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.

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

The Customer Experience and the Call Center Part 3

In our call center consulting practice we often assist call centers understand and rationaize their Customer Experience strategy. This includes aligning the call center operational model with the desired Customer Experience.

In this third article in our Customer Experience (click to view Part 1 and Part 2 )and the Call Center series we examine how that alignment process can actually operate.



In the diagram above we can see the shift from the promise that Marketing makes to product delivery and the service supported by the call center. When considered in terms of how a customer perception is shaped the excitement or anticipation starts high and often degrades with the reality of delivery and after sales service.
Let’s look at a hypothetical organization with the following Mission Statement;
“To deliver World Class Customer Service to our Customers, by providing access to our products and services the way our customers want them, when they want them, while providing a positive, enjoyable and productive environment to our employees and delivering superior returns to our Shareholders”
From this Mission Statement we can see what the company values:
• World Class Customer Service,
• Unfettered access to products/services- based on time and based on channel,
• A productive, enjoyable and positive environment for staff,
• Superior returns for Shareholders
As we continue down the process we have set out a few minutes ago we would then meet with Marketing to discover the attributes of the Brand. The following is a reasonable set of attributes associated with our hypothetical brand;
Accessible,
Cares about Customers,
Daring,
Different,
Energy,
Fun,
Glamorous,
Stylish,
Trendy,
Youthful,

By looking again at the original emotional call flow we reviewed earlier we can now match the experience to the desired Brand attributes



With the ‘current state’ of our Customer Experience picture in hand, we can next look to the experience we wish to create.
Do the Mission/Vision/Value and Marketing messages support the Customer Experience we want to create?

What descriptions and phases would we use to define this experience?

What descriptions would our customers use to define this experience?

Now describe how we want a customer to feel following an interaction?

The answers to these questions become the starting point of aligning the contact center with the brand message.
We are now equipped with a number of building blocks that we will need to develop our customer experience roadmap.
Look at complaints. Map the processes required to support delivery of desire customer experiences. Identify policies and procedures that are in opposition to the identified customer experience descriptors? Identify all processes, policies and procedures that are not aligned with the desired Customer Experience and raise these with management for discussion, review and revision.

To summarize the steps in designing a Customer Experience Roadmap are as follows;
1. Know what the current experience is,
2. Know how you are measuring the experience,
3. Understand your policies, processes and any negative customer impacts,
4. Plan changes and tests,
5. Measure improvements/reductions as a result of tests,
6. Roll out positive changes and continue other tests,
Or displayed graphically



We would welcome your comments, suggestions or questions regarding this post, Please share

