For Internal Relationships
Concerning relationships with those inside your organization, namely your employees, call center agents, management team, etc.
4 Best Practices to Make Call Center Santa’s Nice List
Now that we’ve talked about the “Naughty List,” let’s move on to the “Nice List” of call center practices I’ve seen this year. Put simply, these are practices that deliver value to the customer while positively impacting the company’s bottom line.
1. Putting customers in the driver’s seat – According to our research to date in 2010, 65% of all customers who called the organizations they do business did so because they perceived a problem. And when they call, they have anxiety – anxiety that you (company) won’t stand behind your product/service, that you’ll charge them exorbitant amounts to do XYZ, that you won’t help them. World-class agents recognize this anxiety and allow customers an opportunity to voice all of those fears. And then they offer their customers options – yes options, so the customer can select the outcome that is most pleasing to them. This may fly in the face of all of the conventional wisdom that says agents should be consultative and make recommendations, but the fact is that agents know very little about the needs of customers they serve. Rather than assaulting customers with a barrage of generic questions designed to uncover needs the customer may not have even yet identified, let the customer choose. The fact that as an organization, you were (seemingly) willing to do whatever the customer wanted to reconcile the situation will leave a far more lasting impression than how the issue was ultimately resolved. Continue reading “4 Best Practices to Make Call Center Santa’s Nice List” »
4 Practices to Avoid Call Center Santa’s Naughty List
This holiday season I find myself thankful for the many gifts in my life – family, friends (new & old), health, joy, talented co-workers and a slightly wicked sense of humor. As I sat down to write my holiday gift giving list, I started thinking about who’s been naughty and nice in my life. Children all across the world know exactly what gets them a pile of coal in their stocking.
Having visited dozens and dozens of call centers, I often wonder how that simple distinction between a good idea and a bad one can get so lost in the midst of so many good intentions. In that spirit, I’m revealing my list of naughty and nice call center practices. We’ll start with the naughty! These are practices that if employed in your call center should be re-evaluated so that next year you can make Call Center Santa’s other list. Continue reading “4 Practices to Avoid Call Center Santa’s Naughty List” »
How NOT “Holding” Call Center Agents Accountable Improves Performance
This guest blog post was originally authored by Vice President of Human Development, Cliff Hurst for www.beyondmorale.com/blog. Beyond morale is The World’s First and Only Online Employee Engagement System. For more information, visit: www.beyondmorale.com
What’s wrong with holding call center agents accountable? Accountability is a good thing. Isn’t it?
At the very least, it sure is a popular word in leadership circles. Next time you’re around a gathering of call center leaders, listen to the conversation for a while and you are sure to hear the question…. “What one thing do you wish you could do better?” And the most common answer you’ll hear is: “How can I do a better job at holding call center agents accountable for results?
You want this too, correct? I used to want to do the same thing. Eventually, though, I came to realize that this leadership thing is backwards. I had been thinking that the subject here was accountability. But look at the question again… “How can I do a better job at holding call center agents accountable for results?
The most significant word in that sentence is “holding”. The sentence is a thought-trap. It creates a problem for leaders who buy-into the notion that their job is to “hold” their employees to… _______ whatever … (you fill in the blank). It doesn’t matter if you are holding them accountable, or holding them responsible, or holding them to a standard. You’re still holding!
Neither holding call center agents down, nor holding them up are effective ways of leadership. Holding isn’t leading. Let go of your grip and lead!
Accepting Accountability is NOT the same as Holding Accountable.
If you want call center agents to accept accountability for results or even to seek accountability, that’s different. You can lead them to those outcomes. But you won’t get very far if you try to hold your call center agents to them.
So, if you don’t “hold” agents, what can you do instead? I propose three things:
1. Show that you value your call center agents. That you appreciate their contributions as well as their efforts. And that you value them as people, not just in terms of their role in the company.
2. Appreciate differences (don’t mistake this for Diversity). As leading Psychologist Shay McConnon puts it, “Leadership is about individualizing, not universalizing.” Differences are a source of strength. Don’t picture age here, or gender, or ethnicity–although diversity in those areas may strengthen a team. I’m really talking about diversity in ways of seeing, acting, and responding to the world. Begin to recognize the uniqueness of every employee on your team; help them to see that uniqueness in themselves. Most people don’t know the strengths of their own gifts. Help them tap into their uniqueness in ways that contribute to the company.
3. Set the stage. You don’t get accountability by holding call center agents to it. You gain accountability by setting the right environment where employee engagement can occur, where they want to accept more and more responsibility, where they can see and feel tangible results for their efforts. Done right, accountability is its own reward.
So get your hands off of your call center agents, you just may save yourself from a sexual harassment law suit. Oh sorry, that’s another story. Let’s try again, get your hands off and see employee performance soar.
The Rest of the 13 Practices that Prove Your Company Cares about its People
As promised, here are the remaining 6 practices that prove your company cares about its people. We covered the first 7 practices already and those can be found here. As you may recall the entire 13 practices are an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Survey Pain Relief.
8. Self-Managed Teams. It’s one thing to form a team and quite another to allow the team to manage itself. While the team structure will not fix everything and definitely requires executive sponsorship, nevertheless, there have been many highly positive outcomes from the institution of self-directed teams. These teams set their own standards, handle their own problems, and are responsible for disciplining and rewarding the members. Such a structure can eliminate several levels of management, as well as the resources needed to sustain them and the bureaucracy that inevitably emerges to prop them up. In addition, members of self-managed teams tend to be engaged, cooperative and loyal.
9. Training and Skills Development. Managers often complain about wasted training and development dollars, when the real issue is that, once trained, the employees are given no opportunity to use the skills they’ve acquired. By definition, training is expected to have a short-term payback, while the payback for development is longer-term. Both require the opportunity to practice, first-hand or by assisting others, for the learning to be properly internalized. “Skills” acquired and never used are soon forgotten, and the money paid to acquire them is truly wasted.
10. Cross-Utilization and Cross-Training. The motivational effects of variety are not to be underestimated. Cross-utilization and cross-training help employees to “stay fresh” and engaged in their work. Performance and results are improved as fresh eyes have a chance to look at old problems and new ideas filter into the work process. From a labor management standpoint, cross-training ensures that the necessary skill sets will be available on the floor at any given time enabling properly trained staff to step in and work effectively in times of emergency with little or no warning.
11. Symbolic Egalitarianism. There are various ways to signal that we are all on the same team, all of which have in common the idea of tearing down barriers between people. The CEO of Wal-Mart has a very modest office in Bentonville, Ark., which looks more like the office of mid-level manager at a moderate-sized firm, instead of the spacious quarters one would expect of the leader of a company whose annual revenues exceed those of many countries. The lack of barriers and obvious modesty represented by these leaders send unmistakable messages to the employees.
12. Wage Compression. According to Terry Halbert and Elaine Ingulli in Law and Ethics in the Business Environment, “Plato believed that the rulers of the ideal society should be paid no more than four times more than the lowliest member of that society.” This would be an extreme example of wage compression. What we see in big business today is often the direct opposite.
13. Promotion from Within. Such a policy automatically puts a premium on training and development, long-term planning, and seeing the bigger picture. It also avoids all the negativity that can accumulate in good people when outsiders are brought in over them.
There is nothing magic in these 13 practices. Research may delineate others in the future, and some of the ones listed here could arguably be condensed into fewer topics. But it’s the course set that matters. The above require less lip service and more concrete action. Value the human element, let it be known that this is a keystone of your organization and good things will happen.
Now that we have covered all 13 practices we would love to get your comments and thoughts on how you have seen these practices put into action and the positive or negative impacts. Heck, we even would love to hear about some of your own Knuggets and Knucklehead stories on blunders and benefits you have heard of a company making with its people. Some of the best we will highlight. We can keep you anonymous if you like. Looking forward to hearing from you.
