionally, any way to reduce customer frustration, or even anger, will improve a CSR’s day immensely!
  • Performance metrics – Agents will be able to more quickly close each customer contact because time will not be wasted rehashing information that has already been archived.

This year, I witnessed the success of this integration firsthand.  I did much of my holiday shopping online and was impressed with the frequency with which companies did have access to my entire shopping history.  When I encountered a problem checking out with a department store, I used the chat function to contact a representative.  She could use my shopping bag number to see my cart and resolve the concern.  Later, when I wanted to return only a portion of the order, the call center agent could access my invoice as well as the previously saved chat.  Overall, the entire process was much less frustrating (both for me and the agents) and more efficient, leaving me a much more satisfied customer.

Posted in Call Center Management, Call Center Resources, Customer service, Performance Management. 1 Comment »
«
»