The Customer Experience and the Call Center Part 2

This is the second post on delivering the Customer Expereience through the call center. You can find the first installment here
Before starting to architect the Customer Experience, let’s start by defining it
The key elements of any Customer Experience related to the contact center has to include:
1. The ease of access – to information, to purchase, to inquire, to complain or to fix a problem,
2. The speed of access – Service level, hoops customers have to jump through – how many times do they have to enter their account number etc. time to return an email or resolve a trouble ticket?
3. The quality of interaction- Where they able to get done what they wanted too? Was it easy, was it efficient, logical?
Customer Experience is the experience that a customer has when interacting with a company. This includes how they chose to interact with us and how easy it is for them to complete the interaction.
IBM defines Customer Experience as “The designed interaction between a customer and your organization”. The key element of this definition is the design element. The message here is regardless what your customer experience is and regardless whether it is good or bad, it is what you have designed through your actions, processes and procedures.
With this definition in hand can now look at how we can design our desired customer experience.
To do this we need to start at the beginning. Few companies today are looking at the customer experience holistically. For those that do consider the question of Customer Experience, it is often only a marketing concept...how should our stores, marketing and advertising look and feel to support the brand.
The call centre is generally not connected organizationally to Marketing and most often resides under Operations or Sales. This distance between silos can mean that the Marketing group has little understanding of what takes place in the call center. This despite the fact that centers are the single most common communications channel an organization can have with its customers. Purdue University found that 92% of customers judge an organization based upon the interactions they have with a company’s call center.
So how can we as call center executives join the dots between the desired customer experience and customer satisfaction to deliver the result through our call centers? Like with any travel, once you have a destination in mind you can then develop a roadmap to get you to where you are going.
But we have a few challenges in developing a roadmap...For one thing we do not know where we are starting from.
We know that most companies have not defined and documented their customer experience. So how can we expect to know where we are at now and how we are doing?
The first step in our process is to assess and determine where we are now; we need to understand what the customer experience is today.
First, we need an inventory of the channels, methods and touch-points through which our customers interact with us: phone, email, chat, mail, in-store etc. Do all of the touch-points end in a common single CRM that tracks each ’touch’ the company has with their customers? What about marketing initiatives: email blasts, SMS, print media, daily specials, white mail, etc.
Second, we need to analyze the customer satisfaction metrics (CSAT) and reports we have in place for each of these channels. You are not alone if you don’t have metrics to report on all of these channels; - this is the first step you will need to complete! On what channels do you measure CSAT, and where is it not measured?
Let’s examine the channels where no CSAT measurement is taking place. Is this because a conscious decision has been made not to measure it? Have we determined that we can’t measure it? Has it been determined to be unimportant or has the idea of measuring CSAT on this channel not been considered? Remember that old management tenet, “you can manage what you can’t measure’.
With your CSAT data in-hand, ask yourself is the data comparable? Are you asking the same question for each channel or do you ask different or somewhat different questions? If you are asking about satisfaction with the company or brand on one survey and asking if they were satisfied with their last call center interaction or agent, you are asking two separate and distinct questions. Unless the questions are the same you can’t aggregate the results. So if you are not asking the same questions then you have your second take away.
With comparable data you can chart the CSAT across all communication channels. Look at the results and what do you see...If you are like the majority of organizations you see a much lower level of satisfaction than we would like to see... almost two thirds of 15 verticals surveyed had a customer experience average scores of 70% or less.
The CSAT score is the customers’ opinion of the service interaction quality for the interaction they have just completed. In the same way our internal quality assessment scores are our satisfaction with our agents being able to address all of the elements that we think should be important to both the customer and the company. In the vast majority of organizations these two assessments measure two distinct elements. They are not the same.
Sad or not the scores that our customers have given us are their opinions of the service we provide. This is the customer experience we have now. This is the result of the service model we have designed and put into place.
The last step in defining the current customer experience is to look at what messages we are providing to our customers and prospects. To gain an understanding of what these messages are look at the company Mission Statement and Company Values...are you speaking of ‘World Class Customer Service’ or ‘Committed to quality’ or satisfaction or customers are a priority etc.
Keep in mind that it has been said that the accuracy of a Mission Statement is inversely proportional to its length. That is to say that the longer the mission statement the less likely it is to be true, or realised to be true. It has also been said that “If the mission statement doesn't fit on a T shirt, it's too long.”
Next meet with the Marketing people and review their current marketing campaigns and messages...do the company mission/value/vision statement and the marketing messages match the customer experience we are delivering?
It is important that when examining the marketing and brand messages that we see the emotional aspect to most messages. People make decisions on emotion – then rationalize with intellect. What this means is how the messages make them feel has a great deal to do with how a customer will feel about a brand, a product or a service interaction. In call and contact centers we often focus narrowly on what can and can’t be said. Maya Angelou said “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.”
This can be a two edged sword. If our advertising and marketing make them feel warm and fuzzy about our brand and products. This is good and will be remembered. Many centers employ scripts or provide little latitude to empower the agents to make decisions to satisfy customers. Customers are also likely to remember how angry, frustrated, stressed and unhappy interacting with the call center made them feel. In too many organizations the Marketing department and the call center are working in opposite directions even though the success of the company is their shared objective.

