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How to measure a successful call centre - Q&A Session between GCCRM Advisors and Members
U.S. Perspective
Ms. Donna Fluss
President, DMG Consulting LLC
G-CEM International Partner (US)
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:
There has been a great deal of innovation in this area in the past few two years. The leading contact centers use both quantitative and qualitative key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the ongoing performance of their contact center(s). Contact centers have also started to use scorecards and performance management. Scorecards are often a component of a performance management application (and program). Scorecards are used to measure performance at all levels: agent, team/group, contact center site and entire contact center. They are also used to measure how well a contact center delivers on specific goal. So, you may have a scorecard to measure the number of new sales made, revenue, or number of accounts saved, for example.
Performance management is a concept that has been used successful in business for more than 20 years. During the past few years, performance management has been introduced into contact centers and is intended to make it easier (and more accurate) for contact center management to measure their performance. The concept is simple - a performance management application takes feeds from all of the different systems that it interacts with and creates scorecards. Here is a link to two articles and two white papers that I wrote on the topic of contact center performance management: Click Here. Many contact centers now claim to have performance management programs, the vast majority of which are homegrown. This is an area where we are going to see a great deal of innovation during the next few years, as a well implemented performance management application will improve service quality and reduce operating expenses and/or increase revenue. It's also important to note that an effective performance management application will also help align the contact center with corporate initiatives.
Here is a chart that will provide you with both quantitative and qualitative KPIs, which are also known as metrics:
It is critical to measure both quantity - call volume, performance levels, average talk time, average handle time, and quality - percent of calls resolved during first contact (some consider this quantitative), quality management, customer satisfaction (from customer surveys), number of sales completed. Here is an example that addresses this issue. In many contact centers, particularly in the area of telecom, agents are strongly encouraged to move onto the next call as quickly as possibly. Productivity is an important goal, but must be balanced with customer satisfaction, retention and sales. While you need to do the math for your contact center, it's likely that the financial benefit of either saving a customer or of selling him/her a new service will far exceed the cost of adding two to four minutes in talk time to the call, to make the sale.
One last comment - it's a best practice to involve all levels of staff in the development of KPIs and scorecards - this includes agents, supervisors and managers. If your contact center delivers to sales and marketing goals, then it makes sense to involve these organizations in the development of the scorecards.
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About the Author
Donna Fluss is the President of DMG Consulting LLC, a firm specializing in customer-focused business strategy, operations and technology services. Ms. Fluss is a recognized thought leader and innovator in CRM, contact center and real-time analytics. She is the author of The Real-Time Contact Center and many leading industry Reports, including the Contact Center Performance Management Market Report, the Speech Analytics Market Report and the Quality Management/Liability Recording Product and Market Report.
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