This post is part of the book, “Survey Pain Relief.” Why do some survey programs thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of success? In “Survey Pain Relief,” renowned research scientists Dr. Jodie Monger and Dr. Debra Perkins, tackle numerous plaguing questions. Inside, the doctors reveal the science and art of customer surveying and explain proven methods for creating successful customer satisfaction research programs.
“Survey Pain Relief” was written to remedy the $billions spent each year on survey programs that can be best described as survey malpractice. These programs are all too often accepted as valid by the unskilled and unknowing. Inside is your chance to gain knowledge and not be a victim of being lead by the blind. For more information http://www.surveypainrelief.com/
13 Practices that Prove Your Company Cares about its People
Below is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Survey Pain Relief where we focus in on how companies express the value they place on their human capital. The balance of the 13 practices that prove your company cares about its people is here.
Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University, and a well-known and highly respected researcher and author, suggests that there are some 13 or so practices for managing people, which are key to retaining competitive advantage (from “Producing Sustainable Competitive Advantage through the Effective Management of People,” Academy of Management Executive). These suggestions seem to fly somewhat in the face of the typical ways in which we manage call centers, and so they’re worth a close examination.
Why should a review of these 13 practices be made? Interestingly, companies that invest in the human component and adopt a long-term investment perspective gain a competitive advantage that is very difficult for competitors to imitate. By contrast, new technology can be purchased, patents and licensing agreements secured, market share purchased through advertising and aggressive pricing, brands bought or sold — these are all tactics that can implemented by one firm and copied by the competition in a few months. But once an organization creates a competitive advantage through its people, it is rarely also achieved by a competitor in the same industry. Companies can maintain their HR-generated uniqueness — and high-performing competitive advantage — by expressing their appreciation to the people who make it all possible in both monetary and intangible terms.
1. Employment Security. Employment security signals to the workforce that the organization is making a long-standing commitment to their well-being. Firms that take a longer-term perspective demonstrate a standard of care for their people that goes beyond the contractual pay period requirements. When the firm makes a commitment to employment security for its workers, those workers, in turn, feel an obligation to reciprocate and take a long-term view of the needs of the firm.
2. Selectivity in Recruiting. If a firm commits to employment security, it behooves it to select wisely so as to only offer positions to those who at least meet minimum standards. Rather than assessing the job/skills fit, many firms are now assessing the person/organization fit and doing so with great care.
3. High Wages.In this day of offshoring to save wages, it may seem counter-intuitive to suggest paying higher salaries. But doing so can yield handsome dividends, as higher wages will attract a larger pool of applicants, which can lead to higher quality applicants and greater selectivity for the organization. Most importantly, high wages signal that the people are considered important, just as low wages indicate a perceived interchangeability and, hence, the lack of importance for employees.
4. Incentive Pay. Better performers should receive more pay.
5. Employee Ownership. There are two clear effects of employee ownership interests in the firm. The tug-of-war that often exists between labor and capital is largely avoided because each has partially become the other. The “us/them” delineations simply no longer apply. Secondly, employee-owners look to the future and the long-range effects of today’s decisions. While this has traditionally been a perspective only expected from managers, workers who are also owners often take it up, as well.
6. Information sharing. If people are to be the source of competitive advantage, then it follows that information needs to be shared and acted upon within the organization.
7. Participation and Empowerment. Decentralization of decision-making is paramount to getting people to take ownership of the firm’s processes and outcomes. Push decision-making power, as much as is practical, down to the agent level. Agents who see what needs to be done for a customer but have no power to give it feel frustrated over their inability to affect a positive outcome.
Now that we have covered the first 7 practices let’s take a little break. In the next post, we will cover the remaining 6 practices. As always we would love to get your comments and thoughts on how you have seen these practices put into action and the positive or negative impacts.
This post is part of the book, “Survey Pain Relief.” Why do some survey programs thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of success? In “Survey Pain Relief,” renowned research scientists Dr. Jodie Monger and Dr. Debra Perkins, tackle numerous plaguing questions. Inside, the doctors reveal the science and art of customer surveying and explain proven methods for creating successful customer satisfaction research programs.
“Survey Pain Relief” was written to remedy the $billions spent each year on survey programs that can be best described as survey malpractice. These programs are all too often accepted as valid by the unskilled and unknowing. Inside is your chance to gain knowledge and not be a victim of being lead by the blind. For more information http://www.surveypainrelief.com/
Rev Up Your FCR Rate
This guest blog post is written by Greg Levin, author of Full Contact. He has been researching, reporting on and satirizing contact centers and customer care since 1994.
First-contact resolution has been a hot call center metric for years now. There are white papers and articles galore on the topic, and entire conferences and online forums dedicated to it. Most telling is that numerous managers have gotten “FCR Forever” and/or “One and Done” tattooed on their necks.
The majority of conversations about FCR center around two things: 1) the huge potential impact of FCR (on operational costs, customer satisfaction and agent satisfaction/retention); and 2) how the hell to measure this mega-metric accurately (no simple task, as you’ll see in my upcoming ebook, Full Contact).
What often gets lost amidst the FCR hype and the confusion surrounding its proper measurement is something even more critical: What processes, practices and tools a contact center can put in place to help improve FCR. Customers don’t care if you know how to measure FCR, they simply want you to achieve it. Following is a list of tactics to help you do just that:
Excellent agent training and tools. If your agents lack skills, knowledge and/or immediate access to key information on calls, your FCR rate is going to be lower than the average winter temperature in Greenland or the average morale level in a billing contact center. Top centers provide comprehensive new-hiring training to rookies and frequent ongoing training to veteran agents, forever keeping staff abreast of new products/services, information and approaches to help them provide the most efficient and effective service. In addition, these centers equip agents with user-friendly, fast and frequently updated desktop tools and knowledge bases that enable staff to find crucial customer data and product/service info a flash, thus reducing the number of times customers must be placed on hold, transferred, called back, or physically restrained.
World-class workforce management processes. Even the best-trained and equipped agents on the planet will die without oxygen, thus it’s critical to schedule enough staff to enable each agent to take at least two breaths between calls. Agents can’t resolve calls if they are having a stroke, or if the customer – who has been caged in the queue for 15 minutes – is screaming at them for taking so long to answer the phone. Thus, accurate forecasting and sound scheduling based on those forecasts is critical, as is mastering skills-based routing so that callers get sent to the right agent with the skill-set to handle the customer’s specific issue, and not to Bob – the quiet guy in the corner cubicle who makes paperclip sculptures of his mother.
No conflicting performance objectives. Many contact centers tell agents to focus on FCR, but then pressure them to achieve strict productivity objectives that interfere with agents’ ability to truly focus on the customer. Conflicting performance objectives are the number-one cause of agent-on-manager violence in America. Making FCR a KPI in your center but then punishing agents for not handling a certain number of calls per hour/shift or for going a little over the desired AHT average will not only hinder your center’s chances of achieving FCR success and customer satisfaction, it may result in you being killed or worse by furious frontline staff.
Incentives around FCR goal achievement. It’s always a wise practice to align agent incentives with the contact center’s and the enterprise’s performance goals. And since FCR success should be a top priority for nearly all customer care organizations, nearly all customer care organizations should reward and recognize agents when they consistently meet or exceed individual, team and center-wide FCR goals. Top contact centers do more than just order pizzas or pat staff on the back to celebrate current and propagate future FCR success; rather agents in these centers receive cash prizes, meaningful gifts/gift certificates, as well as public recognition at interdepartmental meetings and via internal newsletters/the corporate intranet. In addition to incentivizing and rewarding agents for FCR success, some centers de-incentivize and punish agents for FCR failure. This typically includes taking cash and gifts away from agents, publically humiliating them at meetings and via newsletters/the intranet, and forcing them to spend an hour alone in a room with somebody from IT.
Agents empowered to improve FCR-related processes. Your agents know customers and customer care better than anyone, assuming your center’s hiring and training programs don’t blow. Smart contact center managers actively solicit suggestions and insight from agents regarding how they may be able to enhance FCR performance. Given the opportunity, agents will tell you what tools, training and workflows are lacking, and what processes and metrics are interfering with their ability to effectively resolve customer issues. They will also tell you what color they would like the contact center to be painted and why they need a new headset that doesn’t shock their ears, so be sure to cut them off before they stray too far from the topic of FCR.
