Artwork in the call center?

I had to ask the manager I was talking to “Have you ever dusted the plasma screen you are using?” The customer reply to me “No, the janitor does that.”  I had to correct myself and get to my point.  “You have had the plasma screen in the call center for over four years and you have never changed the content on the screen?”

No they had not and it had gotten to the point where the agents now almost completely ignore the plasma screens and only review them when the screens provide an audible alert.  The success or failure of the screens can be attributed to the changes to the content on the screens.  The goal should be to modify the KPI’s that are being displayed to ones that are needed.  Call center content needs change based on time of year, business changes, new goals and trends, agent / group successes or failures and call center group relocation's. 

The benefits of an LCD screen in the contact center are:

·        Improve agent and group performance with critical KPI’s that can and do change throughout the year;

·        Agents will react proactively to real time metrics and improve efficiencies;

·        Managers can keep tabs on operational effectiveness while they are interoffice mobile;

·        Minimize agent sick days during important events (Super Bowl, World Cup, etc);

·        Impress visiting customers and potential customers with state-of-the-art technology.

The content on LCD screens has tremendous value and benefits to the agents and call center.  But the content must be kept timely, accurate and appropriate for everyone.  The lack of changes to the content will lower the value to the call center. Content changes include new KPI’s that show where groups are under performing, new layout of the existing content to increase screen visibility and add data that is new to the group from ACD only to ACD and in-house database for example. 

Call center managers should be making changes to the LCD Screen(s) and if they are not sure what changes to make they can ask team leaders, supervisors, senior management, other call centers or even their call center software vendors. 

Don’t treat the LCD screens like artwork: hung up where you want it and showing nice colors.  Treat the LCD screen correctly with performance improving content, always changing layouts, positive group and agent updates and you will have screens that are always being reviewed by agents. 

Too much customer service?

I wonder if this is a case of too much good customer service or taking things so far that the customer will give up and do something else.  Let me explain.

I have an HP notebook PC and the letters printed on the keyboard are coming off. The notebook is less than a year old and is still under warranty.  Now I do not need to see the letters on the keys for most of the letters but some I do not know where they are without looking - quick, without looking where is your F5 key - see what I mean? 

So I went to the HP support website and got on a chat session with HP.  They quickly told me I would need to call for support.  No problem I can do that.  I called the call center and reached a South American support center, cool, first time talking to a South American call center. 

I spoke to three different people about my problem.  They all told me how sorry they were that I was having a problem, which is nice but after hearing that at least 10 times I really did not care I just wanted a resolution to my problem.  I know apologizing for the problem is part of the standard Customer Support training but HP has taken it to a new level.  Tell me your sorry once or twice and I am happy, 10 times and I know you are no longer sincere.

My challenge was explaining to HP what the problem was with my notebook.  They had not had this type of problem before and could not understand how the letters could be coming off the keyboard. Were the keys actually falling off the keyboard? Are the keys not working? No, I kept telling them, it is the printing of the letters on the keyboard.  Finally, they understood and that is when the problems began.

Everyone acknowledged my notebook was under warranty but they kept on telling me this was cosmetic and could not be covered.  Hmm, how could this be cosmetic?  Cosmetic is a scratch, dent, smudge, or or my bumper sticker on the back peeling off.  But for the printed letters to wear off after 10 months of use?  Ok maybe I pound away to hard on my keyboard when sending off an email to the sales team, but they deserve it so that should not count. 

I am now on my third customer support person and this is a Case Manager and I feel like I am actually getting somewhere.  Oh, by the way this is now over an hour at this point.  I have been put on hold numerous times while they investigate this problem.  Which is another issue I have with customer support.  Do not ask me repeatedly if they can put me on hold tell me you are going to put me on hold.  What if I say “No, you cannot put me on hold?” what will they do, how can they support me?  Just tell me you will put me on hold for 2 -3 minutes and do it.

So my Case Manager tells me sorry this is cosmetic and cannot be covered.  So I tried another angle.  I asked him to take his hands off his keyboard, close his eyes and then put his hands back on the keyboard and type something and it must be 100% accurate.  Success!  He understood my problem and one more time on hold and HP agrees to send me a new replacement keyboard. 

This call took me 95 minutes to complete.  HP did everything by the book which leads me to wonder if this not part of a bigger plan to get customers to give up. Here are my examples of going too far with customer service:

·        Asking to put me on hold and telling me hold long I will be on hold.  I get this but don’t ask just tell me you are putting me on hold and for how long.

·        My name is important but not everyone needs to be able to properly pronounce it and spend 2 -3 minutes practicing how to say my name.  When I spoke to three people that alone added 6 - 9 minutes to the call. 

·        Getting a customer to fill out a survey is great, but I talked to three people on the call and each asked me to fill out a survey.  Again more time wasted on the call.