First 30 days for new Call Center Manager

As a call center consultant when I meet or speak to somone who has just been given the job of Call Center Manager, my response is always the same, "Congratulations or condolenses on your promotion, whichever you feel is more appropriate". Seriously, managing a call center can be one of the hardest jobs in the world.

So what can the new manager do in the first month to dramatically improve their chances for success? In this post we examine the critical steps in brief.

Many centers were not designed, but rather evolved over time without a masterplan or a strategy. Often these same centers have not applied rigor to the process of staff selection nor staff promotion. The result can be a center where the single biggest asset and indicator of operational success, the ability to manage, being absent. This can make the job of the manager very difficult indeed.

So job one is to assess your supervisory and leadership staff compare their skills and capabilities and contrast these with the job functions and activities. Once you have completed the assessment and know which or your line staff can complete their duties, you can look at the actual operation of the center.

Once you have completed the above you can then begin to examine the operations. This is done by examining the 'thousand moving parts' of any call or contact center and 'bucketing' these elements under:
People.- Recruiting, hiring, career path, quality, rewards & Recognition
Process- Map all processes in the center as well as those that begin or end elsewhere
Technology- Assess the capabilities of the technology to optimize processes- are there better technology fits
Methodology- what you measure, KPI's etc as well as what you do with them.

With your results in hand ask yourself-Are our proceses causing us to fail and Is the call center aligned to support our corporate objectives. The answers to these questions will help you to focus your attention over the next weeks and months.

If you complete the above exercises you will be well equipped to manage you center moving forward.

Taylor Reach

Updated Taylor Reach Credentials deck

From Great to Gone- Adobe technical support

First let me say I love Adobe, not just the products but the company is one I admired for many years. Their products were great and the support if you had a dumb user question, which I can be prone to, was fast, helpful and professional.

Over recent weeks my opinion has been sliding. Now while I like the product I don't do a great deal with it other than create pdf documents from Word files, so I have been quite content with the capabilities of Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.0 and have no real reason to upgrade. A couple of months ago however i started to get a message telling me that my computers configuration had changed and that I need to reactivate. This process was done on the web, so other than a "that's interesting" thought I ignored it and carried on. Then I had a new window pop up and tell me that I had exceeded the allowable re activations and I had to phone in to activate. So I called, waited on hold the requisite 8 minutes and got this done. The third time I had to call I asked why, I had purchased the product why did it keep shutting down. What I really wanted to know was if this was a thinly veiled tactic to annoy customers until they upgraded to a new version. I was informed that this was a bug and that there was no way to fix this. OK fine, but I still hadn't discarded the "this is a way to annoy me till I upgrade" thinking.

Two days later and I am back needing to phone to activate and here is where the fun begins. Again the requisite 8 minutes on hold before an answer. Once connected to an agent the audio quality was my first clue, it was poor, lots of 'clicking' sounds. I walked through the same diagnostic process, expecting the same answer I usually received. But this time the same symptoms resulted in a different answer. I was told I needed to download a patch that would correct this problem. As I had now been on the phone for close to thirty minutes I asked if it could be emailed to me as I had a conference call I needed to attend. I was told the agent couldn't send me an email. Aha, the penny dropped inability to send an email is often code for an offshore call center. That fit with the agents accent and when I asked it was confirmed as a call center in the Philippines. I quickly noted the download site and ended the call so I could attend the conference call.

After I completed the conference call I went to the download site (tinyurl) and downloaded the patch. I followed the instructions and with the compulsory reboot fired up the application. In thirty seconds I was told I need to reactivate. Great the patch didn't work. Back on the call to the call center, eight more minutes and another agent tells me I was directed to the wrong file. Again and with increasing frustration I asked if they could email me the patch and after sitting on hold for 3 minutes while the agent checked with her Supervisor and miracle of miracles now they could send me an email.

