At Taylor Reach our call center consultants help call and contact center operators improve their operations. We help improve service quality, improve efficiency, improve Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty and repurchase. We improve productivity, improve employee engagement, improve organizational alignment, improve processes, procedures and improve service level performance.
That’s a long list of improvements, but how do we do it, you may ask? First We listen to you. We really get to know your business and your unique challenges and obstacles. We do not believe in a cookie cutter approach where one size is supposed to fit all. We do not sell the ‘pyramid’ the senior call center consultants you meet with are the ones who will work on your project. All of our call center consultants have 20+ years of experience and we do not employ a small army of twenty-somethings fresh out of school. Experience and exposure to thousands of call centers across virtually every vertical allows us to rely on expertise and knowledge and not just a template or pale imitation of what worked somewhere else.
We have completed hundreds of call center programs and have expertise in the follow services areas;
* Call Center Strategic Assessment
* Snapshotz Call Center Audit
* Technology Acquisition
* Site Selection
* Custom Research
* Interim Management
* Process Improvement & Management
* Sourcing Strategies
* Forecasting & Workforce Management
* Customer Quality Reporting
* Quality Measurement & Monitoring
* Performance Management
Call Center Strategic Assessment
All call center operators want to know the answers the five questions:
1- Are we doing the right things?
2- Are we doing these in the right way?
3- Are we doing these in the right location?
4- Are we employing the right Technology?
5- What can we change to become better in terms of cost, revenue, satisfaction and engagement.
To get to the answers for each of these questions you must uncouple the ‘thousands of moving parts’ that are your call center(s). In our Strategic Assessment engagements we ‘uncouple’ this web of interconnected processes, procedures and technology and examine the basis and rationale for
each discrete activity. You must ‘bucket’ these elements under the four ‘pillars’ (People, Process, Technology & Methodology) of all contact centers and their role in delivering the ‘Customer Experience’.
We have completed hundreds of Strategic Assessments that have transformed centers for 6 agents to over 12,000. We guarantee the ROI when implementing out recommendations.
For more information regarding our Strategic Assessment Services please click here
Snapshotz Call Center Audit
Snapshotz Online is the worlds first and only SaaS based call center audit tool. Snapshotz assesses your call center or contact center across 8 categories, 19 subcategories and up to 620 data-points.
While Snapshotz is primarily a call center assessment tool, it is much more than that. Snapshotz is primarily a management tool for customer service / contact center / call centers. Primary uses include:
• SWOT analysis and planning tool
• Audit tool and risk management tool
• Team and location comparisons
• Training tool
• Strategic task management tool linked to KPI’s
• Leadership development tool
» Easily deployed (within 5 – 10 minutes) and available on demand
» Easy to use and delivers immediate reporting
More than 400 organizations around the globe have deployed Snapshotz Online. You can implement Snapshotz Online in as little as 5 Minutes, all you need is an internet connection.
You can’t manage what you can’t or don’t measure. A call center audit can provide great insights into how the center is actually operating, which maybe different than how it is expected to operate. In this webinar we examine the call centers alignment to business goals and objectives employing real-world results from more than 600 actual Snapshotz users worldwide. The results and the insights can be surprising…
For more information on the Snapshotz Audit please click here
Technology Acquisition
After the cost of labor technology is the largest cost component of a call center budget. Call centers can be very technologically dependent: ACD’ switches, call recording, WFM, IVR, Predictive dialling, Chat, email management, knowledge management to name but a few. But which technology is right for your center? Check on line and there are hundreds of opinion and 
experts who will tell you what to buy. Of course if we look closely we will see the whitepaper is sponsored by a technology company or discover that the consultant is actually part a the technology vendor ‘consultant program’ and receives money for customer who buy the technology solution. What you need is a true vendor agnostic consulting firm like Taylor Reach.
