On the journey to meet your customer experience and organizational goals it is essential that you can judge where you are at as well as where you are going. A contact center audit provides that assessment, guides your journey,… You [...]]]> Just recorded this presentation and insights around call center audit value, purpose and opportunities.

On the journey to meet your customer experience and organizational goals it is essential that you can judge where you are at as well as where you are going. A contact center audit provides that assessment, guides your journey,… You can view the presentation here.

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Cheers
Colin

Listen to our podcast: The Evolution the Call Center Audit – Benefits, How & Why…not as dull as it sounds

Staff and Agent retention was a ‘hot’ button topic in the call center industry 20 years ago and still is one now. So how is it that the same issue that ‘dogged’ call centers two decades ago is still a ‘front burner’ issue today? I think [...]]]> Closing the Revolving Door – Part1
By: Colin Taylor

Staff and Agent retention was a ‘hot’ button topic in the call center industry 20 years ago and still is one now. So how is it that the same issue that ‘dogged’ call centers two decades ago is still a ‘front burner’ issue today? I think there are a number of factors that contribute to this:
• The nature of turnover and staff attrition is such that you are never done this process,
• Successive regimes have built up and eroded successful programs that addressed this topic,
• Regular and expected fluctuations in employment levels and labour availability ‘hid’ the problem for periods of time.

Addressing turnover and attrition is a never ending process. With labour costs representing approximately two-thirds of your center operating costs, it is a battle you need to wage and a battle you really want to win.
In this article we will look at what you can do, today, in your center to reduce attrition. There are many ideas, methods, tools and tactics that you can employ to reduce attrition that require time to implement, develop the business case, ROI calculations and secure funding and management approval.
But what can you do today, right now, at little or no cost that will actually improve retention in your center immediately? Specifically we will look at rewards and recognition, ways you can involve, engage and motivate your agents, today.

Proven techniques
A number of proven techniques that can improve staff retention and we will address these under the headings I have named:
• Understanding Rewards and Recognition
• It’s not just the Money
• Recognition is over rated
• Motivating without money
• Building Community
• Challenges equal Opportunities

Before we examine how to improve retention it is critical we have a good understanding of what our current situation is. Do you know what your turnover rate is? Do you know why people are leaving your center?
We have worked with many managers that have answered yes to these questions only to later ask to revise their answers. It is critical that you know or at least believe you know the answers to these questions as we begin drill down through the challenges of retention management.

All centers today employ rewards and recognition within their centers, some with robust unified programs and others moving through a series of one-off tactics. However many of the centers in both of these camps do not have a good grasp of human nature or what truly motivates people.

The recent recession has caused many call centers to scale back, they have thinned the ranks of management, fewer VP’s per square inch, and have reduced or frozen headcount and budgets. So doing more with less; really has become doing more with none.

A changing staff
On top of the budgetary and economic issues we have seen a change in the agents we have working in our centers. Gen X and Gen Y employees are different. They have different expectations, motivations and a different view of what is important. They represent new challenges in engagement and motivation. You need to approach Gen Y employees differently in order to engage with them.

Finally we must remember that tactics are short term. One off campaigns, contests and incentives will be quickly forgotten.

Wherever possible you want to develop Reward and Recognition programs and incentives that are strategic, that is to say support and align with the goals of the center and those of business. Strategic and structural programs endure and become a part of the fabric of the center.

Having said this, don’t discount the value of using money as an incentive…It is still the right size, shape and color, but it should not be the only tool in your rewards and recognition arsenal.

One fact that many centers have reported to me is that their staff has become more transient. Staff is not career focused…some just want a job and not a career. Some may be working in the center until they find a job…what does that say about their perception of the call center and the company?
Turnover is a fact of life and will always be a concern to call center operators. And like it or not our Supervisors are likely not as well selected or trained as we would like them to be. All of these factors were true in call centers 20 years ago, so has anything really changed?