I am an “all about the principal of it” type of guy.  That call cost my company more than just buying a new keyboard. So when the clock hit 30 minutes on this call I started to think about just ordering a new keyboard and letting HP win.  But it is the principal of it that made me follow through on this call.

 Is this the plan for taking customer service to a new level?  Kill the customer with kindness and delays so they hang up and buy the replacement part.  HP has obviously spent a lot of time and money on proper training, but the training has gone too far and the customer support people need to back off a bit and be more human and less scripted agents.  

Call Center Agent Desktops

It has been said that Content is King, but what does that mean for the agent desktop? Does this mean that all agents should receive the same content (sorted by the skill or queue they are responsible for, of course)? For the busy call center manager many times that is exactly what it means but that does not make it right.

I do not lay blame for this issue at the feet of anyone in the call center. I blame vendors like myself for allowing it to happen and propagate. Many vendors give up trying after the sale and take the easy road to project completion and pay day. However, once the sales has been made the real work begins.

Content for agent desktops should vary based on experience, skills, responsibilities and goals for the call center.

1. Experience: A new agent should not see the same content as an agent who has been on the job for years. A new agent has many concerns and adding complexity and confusion to the desktop only adds stress to the position. Minimize the content for the new agents or eliminate it altogether until you are sure the agent is able to handle the additional information.

Focus on providing strictly status information such as Calls Waiting, Wait Time and Service Level. More complex metrics such as AHT or CSat scores can wait.

2. Skills: Some agents have more skills than others. You see this everyday and secretly wish you had more agents with those advanced skills. Therefore the content you provide to the advanced agents should differ from the other agents.

Focus on metrics that show agent performance such as AHT, Adherence, Occupancy, Abandon Rate. Beginner metrics are not as important to the experienced agent they already know how to react to calls waiting, wait times, etc.

3. Responsibilities: Should an inbound customer service representative answering questions about an online policy claims form see the same metrics as an outbound sale agent? Each of these agents has specific objectives.

Align the metrics with the objectives for the agent.

4. Goals: Your call center has goals and most likely these goals have been expressed to the agents. The content on the desktops should support the goals for the call center. Create objectives for the agents and align the content with the objectives.

Help Desk Service Center should focus on trouble ticket metrics , revenue producing centers should focus on CRM metrics, etc.

Your vendor should work with you to develop the appropriate content for your agents desktops and allow you to get real value out of the desktop solution you have invested in. As a call center manager you should be willing to invest the time to make certain you identify your agent types. Then you should take one more step and provide the right content for your agents so the desktop solutions work for them and is not just another distraction.

Agent Metrics

About six months ago I had a meeting with a call center customer. The meeting was with the Customer Services Director and a consultant from a benchmarking company. The purpose of the meeting was to understand what metrics Spectrum should capture and display on the agents desktop wallboard.

The benchmarking consultant stated that the desktop wallboard should contain customer satisfaction ratings, AHT, service level, abandon calls as a percent, ASA and Calls Waiting (inqueue). The consultant said the agent will perform and meet the SLA's if they see these metrics on the desktop. First Call Resolution information is not available and could not be displayed.

From my point of view it did not matter to me what the customer wanted to capture and display, I just wanted a happy customer that is using our product. However, I was concerned about the amount of data to be displayed (because of desktop real estate) and the agent training that would be needed to explain the meaning of the metrics.

The customer decided to do a test. We had two types of desktop wallboards designed with different content and with agents of various skill levels. Later we found that more desktop designs were needed. The customer took a baseline measurement and then again four weeks later. The testing, set up and results are too much to cover in this blog but the final results are important to mention.

• New agents did best with a minimum amount of data: Calls in queue and oldest call waiting.
• Mid level agents performed best with four metrics: Calls in queue, ASA, Oldest call waiting and Service Level. Only a few of these agents wanted to see more and different metrics.
• Highly skilled agents improved most when they had performance metrics on their desktops. These metrics included: AHT, Occupancy, Abandon Rate, Service Level, and Calls Waiting. Some of these agents were actively asking for more data that would help them do a better job.

This customer is continuing to test the desktop content to find out what works best for their call center and agents. My takeaways from this test were:

1. Not all agents should see the same content - duh!

2. Give your agents the information that will allow them to perform best for their skill level.

3. As your agents improve, change the desktop content to match their skills.

4. Some agents want the tools to work for them. Listen to these agents and accommodate the changes when it makes sense.

This test was by no means perfect. There were flaws in the way things were set up, measured, and tested. But you cannot argue with the successes that this call center experienced.

Call Center New Year Resolutions

With the new year comes new year's resolutions. Every year some of us resolve to stop smoking, lose weight or be a better person. Sorry I cannot help you with the first two. If you manage a call center one way you can be a better person is to review and change your metrics, thresholds and reports.