We do not participate in technology vendor ‘consultant programs’ and we do not accept money from anyone, but our clients. We are truly vendor agnostic. Identifying the right technology for your center is often less about what technology is available and much more about your center. We invest a great deal of time getting to know and understand you call center. How the center operates the roles of the staff, and how the current technologies are employed and interact. With this perspective in place we can then work with you and your team to define the user requirements, features and functionality that you wish to see in the new technology. We assess the importance of each feature and requirement: is it mandatory ‘out of the box’ or is this something where the vendor may have to configure or customize? It may in fact be nothing more than ‘informational’ which is to say that it is not needed today but may be desired in the future. We have been in the call center industry for many years and we know most of the vendors for any solution, but we are constantly researching new firms, product reviews and attending product demos. This process ensures that we can survey the broadest possible supplier base to help you source the best solution. We design evaluation methodologies to assess and score vendor responses. We design and manage RFP and RFQ processes the can be named or blind. This strategy can eliminate both internal and external biases that may exist.
Our process has proven success for many call center operators who secured superior technology at better pricing that meet their criteria and was deployed within both budget and timetable.
For more information on our Technology Acquisition Services please click here
Site Selection
Many call centers today exist in locations, because that is simply where they were built. On the 3rd floor or across the campus, they are located where the organization had available space to house them. Increasingly however organizations are realizing that not all locations are created equal when it come to operating a call center. If its not near transit, then all of your agents must drive or carpool. If the call center is located near many other call centers you may see higher turnover of staff and have the opportunity to 
hire the same staff two or three times at ever increasing rates. If you are prone to flooding, tornadoes or hurricanes each of these natural events can spell disaster not only for you local community but also for your call center.
In an intra-city move you are concerned with where you can locate and retain most of your staff. In a search to find a location outside of the current urban location the focus becomes where can we locate a center and have access to potential staff.
Of course the connection between labor and location is not and cannot be the only consideration, or if salary cost was king we all would have off-shored our call centers long ago. No, labor and labor availability are critical factors but not the only ones. Other factors require attention. At Taylor Reach we developed a center location matrix that considers 134 factors on a weighted score basis. This created a range of more than 500 basis points from the worst possible to the best possible location scores. Your own matrix will be unique because only you will rank and rate the 134 data-points specifically for your center(s). Some of the factors to consider would include staff or workforce issues, what is the population, what is the employment/unemployment levels, workforce participation, college, university or military base presence all of which speak to potentially available labor which could be potential recruiting targets for the call center. There may be financial incentives associated with creating jobs in some jurisdictions. These incentives can significantly reduce the cost build a new center from scratch.
Assessing the number, type, function and staffing levels of existing call and contact centers locally can provide guidance related to the level of saturation that call/contact center represents in the local workforce. It is important to locate in a market where we can identify potential sources of employees and identify that there are enough potential workers to support the center. But also look at how many of them are presently employed in call or contact centers. In my opinion the lower the saturation level the better. This is true even though it is difficult to find locations without contact centers you can find locations that have low saturation levels. We recommend to our clients that markets with more than 6% of their workforce presently supporting call/contact centers will represent an on-going recruiting and retention issue. While under 3% tends to be stable and much easier to operate within.
Given that labor is the single greatest expenses in a call center and the cost to recruit a single agent exceeds $5,000-$7,000 finding a stable and easily maintained environment is highly desirable.
For more information on our Site Selection Services please click here
Custom Research
We have conducted hundreds of research projects since our founding and have assisted organizations to gain insights into the minds of the industry, their prospects and their customers. Our empirical approach leverages the hundreds of years of call center operations experience within the firm and integrates this with innovative and process thinking to design and develop research models that yield actionable data and information.
Whether the information sought is for internal uses, intended for advertising and promotion purposes or is it self the basis for a whitepaper, Taylor Reach can assist you from concept through, =design, implementation and execution.
For more information on our Custom Research services and capabilities please click here
Interim Management
Running a call or contact center can be a challenge at the best of times. But this task can become significantly more difficult when there is a vacancy at the top of the call or contact center operation. Regardless of the cause of the vacancy: leave of absence, restructuring, center consolidation, or other 
organizational changes. The operational effectiveness and efficiency can begin to suffer within days without an effective leader. Morale and culture soon follows.
What is a organization to do in this situation?
Promote a junior member of the call center team? Unless they have been groomed and trained for this role, the experience can overwhelm them and contribute to further erosion of service and frustration for all involved.
