MANAGE YOUR CONTACT CENTER FOR MORE MEANINGFUL KPI S

Transcription

1 E-Guide MANAGE YOUR CONTACT CENTER FOR MORE MEANINGFUL KPI S SearchCRM

2 Y our contact center is the nexus of communication between your brand and your customers; are you giving it the attention it deserves? Explore this expert guide to discover 7 dos of contact center management so you can nurture positive CRM practices in your employees. Then, find out which metrics you should be watching so that you can translate what you learned from those 7 tips into meaningful KPI s. PAGE 2 OF 18

3 TOP CONTACT CENTER MANAGEMENT DOS AND DON TS Rick Merson, Global Operations Director Atento A customer contact center can be the lifeblood of a company s operations. Contact centers are where companies and customers come together to resolve issues, evangelize a company s brand and even sell products. Customer service agents are right at the intersection of this, tasked with not only serving as brand ambassadors, but also creating positive customer experiences. Done well, contact center service feels seamless and frictionless, anticipating the needs of customers often before they are even articulated. Done poorly, though, the customer experience can suffer. Contact center management is often the key to doing this well, but it s easy for managers to fall prey to some common don ts and lose sight of the bigger picture. It can be a tall order to oversee multimillion-dollar budgets, enhance staff knowledge and navigate employee retention issues, all while trying to create a solid customer experience. Here s a rundown of some common contact center and don ts -- along with some proven ways to improve performance: PAGE 3 OF 18

4 1. Don t: Make it hard for customers. Do: Be a company that s easy to do business with. Customers who have to work hard to interact with a contact center are great prospects for defection to companies with simple processes. The following are some examples of processes that make it harder than necessary to interact with contact centers: Asking customers to repeat information they ve already provided via an interactive voice response (IVR) system or during a previous interaction. Asking multiple questions and requiring security information before understanding what a customer needs. Requiring unnecessarily complex or rigorous passwords. Keeping customers on the phone while agents complete documentation. Adding IVR options that don t add value (e.g., transferring the customer to a special representative, among other things). Successful companies use journey mapping, Six Sigma, desktop analytics and other techniques to identify opportunities to improve interactions with customers and partners. One approach is a common sense review: look at PAGE 4 OF 18

5 every agent question, IVR question, transfer and customer hold and ask two questions: Did it add value? Is there a simpler way to help the customer? 2. Don t: Create metric madness. Do: Simplify and focus metrics. Metric madness happens when contact centers track too many metrics without coordination and prioritization. The result is unnecessary complexity and distraction. To keep focused on results, enlist the following tactics: Remember what gets measured, gets managed. To avoid unintended consequences, consider how metrics can be misused or incorrectly interpreted. Separate metrics into output metrics that tie to business objectives and input metrics that drive output metrics. Use bedrock output metrics that tie to verifiable financial data. Periodically edit your portfolio of metrics to stay focused on what s important. PAGE 5 OF 18

6 3. Don t: Step over dollars to pick up dimes. Do: Consider long-term impact. While cost optimization is a critical success factor, expense reduction initiatives can backfire, affecting revenue and driving additional expense. A common mistake is underinvestment in core processes and skills. We ve all seen situations in which contact centers suffer from the following problems: Failure to invest in the right infrastructure and support. Without the right software and hardware to outfit contact centers, companies find themselves underachieving business-case targets and buying expensive add-ons. Dissatisfaction with outsourced support. Companies that aren t happy with their service providers, yet don t provide the tools they need or invest in an expert vendor management team. Reduced staffing levels. This often results in an increase in agents call handle times and a subsequent decrease in quality because there s no time for training and coaching -- some call this a contact center death spiral. PAGE 6 OF 18

7 Inexperienced resources assigned to manage critical technologies and processes. You wouldn t fly a plane without a pilot. Don t expect a CRM or workforce optimization system to fly without an expert in the cockpit. One way to avoid penny-wise and pound-foolish situations is to ensure that business cases are complete -- including planning for all the impacts of cost reduction decisions. 4. Don t: Pave dirt roads. Do: Create new roads. Contact centers may be inclined to dig in on existing processes, because that is how things have always been done, rather than pave new paths to experiment and explore new tactics. Contact center management teams have a choice when updating technology, organizations and processes: They can automate the processes already in place -- outsourcers call this lift and shift -- or they can re-engineer by building processes that take advantage of new PAGE 7 OF 18

