"Best Practices for Contact Center Service Levels" September 30, :00 5:00 pm EST

Transcription

1 "Best Practices for Contact Center Service Levels" September 30, :00 5:00 pm EST Overview Within many contact centers, the consistent meeting of service levels is a challenge. With that in mind, this call was created to give contact center professionals the opportunity to discuss how their service levels are measured, their targets and how they are performing against those targets, the level at which customer service is impacted and the metrics used to measure that dissatisfaction. Within that discussion, 12 best practices were identified. Many on the call are also measuring their service level consistency throughout the day, namely at 30-minute intervals. One member on this call is measuring at 15-minute intervals. This is the real challenge because even though these measurements level out by the end of the day or month, it does not help customer satisfaction at those peak points throughout the day when the service level is not being met. A part two to this call that focuses on this particular challenge is in order. Other than the intra-day issue, other challenges listed by this group were as follows: Calculating the service level on calls that are automatically transferred to a virtual hold technology; Managing service levels within micro groups for which one absence can greatly impact the service level; Supporting different divisions that each have their own service level expectation; Increased absenteeism on Mondays, Fridays or after a long weekend, any of which will cause service level fluctuations due to increased wait times with less staff.

2 The conference call participants included: Marcel Barras, Canon Canada Denis Villeneuve, Cardinal Health Sam Heyde, Disney Sue Paull, Disney Robb Davis, Lavalife Jeanette, Lavalife Brian MacNeil, Purolator Rita Rotondi, Wells Fargo Michael Sanderson, Zions Bank Victor Wesolowski, Zions Bank Lorene Di Leo of IIR moderated the call. Key Learnings This section explores the key objectives of the call, namely to identify the problem(s), suggest potential solutions, explore the lessons learned and examine what could have been done differently. 1. What is the Problem? What are various best practices that can be used within a contact center to help meet targeted service levels? 2. What are the potential solutions? Twelve best practices were identified: i) Determine the service level target within your organization; For one member organization, their target is set at 80/20, i.e. 80% of their calls need to answered within 20 seconds. They try to achieve that through every ½ hour interval of the

3 day. Hopefully, at the end of the day, that 80% target has been reached. This company currently uses Meridian Max to capture their telephone statistics to report the service level; Another metric is 80% of calls answered within 30 seconds. This particular organization doesn t get too strict about the intra-day measurement, but certainly on a daily basis and on a monthly basis they are expected to meet those targets; For yet another member, they have different service levels for their different queues. One queue is set at 75/30 and another is set at 65/30. They are managed that way based on the different needs of those customers. The one that is higher at 75% is a sales-oriented queue. Clearly, since calls coming through this queue are potential sales, it is more important to reach these calls faster. The other queues are more inquiry-type calls. Those queues are managed through skills to give them the priority they need. These queues are monitored throughout the day, but not at every interval. Usually, someone is monitoring it on an ongoing basis, but it is reported on 4 times per day: morning, early afternoon, mid afternoon and about 4-5 in the evening. If they are not meeting service level targets, there is a service level contingency plan that is followed. However, as a norm, it is measured overall throughout the day and specifically for the month. The latter is what is reported to the executive level; Another measurement described was to use a percent handled as the main metric for most of this organization s lines of business. They try to answer 95% of the calls that come into the organization for the resort side and then for some of the support areas like guest services, help desk, etc. That has a 40-second ASA (average speed of answer); Another participant s contact center is a technical support center, which by nature, marches to a different tune. Their target is 80% in 180 seconds. It is a lot higher, but that is because the calls are a much longer. ii) Establish the point at which the organization will begin measuring the wait time as it relates to the service level target decided upon above; The question was asked as to when organizations begin measuring their service level to determine if it has been reached. Does it begin as soon as the customer dials in or after they reach the IVR or once the customer is out of the IVR? For the member that raised this point, they are a technical support contact center with a 15-minute interval