Reviewing and changing your metrics, thresholds and reports will make you a better person because your agents and supervisors will love you for it! Call Centers are dynamic. Every year there is something new from the company that the call center must deal with. Everyone in the call center needs to adapt to these changes. Yet the agents and supervisors are still looking at the same metrics, responding to the same thresholds and seeing the same reports from last year.

If the call center has experienced any changes at all the reports, thresholds and metrics should change as well. In addition, agents that have finished another successful year probably have been promoted or at least are doing something more advanced. These agents should not be looking at the same old tired metrics and have the same threshold levels as last year.

Now is the time to review the status of your call center and make some changes that will make you boss of the year. Agents and supervisors will love you for updating their metrics and threshold settings because you have shown you are aware of what they are doing.

Status and Performance Reporting

When it comes to real time reporting for the call center there are two categories of report types: Status Reporting and Performance Reporting. At a glance these two types of reports look very similar, however, there are subtle differences. Knowing what these differences are and selecting the correct reports for your call center will make your reporting successful.

Status Reporting is for the call center that is mature, has agents that perform at a high level and need very little training and coaching. This call center knows what they are doing, knows their SLA's, the agents know their goals and regularly achieve them. This call center will have turnover that is lower than the industry average and have agents that adhere to their schedules.

Reports for real time status will include these KPI's:

• Calls in Queue
• Service Level
• Calls Abandoned
• Oldest Call Waiting
• Average Speed of Answer
• Average Handle Time

There are other KPI's that call center will include which will depend on the call center, the industry, the agent performance and other factors. The KPI's shown above are the critical metrics a call center that is performing at a high level should see.

Performance Reporting is for the call center that needs encouragement to reach their goals, has turnover that is higher than industry averages, does a lot of training and coaching and still misses their SLA's. This call center, large or small, seems to be on a roller coaster - some days the agents do very well other days not so well. This type of call center needs performance statistics that show how they are performing and what needs to be done.

Reports for real time perfomance will include these KPI's:

• Calls in Queue
• Oldest Call Waiting
• Average Speed of Answer
• Calls Abandoned Rate (Percent)
• Agent (Schedule) Adherence Rate
• Agents Available

These metrics help the agents with awareness which is typically lacking in an underperforming call center. To help the underperforming call center improve agent performance reporting is the best alternative.

Breaking down these reporting types further into more granular types there are Agent Status and Performance reports, Team Leader Status and Performance reports, and Call Center (Manager) Status and Performance reports. These reports become more targeted and granular and further help the call center improve.

For call center reporting to be successful and help the content in the report must be appropriate. providing the information can be de-motivating. To select the right type of reporting the manager must take a hard look at the call center and determine if they are a successful or an underperforming call center. Once the manager realizes what type of call center they have steps can be taken to offer the right information to the agents, team leaders, and manager.

Bartender for the Call Center Manager

Sometimes I feel like I am a bartender or a hair stylist for Call Center and IT Managers. I ahve heard stories from these managers about their switch or WFM or service provider that I probably should not be hearing. I guess being a vendor with no horse in that race the manager feels it's ok to tell me about their experiences and why they are pulling out a vendor in favor of another.

This got me thinking about why these call centers are moving to another vendor at what will be an extremely costly change. No one in their right mind wants to spend that amount of time and money to change vendors for the heck of it.

1. The vendor has over promised and under delivered. There are times when a vendor and customer are not on the same page which can lead to this occurring. There are times when the vendor is not able to hold up their end of the project. Rereading the SOW and its fine print are a quick way to find missing or misleading vendor tasks.

2. Total cost of ownership. Customers must read the details of the solution coverage and ask lots of what if questions when it comes to warranty, maintenance, licensing and support. Digging deep to understand what is really covered and assuming that something is covered are two different things.

3. Misstated, misapplied or misused ROI calculations. The adage of too good to be true applies to ROI calculations. I have heard ROI calculations for million dollar plus projects of 5 - 6 months. If you vendor has invented time travel then this might be possible. If not then the ROI calculations are probably off. One quick ROI check is to look for improved efficiencies. No product is used 100% of the time so a multiplier that is applied 100% of the time is not appropriate. For example a new phone might make the agent more efficient but only when they are actually using the phone not when they are idle or simply talking and not using the phones features.

4. Not staying current. The vendor has not made any product changes, added new features, done any development on the product since the purchase. If this is accurate then there is cause for concern. Any vendor with long term plans for a product will continue to develop the solution and try to make it better. Ask the vendor for a list of product updates made in the last 3 - 5 years and then ask about future development on the product.