8 learning and technology. Transformational outsourcing allows the outsourcer to apply best-in-class expertise and get paid for outcomes. 5. Don t: Plan to fail. Do: Plan and prepare. By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail, Benjamin Franklin said. This quote is more relevant than ever in our 24/7, competitive business world. While it is impossible to anticipate everything, a robust set of contingency plans reduces risk and allows contact centers to seize opportunities. Having training and communications ready to go for unplanned periods of availability is a great way to improve quality and reduce handle time with minimal additional expense. 6. Don t: Treat suppliers as enemies. Do: Partner with your suppliers. Contact centers are dependent on a host of internal and external suppliers: technology vendors, outsourcing suppliers, labor unions and their own PAGE 8 OF 18

9 employees. These relationships can be collaborative and efficient, rather than adversarial and time-consuming. To make supplier relationships successful, consider the following: Align customer and supplier goals. Contracts that align customer and supplier goals automatically create collaboration, while lack of alignment quickly creates contention. Contracts with gain-share provisions and cost-per-outcome arrangements are good examples. Establish a governance process. Keep the lines of communication and collaboration open -- this can be as simple as a quarterly leadership alignment meeting. Keep it simple and understandable. Limit contract key performance indicators and service-level agreements to outcomes that matter, and collaborate on a contract summary document that both parties can use as a daily guide. PAGE 9 OF 18

10 7. Don t: Fail to use data as a competitive advantage. Do: Turn data into actionable information. The availability of data increases daily, along with sophisticated tools to extract actionable information. The benefits of analytics are also well documented -- the key is for leaders to efficiently use the call center data. Some guidelines: Don t wing it, but at the same time, avoid analysis paralysis. Preestablish guidelines to ensure consistent, optimal decisions without demands for extra business cases. Include fast hypothesis-based tests and pilots of software with clear go or no-go criteria. Carefully assess new data-gathering requirements before changing processes. With lower-cost data storage and analysis, it is tempting to ask customers for more data. Ensure that new requirements don t make it difficult for customers or contribute to metric madness. Reinforce the value of the contact center by evangelizing its robust data set and analytics capabilities and their impact within the rest of the company. PAGE 10 OF 18

11 Contact center management isn t based on just gut feel or instinct. Best practices are based on years of industry experience and proven methods. Companies need to focus on some of the fundamentals in their contact center strategy, though, from improving the customer experience to establishing key metrics and using data to make informed, clear decisions. These are the kinds of contact center management principles that can reduce costs, boost staff retention and increase sales. But in order to do that, organizations must first get on board with the do side of the equation -- not the don t side. PAGE 11 OF 18

12 HOW TO ESTABLISH MEANINGFUL CONTACT CENTER KPIS Scott Sachs, President - SJS Solutions Like the rest of the business, contact centers are increasingly under pressure to deliver results. As the front lines of the organization, they are often the faces of customer service. Success or failure can turn on whether contact center agents resolve issues, are knowledgeable about products and make customers feel taken care of during an interaction. Questions arise as to how to measure whether contact center agents are effectively resolving customer issues or whether customers are satisfied. What metrics should contact centers use to measure these critical factors? Today, the key struggle for companies is identifying the proper metrics to measure contact center success. To that end, companies are honing key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess contact center agent performance, contact center efficiency, as well as customer satisfaction and overall customer experience. PAGE 12 OF 18

13 There are many critical contact that companies should use to determine whether their efforts are effective: Three of the most common internal contact are: Service level Average speed of answer (ASA) Average handle time (AHT) Contact centers often measure without enough visibility into what these numbers mean or whether their KPIs are truly achieving their goals. Let s explore how to think about these contact to ensure that contact centers are measuring true levels of efficiency, service quality and solid customer experience. SERVICE LEVEL Service level goals are established to ensure that call center agents answer the phone in a timely manner. Specific service-level goals vary among organizations and industries. One of the most common service-level goals is to target that 80% of calls are answered in 30 seconds or less. This is an effective target PAGE 13 OF 18

