Building a Strategic Plan for your Contact Center

Building a Strategic Plan for your Contact Center


Colin Taylor

In our call center consulting engagements one recommendation comes up time and again and it is often the first one we tackle when working with our call center clients; the Strategic Call Center Plan. In a previous post we examined if a call center, contact center or customer service operation required a Strategic Plan and concluded that it is one of the most powerful tools to ensure alignment between what a company or organization is working to achieve and the support provided by the call center to realize these goals and objectives.



Of course if the company has defined their strategy then the exercise can be straightforward and can be completed as set out in our earlier post Is A Strategy For The Contact Center Necessary?



But what if no corporate strategy exists? Can we develop a call center strategic plan? The answer is that in some organizations you can and in others you likely cannot. In order to define the existing strategy you will access and active participation from the senior management and the company leadership team. Depending upon the size, industry and structure of the organization this may or may not be achievable. If the company however is of a size, structure, culture that could allow for the required participation and there is a willingness upon the senior management group to engage in this exercise then it is in fact possible to construct a call center strategic plan in the absence of a corporate strategic plan.



Of course, each organization is different as are the members of the leadership teams at any organization. Their individual experience with developing strategic plans will also vary, so our approach has been to employ pre-work for all of the participants and to set up facilitated meeting to work through the biggest strategic questions upon which the corporate and call center strategies depend. In these meetings we establish and gain agreement on a strategic framework upon which the call center strategic plan can be built.



So what are these questions? In our experience the answers to the following questions have been critical to establish that strategic framework:

1. Who is the Primary Customer? This question focuses the attention and efforts of the center against the customers deem most important to the business.

2. Who Comes First? The answer to this question establishes the hierarchy or priorities between Customers, Employees and Shareholders.

3. What are our Core Competencies? This question eliminates ambiguity surrounding what we are good at which provides and competitive advantage and what we may or may not be good at, without a competitive advantage.

4. What are our Core Values? Defining what we value and prize as an organization can help to prioritize call center and customer service decisions within the call center.

5. What will we not do? Establishing what we will not do as an organization is as important as what we will do. Strategic limits ensure that cycles and efforts are not wasted in areas that the organization has no interest in pursuing.

These five questions when combined with knowledgeable a facilitator with deep understanding of both strategic planning and call center operations can deliver a highly focused, and aligned call center strategic plan which better enables the call center operation to support the company and the brand.



For more information regarding Call Center Strategic Planning or The Taylor Reach Group call center consulting services, please contact the Colin Taylor.

IQPC Call Center Summit – Review

Colin Taylor


I spent last week at the IQPC Call Center Summit in Orlando Florida. The venue was quite nice, though there was some distance to travel to find the lundcheon rooms. The speakers convered the gamut for such events and the topic of Social Media was once again prominent. The presentation by Michael Biondo from Thumbplay was suggested by a number of other attendees as one of the best as was the one by Steve Riddell of Blinds.com.



The number of delegates was up from last year as were the number of exhibitors in the trade show and both of these points bode well for the burgeoning recovery. There seemed to be a lot more managers and line staff in attendance this year, however. So while the number of attendees increased it appears the quality and seniority of the attendees declined.



I had a number of great meetings during the event and and also completed a couple of interesting interviews: one with Barb Bleiler of WPS who was speaking at the event, she and I sat down to discuss self service in call centers in general and the WPS call center in particular. My second interview was with Michael Biondo of Thumbplay, we discussed social media and the opporunities of call centers to use these channels to get closer to their customers. Both of these videos are availab on our YouTube Call Center Channel .



I also enjoyed my tour of the CCA (Call Centers of America) facility in Orlando, it was both interesting and informative.



Overall I would rate the event a 6 out of 10 and look forward to the next IQPC event ‘Call Center Week’ in Las Vegas this June.

How Easy is Your Call Center to Deal With?

How Easy is Your Call Center to Deal With?


Colin Taylor

There is growing debate in call center and customer service circles as most organizations (89% in a recent study) strive to exceed customer expectations, that this has little value in increasing customer loyalty. Instead loyalty is more generally derived from ‘ease’ of interaction, that is to say making it easy and simple to interact with the company call center. This can mean offering more channels of communication, (57% of customers found the need to switch from the web to the phone to be an obstacle, that the presence of robust chat might have eliminated), offering extended service hours, accurately capturing customer information and nature of the problem or challenge (56% had to re-explain their issue), and resolving the inquiry on the first contact (FCR) opportunity (62% of customers had to repeatedly contact the company to resolve an issue).