5. Arrogance and attitude. If the arrogance and attitude of the vendor have gotten in the way of the vendors ability to provide a solution that works then it is time to move on. It is one thing to be sure of your solution it is another thing to ignore the customer or as a vendor to believe the customer cannot go anywhere else. As a customer it is not wise to cut off your nose to spite your face. It is possible to request new representation from the vendor and talk frankly with the vendor management about the attitude and arrogance coming from the vendor.

There are other reasons why customers leave vendors but these came to mind quickly. As a vendor to the call center industry being vigilant and not falling into the rut of any of these issues listed above is a key part of being a responsible vendor.

Cross Selling in the Call Center

I was surprised when I heard the Call Center Manager explain to me that they do not ask the agents to cross sell because it does not work. The manager went on to say that his agents are not trained to sell and asking them to do something they are not trained to do would be a waste of time. His metrics would also be adversely be affected by having his agents cross sell. I suggested the agents did not need to sell but rather just bring up the idea of another product or service.

When was the last time you were so surprised that you were almost speechless? This is what happened to me when I was talking to this manager for a major insurance company. His entire argument about cross selling does not work because of training is ridiculous. I am in sales and I no without a doubt that cross selling works. In fact it worked on me the other day.

"Yes, I am calling to receive a copy of my mortgage interest statement for 2010." "Ok, please give me your account number...." After the main purpose of the call was done the agent asked me if I was interested in learning about the current interest rates for refinancing my home loan. "Sure" I said and I was quickly transferred to another agent that did some routine questions with me then I was transferred to a loan officer. Within 15 minutes I was ready to make a decision.

Cross selling works. Call Centers and Call Center Managers that do not cross sell are missing a tremendous opportunity. I suspect the insurance company CC manager was afraid that cross selling might negatively affect his metrics and scorecard. This manager is missing the big picture.

For those that want to employ cross selling there are some very basic rules to follow:

1. Train the agent to mention only a single product or service;

2. Make the cross selling statement simple and quick. The statement should take no more than 5 seconds to ask;

3. Remind agents to cross sell using your call center reporting tools such as wallboards, desktop messaging and weekly meetings;

4. Everyone should be cross selling, everyone;

5. Reward the agents that cross sell, especially the successful cross sellers;

6. Track your efforts.

Cross selling works and more call centers should employ this technique to boost review. By the way the question, "Is there anything else I can help you with?" is not cross selling.

Help Desk Metrics

Last week I was speaking with a Director of Operations in charge of a Help Desk Customer Service Center. This director was interested in metrics he should be using for his operation. One issue that he mentioned at the beginning of the conversation was that he did not want typical call center statistics.

Our conversation explored his customer service center and what his goals were for the center. It is interesting the differences between inhouse and outsourced customer service centers. I have found that inhouse centers focus on the number of tickets opened and closed while outsourced centers fixate on SLA's. Perhaps given their respective reporting responsibilities it maks sense.

For this outsourced service center I suggested the following metrics to report and track. These metrics are not in any order or priority.
Total Number of Tickets Logged per Product - real time and for the day
Total Time Worked per Ticket and per Product
Average Number of Tickets per Product
Average Time Worked per Ticket per Product
Tickets Opened per Product real time and for the day (this differs from Tickets logged)
Tickets opened per Product for the Day
Service Level real time for the day per Product / All Product / Group
Tickets Closed pre Product real time / day
Average Handle Time per Ticket per Product (Can be a misleading metric)
Max Handle Time per Ticket per Product
Max Handle Time all Tickets / Products
First Call Resolution per Product
Tickets resolved in X hours since Logged per Product
Tickets resolved in 8 hours since Logged per Product
Tickets resolved in 24 hours since Logged per Product
Tickets unresolved for the day / week per Product
Tickets escalated per Product for the day
Customer Satisfaction Rate per Product / Total
Ticket Closure Ratio per Product / Total
Average Time to Close VS SLA's
Average Response Time per Product

All of these metrics should be run by group and by agent as well. This level of detail can show which groups are performing well and which CSR needs training. There are many idiosyncrasies with help desk metrics that can be misleading and should be analyzed prior to using the data in performance reviews.

Smart phones in the call center

Everywhere you look today you see smartphones. Call center managers, team leaders, agents, IT support, etc all have smart phones. Since so many people are using smart phones why not extend the use of the phone to the call center.

So what is a smart phone? If you have an IPhone or a Blackberry phone you have a smart phone. However, Wikipedia defines a smart phone as a phone with traditional phone features and advanced computing and connectivity.

Call centers leaders are now using their smart phones to stay in touch with the call center with web based reporting, scheduled reporting that provide current call center status and ad hoc alert message about metrics that are outside of the goals.

Managers are very mobile and the smart phone is an ideal tool to stay in touch with the call center in a very unobtrusive way.