Recognition is not enough
Time and time again you will hear experts and pundits espouse that recognition is all you require to have a happy and engaged workforce. Unfortunately that isn’t correct. Recognition is wonderful and makes those being recognized feel special and valued, but alone it is not enough to solve retention issues.
By themselves recognition programs have a number of shortcomings: Event and time based programs end, ‘First past the post’ generally results in the same cadre of agent winning all of the time- remember our Mastery agents…they should be winning all the time! If you can not win, you will quickly give up trying. In this situation the reward program that was implemented to motivate and incent agents is actually a disincentive.

The key to long term success and ease of management is to implement programs that are aligned with the objectives of the center. They support the attainment of the objectives and goals established for the center.

For example if one of the centers objectives in 2010 is to improve First Call Resolution by 5%, then an incentive or recognition program tied to FCR or reducing repeat callers or increasing the percentage of customers who identify “fully resolved” on the post call survey are all examples of aligned programs. Programs that recognize those who achieved a 10 second reduction in AHT is not aligned with the objective unless its’ scope is expanded to include a while improving FCR. In fact in the AHT example it is quite likely that this program would actually reduce FCR at least in the near term as agents rush callers off the phone and struggle to find faster ways of doing things.

Similarly programs that incent sales can be great, but if that is not a center objective it is not aligned.
Lots of achievements that can be seen as positive improvement in a call center, but not all of them will be aligned with the stated and published business objectives of the center; reduce AHT, reduce costs, increase sales, improve center profitability, reduce calls, reduce cost per contact, increase FCR, increase CSAT, improve ESAT etc. All of these can be identified as call center business goals. But none of these operates in a truly independent manner. We know that a call center is an interconnected web of processes, people, technology and methodologies and many of these elements are connected…some in obvious and others in far more subtle ways.

Cases of non-aligned incentives
The following are a couple of real world example of non-aligned incentives.

One services company set the center objective to reduce costs…this is likely one goal we are all familiar with. So the center management decided to offer and incentive for agents who attained an AHT of under 200 seconds. For each call they handled under 200 seconds they had their name entered into a draw for prizes. At first the results appeared stunning almost every agent reduced their AHT from 220 -230 seconds to sub 200. It was on the third day however that the center manager noticed that the call volume was rising significantly above the generally accurate forecast. They were at a loss to explain why.

On day four it twigged. They found through monitoring that they were getting lots of complaints from customers reporting that when they called in the agent would hang up on them before they were finished. Closer scrutiny found that yes; in fact the agents were hanging up on customers. In fact some even told the customers that they would have to call back because the agent had used up all of their time for the call – Ouch

In a real outbound example, one company had an inside sales team that sold new business to a large prospect database. Now the database had been cobbled together from multiple sources and had a lot of holes in the information, missing addresses, postal codes etc. The manager determined, reasonably, that if they had better information in the database then they would have fewer orders with incorrect and/or inaccurate information which required rework.
So the Manager implemented an incentive program that paid the rep $.50/ updated record. This worked, in fact it worked so well that once the agents realized that they could make as much if not more incentive dollars by simply updating records versus selling the service, they stopped selling. Now I ask you what should be the primary role of an inside sales team?
We know that other companies and organizations struggle with the exact same issues as we do. How do these firms motivate their staff?
Existing Recognition/reward programs
Before we dive any deeper on what programs could be deployed, let’s look at some of the recognition and reward programs that other organizations are employing.
• Rotating Trophies for Top Performers each month.
• Decorating agents’ workstations whenever they meet their daily and/or monthly goals.
• Managers calls: where the center Supervisor and Managers take the reps calls for an hour while the Rep coaches the manager.- The Scooter Store
• Reps pick songs and select management staff who must perform them.- Freedom Communications
• Call swapping- If an agent gets 100% QA score on 3 calls, The manager takes 3 calls for the rep.- Galileo Processing
• Top performers each month have their Manager pick them up every day for a week and drive them to work
• Earn a chocolate for a perfect call or a call resolved in X minutes. Each resolution (or perfect call) gets a round of applause from the whole center.- Wipro BPO
• 80/20 Elite Team, the Pareto principal rewards the top 20% of agents. They get a separate lounge, flex shifts, first choice of time off and are groomed for management roles. This is run and reviewed each quarter. – Wipro BPO
• Placing a rose on the seat of an agent who has gone above and beyond.
• Campaign pins, like military ribbons or scout badges placed on the agents nameplate on their workstation.- Embarq
• Producing ‘Baseball’ cards of your star performers- Embarq,
• We rely on Dr. Bob Nelson book “1001 Ways to Reward Employees”, it has been invaluable.- The McNaughton Group,
• Earning points for every call with FCR over 90, points redeemed out of a catalogue
• Call center radio, top performers get to pick the songs that will play in the lunch and break rooms