“Simplify, simplify”, said David Thoreau and that is good advice for today’s call center and contact center operator. In our call center consulting practice we have seen many organizations that added too much complexity into the process that created barriers and obstacles for customers to overcome. These obstacles can include:

* Overly complicated IVR systems – remember humans cannot remember more than 7 things and 4 or 5 is really ideal,

* Limited hours of call center operation that force customers to contact us when it is convenient for us and not them,

* Not offering multiple communication channels. We want to be available to interact with our customers in whatever channel is convenient to them…not to us. So add chat, so customers don’t have to leave the web to phone us. Offer email from the website to allow this channel of communication.

* Ensure that the call flow is logical from a customer perspective (related to the IVR point above). Don’t mix sales and service options and queues unless this is what your customers want. If it is not logical you will drive transfers and dissatisfaction.

* Offer easy to use self service. Many customers would prefer to get the answer themselves than to sit in queue to speak to an agent.

* Ensure that your systems are integrated or at minimum that the caller information can be viewed by anyone who the customer has to speak to. There is little that is more frustrating than having to repeat yourself and explain a situation for the second or third time.

* Be proactive if there is a high correlation between a stated customer issue and a follow on issue occurring, share this with the customer, give them guidance or tell them where they can find. This can eliminate the ‘next’ call and preserve satisfaction.



Being easy to do business with is a key metric when examining overall customer satisfaction with and organization and it is critical when viewed from a customer service or contact center perspective. Never lose sight of the fact that once a customer is ‘sold’ and has to contact the call center the role of the center is to protect that customer from attrition. The call center protects the revenue stream that has already been secured, making it easy and effective to get what they need seem obvious, but as with common sense, it can be very uncommon.

Root Cause Analysis in the Call Center

Root Cause Analysis- Why You should be using it,

By Colin Taylor

It always amazes me how call center managers, their direct supports and their superiors often fail to use one of the best tools at their disposal, Root Cause Analysis. Of course if you are always fighting fires it is difficult to find time and or resources to

research what is causing the fires in the first place. As with any fire there is always a cause; a discarded cigarette, an ignition source, lightening etc. There is always an underlying cause for any event.

According to Wikipedia, “Root cause analysis (RCA) is a term used to denote a class of problem solving methods aimed at identifying the root causes of problems or events. The practice of RCA is predicated on the belief that problems are best solved

by attempting to correct or eliminate root causes, as opposed to merely addressing the immediately obvious symptoms. By directing corrective measures at root causes, it is hoped that the likelihood of problem recurrence will be minimized. However, it

is recognized that complete prevention of recurrence by a single intervention is not always possible. Thus, RCA is often considered to be an iterative process, and is frequently viewed as a tool of continuous improvement”.

If we go to see our doctor we would rather that he addressed the cause of our sickness and not just the symptoms. In our business lives, however, we can often fail to see or understand the causal events that are making our lives miserable. So how can we move

from fighting the fires to preventing them? How can we do this without investing in expensive technology, costly consultants and with no additional resource bandwidth? The phrase “out of the mouth of babes” comes to mind. You see I have been practicing

root cause analysis for many years and had developed a fairly robust approach of employing process maps, live call monitors and recording as well as stakeholder interviews. All of which I must say has worked quite well and has stood me in good stead with

my clients and customers. When babysitting my granddaughter recently I was reminded of another approach and one that is extremely effective for drilling down to a root or underlying cause. “Why is the sky blue?, Why do we have day and nights?,

Why doesn’t the sun go out? Why does the moon move around the sky?, Why do the tides move in and out? Of course anyone who is familiar with six sigma understands the ‘5 whys’. Following my most recent interaction with my granddaughter I gained a new appreciation for this approach. Again from Wikipedia, “The 5 Whys is a technique used in six sigma methodology to help determine the root cause of a defect or problem. Often it takes roughly five iterations of asking why to get to the real cause of a problem, although the real key is to just start asking why” The penny dropped, using the 5 whys could be a far simpler tool for quickly assessing the root cause.



So we tried it out on one of our clients;

“41% of all callers were complaining that the service promised was not delivered”,

Oh says I “why would the service not be provided?”

