2013 Whitepaper. Five Essential Measurements of Contact Center Success

Transcription

1 2013 Whitepaper Five Essential Measurements of Contact Center Success

2 Five Essential Measurements of Contact Center Success In order to have a contact center that is truly valued and respected both internally and externally, it s critical to assess what is working well, where improvement is needed, and what actions are necessary to adapt to the evolving direction of your organization. Once you ve taken these critical steps, then and ONLY then should you move forward with the process of preparing operating and capital budgets, making hiring plans, and setting goals for supervisors and agents. In this paper, we will help you to begin this process by posing five essential questions about the areas that you should address, and outlining strategies to make your center a success. 1 How well does your contact center align with corporate goals? As the primary intersection point between the enterprise and its constituents, it is essential that the contact center understand where the enterprise wants to go, and help it get there. The contact center cannot function as an island unto itself and hope to get the budget and recognition it needs and deserves. Corporate goals and departmental goals To achieve alignment with the corporate direction, contact center management must dialogue with the operationallevel departments and strategic business units that are charged with developing and implementing specific action plans. These would typically include product management, marketing management, sales, finance, and product/ service support. Output from this process will help guide the contact center in structuring its operational and capital budgets, hiring plans, training requirements, and other actions. Corporate goals are typically expressed in both quantitative and qualitative terms. The intent is to chart the direction of the organization, but not to detail how these goals are to be accomplished (a function of operational groups further down the corporate hierarchy). Contact center response to corporate and departmental goals Corporate goal #1 Increase sales 10% Corporate goal #2 Achieve 20% ROI Corporate goal #3 Achieve 85% customer satisfaction Sales Product management Marketing New sales offices in Latin America New sales automation program Inside sales for small customers Declare of-end-life for six products Release three new products Implement loyalty program National promotions for new products Promote via social media Recruit bilingual agents Update IVR for multilingual Integrate sales automation Beef up sales training Prepare a Q&A for agents Increase product training Training for difficult customers Update CRM Training on how to improve FCR Training, scripts, for new promotions Training on , chat 2

3 Clearly, enterprises exist in a highly dynamic environment. Thus, there will be a need for course corrections, so flexibility should be built into the contact center budget and action plans. Additionally, it should be noted that there is often a need to provide training at both the management and agent levels, in order to align skill sets with organizational needs and desires. 2 Are you choosing metrics that matter and that can be impacted by the contact center? While establishing contact center-level goals and action plans is necessary, this alone is not sufficient to ensure alignment with the corporate mission. You also need measuring sticks. With so much data available, there is a temptation to rely upon the tried and true. Traditional (first-generation) metrics have been around since the invention of the automatic call distributor in the 1970s. They include service level, answer time, adherence, occupancy, abandonment rate, average handle time, and about 100 others. First-generation metrics have very specific meanings and generally are calculated in the same way. They can be charted over time and benchmarked against peer groups. They are automatically churned out, which makes them very comfortable to rely on. The difficulty is that they speak to processes rather than outcomes. This leads to management by and for the numbers, even if they bear little or no relationship to the goals of the enterprise. Second-generation ( new ) metrics rely on data that is external to the contact center to measure outcomes and analyze their causes and, therefore, can be more meaningful. Generally speaking, for-profit businesses have three broad goals: to grow revenues to improve profitability to strengthen bonds with core constituents (customers, employees, vendors, and investors) Selecting the metrics that matter The following matrix identifies selected metrics that align with each of the three broad goals and can be directly impacted by the contact center: REVENUE GROWTH PROFITABILITY CONSTITUENT SATISFACTION Revenue per agent IVR containment rate Top-box customer satisfaction Conversion rate Schedule adherence Service level Customer retention Agent retention First call resolution Customer lifetime value Cost per contact per channel Quality scores Upsell attempts ROI for new infrastructure Net promoter score 3