Recruit a replacement is likely the best option, but it could take months to find the right candidate. How do you keep the center running effectively during this time?
The answer for many firms is interim management. Taylor Reach can provide experienced Call and contact center experts who possess 15, 20, 25 or more years of experience building and running call centers, contact centers and customer service operations.
For more information on our Interim Management Solutions please click here
Process Improvement & Management
There is always a better mousetrap, we just often need time to see and build it. Taylor Reach employs root cause analysis and lean approaches to ensure that the processes within and extending out from you call center are optimized and function effectively, efficiently and logically. We can redesign your processes to improve service quality, decrease time, effort and rework required.
For more information on our Process Improvement and Design services please click here
Sourcing – In- Out – Home or Near
Whether you are looking at outsourcing, offshoring, insourcing, nearshoring or homesourcing, The Taylor Reach group can help you. Not only have we completed numerous consulting projects in all of these areas, but we have built and operated outsource organizations on two continents. With our unique and hands on experience as both consultants and outsourcers we can see the pros and cons associated with each of these strategies without blinders and without succumbing to political correctness or the current flavor of the day.
We work with you to understand your operation. Your goals, objectives and the realities in which you operate your center. Equipped with a defined set of criteria we can help you navigate to potentially dangerous waters to ensure your sourcing decision is the right one for the organization and the call center.
For more information on our Sourcing Support services please click here
Forecasting & Workforce Management
There is no activity more critical for any call center than understanding the demand requirements for the center and the resource allocation to meet this demand. Taylor Reach has assisted small call centers and global contact centers to improve the accuracy, performance and adherence of their forecasts and schedules. We have the experience, knowledge and tools customized Workforce Management practices and tools to ensure your center has the right people in the right place at the right time while performing the right tasks.
For more information on our Forecasting and Workforce Management services please click here
Customer Quality Reporting
Contact centers deliver services to customers and prospects by
telephone, email, and chat. It is essential that organizations have
insight into the quality of those interactions. The internal perspective
is often delivered through a quality listening team which reviews
contacts and scores measuring based upon predetermined set of criteria.
In many organizations the internal quality measures are those elements
of the interaction that are believed to be important to the customer as
well as company focused compliance elements.
The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. has developed Customer Quality Reporting
as a service to assist organizations in measuring and gauging customer
satisfaction. Each month we can report on Customer Satisfaction, FCR and NPS down to the agent level.
Taylor Reach works with your organization to identify the anticipated
customer response to an emailed survey. The goal is to deliver four to
five customer responses per agent per month. This creates a sample size
approximately similar to that achieved with internal quality programs.
This sample varies by organization. Initial outgoing surveys are 100 per
agent per month.
For more information on Customer Quality Reporting click here
Quality Measurement/Monitoring Service (3PQM)
Major issues for many centers is time, or lack of time required to complete the ‘call monitoring’ consistently, objectively and regularly. While all supervisors acknowledge that monitoring is important they are usually so pressed for time that listening is a “if I can” activity. How often has your team failed to meet the minimum number of monitors in a month?
Also because each supervisor does the listening and scoring as discrete tasks there is often no roll up of the agent’s scores team or group levels; and virtually no historical tracking of overall center performance. In short with no roll up or historical tend tracking your Quality program is little more than mini-performance review of the agent.
Of course each Supervisor will score differently and often will treat individual agents differently as well. This is bias. The bias can be favoritism, or discrimination. Internal Quality Monitoring is fraught with challenges including the conflicted role of the Supervisor as both the Assessor and the Coach. This duality can actually lead to reduced performance[1].
3PQM services solve these and other problems associated with listening and scoring calls by providing an independent and objective point of view to all the people involved.
For more information on our 3PQM Quality Monitoring services please click here
Performance Management & Metrics
You can’t manage what you can’t or don’t measure. Developing and implementing a balanced set of metrics that are relevant and actually support business decision making is critical in any environment and this is also true of call centers. Should we be measuring FCR, NPS or CSAT and at what level and how? What about AHT and ASA is there a role for these metrics as well?
Taylor Reach works with organizations to design an effective performance management and reporting systems that promote alignment to goals and which drive and sustain call center performance.
For more information on our Performance Management & Metrics services please click here