There are lots of good ideas here, but most are tactical, one-offs and some you can see that are a part of larger, over arching program. Many of these tactics could however be integrated into a strategic program.
One other thing you will notice is that almost all of these reward on the ‘best’, we know from experience that these types of programs do little to motivate or engage the ‘rest’.

Tactical versus strategic
How can we move beyond the individual recognition event?
The answer is to move beyond the tactical and develop an aligned culture and community that delivers superior service? This requires structure and design, both of the real world examples I cited earlier shared the design flaw that the managers didn’t think through the process. They also didn’t appreciate that agents are smart. If there is a way to ‘game’ or cheat a system, they will find it and exploit it.

The second part of this article will explore the creation of an enduring structure in the call center that will foster employee engagement and motivation and permit the deployment of aligned reward/recognition programs that meet the objectives of the center and the business.

In part 1 of this three part series we looked at the history of service service, the challenges organizations and customer face when trying to interact via self service, the most popular and preferred self service channels, costs and effectiveness and declining success rates. [...]]]> Self Service of Cents and Sensibility Part 2

By: Colin Taylor

In part 1 of this three part series we looked at the history of service service, the challenges organizations and customer face when trying to interact via self service, the most popular and preferred self service channels, costs and effectiveness and declining success rates. In this part we examine Customer perceptions regarding self service, best practices for ebilling and IVR and Self Service and the Call Center.

Customer Perceptions
What if we could peek inside the head of our customers and see what they really think about self service, what would we discover? Research completed by Paul Hudson found that customer perception is that self-service is associated with speed, convenience, simplicity……and technology – but not associated with offering support, being caring, or personalized. However, the words ‘customer service’ is associated with care, support, personalized, but less associated with being fast and convenient.

Two out of three U.S. consumers surveyed want self-service options when shopping. Nearly half of U.S. shoppers surveyed under the age of 45 want stores to offer self-checkout. Almost 46 percent of U.S. consumers surveyed want stores to offer more self-service options, like self-checkout or kiosks, to improve their shopping experience.

In looking at customer perceptions we have to realize that – 1-perceptions are not static, they can change over time –People who refused to pump their own gas or use an ATM when these SS technologies were introduced happily do so today. And 2-That perceptions are shaped by the customers environment and by their self interest and specifically is something is: A) Easier, B) Faster, C) Less Expensive

Self Service and the Call Center
According to ICMI, 79.5 of centres offer Self Service. Reasons for Implementation where headed up by : operating cost reductions (83.4%) and meeting customer demand for service options (74.3%). Over half (64%) of respondents don’t know if or when a customer has tried to self-serve but then opted for a live representative.

Among the tools contact centers use to support Web self-service channels, in particular, leaders emerged: issue tracking (53%), knowledge management (44.6%) and service management tools (42.3%).
A troubling 43.6%, almost half of respondents, don’t measure customer feedback on their centers’ self-service channels.

Regardless of the self service channels employed in the call center, each center still has to determine what to do with:
 The 13% that opt out of the IVR?
 The 40% who are still on your website?
 The 2/3 that have already tried to find the answer?
 Silo distance between call centre and ‘owners’ of the web?

Frequently Asked Questions or FAQ’s are often one of the first self service tools adopted. If questions can be self contained and completely answer the question they are well suited for web service. 80% of questions can generally be answered by FAQ’s . Yet FAQ’s are near the bottom of the self service tools employed by customers
1. Shopping carts (for products/services)
2. Order confirmation
3. Order tracking
4. Appointment setting/rescheduling
5. Bill pay and funds transfer
6. Personal account access, set up and management
7. Site search
8. FAQ’s
9. Opening and checking tickets

So how do we implement and drive self service adoption? The graphic below illustrates the considerations that need to be addressed and aligned.