4 With the exception of service level, none of these metrics are generated by the call server. Your review of the usefulness of current metrics may also reveal the need to construct custom metrics. For example, in many businesses, sales can be executed only by qualified and certified personnel. This makes it impossible for contact center agents to increase revenue directly. However, they DO have the ability to inform callers of offers and qualify potential buyers. These are leads that can be entered into sales automation systems and tracked through the sales process. Armed with this data, management can develop metrics for lead generation and sales conversions, and reward agents accordingly. A useful template for selecting metrics that (really) matter is to rate them on two dimensions: relevance to corporate goals, and center s ability to actually influence the results. The process may highlight metrics that have no obvious impact or known statistical correlation with organizational goals, or are driven primarily by factors outside contact center management s control. Industry training courses can offer value here, by providing detailed direction on how to effectively implement tools such as analytics and dashboards. 3 Do you understand the difference between big data and useful information? Big data is exploding. According to Intel, it took from the dawn of civilization to 2003 to create five exabytes of information. Now we can do that in two days! 1 If you want to know what big data looks like, consider today s contact center. One large service provider handles 300,000 to 400,000 calls per day. This generates as much as 60,000 hours of recorded audio. However, until the audio is organized and presented in an understandable manner, it is just data, not information. Recorded audio is a form of unstructured data. Unstructured data is not organized in a pre-defined manner. Stored audio and video are good examples, but unstructured data can also include text, feedback on social media sites, and even numbers and dates. By some estimates, approximately 90% of the world s stored data is unstructured. 2 Extracting meaning The challenge for the contact center is to extract meaningful information from its troves of stored voice and data. We do that now by creating KPIs and by analyzing stored audio through the quality monitoring process. But these tools only reach the tip of the iceberg. To successfully find all of the needles in the haystack, you need a really big magnet. That s where speech and data analytics come in. Speech analytics is a spectrum of software tools that can sift through thousands of hours of recorded speech to extract otherwise hidden meanings. Common applications for speech analytics are compliance, performance management, discovery, and root cause analysis. The cost of speech and data analytics technology has declined dramatically over the past 10 years. However, despite the many advantages and improved affordability, it is estimated that only about 20% of contact centers today deploy these technologies. 3 For the other 80%, there is much that can be done with little or no additional investment. Use the tools within your recording system to categorize incoming calls by call type. This will quantify the reasons why customers are calling. Train and motivate agents to probe for root causes. If someone is canceling an account, find out why. Tag significant calls and require supervisors to follow up. Issue periodic electronic reports and attach recordings that illustrate key points. Encourage agents to share significant insights. 4

5 Providing valuable insights is a great way to gain visibility and recognition with senior management. The executive level of your organization may not understand KPIs, but they likely understand the value of insights that can lead to cost savings, successful innovations, marketing initiatives, and customer care policies. 4 Are you listening to the voice of your customer (VOC)? Customer experience management has emerged as a new paradigm for modeling the agent caller interaction. An important distinction between customer experience management (CEM) and traditional customer service management is the notion that every interaction at any touch point constitutes an experience. The sum total of these experiences influences the customer s view of the brand and the company. The intent of CEM is to make customer interactions positive and memorable. The presumption, based on research, is that customers that are completely satisfied (delighted) with the customer interaction are most likely to remain customers and to promote the brand to their network of contacts. Customer satisfaction is one of the key metrics used by executives today to evaluate the health of their organizations. Given that reality, it is surprising that not every contact center has a voice of the customer (VOC) program. According to a study conducted by ICMI, 31% of contact centers surveyed did not track customer satisfaction at all, and among those that did, the data was often collected too infrequently to guide effective decision-making. 4 Options for building a VOC program CEM cannot be implemented without an effective voice of the customer program. There are many ways to collect end-user feedback, each with its own pluses and minuses: METHOD PLUS MINUS Inferred by supervisor, based on recordings Fast Ties back to agent Highly judgmental Small sample Directly by agent Fast Ties back to agent and event High participation Potential for bias Extends handle time Respondent may not be candid Third-party surveys Objective Consistent Can collect explanatory feedback Slow Costly Cannot tie back to specific agent or event Pre- or post-call IVR surveys Economical Ties back to agent and event Low participation Hard to collect explanatory feedback Web surveys Economical Flexible Need address Low participation 5