4 service level measurement. Agents are taking the same calls, but some of them might be 3 minutes while others are 25 minutes. So, it gets a bit more complicated when trying to establish how many people are needed based on the determined service level and the set AHT (average handle time). So, the question was raised as to how it should be calculated. Sometimes, once the customer is out of the IVR, they only have 30 seconds left to answer it. So, currently, they are not meeting their service levels. In analysis after analysis, everything tells them that they have enough people scheduled, but the service level is still not met; One reply as calculated by one organization is that they measure ASA with 3 different goals. A 30-second goal for the general calls and then 25 seconds for the specialty calls and 20 seconds for the high value calls; Another organization calculates the call once it hits the queue, so after the IVR. Another organization on this call also does the same. For the first organization, the thought behind this is that they are trying to service the call once it gets out to the floor. They were servicing it through automation, but they didn t get what they were looking for that way so now this is the service level of live answer. So, it has nothing to do with the automated part of it; Yet another method is to have the system track it from the moment the IVR answers it. So, any time spent in the IVR is counted against the ASA; A fourth practice is to measure it once it leaves the IVR. Previously, this organization measured it once it hit the IVR, but since then it has changed. In their particular case, if a customer opts out, it makes about a 2 second difference or a 2.5 second difference; For the member who raised this question, he finds it easier to calculate once it gets out of the IVR, which is how it was done where he used to work. Now, when it is in the IVR, they don t always see it in their real-time management tool. Being in the IVR, once it gets out, that s when they have to react and do the real-time management at that moment. So, he is pushing towards having it calculated after the IVR. Also, it depends on the IVR. Their IVR goes up to 140 seconds; Adding to that last point, another member stated that customers within her organization s IVR have so many options and can do so many things that they can spend so much time within the IVR. That takes up a lot of valuable measurement time; The calculation chosen will depend on the organization s core business. For one member, their product is their IVR. So, any time the customer spends in the product sending messages back and forth, it really makes no sense to do anything other than to count it from the time it hits the queue.

5 iii) Work proactively with other departments (namely marketing) to curb inbound call volume; Many organizations experience an increase in call volumes when promotional and marketing packages are issued within various campaigns. One such smart practice is to be proactive with these departments so that the contact center can prepared for any increases in call volume. Also, ensuring that the promotional campaign is as clear as possible for the customer so that they are not calling the contact center for clarification. It s a proactive strategy to deter inbound spikes in call volume that could throw off service levels. iv) Decide at which service level customer satisfaction is affected; As explained by one member, they staff for an 80/20 service level and use automated software to create their schedules for them. As long as they keep their staffing level at the 80/20 mark, they do fairly well with their customer satisfaction levels. However, as soon as any attrition happens, even 3-4 bodies, their service level crashes. The biggest challenge is to maintain that staffing line and hold the 80/20. Even 2 absences will cause it to dip down into the 70 s and anything below 79% is when their service level gets impacted for customer satisfaction levels; Ms. Di Leo added that in other conference calls on this topic, one organization did research and discovered that anytime the wait level was at 3 minutes or less, it yielded a consistent level of customer satisfaction. At 3-5 minutes, customer satisfaction started to drop. As soon as the customer had been waiting at that 5-minute mark, customer satisfaction dropped off dramatically; Another participant shared a project that they were involved in whereby they modified the ways the calls were being answered. They had a specific team concentrate on answering and distributing the calls, depending on the time it would take to complete them. As a result of that, they saw a 20% reduction in volumes because fewer

6 customers were calling back due to long wait times. With less call backs, customer satisfaction went up by 2%; A customer s patience level will increase, depending on the company, their product, supply and demand and any special promotions that may be offered; It was agreed that there is a fine line in cost/benefit ratio in terms of the amount of money that goes into staffing to an organization s service levels and how much of a return is netted with customer satisfaction. So, from that perspective, it is worth doing some research to understand where customer satisfaction is impacted. v) Investigate different technologies, such as virtual hold; There are different technologies available that have a hold capability within their software (Genesys is one). Another is called Virtual Hold. Basically, what it does is educate callers with their estimated wait times. It gives them a choice to either wait in queue, or they could receive a call back equivalent to their time in queue. For example, if it is an estimated 10-minute wait time, they have the choice to either stay on the call to wait in queue or they can give their name and phone number to be called back in 10 minutes. A third option is to request a different time for a call back, one that is more convenient to the customer. This technology is aimed at helping organizations with those spikes in volumes so that their service levels can be maintained. Companies will set that virtual hold technology in place, particularly if the abandon rate is high. This threshold can be pre-set and/or adjusted by the company; The question was asked as to how the call back feature is managed. In the past, this participant has steered away from voic and hold times. It takes longer to retrieve the message and call the customer back. The process would need to be smooth, preferably handled by the technology so that the call back could be routed to the next available agent. One member whose company does use this technology stated that it can be done both ways. Where he works now, whenever calls are transferred to virtual hold, they will be answered as the next available call. However, he cautions that when call volumes are high and the call volume is building up, now instead of one queue there are 2 queues. So, whenever they have high volume periods during the day, and/or people that are sick, they end up deactivating the virtual hold. The longer the wait time, the more people opt into the virtual hold. However, it still keeps building with

