Contact Center Decisions                                                            July 2016

As the leader of your contact center you are under constant pressure to improve agent performance. 

But is it really about improved performance or is about meeting and exceeding goals that senior management has put in place for the contact center.  Depending on the industry it could be incoming increase revenue or reduce outgoing payments. 

What we come to realize, in the contact center, is that agents, team leaders and even you the manager are caught, off guard and unaware of the jump in customers contacting the business.  Fifteen, twenty years ago customers called us and we were quickly alerted by the flashing red light mounted to the cubicles in the call center.  In today’s world customers are emailing, sending chat messages or going out to social media.  This is how the contact center can be thought of as unaware and not taking care of the customer.  

How do we eliminate this “not aware” problem?  What can we do to provide agents, supervisors and even ourselves with the information we need to be made aware?  We have choices that we need to make to improve, maintain or exceed our business goals. 

Digital Signage in the Contact Center:

Large LCD screens showing calls, emails, chats, or social media information can be very valuable to the contact center.  Questions that you need to answer:

     

     1.       Who is the audience for the LCD Screens?

a.       How many will you need to have for your audience to see the screens?

b.      Do the supervisors and managers walk the floor and need to see this content because they are not at their desks?

c.       Is mobile not allowed in your contact center?

     2.       What content is needed to improve performance and can that content be displayed?

     3.       Weather, traffic, social content is needed do your internal policies allow for this content?

     4.       Will your budget cover the software, hardware and hardware installation? 

Data can be combined together showing the agents that current status of critical KPI’s such as the emails and chats waiting to be answered.  The positive or negative social media posts that need addressing. 

Going beyond the usual contact center data having the LCD screens to communicate with the agents provides added value to the daily job the agents must endure.

     Dashboards:

Data from multiple sources combined together into a single report makes it quick and easy for anyone to see the current status.  It does not matter the method in which the customer is trying to contact you because you are now immediately aware of the status.  Questions that you need to answer:      1.       Can you combine the data together into a single dashboard?
      2.       Will the right people have access to the dashboard?      3.       Can you segregate the data to the correct audiences?Dashboards if properly designed will provide the best information for its audience.  The design of the dashboard must also meet the audience’s personality. Some people are unable to review a lot of data and want critical stats in graphs and charts.  Others do not want graphic input they only want data.  Dashboards are able to eliminate, solve and or reduce problems for just about every call center.  Are you willing and able to combine data together in a format that works for you?

 

Desktops:

Real estate!  Agents have limited room on their desktops for a dashboard with a lot of data on it.  So the resolution is to have only the critical data on the desktop wallboard.  Display Calls, Emails, Chats waiting to be answered and you will see an improvement in contact center performance.  Yes, each of these applications show this status but are they combined together so the agent does not have to look at three separate reports or notifications?  Questions that you need to answer:

1    1.       If the agents have this desktop wallboard will they read it and react to it?

      2.       Will the desktop wallboard have the proper data for the agents?

      3.       Will one more application on the agents desktop overwhelm the agent?

Agents are always working heads down.  They are focused on the current customer and the applications they are working.  Having an alert on the phone works only if it is for calls waiting and the agent is looking at the phone for a blinking LED light.  Giving the alert notice to the agent who is looking at their screen will improve performance.

Mobile Web Reporting:

In today’s world we are mobile.  We are out working with the team leaders, agents, in meetings, traveling, checking on status from home, or providing senior management access to the critical statistics.  If we are a BPO our customers need to see the reports.  Mobile web reporting is crucial in the contact center today.  Questions that you need to answer:

1. Do you have access to your desktop 100% of the time while you are working? 

    

     Of course not. You are mobile so having access to the critical data at all times manages the performance of the contact center.

     2. While being mobile do you need to know the status of the contact center?

      

     3. Do you need quick drill down access to multiple layers of data?

Web based reporting allows for easy mobility for key team members.  The reporting may not be pretty pictures with graphs and charts but it does contain the crucial data that offers team members quick solutions to the daily challenges. 