6 Relevant training can guide contact center managers in understanding the best collection methods, and how to apply this data in order to put together an effective voice of the customer program. This type of meaningful approach can go a long way toward improving customer satisfaction and building customer loyalty. 5 How successful is your center at first call resolution (FCR)? First call resolution (FCR) has become one of the most closely watched metrics in the contact center, and for good reason. FCR has significant economic and customer satisfaction implications. On the economic side, about 30% of inbound calls require at least one follow-up call. If an agent handles, say, 1,200 calls/month at $7.00/call and 30% are follow-ups, the cost is $2,520/agent/month. 5 If the percentage of repeat calls were to drop to 25%, the cost per agent would drop by $420 each month. For a 100-agent call center, that equates to more than $400,000 per year. From a customer care perspective, FCR is one of only a handful of traditional KPIs empirically shown to directly affect customer satisfaction. (Another is agent satisfaction.) Finally, unlike customer satisfaction scores, the incidence of repeat calls is largely controllable by the contact center. While the value of FCR is clear, there are some challenges in collecting the data. One method is to require agents to flag repeat calls on the CRM system. Another approach is to scour the ACD for calls from the same telephone number that occurred within a defined time interval. A more accurate approach is to collect the data directly from callers through voice of the customer surveys. Unfortunately, it can be challenging to determine whether the caller has made a prior attempt (perhaps through a different communication channel), or dropped off after a long wait time. Causes and fixes Our research has identified the following common causes of repeat calls: Long hold times caller drops and tries a second time Agent did not have the information to answer the question Agent lacks the authority to solve problems Prior attempts resulted in unclear or incorrect information Corporate policies with which the customer disagreed Frustration with self-service Unclear response from non-voice channels While there are many technology solutions designed to help improve FCR, a great deal can be accomplished without investing in costly new technology. Agents need to know of external events and developments (like product recalls, price changes, and new promotions) before the customers find out. Every agent should possess contact information for subject matter experts who are committed to supporting the contact center. Agents, particularly the more senior ones, should have the authority to make carefully constrained decisions and provide concessions without seeking further approval. Finally, external training that addresses this topic can provide best-practice solutions at both the management and agent levels. 6

7 Summary Goal setting, selecting appropriate and meaningful metrics, understanding the difference between data and information, listening and responding to VOC, and a high percentage of first call resolution are all are essential elements of a successful contact center. However, it is also critical to note that practices and technology are only a means to success, secondary to high-performing employees. The planning and budgeting process must address coaching and training needs at all levels in order to truly be successful, and developing first-class materials and launching innovative delivery models requires expertise that is often all too scarce in-house. Training at the manager and supervisor level can provide this much-needed expertise, while simultaneously increasing employee satisfaction and improving processes. 1 Intel IT Center, Big Data 101: Unstructured Data Analytics, (June, 2012) 2 IDC iview, Extracting Value from Chaos, (June, 2011) 3 Frost & Sullivan End-User Contact Center Survey (2010) 4 ICMI research report, Customer Satisfaction Measurement, (2009) 5 Pelorus Associates, whitepaper, Boosting First Contact Resolution with Best Practices and Technology Solutions, (2008) About ICMI The International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) is the leading global provider of comprehensive resources for customer management professionals from frontline agents to executives who wish to improve customer experiences and increase efficiencies at every level of the contact center. Since 1985, ICMI has helped more than 50,000 organizations in 167 countries through training, events, certification, consulting, and informational resources. ICMI s experienced and dedicated team of industry insiders, trainers, and consultants are committed to helping you raise the strategic value of your contact center, optimize your operations and improve your customer service