Consumer must be ready, they must understand their role (89% of employees are confused by new products or services) and what is expected of them, they must be motivated; either by themselves or someone else and they must have the Ability- skills, competency, knowledge or pre-requisite technology (i.e. internet).

The product must have appeal, be compatible with the target audience, provide a tangible advantage over previous methods etc. In addition the product must overcome inertia, technology anxiety etc.

Drilling down to look at eBilling this chart illustrates a logical process to implement eBilling.

The following best practice tips can significantly improve the speed of implementation as well as the success achieved;

1. Sign up all new customers for your ebill program. Do it automatically and with no action required from the customer.
2. Use an e-mail matching service append up to 20 percent of your customer database with customer’s email addresses at very low cost.
3. Initiate an automated welcome e-mail telling the customer what to expect.
4. Then just begin delivering the bill electronically. A small percentage will opt-out, but the vast majority will accept it. Adoption therefore becomes equal to the number of email addresses you have available.
5. Offer simple bill presentment via secure email as the first step. It’s not necessary to try and ‘pull’ the customer to your website to achieve successful ebill presentment.
6. Take it one step at a time. Achieve bill presentment and paper truncation first. Then drive payment as the next step.
7. Replicate your paper bill truly in a digital format – familiarity drives acceptance. You can add additional functionality later.
8. Use opt-out rather than opt-in strategies. Customers expect you to bill them.
9. Automatic paper truncation with the ability to revert to the paper option. When your customers are familiar with the ebill, turn off the paper automatically – you will be surprised how few requests you will get to re-institute their paper bill (on average, less than three percent).

On the topic of best practices lets look at some related to the use of IVR’s
1. Menu options no more than 4
2. No more than 4 layers
3. Zero Out option at any time
4. Allow corrections at each menu level (consider routing to live agent after 1)
5. Allow to back up or re start at each menu level (consider routing to live agent after 1)
6. No Jargon
7. Make sure the customer can actually do things they want to do:
1. Account balance
2. Report a payment
3. Open a Ticket
4. Track a shipment
8. Test Speech Recognition and Virtual agents before you deploy.
9. Use IVR for outbound calls –
1. Outage notifications,
2. Pre-collection,
3. Planned Maintenance/Outages

Share knowledge across multiple channels to make it available when and where needed:
Knowledge base for web, can be employed by live agents for calls, chats, email
FAQ’s- make sure they are the same ones regardless of the channel they are viewed
Blog- If you have one promote it and link it to your website and help pages if it offers service and self service tips.
Video/YouTube channel- This can be a great resource for showing ‘How to’ and,’ where to find’ information.
You must measure all users who employ self service…those that enter and those who leave early. Only by understanding what calls, contacts you are actually deflecting successfully can you determine the ROI. And only by knowing where customers are ‘jumping out’ of self service can you identify where you need to improve.

A Caveat to the trend to self-service has been raised by William J. McEwen, Ph.D., the author of Married to the Brand. Bill cited industries that have trended towards commodity status have of often been strong proponents of Self Service…such as the gasoline retail business. 40 years ago when each retailer tried to show the superiority of their product, but by 2007 only 9% of consumers surveyed by Gallup believed there was any difference between brands.

McEwen feels that a key to maintaining a strong brand is maintaining contact and interaction with customers. Organizations like the JetBlue, Southwest and Ritz Carleton have long since identified that their staff are the key to a success and positive guest experience. Similarly we can all think of positive service experiences where it was the individual that we interacted with that made the experience so great.

So from McEwens’ perspective if we eliminate personal service interactions we are driving our organization towards commoditization. If we take McEwen at face value a move toward cost reduction through self service is less personal, less connected and less likely to create raving fans or similarly happy customers.

But more personal service costs more. Is their no way of improving service quality without increasing the costs?