Insight The analytics trend in customer service 4-point plan for greater efficiency in contact centres
2 Introduction The subject of analytics these days includes a vast number of factors relating to customer satisfaction, the effectiveness of the contact centre employee (agent) and the internal contact centre processes. As a centre or service centre manager, part of the quality management you have to consider is which of these factors are crucial to your business and are capable of being measured and which procedures must be put in place when thresholds are breached. Social networks can now be added alongside conventional communication channels such as phone, fax, post, email and text messaging. Facebook, Twitter and the like all present you with new challenges: Whereas it was previously only telephone calls that had to be processed in real time, online communication is now a real time channel in its own right. Due to the frequent use of the online channels used as a communication tool, customers expect to get an immediate response to their query. As a result of this situation, customer service centres are increasingly becoming real time factories where it is not only necessary to monitor the KPIs but where changing developments must also be responded to immediately. It is a good idea not just to consider the service centre organisational unit but to broaden the internal interaction with the sales, marketing and customer service departments in order to learn about customer communication in these areas and obtain a complete picture of all dialogue. Ideally, there should also be a portal which not only shows the KPIs for the contact centre but which can also be used to monitor the error frequency for identical incidents at the user help desk, the conversion rate for current outbound campaigns or the tone on internet platforms in relation to current industry topics in comparison with competitors, for example. The aim of this increased outlay is to provide customers with the best information as quickly as possible, to maximise customer satisfaction and ultimately to generate maximum added value. This is also why it is becoming increasingly important for interaction on social media to not be confined to marketing and instead be integrated in contact centres as another high-quality communication channel. Analysis of customer communication channels are usually restricted to the study of the spoken and written word. Since the greatest challenge is posed in particular by real time language analysis, the focus below is generally not on analysing campaigns or events, but rather on analysing conversations. Interesting observations have been made when analysing: 1. The frequency of the words within a conversation. 2. The combination of words or the occurrence of the words in a specific sequence or a particular time interval within a conversation. The analysis also looks at content-dependent usage remember problematic words do not always mean a negative conversation!
3 Mining Hidden Gold Upselling and Cross Selling In sales, both quantity and quality matter. Both areas can be measured and evaluated exceptionally well using suitable criteria. Fundamentally speaking, any conversation can be turned into a sales conversation: Informative customer service conversations can be steered towards cross selling or upselling with subtle questions to collect information. Agents can handle customer complaints by listening carefully and with skilled objection handling, offering the customer suitable alternatives to solve their problem and encouraging continued loyalty to the company. Customer calls to the service desk may indicate that a useful service upgrade should be sold to the customer without the costs exceeding the service benefits. Campaign-related outbound conversations are a special form of conversation. The indicators include successful closing within the shortest possible time. What should you measure? In order to be able to adequately analyse sales performance, the following KPIs must be evaluated: Average conversation time Outbound reachability rate number and percentage of messages left on voicemail Conversion rate factor calculated from the number of deals closed relative to the total number of all conversations conducted Level of sales achieved Cancellation rate cancellations based on initiated/ agreed sales Cancellation recovery rate reversal of cancellations for a variety of different reasons It is clear that some factors are process-driven, while others relate to the skills of the agents. Nonetheless, your contact centre staff are at their most successful when they are provided with the ideal resources to help them during the conversation. On the one hand, these can be dynamic guides which jump to different sub-dialogues depending on the answers provided by the customer this does however rely on the agent correctly identifying the response, entering it by hand and then carrying out the suggested steps. It would be much better if customer responses were analysed automatically in real time and a separate campaign window opened, notifying your agent of what steps to take next. Identifying the potential for cross selling and upselling then becomes less dependent on the skills and experience of the individual agent meaning that new, less experienced members of staff have the increased capacity for success. Example: Online bank Analysis has shown that the words fixed-term deposit plus and day-to-day money are seldom used together As a result, customers do not notice new products being proactively offered and this means lost sales opportunities The gaps in an agents knowledge can have a negative impact on the success of the sale
4 Transparent Motivation Agent Coaching The best technology cannot replace a well-qualified agent, but it can improve the skills and the productivity of any employee. Your agents are still the most valuable asset in your contact centre or service centre (70% of all costs are attributed to personnel costs). As such, it is important for you to provide your employees with optimum training and development. This is not just about productivity but also about the morale and motivation of every single employee, as there can be a high employee turnover rate among independent contact centre outsourcers in particular. The existence of a staff committee is therefore particularly encouraged in contact centres. Increasing staff productivity can quickly become the sole focus while personal development is neglected, particularly in the case of service providers, where the contact centre is their only business. Analytical tools can easily create the impression that employees are being screened and scrutinised in comparison with their colleagues, it is therefore vital to involve the staff committee right from the very beginning and throughout the analysis process. Agent cockpits a valuable tool for employee development Your staff are more motivated when they know exactly what they are working towards. They must be able to understand how their work influences the overall success of their company or department. Analytical tools are an excellent way of providing contact centre agents and team leaders with a continuously updated picture of where individual strengths and weaknesses lie and how they can counteract any such weaknesses. The employee would ideally have access to a portal where they can view the campaigns on which they have been assessed and select the appropriate training packages. This is important for their ongoing motivation as it gives them visibility on their progress. The Agency cockpit can also show whether poor customer ratings can be attributed to their service or to a faulty product, for example. Agent cockpit The contact centre employee should ideally be able to see the following information: Status / attainment level of departmental targets Attainment level of personal targets (if agreed) List of campaigns analysed (phone conversations, emails, chats, etc.) List of personal evaluations Customer survey results relating to the agent s campaigns Personal evaluation trends(possibly only group trend) Comparison with other comparable groups General and personal coaching packages Self-assessment option for a campaign Personal future plan of action for planning the individual s training It is also important for you as a Contact Centre Manager to identify whether your agents and team leaders are observing the code of conduct and process guidelines. Here, too, campaigns can be analysed for pre defined keywords, or the content and times of conversations can be compared with parallel screen content. Support your agents development by allowing them to view the results of the analysis transparently