14 for those 80% of the customers who fall within the target. The weakness of the goal can show up with the 20% of customers whose calls aren t answered quickly. The following hypothetical scenarios show very different customer experiences: Scenario one. During a given day, a contact center receives 1,000 calls, 800 of which are answered in 30 seconds and the remaining 20% of which are answered in 40 to 60 seconds. These time frames would be acceptable for all callers that day. Scenario two. During a given day, a call center receives 1,000 calls, 800 of which are answered in 30 seconds and the remaining 20% of which are answered in three to five minutes. Needless to say, the customers outside the target have a terrible contact center experience. In both scenarios, the service-level target was attained and call center employees may be patting themselves on the back, but customers experiences varied wildly depending on which scenario they encountered. PAGE 14 OF 18

15 AVERAGE SPEED OF ANSWER (ASA) Average speed of answer (ASA) is similar to service level, providing a measure for how quickly the phone is answered in the call center. A typical ASA goal may be 30 seconds. This is an effective target to ensure that, on average, phone calls are answered in 30 seconds. Most call center leaders in various industries have had experience achieving this goal in the right and the wrong way. The following hypothetical scenarios demonstrate two different journeys: Scenario one. During a given day, a call center receives 1,000 calls. On this specific day, the call flow is smooth and at forecasted volumes, resulting in calls being answered in between 20 and 40 seconds for the entire day, and the overall ASA for the day is 30 seconds. Scenario two. During a given day, a call center receives 1,000 calls. On this specific day, a huge surge of calls come in during the first part of the day and the ASA for the first 500 calls is 60 seconds. For the second half of the day, additional staff is brought in, and call volume recovers. The contact center decides to burn the numbers, running a zero-second ASA for the second half of the day. At the end of the day, the overall ASA is 30 seconds. PAGE 15 OF 18

16 In both scenarios, the ASA goal of 30 seconds has been attained and the call center can attest that is has attained its goal. The issue is the inconsistent journey for customers and the poor use of resources. AVERAGE HANDLE TIME (AHT) Average handle time (AHT) represents the average length of telephone interactions with customers and is a critical productivity measure in call centers. A theory underlying an aggressive AHT goal is that shorter phone calls represent efficient interactions and, therefore, increase agent productivity. This theory is flawed in that it doesn t measure the interaction s effectiveness and customer satisfaction. The following hypothetical scenarios provide two divergent customer experiences: Scenario one. A customer calls with a billing issue complaining that he or she was overcharged. The agent issues a credit for the charge and completes the call within the AHT target of three minutes. But at the same time, the agent ignores the root cause of the issue: The customer is not on the correct rate plan. Noticing this issue would have taken an additional two minutes to fix and the AHT goal would not have been attained. PAGE 16 OF 18

17 Scenario two. A customer calls with a billing issue complaining that he or she was overcharged. The call center agent issues a credit for the charge and, after realizing the root cause of the issue, adjusts the customer s rate plan. As a result, the length of the call extends to five minutes, and as a result, the AHT target isn t met. Scenario one creates a situation in which the agent attains his or her AHT goal, but the customer will likely call back the following month as a result of the recurring billing issue, creating additional costs, inefficiencies and poor customer experience. These scenarios indicate that companies need to dissect their metrics to address whether they are truly meeting their contact and goals for success. These goals provide the key measurements of success and drive employee behavior. The key to establishing effective targets is not only to examine the final outcome, but also to understand the journey required to achieve the outcome and the actions that are taken to achieve the targeted results. PAGE 17 OF 18

18 FREE RESOURCES FOR TECHNOLOGY PROFESSIONALS TechTarget publishes targeted technology media that address your need for information and resources for researching products, developing strategy and making cost-effective purchase decisions. Our network of technology-specific Web sites gives you access to industry experts, independent content and analysis and the Web s largest library of vendor-provided white papers, webcasts, podcasts, videos, virtual trade shows, research reports and more drawing on the rich R&D resources of technology providers to address market trends, challenges and solutions. Our live events and virtual seminars give you access to vendor neutral, expert commentary and advice on the issues and challenges you face daily. Our social community IT Knowledge Exchange allows you to share real world information in real time with peers and experts. WHAT MAKES TECHTARGET UNIQUE? TechTarget is squarely focused on the enterprise IT space. Our team of editors and network of industry experts provide the richest, most relevant content to IT professionals and management. We leverage the immediacy of the Web, the networking and face-to-face opportunities of events and virtual events, and the ability to interact with peers all to create compelling and actionable information for enterprise IT professionals across all industries and markets. PAGE 18 OF 18