“The customer must complete some preparation in order for us to provide the service. A lot of times they don’t prepare and blame it on us”

“So what percentage of the complaints are real and what percent is the customers?” I asked.

“I don’t know came the response, we don’t measure that”

“Ok, so I’ll ask, why don’t we measure that?”

“We don’t have a mandate from corporate to measure it”

“You said you didn’t have a mandate from corporate. Aren’t there service standards in place?”

“Well yes, there are, but complaints aren’t really covered.”

“Why aren’t complaints covered?” I asked gamely.

“The operations staff doesn’t want us to measure complaints.”

“And why don’t they want to measure complaints?”

“Because since some of the customers are lying it will make the operations staff looks bad and they don’t wish to be seen as doing a bad job”



At this point I had to agree I could see that point of view. After all who wants to look like they are doing a bad job? The operations staff also completed ten of thousands of service deliveries successfully each month. Though not wanting to bail out of the process, I adjusted course and went back at it, “You said there were service standards in place. Is there not a standard for service complaints?”

“There actually is, but we don’t report on it, because it just gets the operations staff upset. They tell us it is only a goal.”

“Ah ha! So these are service goals rather than service standards for complaints. So you don’t track them because a percentage of your customers may be lying. Do I understand this now?”

“Yes, actually you have put it quite well.”

There we have it. Not quite done in the suggested 5 why questions; but the underlying cause for the high percent of complaint calls is the lack of service standards. While management claimed to employ service standards in the case of complaints, they were really just goals. Therefore they were untracked and unenforceable. But maybe I am congratulating myself too quickly. Let’s fast forward a bit through the process:

We met with the senior management team and reviewed the service standards.

We found that many standards were really goals and most were not tracked or met.

We secured agreement that in order to have any effectiveness a service standard had to be tracked, analyzed and managed,

We secured agreement on all standards fairly quickly based upon a 5 nines success rate 99.999% success.

Then we bumped back into the problem with those lying customers. In all fairness it was not me who had the epiphany, but rather one of the senior group.

“So tell me” he asked “is your lying population concentrated in just one sales territory?”

The answer as suspected was “No they are all over town”,

“Good then why can’t we just accept that a percentage of our customers will be less than truthful, because I’m sure the liar density in this town, like others is pretty equally distributed”

Well that did it. We agreed to a meaningful service standard for complaints; accepted the truth that liars don’t all live on the same block. We moved forward and implemented meaningful service standards across the organization.

There were more than a few missteps along the way but at the end of the day we saw the number and percentage of total calls represented by complaints drop from 41% to less than 7%. Of course like any improvement initiative it never comes to an end. I know that today we are still working to improve the success rate for the service standards and we are still looking for those customers who are less than truthful.

A final thought if you ask the question as to why things are done a certain way and get the answer because we have always done it that way; don’t despair. There is always a better mousetrap, a better way of doing things. We just need to discover them. Root

Cause Analysis can be a very valuable tool is helping you to understand why.

Originally Published in Customer Reach Volume 2 Issue 5

Toyota Just Doesn’t Understand: Poor Design Creates Poor Experience

Toyota Just Doesn’t Understand: Poor Design Creates Poor Experience
I like to think of myself as a patient person, though it has been said that I don't always suffer fools well. I was having a happy retail experience, well at least as happy as one can have when you leave $1200 with the dealer. I did need new front brakes, so all in all I was quite happy and content, when the service advisor choose to make me even happier. "Here" he said as he handed me a post card, "register on this site and you could win a thousand dollars". I joke that would only leave me $200 in the hole and he laughed as well.

Back at the office I went to the 'clubtoyota.ca' web site and attempted to register. I input my VIN # and all other requested information and hot enter. The first try is returned an incorrect postal code. I had added a space where none was required/accepted. It would have been nice if they told me this, but no biggie, I corrected and continued. Still got the 'correct your postal code' message two more times, before the website displayed the 'please phone our call centre' message. While I was getting frustrated, I thought a $1,000 is still a $1,000, so I dialled the phone.