I’d love to hear some of your ideas on FCR improvement, and/or about any tattoos you have gotten to show your dedication to this key metric.
Read more: http://www.greglevin.com/index.html
Greg can also be reached via twitter @greg_levin
Photo Credit: www.callcentercomics.com
Communicating the Results – Part 3 of a 4 Part Series: Supervisors and Agents
Over the last two weeks, I’ve covered how to communicate the results of your call center to both the Executive Management and to the Operations Team. Today we will turn our focus to the Supervisors and Agents in your call center. Again, it’s important that each group gets the proper information to perform to the best of its ability.
Reports for Supervisors and Agents
Managing a team of contact center agents requires a combination of quantitative and qualitative customer feedback to measure, track, compare and motivate. And the shorter the lag time between a call and the availability of the customer’s feedback, the better!
The availability of real-time data expedites a supervisor’s ability to identify trends in performance, provide feedback to agents and conduct service recoveries for defective service experiences.
Customer Comment Report
Customers are in a unique position to motivate agents through their positive comments. The knowledge that a customer was impacted by a service experience to the point where he/she would take the time to make it known, is often more effective than any praise given by a peer or supervisor. Conversely, a customer’s comment could also shed light on sub-par scores. It is the complement of this qualitative feedback to the quantitative data that allows for a holistic approach to the customer experience.
Since customers are not able to see and have never met the agents they interact with, they create a mental image of what this person must be like using expectations and prior experience as a guide. Consumers categorize others because it makes their lives simpler and provides a feeling of control. Callers, therefore, will know (or think they know) how to approach a situation in which they are dealing with people they don’t know because they have already categorized it. They begin with a prototype in mind of what the agent should be like and how the interaction should go. When an agent fits the prototype, and even goes beyond the customer’s expectations, then Wow Factor feedback is collected:
- “The young man who helped me was courteous and quite knowledgeable of the ways of the company. In fact, if I ever needed anything in the future I would be tempted to call back and repeatedly call back until I received him. I would even like to have him over for dinner. Maybe even some beer and watch some baseball.”
- “I found him to be intelligent, quick on the uptake, very pleasant, agreeable and had a sense of humor. That’s rare among bankers.”
- “Sharon was outstanding. She deserves some additional compensation. This is not one of her relatives. Thank you.”
- “I was very impressed with the service that I got today over the phone. There is no way we will ever leave you unless somebody really, really screws something up bad.”
This also takes a negative direction when the agent does not fit into the prototype.
- “Your customer service needs to do customer service. When they can’t help you or refuse to help you, they follow up with the question: What more can they do to help? Well they haven’t done anything to begin with. A bunch of Cretins.”
- “This rep treated me like I was stupid. I didn’t appreciate it. You should never treat a customer like they are stupid, even if they are.”
- “Your reps are the least informed, ill-equipped and most ignorant people I’ve ever run into. This bank is the perfect advertisement for any other bank.”
We have all suspected that satisfaction and/or dissatisfaction in one’s life role may be transferred into other life roles, like an agent taking a bad day out on a customer and vice versa. Frustration or dissatisfaction with a product/service may actually be the result of the consumer feeling frustrated in life roles other than the consumer role. Agents must not only manage the delivery, they must also detect and manage the issue for the caller — all with the company’s best interest at the forefront.
- “Thank you for making my depressing life a little bit better with the service that you have given me.”
- “The representative was very courteous and kind. I appreciate her. The only problem I’ve ever had is that our former banker had an affair with my husband. We divorced and now they’re married. So, in that area I’m not satisfied with the services the bank has provided.”
Customers also expect to be treated in a manner consistent with their role as the customer in the interaction. Research shows that consumers evaluate service institutions and personnel positively when the personnel treat them as individuals who have specific needs to be met by the service interaction. If agents do not, customers will let you know.
- “The representative was very efficient and this is true to your company’s form. Every time that I have called customer service I have gotten excellent service and today was no different.”
- “It took four phone calls to get a pink slip. I’ve paid the car off. I deserve the pink slip. The first call I made said I would get it in 10 days; it’s now been 6 weeks. This phone call said it was mailed yesterday. Somehow I doubt that, but we’ll see. If I don’t get it, I’ll call you back. I don’t mind. I’m retired. I’ve got nothing to do but call you folks until I get what I want.”
- “You can return my calls, which you don’t do. I’ve asked to talk to a supervisor a few times. I haven’t gotten a supervisor to give me a call so why should you ask me to waste my time on this survey when you won’t have a supervisor call me. I think that’s pretty rude. You can call me at XXX-XXX-XXXX. I doubt I’ll hear from you but it would be really nice if I did and it would make my day and might change my perception on how I’ve been treated.”
Why be concerned with the research behind customer comments? Well, it’s a component of increasing customer satisfaction, loyalty and creating a positive word of mouth. If you can better understand your customers, you can create a better environment for the service interaction. You can also educate your agents and use this information as a training opportunity for them to garner a better understanding of consumer comments. After all, customers do say the darnest things.
Real-Time Performance Dashboards
By viewing the real-time dashboard below, a supervisor could quickly surmise that today’s call resolution and call satisfaction statistics are trending below the month’s average. The supervisor now has a goal for the day, as well as a minute-by-minute indicator of his/her success in impacting these key metrics.
Real-Time Alerts
The availability of real-time data also allows supervisors the opportunity to recover customers who have had a dissatisfying service experience. Although the caller may not have been satisfied with the service experience in general, satisfaction with the service recovery experience is significantly related to their intention to repurchase [1]. If there is no process for service recovery, the relationships of 15 percent of your customers are at risk (if not 15 percent, insert the percentage of your callers who would rate the experience as poor). Customers who have had a service failure that was resolved quickly and properly are more loyal to a company than are customers who have never had a service failure — significantly more loyal [2, 3]. The key to success is a quick resolution. How quickly do you initiate a recovery plan after the dissatisfying experience? Is there a service recovery plan in operation?
Many call centers have inadequate processes in place to capture, nevermind address, a failure in customer experiences. The process, and its timeliness, leaves too many customer relationships exposed. Service recovery should protect the exposed asset during the call experience (whether that exposure was a direct result of Agent behavior or caused by the organization’s process). Is recovery of the relationship even possible? It is unlikely if you do not know about it, as only about 5 percent to 10 percent of customers choose to complain to the company [4]. More likely, it results in negative word of mouth (market damage) and the discontinued use of your products and services. A lost customer is an easy, low-cost-to-acquire new customer for a competitor AND is customer value lost to your organization.
Components that facilitate timely notification of dissatisfaction enhance service recovery. By instituting a real-time survey, the amount of saved customer relationships will increase not only customer satisfaction, but have a direct link to an increase in customer loyalty. An immediate alert of a failed experience tells an important story. Is there a common issue with a particular agent? Ineffective behavior can be quickly addressed, minimizing the ongoing negative impact for the agent and the organization. Is there a common process issue? Caller dissatisfaction may be rooted in a new policy or procedure. Identify and change the procedure or identify and provide an effective Agent response to common aspects of customer dissatisfaction. Extrapolate the findings from the service recovery group and leverage this within your organization.
A real-time alert feature delivers significant value by proactively responding to callers who experienced difficulty with an interaction and are leaving the interaction dissatisfied. The EQM program contains a systematic approach to capture the reason for the customer-defined failure (people, process, or technology classifications) to highlight patterns for the organization. Without a framework, proving the effect of a process issue, for example, is more difficult.
We included the dashboard with this post because it communicates to center management the critical elements that must be chronically monitored and managed.
To wrap up this series next week, we’ll recap these three groups and introduce some interesting powers of persuasion to help you when communicating the results.