7 new calls coming in, creating a vicious circle. When things don t move fast enough, customers start calling back to see what s happening. Long and the short of it, in this member s experience, it is not practical when call volumes are high, only when there are normal call volumes; Ms. Di Leo shared another technology used by some members. It is SMS short message service. This technology offers companies the ability to send out short text messages or voice messages to their customers in an effort to prevent inbound calls. Accounts payable is an example. As soon as the money has been deposited, a message is sent out to the customer, thereby preventing that inbound call. vi) Have a resource pool that can help with the phones when call volumes spike; One participant shared that they have one of their reporting analysts monitor the service level throughout the day. It is his/her job to be able to report to management the service level at certain times during the day, i.e. 10 am, 12 noon, 2 pm and 4 pm. Suggestions will be made, as well. If their service level is high, that is a red flag that they are over staffed. So, they might take 2 or 3 people off the phone to do administrative type work. If it is a low service level, there are various steps that are followed based on how low the service level it actually is. The supervisor on duty could simply adjust the schedules with breaks and lunches or they could change the priorities for skill level. If one skill is performing low, they could prioritize that at a higher level for the reps that have that skill in order to give the pertaining service level a boost. They also have an admin department that works just mail inquiries. Most of those people come from the customer service area and are already trained. So, they are used as fill ins when needed. Phones are the first priority, which is understood. These two areas work very closely together to help maintain service levels. Another strategy is to use overtime. Lastly, there are supervisors they rely on that can jump on the queues to help ease the back log when service levels are very low. That is an extreme and it usually doesn t get to that state, but it does happen (the Christmas season is a prime example); Another organization uses content monitors who listen to the system for ads. While they typically don t have any customer service experience, they are given the opportunity to use this as CSR training when call volumes are high. This not only helps

8 deal with the spikes in volume, but also creates a hiring pool for when new CSRs are needed. vii) Examine the virtues of a home agent program; One organization is exploring home agents as a strategy for dealing with short spikes in call volumes, particularly in the middle of the night for a 2-hour shift here and there. Currently, shift schedules need to be in 4-8 hour blocks and using this outsourced home agent program option would offer much needed flexibility. At-home agents are much more amenable to working short 2-3 hour shifts because they don t have to come into an office to do it; Ms. Di Leo added that many CCSF members have had success with this type of program. Another practice used is to make this a condition of working from home. For example, they must agree to work X number of short shifts throughout the month for the privilege of being able to work from home. viii) Understand the benefits of outsourcing for peak volume spikes; For many organizations, outsourcing call volume is a very successful strategy, particularly because these organizations are accountable to a service level agreement; One member on this call does outsource some of their call volume. They have found it to be very beneficial in staffing up for those half hour peaks in call volume where the same flexibility does not exist internally. ix) Consider customer segmentation as an option; As mentioned earlier, adjusting service levels for different queues is a strategy. This is particularly helpful for sales queues and/or customer segmentation. If a customer has been determined to be a gold level customer, a different service level will be set compared to that of a bronze level customer, as an example. This is achieved through