In the real estate industry it is all about location, location, location.  For the contact center industry we have decisions, decisions, decisions.  Which direction you should go is funded by the budget and anticipated outcome.  If the direction needs to be contact center improvement in daily functionality then reporting is the proper direction for you to go.

Spectrum is a leading provider of Unified Contact Center Reporting.  Contact Spectrum today to discuss difficult contact center reporting decisions.  For more examples of reporting visit our website and the products page. http://www.specorp.com/products

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Dan Boehm
VP Sales and Marketing
Spectrum
dboehm@specorp.com
+1 713 986 8839

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.

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.

Call Center Digital Signage Content

I have been helping customers this week layout their Call Center Digital Signage Content. This is the content that will be displayed on their LCD screens in the call center. The content is real time information from multiple sources such as the ACD, CRM and WFM. However, one consistent challenge that I have run up against is the amount of content the customer wants to display on a single screen.

In each case that I worked the customer wanted two - three times the amount of content that is recommended for a LCD screen. Content over run occurs becuase the manager has so much they want the agents to be aware of at any given point in time. So how does a manager cut down the content or decide what content goes to the second and third page on the screen?
1. Know your audience;
2. Understand what the goals are for the audience;
3. What type of impact does the content need to have on the audience;
4. How far is the average person from the screen?

Know your audience: If the digital signage is for the agents and team leaders then the content should be directed to them. Displaying historical data from the IVR may be interesting but it does not help the agents achieve their goals.

Understand the goals for the audience: If the goal for the audience is to improve Average Handle Time then display the metrics that affect the average handle time including AHT.

What type of impact does the content need to have on the audience: Be sure the content is prominently displayed and is the first to be read/seen by the audience. Make the important content stand out with larger fonts and use color thresholds to gain attention.

How far is the average person from the screen? On average a 1 inch tall character on an LCD screen can be read from 16 ft away. If your agents are 50 ft from the screen a 3 inch tall font is required.

Since this is a blog I did not want to go into much more detail. Contact Spectrum for more details on this topic of Call Center Digital Signage content.

At-home agents

My nephew just started working out of his home rather than at the office. He asked me about some things that he should be doing to make certain his sales do not drop off. I was thinking about this and realized how similar his situation is to a work at home agent. So I created a list of things that a work at home agent should have to be able to be effective. This list is not in any priority.

1. The right tools: This is a basic assumption that can be overlooked. Phone, computer, high speed access to the internet and company network, headset, desk and comfortable chair.
2. Work Space: A dedicated place to answer the phone and work. This needs to be comfortable too.
3. A quiet environment: There is little worse than talking to an agent and hearing the dog barking or dishes clanging in the background.
4. The proper attitude: Not everyone can work from home. Some agents need social interaction. Years ago I had a work from home sales rep quit because he could not "hang out at the water cooler" and get caught up on gossip. During the interview process be sure to determine if they have the proper attitude.
5. Dedication: It is easy to log on and then place yourself into some type of non working status. Agents that work from home need a schedule and they need to be dedicated and stick to the schedule.
6. Feel like part of the team: Include all agents in contests, share information, send messages and make them feel like part of the team.
7. Back up plan: The agent should have a notebook and pencil ready for when (not if) the internet connection or network access is lost of denied.
8. On-going training plans: All agents need on-going traning. Agents that work from home may miss out on the team leader or manager immediate support therefore training is important to keep at-home agents up-to-date.
9. Access to real time statistics at their desktops: Real time information will let the agent know their status and that of the call center and can be prepared for heavier call volume. The ability to change the statistics and metrics they see would be helpful.
10. Priority access to team leaders or managers: Working from home does not mean at-home agents do not have trouble at times. Because they are at home and do not take as much team leader or manager time they should have priority access when needed.

Spectrum can provide the Real Time desk top statistics and metrics. Contact Us for more information.