This post is part of the book, “Survey Pain Relief.” Why do some survey programs thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of success? In “Survey Pain Relief,” renowned research scientists Dr. Jodie Monger and Dr. Debra Perkins, tackle numerous plaguing questions. Inside, the doctors reveal the science and art of customer surveying and explain proven methods for creating successful customer satisfaction research programs.
“Survey Pain Relief” was written to remedy the $billions spent each year on survey programs that can be best described as survey malpractice. These programs are all too often accepted as valid by the unskilled and unknowing. Inside is your chance to gain knowledge and not be a victim of being lead by the blind. For more information http://www.surveypainrelief.com/
References
1. Boshoff (1999). Journal of Service Research, 1, (1), p 236-249
2. Blodgett, Wakefield and Barnes (1995). Journal of Services Marketing, 9, (4), p 31-42
3. Smith and Bolton (1998). Journal of Service Research, 1, (1), p 65-81
4. Tax and Brown (1998). Sloan Management Review, 40, (1), p 75-88
Avoid Call Center Schizophrenia from Pay for Performance – Part 2 of a 2-Part Blog Series
Whenever I have an opportunity to visit a business partner’s call center, I take a few minutes to conduct a rather un-scientific test, call it morbid curiosity. As I pass by cubicles and am introduced to call center staff, I always ask how agent performance is assessed. To me, the variety of responses I hear speaks volumes and perhaps helps explain the responses I get from call center agents when I pose the exact same question. Typical responses are a shrug of the shoulders, a shaking of the head and a quick glance to co-workers for reinforcement. They don’t know, feel they cannot explain the complexities or simply don’t remember.
Call center agents are expected to know and retain more and more information in today’s complex business environments. Unfortunately, our short-term and working memory capacities have not increased to accommodate this environment. Agents are also expected to generate customer perceptions that the service was excellent while managing the call to the operational metrics. Talk about feeling committed…to an asylum!
If you want your agents to feel less like they NEED to be committed but rather be committed to the customer experience, keep in mind and act in accordance with the very basics of their job expectations. And be clear about those expectations. One business partner I visited earlier in 2010 had their KPIs updated in real-time on dozens of flat screens in the call center. Another business partner created banners as a colorful reminder of the quarter’s call center initiatives. Great ideas because the agents understood why the KPIs were important, what impact they individually have on them and how they benefit from effectively performing to these. Don’t assume this is the case without testing your assumption.
A balanced scorecard can serve as a visual cue for agent success. Well-designed balanced scorecards are typically made up of four parts:
1. Metrics by which performance will be assessed,
2. Performance objectives for each metric,
3. Weighting applied to each metric (an indication of relative importance), and
4. An individual agent’s performance on each metric.
Selecting performance metrics
Traditionally, call centers have managed performance based on the goal of operational efficiency. We see this drive for efficiency continue today through the management of call center agents to metrics like average handle time, number of calls handled, after call work, etc. While these are very important metrics, the fallacy is in managing a call center to only these internally-focused metrics. Customers do not care how much time an agent has to spend filling out paper-work or electronic forms after the call ends. Rather they care that an agent is available within a reasonable amount of time when they call. Customers care even less about how long they need to spend on the phone with a (single) call center agent, as long as the problem has been resolved with that call. A 30-minute call might end with a delighted customer, a frazzled call center manager and a very confused agent. Are you seeing the disposition toward schizophrenia now?
The key to success is in selecting a variety of metrics that speak to the customer experience and balancing them with the business need for efficiency (we will speak more about this balance when we talk about scorecard weighting). Best-in-class business partners also incorporate other data sources into their agent scorecards such as internal quality monitoring data, chat, text, SMS and email data, etc.
Setting performance objectives
We’ve all been in situations where a goal was picked out of thin-air by a well-intentioned executive and then carved into stone for us to follow. In the absence of this scenario, the best set goals are based on actual historical performance. Important elements to consider in setting performance goals are:
- Mean or Median? (measures of central tendency)- In order to set a goal for future performance, we must first have an understanding of how we’ve performed in the past. Measures of central tendency indicate the point on a performance continuum where the members of a group or dataset tend to gather. While the mean (often referred to as the average) is more widely-reported in call centers, it is most useful in groups whose performance is relatively normal (normal from a statistical standpoint, that is). A normal distribution is one in which a majority of group member performance is centered around the middle of the performance continuum and the distribution of performance is perfectly symmetrical to the right and left– in short, a bell curve. Unfortunately, this type of distribution is not typical of call center performance. As such, the median (the point at which half of the group’s members fall above and below) may be a better way to determine how the call center “typically” performs on any given metric.
- Time frame of historical data– Having decided whether the mean or median will be the most appropriate statistic for determining a baselineof past performance, we must now define a time frame to represent history. At bare minimum, Customer Relationship Metrics recommends that at least three months of data be used to minimize the impact of anomalies in performance and non-normative events impacting performance. Ideally, a larger time frame would be used which encompasses all stages of a company’s business cycle or seasons (1 year). The danger in using more than a single year of historical data to establish a performance baseline is the possibility of negating or underplaying recent performance gains – essentially making the performance goal too easy to achieve.
- Predicting the future – Once a historical baseline of performance has been established, the same data set can then be used to make predictions about future performance (statistical modeling). Performance objectives can then be based around those predictions. Some business partners have also found some success if applying a 5% to 7% “lift” to historical performance and using that lift as the performance goal for the following year.
Metric weighting
The weighting applied to each metric on a scorecard indicates its relative importance to the call center and to the larger organization. Before arbitrarily applying weighting or points to each metric, think about the organizational goals that have been set for the fiscal year and the ways in which the call center contributes to these goals. Doing so will help you make the first critical decision – whether to focus on the customer’s experience or on organizational costs. Weighting within each category of metrics (operational vs. customer experience, etc.) can then be determined based on the degree of impact each metrics has on the category outcome (ex: issue resolution has a higher impact on customer experience than courtesy, so issue resolution should have a higher point or weighting allocation associated with it).
Individual agent performance
If one of your goals in implementing a balanced agent scorecard is to keep agents informed about their performance and incite healthy competition, ensuring that your agents have ready access to accurate scorecards will be a key determinant in the success of the initiative.
During one of my recent visits to a business partner, I took my usual walk through the call center and was quite pleased to see the number of agents who were logged in to Customer Relationship Metrics’ MPM real-time agent scorecards. MPM (Metrics Performance Manager) is a reporting tool that Customer Relationship Metrics uses as part of our applied business intelligence services to gather data from disparate sources. We’ve found that one of the outputs of this reporting tool that can be very motivating to agents are the scorecards. In this call center, agents were actively managing their own performance and receiving immediate feedback from the system about the changes they were making to their interactions with customers. Feedback from the ACD about their efficiency, feedback from customer satisfaction surveys, feedback from the Quality Assurance team are all in a single location, updated in real-time. Imagine the burden you would remove from your supervisors if your agents were that tuned-in to their own performance!
Communicating the Results – Part 2 of a 4 Part Series: Operations Team
Last week I talked about how to communicate the results of your External Quality Monitoring (EQM) analytics to Executive Management. In talking about, “know your audience” I was reminded of a trip to Greece. Today as we turn our focus to the Operations Team, I recall a much more recent story. In fact, this happened two days ago while I was out shopping.
For an upcoming wedding, I was in search for simple black earrings. It was later in the evening when I entered the department store alone (which I like since there are less crowds, and I can be in and out) in search for my quick purchase. Now, typically in your big brand name department stores, there is NO ONE around to help you other than the required minimum Sales Associates on the floor mainly to man the fort behind the cash register. That night, there was a young lady in the jewelry department who was straightening out the display cases in prep for closing time. She asked if I needed any help. Shocked to hear such a thing from an employee in this particular store, I decided to take her up on the offer. I tell her that I am looking for simple black earrings to go with my dress. Well, 30 minutes later, I was back to where I started…looking for simple black earrings by myself. The sales associate showed me everything from silver sparkling, dangling earrings, to red hoops (“that really pop!”) to huge black flower earrings. All of these I’m sure would look great on girls in her age group, but I was very specific about what I needed for this occasion. She clearly did not listen and did not know her audience.
