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How to measure a successful call centre - Q&A Session between GCCRM Advisors and Members
Asia Perspective
Ms. Claudia Schlesinger,Managing Director & Principal Consultant,CCS International (Hong Kong) Ltd
www.g-cem.org
This article is exclusively written for GCCRM.
Question:
In China call center is very familiar and useful for us. However I've no idea about the criterion of a successful call center, especially in the telecom industry .Is the criterion qualitative or quantitative? If quantitative, what does it mean concretely?
Answer:
Call Centres have always talked about productivity measures to boost the performance of their working environment and are often measured by their performance on key performance indicators (quantitative metrics).
Call center have traditionally focused on simple measurements of agent efficiency, such as talk time, wrap time and idle time. The data to create these reports is easily accessible from ACD's and predictive dialer's, and although manually compiling the information and presenting it in understandable reports can often be tedious and time consuming, the easy access of the information has led call center management to place a biased value on these agent-centric efficiency reports. Missing from this type of report is the effectiveness side of the scales, which highlights both the customer-centric view of the overall customer experience as well as integration of call center efficiency with overall corporate objectives.
The reason for putting a set of measurement practices in place at the call centre includes raising customer satisfaction, efficiency, performance, increasing sales, reducing staff turnover and ensuring consistency of organisational processes within the work environment.
Some key indicators that many call centres track today include:
* Abandon Rate
* Availability and Agent Utilisation
* Average Speed of Answer (ASA)
* Average handling time
* Idle time
* Handle Time
* One Call Resolution Rate
* Time in queue
* Time agent is available
* Wrap-up time
* Cost per contact by media
* Service Level
* Turnover Rate
* Contact Volume
Still the most popular key performance indicator (KPI) for an Inbound centre is abandoned calls and service levels and for Outbound centre the KPI's measured include the number of calls made, number of successful contacts and conversion rates
The relationship to the business process can't be examined using traditional call center metrics, which tend to be focused on volume measurements like calls per hour and calls in queue. Companies have been spending too much time with measurements that are focused on volume, the increased emphasis on the customer has necessitated a move to quality measurements.
Although the above measurements are important in today's business climate, and while traditional quantitative measurements shouldn't be ignored, they need to be balanced with those measurements that reflect a company's business direction,- so while a company needs to examine the efficiency and effectiveness of its call centre, it must pay attention to more complex issues like customer profitability. . the most important metric at the end of the day is customer satisfaction and it is generally acknowledged that it is more expensive to find new customers than to retain them. Customer satisfaction "is the most important measurement, as it can affect customer retention, loyalty and ultimately, an organisation's bottom line," according to GartnerGroup.
As technology has evolved over recent years the call centres can now run an operation that aligns its measurements with the organisation's business goals, focus on improving customers' experiences and still keep productivity up and costs down. True Return on Investment (ROI) comes from delivering the best customer experience possible with the ability to improve all areas of the business based on sophisticated, closed-loop data capture, and analysis from the gold mine of actionable information found in the contact center.
By correlating both hard and soft metrics, managers can identify which agents are best at meeting quantitative goals and providing superior customer service at the same time. For example, by comparing talk time with first call resolution, you can identify agents who excel at solving the customer's problems in the briefest amount of time - key candidates for best practices modelling. At the same time, you can identify those agents who take the most time to achieve call resolution and allocate them for training for improvement.
Measuring effectiveness and quality is just as important as measuring efficiency and quantity. Business objectives should become the bottom line in deciding who, what, where and when to measure, i.e., what key performance indicators (KPIs) are important for your call center. Then data capture, consolidation, analysis and reporting can become a closed-loop process that benefits everyone when the information is distributed to the whole organisation and the customers' experiences are improved.
The key efficiency metrics, according to GartnerGroup, are average monthly calls handled per agent and average monthly transactions handled per agent. The effectiveness of the call center can be evaluated by personnel costs and head count distribution among personnel categories, as well as first contact completion percentage. A poor first-contact percentage could reduce customer satisfaction and increase call center costs.
It has to be noted that not all measurements are necessary for every company or even for different functions within the same company. For example, a help desk CSR might not perform sales tasks at many companies, while other companies might use universal (service and sales) CSR's. As a rule of thumb a call centre that handles strictly outbound sales typically won't have calls waiting in a queue.
Conclusion
Although many call centres place a lot of emphasis on quantitative measures such as speed of calls and numbers of successful contacts, quantitive analysis is often driven by the desire to reduce costs and there is less focus on qualitative measures. Where quantitive analysis pursues business outcomes such as customer satisfaction, first call resolution, sales revenue and whether CSR's are productive in their jobs
Quantitive measures help ensure that staff work to a certain performance level while qualitive measures examine the impact on the business.
Traditionally, calls per hour has been an almost universal productivity measurement, but now is fading. It is increasingly being replaced by focused and specific qualitative and adherence measurements. CSR's can concentrate on being available, and on handling each transaction according to its individual needs. If implemented well, qualitative and adherence measurements can cultivate a better working environment, better quality and higher productivity.
Some Qualitive measures to consider include:
Call monitoring
Customer call-backs
Customer Satisfaction
Quality monitoring
About the Author
Claudia started in the Telebusiness Industry 11 years ago, as a Customer Service Reps' in the UK.
Moving through a variety of roles within Operations to find a niche in HRM and Training Development.
Academically, Claudia has a BA (Hons) in Performing Arts, and Diploma in HRM, and in Asia is one of a few Master Coach professionals listed with the Coaching Resource Centre.
Claudia moved to Asia Pacific over 8 years ago, with an International outsourced provider as a key player within the implementation team, supporting new and developing markets, working with new clients to establish the Telebusiness Industry. She designed strategies for implementation and then delivered them. She adapted European and American operations and training concepts to the local cultures to ensure knowledge and skills transfer. She understands that with the many cultural differences within Asia the main synergy is communication. One of the most important things she achieved was the transfer of knowledge and skills so that the local workforce understood how to bring value to the industry. Coupled with processes and technology, Claudia firmly believes that people can drive the development of the Industry.
Claudia's next role was based back in Europe where she implemented a methodology of "one face to the customer" across 12 sites in four continents for a large blue chip client.
With her global experience Claudia still found a passion and excitement from the Asian market and now runs her own Management and Development Consultancy, focusing on fast tracking and heightening the profile of the Telebusiness Industry by leveraging on global expertise. She is a strong advocate for a customer centric culture within contact centre and that the people of the organisation are the key tool to success.
Claudia has worked in Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, The Philippines, Australia, China, Malaysia, Europe, and America and still adding to her wealth of experience within new emerging markets today. Working to put the industry on the map, and making it a choice of career.
Claudia is a committee member of the APCF (Asia Pacific CRM forum) in Singapore and is championing the networking and involvement from established industry associations across Asia Pacific region, leveraging on each other's learning's of the industry to help promote a better Telebusiness future. At present she is also Executive board member of the Call Centre association of Hong Kong.
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