9 skill-based routing. For one member who does use this type of strategy, every agent has it as their first skill priority to be able to service the gold level customers and then others as their second. Changes can be made throughout the day as needed. This strategy works well as it increases their flexibility when dealing with high call volumes. x) Hold supervisors accountable for service levels within their compensation plan; For one member organization, their managers have a yearly bonus. Service level objectives (maintaining the target of 80/20) are one metric for which they are measured to earn their full bonus. It is counted on the number of days. For instance, if June has 20 business days and the manager only meets the 80/20 service level 15 days out of 20, they will only receive 75% of their bonus. This works as an incentive to keep an eye on service levels; For another participant, they do something similar, but on the other side. Instead of looking at it by day, they measure it by service level. If they obtain 80, they get a certain percentage. If they obtain under their service level objective, they get less of a percentage of their bonus and so on. Since this isn t a metric for which they have absolute control, they don t want to penalize the manager totally for not obtaining the overall service level. xi) Cross training agents for skill-based routing options, especially for those micro groups that experience call volume fluctuations very easily; The micro groups within organization, i.e. a very small group of 3-4 agents that are trained in a specific skill for which the center receives very little call volume, are an exceptionally difficult area to manage. This is because with only 3-4 people in the group, as soon as one person is away, the service level can t help but be greatly impacted. To help with this type of challenge, one member shared that they cross train other agents to be able to handle these types of calls. They step in on the days where this small unit gets behind in their service level. This goes back to skill levels. The main priority is X queue, but when this small group needs help, others can step in to assist.

10 They call it a reserve agent. It is programmed into the system that when that queue is in severe distress due to a low service level, the reserve agent steps in to help out. xii) Implement absenteeism plans for monitoring and being proactive with absences that occur on Mondays, Fridays and after holidays; An age-old problem in contact centers is the absenteeism rate on Mondays and the days following a holiday. One participant stated that he is even starting to see absenteeism creeping up on Fridays, too. In order to combat this problem (because of the residual affect on service levels for those days), one member has implemented an Attendance Awareness Program. When a trend has been identified with an agent missing these days, they will not be paid for the day unless a doctor s note is supplied. This is a common strategy used in contact centers. 3. What were the lessons learned? Financial institutions, particularly in the US, are definitely seeing a tremendous increase in unpredicted call volumes given the financial crisis the country is experiencing. As explained by one participant, any changes that occur in the marketplace cause their customers to become very uneasy. These customers want to be assured of the security of their investments and their money. Much time is spent calming fears and giving assurance of the stability of the company. Also, banks are seeing an increase in new accounts and transfers from other banks. One suggestion for helping with this is to add messages of assurance into the IVR as the customers are holding. A tactic to lower call volume is to encourage customers to use the company s selfservice options, such as their website or other automated means. However, the abandon rate will still go up due to the customer abandoning the call to use another contact channel. This is positive for the self-service rate, but not for the abandon rate. Target abandon rates were discussed: A) a 5% target with a leeway anywhere from %. For this participant, they don t want to be too low and they don t want to be too high. It is measured over a weekly period. Mondays are the highest (12%) and then on Friday it is down to about 3%. So, the rate averages itself to between 3.5% to 6.5%.

11 Obviously, if they staffed for a Monday to obtain a 5% service level, by Friday they would be 10 people overstaffed; B) another mentioned target is 3% measured daily; C) yet another target is 3.8%. For this participant, they are consistent with that target every day of the week; D) Ms. Di Leo offered that by comparison, these target rates are on par with what has been mentioned in other conference calls. The question was raised as to whether anyone on the call adjusts their service levels by seasons, particularly Christmas. By and large, participants responded that they are expected to keep the service level intact, regardless of the season. Added one member, they try to staff up by about 4-5 FTE over the entire month through a combination of increasing part time hours, bringing in people from other departments, etc. The reason they increase staff for it is because every lost call is a potential lost sale. Service call centers could be more forgiving, but not when sales is involved. 4. What would you do differently? One member was able to comment on the use of Virtual Hold Technology as it is employed within his company. Whenever calls are transferred to virtual hold, they will be answered as the next available call. However, he cautions that when call volumes are high and the call flow is building up, another queue emerges. So, whenever they have high call volume periods during the day, and/or people that are sick, they end up deactivating the virtual hold. The longer the wait time, the more people opt into the virtual hold. However, it still keeps building with new calls coming in, creating a vicious circle. When things don t move fast enough, customers start calling back to see what s happening. Long and the short of it, in this member s experience, it is not practical when call volumes are high, only when there are normal call volumes. 5. What were the results? One participant shared a project that they were involved in whereby they modified the ways the calls were being answered. They had a specific team concentrate on answering and distributing the calls, depending on the time it would take to complete them. As a result of that, they saw a 20% reduction in volumes because fewer customers were calling back due to long wait times. With less call backs, customer satisfaction went up by 2%.

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