Reports for the Operations Team
The packaging of the External Quality Monitoring program is an important marketing tool for the contact center and the operational team responsible for its performance. A critical component of the reports is that the research has been executed correctly and the validity of the results is certain. This data inform operational decisions, populates performance management systems and calculates incentives/performance pay. The data are used along with the internal call monitoring data and the operational metrics to provide an accurate assessment of the service function, and to identify directives for each agent and each team.
In addition to providing a snapshot of the service the contact center is providing to customers, operational reports will likely focus on two aspects: location-specific analysis over time and location comparisons. Location-specific data compares the period just past to prior periods and perhaps even to the last year. Such a comparative analysis allows operational management to track changes over time, revealing which interventions yielded the most positive results for a single location.
From a comparison perspective, it is useful for specific locations to be able to rate their performance against their peer locations, as well as the contact center effort as a whole. It can be a source of pride for the successful locations and a spur to more intense efforts for those that lag the whole. Continue to make use of multiple formats for the presentation of results. Remember, some readers are more verbal, visual, or numerical than others.
The highest tier of the operations-level report is a summary of all feedback collected for all of the contact center locations and departments. This view of the data provides a status report of the past period’s performance, which can be compared to prior periods. The table below provides aggregate data regarding customer ratings on each question within the survey. The data found in this table presents % Delight (in this example scores of 8 or 9 on the 1-9 response scale used) and mean score, extrapolated to a 100-point scale.
On this scale, the lowest service rating (a rating of 1) is equivalent to zero points on the 100-point scale, and the highest rating (a rating of 9) is equivalent to 100 points with the remaining point distributed across the scale.
You can classify customer ratings on key questions into loyalty categories to more closely examine the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty. Combine key loyalty questions, including customer satisfaction with the company, the representative, and the call itself to create a customer loyalty index (CLI). Customer satisfaction directly relates to long-term customer loyalty that ultimately contributes to shareholder wealth. Trend analysis of CLI is critical to determining if change initiatives are being recognized by customers, reflected in service delivery evaluations, and positively impacting return on investment (ROI).
Four categories are represented in the CLI chart:
- Customer Delight (green in CLI charts). The top two categories on the scale (8 & 9) represent customers that are delighted with your company/service/agents. These customers are key company assets that have been preserved through the service experience. Their high scores provide assurance that they will stay with your company, provided you maintain a consistent level of service.
- Satisfied Indifference (blue in CLI charts). These customers (categories 5-7) represent the primary focus for the next evaluation period. They are generally satisfied, but cannot be counted in the completely loyal category. If presented with an opportunity, these customers may select a different provider. As such, the goal is to move these customers into the delighted category.
- Dissatisfied but Recoverable (yellow in CLI charts). Customers in this category (3 & 4) did not have a positive experience and would likely switch, but you may be able to reach out and change their perception by correcting the service experience. As such, timely and informed follow-up is the key to success with this category of customers. These customers should be the secondary focal group.
- Customer Defection (red in CLI charts). These customers in categories 1 & 2 were very dissatisfied and are most likely to leave your company for an alternative.
The examination of performance means and percentages for key survey questions as describe thus far is important, but contributes only part of the information regarding the callers’ evaluation of service provided by your centers. The survey data was collected to achieve the two purposes. One, how are we doing and, two, what is critical to the quality of the service experience?
- to provide a caller evaluation of the attributes of service, called a performance measure or the mean level of performance, and,
- to enable the analytics to identify the service attributes that statistically impact caller satisfaction, essentially the drivers of caller satisfaction.
The performance means and calculated impact values of each service attribute enable the quantitative identification of areas in which service performance may be below an acceptable level and the resulting impact on satisfaction is high. The process of calculating impact values is a little more intricate than the process of calculating mean performance scores. The regression analysis from the caller satisfaction data computes the impact values and identifies the level of impact each attribute has on overall satisfaction. This allows supervisors and managers to concentrate on the areas that are most important to customers.
The combined aspects of service produce an effect that is perceived by the customer. When determining improvement issues, you should consider how the attributes interact, rather than a static attribute-by-attribute evaluation. Therefore, use a regression model to examine the callers’ overall perception of the service received during the call. An example model, in words, is:
The rating of overall satisfaction with the agent (Q1) is a function of how quickly the agent understood the reason for the call (Q2), how professional the agent was during the call (Q3), the agent’s knowledge of products and services (Q4), the agent providing a clear and complete answer (Q5), the confidence in the information provided by the agent (Q6), and being treated as a valued customer (Q7).
That model, mathematically, is:
Q1 = f (Q2, Q3, Q4, Q5, Q6, Q7)
By running the regression analysis, you can determine which attributes impact caller satisfaction the most. Combine these drivers of satisfaction with the measures of performance to present a complete picture, as shown below.
Based on the multivariate regression model, “conveying confidence in the response given,” “taking ownership for resolving the problem/issue,” and “quickly understanding reason for the call” are the most important drivers of satisfaction with the representative for this set of data. The drivers-of-satisfaction results (presented with the impact/performance chart as above) will vary for different sets of data. One team compared to another may have very different strengths and weaknesses. The power of such analysis is that it narrows the scope of focal areas to a manageable number. The example below shows a drivers-of-satisfaction analysis for two teams. These teams differed only in their leadership and membership–average tenure. Customer types served and location were both similar.
Team 1
Impact Performance
Team 2
Impact Performance
Despite the similarities between these two teams, each team generated different performance means and drastically different impact values.
Comparative analysis of different supervisors, teams, locations and departments often reveals service segments that should be emulated and other segments in need of intervention. Based on the table below, only one of the four teams that represent the largest percentage of completed surveys is a top-performing team (based on mean survey scores). An analysis of the strengths, skills and approach taken by members of Team B could aid members of the remaining teams in improving their own performance levels. Conversely, analyzing the lower performing teams could identify the unique challenges they face in servicing customers.
Note: C1-C5 would be general satisfaction criteria; Q1-Q6 would be Agent attributes.
In the example below, we analyzed the characteristics of a low-performing team in order to design corrective training. A drivers-of-satisfaction analysis revealed that “knowledge of the company’s products” and “completeness of responses” were the behaviors that had the greatest impact on the customer’s perception of the call. We plotted individual performance on these two key behaviors to create a visual profile of the team’s makeup. The team’s mean scores (on a 1-9 scale) on these two key behaviors divide the scatter plot below into four quartiles. Each quartile represents a unique agent profile, with a known set of strengths and weaknesses. For example, quadrant III, in the lower left side of the scatter plot, represents the call center’s risk. These agents are below-average performers on both of the key behaviors that have the greatest impact on customer perception of the service experience. While this quadrant represents a comparatively low percentage of this team’s membership, management must conduct an assessment of skill and desire to improve in a timely manner in order to minimize the risk to the contact center and, ultimately, the company’s revenue stream.
Let’s look at an instance where agent tenure was selected as the differentiating variable among agents. A great deal of time and energy is spent in the contact center industry empowering and developing agents in hopes of ensuring longevity. These actions do not always guarantee that the most tenured agents will be the best performing agents, as was the case in the example below.
The figure above clearly places peak agent performance at approximately 10 months of tenure. Introducing a performance intervention prior to month 10 of an agent’s tenure can extend the peak performance level.
Call resolution plays a key role in driving customer satisfaction. Significant differences in satisfaction scores exist between customers whose calls are brought to resolution and those whose problems/inquiries require follow-up. The table below exemplifies exactly why call resolution is such a key metric.
Repeat calls also have a dramatic impact on customer satisfaction. Repeated calls by customers are not only costly from the perspective of agent talk time, but also have a fairly severe impact on customer satisfaction with the company, the call and the agent.