5 Get Real Time Customer Satisfaction Customer satisfaction surveys have the major advantage that the potential customer responses can be precisely restricted and therefore can collect accurate and consistent data sets. Surveys with multiple choice answers or surveys carried out by computers with a voice synthesiser and using an evaluation system based on school grades provide the best basis for unambiguous findings and the best data. These days, customer satisfaction surveys are typically carried out in the following forms: CSAT examples Anonymously on the internet using free online platforms such as SurveyMonkey, FluidSurveys, etc. By means of a specific telephone outbound campaign. In the case of appropriate target groups, by text message immediately following the interaction. At the end of a phone conversation with a customer, with the call being transferred to a computer with a voice synthesiser. The last two examples collect the feedback from the customer in real time or immediately following the service provided. If the analysis system is capable of evaluating the customer feedback immediately, then you effectively have a real time landscape of customer satisfaction; key points to remember: 1. The agent s learning success is at its highest since the circumstances of the case are still very fresh in their mind and the agent will be able to remember most details. This makes it easier to make contact centre agents aware of the nuances of their choice of language in a customer dialogue. 2. Real time feedback lets appropriate measures be taken promptly to guarantee a positive user experience for the customer and to put an unsatisfied customer in a more positive mood again. In the case of phone conversations with customers, their level of satisfaction can be analysed by identifying predefined words. The illustration on the next page shows an example of the frequency of words used together with the term cancel. As a Contact Centre Manager, you receive important clues to enable you to counteract negative outcomes early. According to the next diagram, the main problems are delays and long response times. Remember context is as important as content when collecting feedback we are
6 Get Real Time Customer Satisfaction The following diagram shows the relational frequency of words in the context of the key word cancel. The darker the colour, the greater the frequency. The nature of the clues, their context and their frequency will tell you whether the customer s dissatisfaction is caused by the employee, the faulty product or the service centre process that they have gone through. Top Tip: Quality Response times Delay Cancel Expensive Bandwidth Acoustic patterns provide clarity The aggressiveness and pitch of the voice can also be used to determine the level of customer satisfaction. It is worth examining here the extent to which the course of the conversation is responsible for the dialogue becoming negative. The image below shows the customer s voice over a period of time, with aggressive sections marked in red. Reachability Language problems Competition Listen carefully to your customers and read between the lines to identify valuable information
7 Knowing the Right Path Compliance and Procedure Observation of procedures, guidelines and policy (referred to collectively as compliance) plays a major role in companies and particularly within contact centres. The contact centre management stipulates how the sales approach should in principle proceed, which paths the agent should follow according to the current status of the conversation and how statutory provisions should be implemented. In sales, it may be worthwhile for agents to obtain a yes from the customer as often as possible or to repeat all the relevant points once more at the end of the sales conversation. In the case of advisory conversations, documentation must be be provided so there is proof that the customer has been made sufficiently aware of any risks and restrictions. Some of the most basic principles governing the way in which agents should communicate with customers (greeting, repeating the customer s needs, presenting the options, agreeing the outcome, summary, goodbye) can be checked by analysing key words and the sequence of words. Evaluation of the following points can lead to a new training package for the agent or reduce the wrap-up times for conversations by optimising the processes. Since individual programmes can be excluded in the screen recording, this procedure can also easily be made consistent with the respective employment agreements. Valuable additional information from evaluating screen movements. In addition to what is said, recording of the agent s screen can also be used for analysis. Modern analysis systems can record the speech and the screen in parallel hold times during a conversation can be directly correlated with below-optimum use of applications. The screen recording can be used to analyse the following points: The agent s skills in using the programme in question: Can the agent find the correct place in the application? Are the agent s mouse movements productive? Optimum sequence of the individual processes in the conversation: Do applications need to be used relatively often during a conversation? Does known data need to be entered manually into applications? Which data does the agent still need to enter in the wrap-up time? Incorporate the evaluation of screen content to optimise your established processes we are
Summary Analytical tools create the most added value in contact centres when you are able to examine individual campaigns in real time. In addition to phone conversations, online chats and increasingly social media interaction, they should all be evaluated as real time campaigns. Using appropriately adapted dictionaries, the analytical solutions are capable of not only analysing pre-defined correlations, but also identifying previously unknown combinations of words, depending on the content. Furthermore, analysis of acoustic patterns allows tense and aggressive conversations to be identified. Analytics in service centres uncovers hidden information, monitors pre-defined performance indicators and presents the results in a clear and comprehensible way. Our 4 Point Plan 1. Show the agent all the crucial information for maximum cross selling and upselling opportunities 2. Help contact centre staff develop through greater transparency and openness 3. Implement measures that quickly address dissatisfaction and increase customer satisfaction 4. Continuously audit compliance with internal code of conduct and process procedures It should be noted at this point that the analytical tools do not provide all the desired KPIs at the touch of a button. Some indicators may not be integrated at all or may be integrated only with a high level of integral effort in the analysis system. This is due to the potential interfaces and open database standards used by the individual manufacturer. The individual rules and combination of rules and their visual display, both in real time and historically, must also be scrutinised. Before ultimately deciding on a solution, a trial must therefore be carried out (proof of concept). Jon Hackett Principal Consultant Jon specialises in contact centres and complex voice within the unified communications stack. Next Steps To find out more, contact us on: 01403 244777 enquiry.dcs@daisygroup.com Or if you re an existing customer, get in touch with your account manager directly. CCBR/01/16 2015 Daisy Group. All rights reserved.