After negotiating the auto attendant menu and holding for 35 seconds I was connected to an agent. After explaining my challenges on the site, she explained that I may have been entering the wrong address and it had to match my home address. I thought of my retweet yesterday of Seth Godin's post regarding frustration with poorly designed websites - HERE. If the site had mentioned that the address had to match my home address and not the one registered with the dealer, I could have navigated it. The agent then told me that if I had moved since I bought the vehicle, then my home address wouldn't have worked either and it had to be my home address when I bought the vehicle.

Now I know why Toyota is promoting this web site and giving away thousands of $$. They want to ensure that their database is accurate and current. Who knows Toyota may have a recall (sorry a low blow, but I couldn't resist). They also understand the concept of relationship management and want to be able to connect with me through as many touch-points as possible.

Of course by the end of the 4 minute call with my address corrected and verified by the agent, I said good-bye and attempted to login to the site. Once again an incorrect postal code message and after I verified that what I was entering was what the agent had said it should be i was once again asked to call the Toyota call centre.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the generosity and goodwill of the dealer by offering me a chance to win $1,000 had evaporated. I was out 30 minutes of my time, had seen my satisfaction with Toyota fall from a reasonable 8 out of 10 when first handed the card by the dealer to now a 2 out of 10 now. I wondered to myself was the company (Toyota) just dim when they created a site to register, reward and recognise customers or was their intention to demonstrate how to tick off customers who were relatively happy before receiving such a gift?

I suspect that their intentions were and are honourable. I suspect that no one paid attention to the website or web design. A few well placed instructions could have eliminated my call and frustration.
At the end of this process, my opinion of Toyota has taken a beating (and I now own my third consecutive Toyota vehicle), my respect for them as an organization has diminished (how many blindfolded monkeys does it take to make a website) and to make matters worse, it cost me time, but also cost Toyota money; 6 failed web interactions, one 4 minute call and the downstream damage done by one unhappy customer tweeting to the world.

I suspect that a better effort in building the website would have cost a whole lot less. This is the case with so many organizations that fail to extend their customer experience vision to all touch-points or fail to align all contact points to the vision.

10 Relatively Serious Predictions for 2011

10 Relatively Serious Predictions for 2011
Guest Blogger John Cockerill
1. There will be a future however bleak or rosy, it will still be. Take off the rose colored glasses and stop forecasting historical plus 5%. That is what a demand forecast is for. Get one now.
2. Politicians will still get elected; and we all will complain regardless of who is elected and their policies. Now is a great time to examine your own policies, are they complete, are they up to date are they relevant to the way your center operates today?
3. Calls will still likely be the large percentage of contact traffic types in your centers. People like to talk with people. It is organizations that generally push for self-service and non voice channel (chat and email) and all of these can add value to you center. But don’t forget to pay attention to voice it is likely to be you largest channel for the near future.
4. Mondays will continue to be the busiest day of the week for most centers, so don’t schedule the same number of staff on Monday as on Friday or even on Tuesday for that matter.
5. Finding and keeping good staff will remain the secret to contact center success. Oops, didn’t mean to let that one out.
6. Friday and Monday will account for 40% of all absences and illness on in centers working standard business hours and days. For most centers this does far more damage to your service levels on Mondays, so try asking your staff to be ill and absent on Friday…or at least to start their weekend one day earlier, so they are recovered by Monday.
7. Agent training in contact center will for the next year in many centers to remain thought of as a ‘nice to do’ not a ‘must do’. Here’s a thought…what if we hire good people and ensure that they have the training and knowledge to assist our customer over the phone. Would that improve our CSAT and perhaps our ESAT as well?
8. Fault calls will remain the largest segment of calls for most centers. Who’s fault? It’s your fault…well maybe not you personally, but your organization. What are you doing in your center to reduce fault calls?
9. Marketing may talk to the center regularly and let them know what campaigns, and programs will be run and associated volume expected and likely to impact the center. I don’t believe that is all that likely; but it could happen. I have faith that it should have one of these years. Let me know when it does.
10. Predictions for the future like demand forecasts are prone to have a margin of error (50%) regardless of the authority and foresight. Pick a point and go for the future with belief that you can and will figure it out and it will be rosy. If you can conceive it, believe it, you can achieve it.

Talking Call Center Videos

Call Center experts from New York City 311, Philly311, Unity Health, Scotiabank, Preferred Health Partners, speak on industry trends, how the trends are impacting their contact centers, the role and impact of social media on their centres and customers.
These videos are available on the Taylor Reach Group YouTube video channel and is available via this link