With a representative sample, we can extrapolate the percentage of repeat calls to all calls taken during the month, in order to calculate the operational cost of repeat calls. The average cost per call is multiplied by the number of repeat calls (as determined by percentages below) for the second, third, etc., calls required. Keep in mind that the indirect cost is also a factor as it is associated with the significantly decreased satisfaction as shown in the section above.
An analysis of company-level data in this manner provides members of the operational team with a solid understanding of current customer satisfaction levels, the drivers of customer satisfaction and areas in need of improvement. However, examining the data longitudinally reveals performance trends and the impact of interventions.
The figure below is a control chart for call resolution. Control charts are often used in Six Sigma to differentiate between normal and abnormal process variation. Each point in the control chart below represents weekly performance on the key metric call resolution. The blue horizontal lines represent the upper (UCL) and (LCL) lower control limits for this metric, based on mean performance and standard deviation of weekly performance around this mean. Any point that resides either below the LCL or above the UCL indicates that the call resolution process is out of control, requiring an intervention.
Performance above the UCL indicates that agents are resolving an abnormally high percentage of calls. On the surface this may seem desirable, but further analysis reveals that resolution was gained at the expense of customer satisfaction. Performance below the LCL could have severe implications on customer satisfaction and contact center costs.
Next in the series, we turn our focus towards the Supervisors and Agents.
This post is part of the book, “Survey Pain Relief.” Why do some survey programs thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of success? In “Survey Pain Relief,” renowned research scientists Dr. Jodie Monger and Dr. Debra Perkins, tackle numerous plaguing questions. Inside, the doctors reveal the science and art of customer surveying and explain proven methods for creating successful customer satisfaction research programs.
“Survey Pain Relief” was written to remedy the $billions spent each year on survey programs that can be best described as survey malpractice. These programs are all too often accepted as valid by the unskilled and unknowing. Inside is your chance to gain knowledge and not be a victim of being lead by the blind. For more information http://www.surveypainrelief.com/
Communicating the Results – Part 1 of a 4 Part Series: Executive Management
A few years ago, my husband and I took a trip to Greece. We wanted to explore the countryside for a few days and decided to rent a car in Athens. At the reservation desk, the nice gentleman at the counter handed me a road map. Eager to get on our way, I thanked him and put the map in my bag, got into the car and away we went. As my husband was driving, I opened the map to take a look at where we were heading. It’s in English. I took a look out the window. The signs are in Greek. I could not translate the symbols in the Greek words to what I was reading on the map. As they say, “It was all Greek to me” and out the window the map went (not literally out the window). While it was considerate of the car rental representative to hand me a map in my own language, it was a totally useless tool regarding it’s intended purpose. In the end, he truly did not know what I needed.
Know Your Audience
We all know that in every situation, personal or corporate, you need to know your audience. This is not breaking news. However, do you know what information your audience truly needs? What does your Executive Team need to know to make strategic decisions versus what do your agents need to know to perform consistently well? Therein always lays the challenge. Analysis must be relevant to the decisions that the audience must make. Actionable data provides answers, direction and purpose.
Communicating the results of your External Quality Monitoring (EQM) research effort is a key but sometimes overlooked step in the process. Doing this right can be the difference between renewed funding and cutbacks that cannot be supported; the difference between usable feedback and mass confusion; the difference between having an engaged, motivated group dedicated to the Rally Cry for the customer and just getting by with handling customer interactions.
The audiences that are most likely to require feedback from the EQM program:
- Executive management,
- Operational management of each contact center,
- Teams and individual agents.
Each of these audiences will need analysis on different data and graphic or tabular presentations of the data. Additionally, consider when oral presentations will be needed and prepare for those in conjunction with the written reports. Never miss an opportunity to tout the advances made by the program and the benefits achieved.
This 4-Part series focuses on communicating the results that are needed to the appropriate teams and today, we place our focus on Executive Management.
Reports for Executive Management
As a critical function within the enterprise, any report to executive management must summarize the contribution achieved for the investment made. Beyond a mere presentation of high-level numeric results, an executive-level report should include a summary of the mission, the investment in customer relationship management, the contribution to customer loyalty and sales, a summary of the product, services or process issues identified for enhancement and the results of those initiatives (beyond the contact center).
Looking first and foremost at executive management needs, a first-rate presentation is paramount. Looks matter a good deal at this level, so do not skimp on color graphs and high-quality paper.
In general, such a presentation will require an executive summary, a response questionnaire, a narrative, including tables and graphs, as appropriate, and a summary/conclusion section.
1. Executive Summary: Give an overview briefly stating the purpose and results of the research. The executive summary must be parsimonious. It should be brief and cogent, wasting no space or words. Make it as objective and clean as possible.
2. Response Questionnaire: Include the survey instruments next. Evaluators of the research need to understand exactly what was asked. It is generally a good idea to include an accounting of the responses to the questions. Those will be readily available from the frequency tables in the analysis printout. You can include both the questionnaire and the responses in this step, hence the name “response questionnaire.” It is also possible to include the means for each question if that information will be meaningful to the reader. Some people are sensitive to the order in which the questions are asked, so it is wise to use that order in this section and indicate this clearly. Avoid needless discussion on question order to save time for the important business of selling executives on the value of the research initiative. Below is an example of a response questionnaire.
3. Narrative: In the narrative, state the purpose at the beginning and the results at the end, but, in between, tell how the research was conducted: who, what, when, where, why, how. Expect to put every piece of important information in the narrative at least twice: once verbally, and at least once more in a table, graph or both. Remember that people do not process information the same way. Some are verbally oriented; others are visual learners, so graphs will be easier to absorb. Still others relate best to numbers — and a table that would put most of us to sleep will sing out loud and clear to them. Include a plan for how the results will be used and outline additional resources needed, including budget, time, space, etc. If the proposed plan can reassign already-available resources without incurring additional expense, then all the better. Put that information in and anything else that supports the argument. Sample components of the narrative section of an executive committee report are shown below.
Example 1
This past quarter, the contact center experienced an unexpected 40 percent increase in call volume, due in large part to the promotional campaign launched in early July. The impact of the large increase in call volume had an adverse effect on operational metrics such as average speed of answer (ASA), average wait time and service level, as well as customer satisfaction levels. As a result, the contact center fell below performance goals on External Quality Monitoring customer satisfaction metrics for the first time over the last five fiscal quarters.
Example 2
In an average month, 100,000 customers call into our phone support center. At an average monthly value of $50 per customer, our phone support center has the potential to impact approximately $5 million in revenue. This past year, our phone support center reached performance goals (customer delight of 60 percent, and customer dissatisfaction of 5 percent), representing a 15 percent improvement in performance over the prior year. The result of this improvement is the protection of $750,000 of company revenue. In comparing this figure to the operating costs for this same period, a return on investment figure of 138 percent results.
Example 3
During the first quarter of this year, our contact center once again exceeded the performance of our competitors in the industry. Our domestic location (location 2) contributed to this positive standing, while our offshore location (location 1) continued to struggle to meet performance goals.
4. Summary: The summary/conclusion should again state the purpose of the research, the results of the research, the uses to which the results can be put, and subsequent plans for implementation. This should be much shorter than the narrative, and should highlight what is successful and useful. It is mission critical to aid executives in understanding the research, so make it clear.
The outlined report is intentionally redundant. It is the writer’s job to make it seem less so. Making the same points repeatedly is necessary since this may be the only opportunity to win the case. The idea is to repeat the major points but with more detail from executive summary through narrative, and then summarize again in the conclusion, leaving the reader no choice but to see the absolute reasonableness of the conclusions. A report should not leave the reader with questions. Make all the necessary information available, place that information into multiple formats, polish the language and present it in an appealing report. Again, it is critical to hold this job to the highest standard. Allocate sufficient time for the best report writer and editor available to do this job.
Next in the series, we turn our focus towards the Operations team.
~ Dr. Jodie Monger, President
This post is part of the book, “Survey Pain Relief.” Why do some survey programs thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of success? In “Survey Pain Relief,” renowned research scientists Dr. Jodie Monger and Dr. Debra Perkins, tackle numerous plaguing questions. Inside, the doctors reveal the science and art of customer surveying and explain proven methods for creating successful customer satisfaction research programs.
“Survey Pain Relief” was written to remedy the $billions spent each year on survey programs that can be best described as survey malpractice. These programs are all too often accepted as valid by the unskilled and unknowing. Inside is your chance to gain knowledge and not be a victim of being lead by the blind. For more information http://www.surveypainrelief.com/
Hey CFO, where will you outsource to now?
One of my most-memorable offshore customer-service experiences involves a Fortune 100 direct-to-consumer computer company. My power cord had stopped delivering power to my laptop, making it a fairly large (and expensive) paperweight. I called the toll free number, ordered a new power cord, validated my shipping address and willingly paid for express delivery.
A few days later, still without a power cord, I called the customer service number and was swiftly routed to an agent in the Philippines. Apparently the power cord had been delivered to my previous mailing address, 1,200 hundred miles away. I explained the urgency of this matter and after a period of absolute and deafening silence, the agent wondered if I could pick it up at my old address. Really? How far do you think 1,200 miles is? Eventually he recovered to cite the company policy for returns and exchanges (not really applicable to the situation at hand) and then swiftly transferred me to a supervisor.
When the concept of ‘Empowerment’ is foreign to a culture, it will be useless to your employees
Such experiences are unfortunately not that unusual from customers who have been served offshore. Some of you might find it surprising that my experience was with an organization who gave their offshore call center agents significant decision-making power in resolving customer problems. So why did I not benefit from the impact of agent empowerment? Because empowerment of entry-level employees is so counter to the culture in the Philippines and other popular offshore locations (namely India) that the initiative fails to address the core customer dissatisfier – that customers are talking to people who more than anything want to please, but are too subjugated to take any definitive action to meet those ends. This is the fundamental reason of why off-shoring of service to these countries has largely failed from a customer experience perspective.
Cultural gaps negatively affect customer experiences
Despite the abundance of both quantitative and anecdotal data about the negative aspects of offshore customer service, with foreign labor costs of 1/5 to 1/10 of U.S. costs, offshoring continues to be a popular initiative. A.T. Kearney’s Global Services Location IndexTM (GSLI)analyzes and ranks the top 50 countries worldwide as the best destinations for providing outsourcing activities, including IT services and support, contact centers and back-office support. The 2009 GSLI report revealed a few key findings:
- India still ranks as the number 1 choice for outsourcing, with the Philippines following in second place.
- Emerging “hot destinations” include the Middle East and Africa (Egypt ranked # 6 in the world; Jordan ranked #9; Ghana ranked #15 and Tunisia ranked # 17)
- Countries in areas capitalizing on (close) proximity to the United States include South America and the Caribbean (Chile ranked # 8 in the world; Cost Rica ranked # 23).
The GSLI Index applies a weighting of 40% to financial attractiveness, and 30% to both People Skills and Availability and to Business Environment. The Business environment category includes an assessment of Cultural exposure [1]. From a Customer Experience perspective, it is this cultural exposure or gap that represents the largest risk to the Customer Experience.
The importance of cultural exposure and fit with the customer base served cannot be underestimated. I am reminded of a story someone told me about the company they worked for. They had an offshore call center handling their customer support. A customer called in regarding a malfunction in her dishwasher. The agents involved were unable to understand why this was such an urgent problem and were unable to provide her a solution. When this situation was brought to the attention of the management team, the agents were called in for a meeting. They defended their response by raising their hands and saying, “If the dishwasher is broken, why not use these? What is the problem?” They just didn’t get it.
HofStede’s five cultural dimensions provide insight into the key ways in which cultures differ. Perhaps the best known of these cultural dimensions is the Power Distance Index (PDI) [2]. The PDI describes the degree to which the less powerful members of a culture expect and accept that power is unevenly distributed. This index essentially speaks to how much a culture values and respects authority. In the workplace, an employee from a culture with a high PDI would expect detailed instructions from supervisors, would never question authority and would actively avoid decision-making. In contrast, an employee from a culture with a low PDI would feel more comfortable challenging or critiquing those in power.
The world average PDI is 55. The United States has a PDI of 40, a relatively low Index. This low PDI indicates that while there is a fair degree of power inequality in our culture, we apply less deference to title, class and status than many other countries in the world. In comparison India and the Philippines have PDIs of 77 and 94, respectively. This explains the high degree of frustration American consumers experience when they seek out-of-the-box problem-solving skills from call center agents in the Philippines or India.
Understanding that cultural differences are the source of offshore customer experience discontent, let us examine what a service experience with an agent in the “hot and upcoming” Middle East and Africa or near-shore options of South America and the Caribbean might look like.
South American and Caribbean countries in the top 25 list (GSLI-ranked) include Jamaica (#24), Costa Rica (#23), Brazil (#12), Mexico (#11) and Chile (#8). With the exception of Jamaica and Costa Rica, the remaining countries all posses Power Distance Indices more than 20 points different than that of the United States, representing a significant difference in culture. While Jamaica and Costa Rica may represent the best options for the United States’ future off-shoring needs (Global Services Location Index within top 25; PDI distance from the US of only 5 units / points), the effects of significant differences between these countries’ and the United States’ Individualism and Uncertainty Avoidance Indices must be considered.
Within the top 25-ranked countries (GSLI-ranked), only one African country (Ghana) made the list. Ghana’s PDI of 77 (distance of 37 units from that of the United States) makes it a cultural mis-fit.
So you are probably asking yourself, just as I did, why have so many chosen to outsource call centers to India and the Philippines? One may assume it’s related to numerous reasons from economic incentives to communications infrastructure to the number of English speaking residents to the large percentage of college graduates. It does seem largely evident that the GSLI was not part of the consideration.
References
1. The Shifting Geography of Offshoring – The 2009 A.T. Kearney Blobal Services Location IndexTM http://www.atkearney.com/index.php/Publications/global-services-location-index-gsli-2009-report.html
2. http://www.geert-hofstede.com/
4 Steps to Overcome Being a Pain in the Ass Call Center
Through real world best practices, part 3 – the final chapter in this three-part series – highlights a few “how to” steps on overcoming barriers and become less of a Pain In The Ass (PITA) to your customers. It begins with four vital questions…
Step 1: Answer some questions.
According to W. Edwards Deming, the father of the quality evolution, “workforces are only responsible for 15% of Continue reading “4 Steps to Overcome Being a Pain in the Ass Call Center” »
Avoid Call Center Schizophrenia from Pay for Performance – Part 1 of a 2-Part Blog Series
A few weeks ago, I was reading an interesting article about schizophrenia. It talked about the statistics, symptoms and treatment for this terrible disease. At first I was alarmed by the recent research numbers, an estimated 3.2 million Americans suffer from this mental illness. Wow. As I read on, I learned that four types of “delusions” exist in schizophrenics, and from that list of four, “Delusions of Control” is one that really struck a chord with me. Naturally, I started to draw some parallels between this particular symptom and people I know, myself and those in my line of work. I do believe it’s fair to say that based on the delusion of control alone, we all have a touch of schizophrenia from time to time. Perceived control is a way of life in the call center.
When reflecting on the life inside a call center, it’s easy to believe that we are patients that are often not medicated to control our delusions. The call center as an asylum may not be a stretch! Not only is it insanely intense, it is also a place of constant contradiction. We often have expectations of our employees and our call center agents to adhere to a specific model intended to produce a controlled response (a great service experience). In the same breath, we also expect that model to produce the opposite results (do it fast, right and cheap). Isn’t this setting your team up to feel schizophrenic? We allow agents to believe they are in control, but in reality, they are not.
I was reminded of this parallel when speaking with one of our partners last week. This particular client had three service centers that were using the “Pay for Performance” model with their agents. As he elaborated on the damages this was causing, I began to recall the correlation between my recent revelation on call center schizophrenia and the “Pay for Performance” model (particularly in service orientated call centers.) In this particular model, agents are being paid based on metrics such as number of calls handled and number of minutes spent on those calls. This is the expectation set forth. At the end of the month, organizations are left scratching their heads as to why customer satisfaction scores are so low. Well, the innate service component is being squished out of the agent as they are trying to hurry on to the next caller. But yet, we are expecting an outstanding customer service experience to come from our service orientated call center, right? Insanity in its true form and we’ve all had this conversation with ourselves and everyone on the management team.
This will be the first in a two-part series focusing on designing the perfect, or as-perfect-as-you-can-get, model for service call centers. Part One will discuss the “Pay for Performance” model, how it has been incorporated in the service call centers and how it is affecting your agents and your customer service scores. Part Two will discuss how to build effective balanced scorecards and, in turn, a more appropriate model to your service call centers. We need to control the insanity!
What is “Pay for Performance?”
“Pay for performance” also known as incentive pay, rewards workers based on the outcomes they achieve as opposed to the traditional model of paying for time worked. These models have been wildly popular in outbound telemarketing for many years, advancing the earning potential of skilled salespeople while “weeding out” those who in a conventional pay model would largely rely on their base salary to pay their bills. More sophisticated (sales) incentive pay models financially penalize agents for “buyer’s remorse,” encouraging quality sales acquisition methods.
Sales vs. Service
While time and outcome-pressured compensation models may work in a sales environment, they represent the antithesis of what is needed in the service world. Conventional wisdom states that in a sales environment, there is only one outcome that matters — sales that “Stick”. Certainly there are complexities in how a call center agent reaches a “Yes,” but that does not negate the fact that there is only one outcome that is guiding the call flow. A customer service call center is far more complex. Customer service call center agents are tasked with resolving calls in a manner that is pleasing to customers, builds brand loyalty while remaining sensitive to everyone’s time – the customer on the phone and the one waiting to be helped. That is quite a tall order especially when a case can be made that the Sales team is often responsible for the call to the Service team. At the end of the day, incenting agents based on a single outcome may expose your organization to a very high level of business risk.
“Why are my customer service scores so low?”
The correlation between time spent and outcome is much more fluid. Let’s examine some of the unfortunate outcomes of ill-conceived pay for performance models in customer service centers:
As an assignment, add your metrics to this list and evaluate them against the delusion of control construct.
“If not “Pay for Performance”, then what should we use?”
In a service center, a balanced agent scorecard is a far more effective way to pay and incent agents. Balanced scorecards force agents and their managers to focus their attention on more than a single Key Performance Indicator (KPI). Some of CRM’s existing customers have access to an important tool which assists them in determining the relative importance of agent skills, from the perspective of the customer – predictive (regression) modeling. In the figure below, the beta levels on the left indicate the level of impact each agent skill had on the customer’s overall perception of the agent’s performance. The right side of the figure indicates the current performance level of that skill (on a 1 to 9 scale).
One business partner uses this regression output to not only set priorities within their agent scorecard, but to also set priorities for ongoing / developmental training for the upcoming quarter. The figure below indicates the degree of improvement in customer satisfaction this business partner has been able to achieve by linking customer, agent and training priorities.
Companies using the “Pay for Performance” model in their service call centers will remain to be at war with themselves. If you are paying your agents on the number of calls they take, then you will get a high number of repeat callers and lower FCR rates due to customers being rushed off the call. If you are currently using the “Pay for “Performance” model in your service center, have you experienced similar results?
Now that we identified a much more suitable, more effective model to adopt in your service call centers, it’s time to discuss “how.” Part two will discuss just how you can build effective balanced scorecards to incentivize your agents.
Work-at-Home Agents Damage Net Promoter and Customer Satisfaction. Is this Preventable? A Call Center Case Study
The remote agent model is compelling for many reasons – from elimination of the cost of physical work space, to decreased employee attrition and the higher caliber of employee that can be hired once geographical limitations disappear. At the recent Frost & Sullivan Customer Contact 2010 Event, Michael DeSalles, Strategic Analyst of Contact Centers stated, ‘It is estimated that the work at home agent model is growing by 40% annually’[1]. Attrition among work at home agents is only 10% compared to attrition rates of nearly 50% in typical call centers[2]. The ability to fill agent positions with individuals who have college degrees (80% of work at home agents do) and management experience while reducing overhead is an intriguing proposition to many organizations.
We recently covered this case study during our quarterly Customer Insight to Actions (CIA) user group meeting. As an applied Business Intelligence services firm we deliver actionable insights and best practices from data that is mined from voice of the customer, voice of the employee, and call center performance metrics. This case study was shared anonymously by one of our business partners after they deployed a call center remote agent model.
In the graph below, from the beginning, you see that the wok-at-home call center agents performed worse when customer’s rated the likelihood to recommend the company after their service experience (Net Promoter). The call center began working on correcting their work at home agent model as a result of this business intelligence soon after deployment but as you see recovery has been slow.
Here you get a similar perspective by looking at performance with call center agent satisfaction.
So why did net promoter scores and customer satisfaction drop when one call center sent their top-performing agents home to work? Despite significant planning to address the technological challenges of remote workers, this call center quickly discovered the down-side of their work at home call center agent model. Previously top-performing agents struggled to maintain even average-level performance.
As a result of their re-engineering of their work-at-home agent model the call center considered many things not previously considered.
A few items you may consider are:
1. Have we selected the right employees: The ability to perform well in your call center may not guarantee a high performance level will be maintained once the agent goes home to work. When selecting remote agents, certainly job competence has to be a key factor, but is it the only factor to consider? Do the agents that are effective in working from remote locations share similar characteristics? Additionally:
- Are they the self-motivated ones that strive to out-perform their peers and their own historical performance because of the satisfaction it brings them, not the praise they may receive from others?
- Are these the “low maintenance” call center agents? Do the supervisors give them little supervision or direction to complete their job responsibilities. Will this still be true when they work-at-home?
- Do these call center agents typically learn new systems, platforms or programs quicker than others? Do they have a natural interest in technology and can therefore help (not impede) remote trouble-shooting?
2. Do you need a different set of expectations? Is one of the key factors to a successful remote agent model consistency of customer experience? A customer should not be able to tell whether an agent is working from an office with dozens of other call center agents around him / her or in a home office. Of course, no dogs, screaming children, deliveries, plumbers or televisions in the background. Do the call center agents realize that the ability to work from home is a privilege – a privilege that is contingent on them maintaining a high level of performance?
3. Do you need a different plan for coaching & training? Is simply requiring that remote agents dial into regular office training sessions sufficient? Much like face-to-face training, does remote training need to be designed to teach individuals in all of the different ways in which they learn – by sound, by visual instruction and by tactile experience (doing while training)?
4. Do you need mandatory in-office events to keep agents engaged and entrenched in company culture? This consideration was the most controversial among with participants of the CIA Meeting, as it requires companies to limit their recruitment to within 40-50 miles of the company’s location. Proponents of this approach cited the ability to have remote agents work from an office location in the event of internet, phone or electricity outage, as well as the opportunity to maintain engagement through regular face-to-face contact. Do you need this?
The findings from our user group meeting case study discussion were not to construct the perfect call center at-home-agent model. Instead, it was meant to provoke thought. Because one thing is certain, you must think in a totally different manner than you are used to when designing an at-home agent model. If you don’t, the risk of failure is high and the road to recovery is long.
[1] Michael DeSalles, Strategic Analyst, Frost & Sullivan – April 19, 2010
[2] http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/57812.html?wlc=1272052827
Innovative New Models for Managing Customer Contact Agents
I recently had the opportunity to facilitate a session titled, “Innovative New Models for Managing Customer Contact Agents” . This was a 90-minute workshop that provided attendees the chance to collaborate with one another to rethink the way they operate their contact center. The objective was to create an environment that is more inspirational, innovative, and filled with happy employees. These are the notes from that session. Continue reading “Innovative New Models for Managing Customer Contact Agents” »