I received the email in minutes and rather than the application it contained a link to another file. Once again I followed the link and directions. As I write this, the problem still exists and I need to call the call center again. But I have been thinking about why I have had these problems. What could the company and call center have done differently to assist me? I help companies streamline and improve contact center efficiency and effectiveness everyday so I have good familiarity here. First Agent training. The fact that I could make many calls over many months and keep getting the same wrong answer tells me that agents are not well trained and probably not tested for comprehension. Second Empower the agent. The agents are "not allowed" to send emails. This is not uncommon in outsourced offshore center and can be rationalized as saving agent time, but in practice that is often not the case. The real reason for this restriction is that the company doesn't trust the outsourcer enough to allow email access. Great they don't trust their own partner, but I am supposed to trust them! Third Quality control. The download site had few instructions and no confirmation after install that the problem was corrected. QA should have identified the inaccurate file reference and the vague instructions. QA should also have identified audio quality issues that were evident on two of my calls. Fourth Demand management. It is clear to me the the targeted ASA ( Average Speed of Answer) is 8 minutes, as each of my calls were answered in approximately this time-frame. When 8 minutes? Is the the most cost effective ASA, the balance between the degree to which it will tick off a customer, before they hang up and buy a competitive product? Fifth, product upgrade. This still could be a tactic to get customers to upgrade. I can envision the planning meeting dialogue..."Yes we will erode the usability in older product versions until the customer upgrades". While I don't seriously believe this is the case, the accessibility, quality and the sheer amount of time spent dealing with this makes me wonder. Sixth Metrics. I don't know what they are measuring in this center, but I suspect that First Call Resolution (FCR) isn't one of the key metrics.

Of course poor service can actually cost more than good service. A quick answer and an email including the patch, (instead of the link), could have solved my problem in less than 2 minutes. Over my last two calls I spent more than 50 minutes on the phone and I still don't have a solution. What has that 50 minutes cost the company versus the 2 minute process I suggested?

Adobe has great products and they used to have great support. It's a good thing that the product is high quality, because the support or lack thereof will not win them any fans. As is evidenced by my experience my opinion of Adobe has changed significantly based on these calls. My opinion today is much worse than before I called. This opinion erosion is linked to customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and intention to repurchase.

Poor service can provide a false economy in appearing to reduce support costs, but if it costs you customers this can be a dangerous double edged sword. A company really needs to understand this relationship before they make significant change to their support service.

Is Customer Service the deciding factor as to which companies succeed or fail in this economic downturn?

Just received my copy of the Call Center Openings & Expansions Report from King White at Site Selection Group and for the first time I can remember there are no new builds or expansions in Canada. Nor are there any in India either for that matter.



The numbers show a dramatic slowdown in the job creation with 2,930 net new jobs created- down almost 70% from a year ago, of those 2,560 are located outside of North America. The majority of the increases occur ed in the outsource BPO sector with new centers in the Philippines and expansions at home.



2,143 jobs were displaced in 16 contact centers in US and Canada in January.



The fact that the market is tightening up isn't a surprise to anyone. We are bombarded by horror stories in the media every time we listen to the radio, watch or read the news. What is surprising to me at least is how resilient the contact center industry is proving to be.



In January 598,000 workers in the US and 129,000 workers in Canada lost their jobs. That adds up to a staggering 727,000 people looking for work. Yet in a sector much maligned the net of hiring and firings were about break-even. That's a lot better than the banks or automakers fared.



Now its possible that the axe just hasn't fallen yet as job cuts work through organization and the customer facing call and contact center positions are just coming into the cross-hairs.



Or maybe organizations are recognizing that in a downturn where cash is king, getting a customer to part with their cash is becoming increasingly difficult. Good service, as infrequent as it often is may just be the key to prying open the purses and wallets of customers. Service can be a key differentiator between organizations.



In tough times we all choose between alternatives, buy this, pass on that, maybe later or not at all. In days of plenty we would have bought it all. So how will customers...you and I make decisions? I postulate that increasingly the service we receive will be viewed as a part of the purchase or transaction. When customers view the customer service experience inherent with making that purchase as a part of the buying experience and capable of increasing purchase satisfaction, then savvy companies and organizations will embrace true customer advocacy, and all of our customer service experiences will become significantly more effective, more efficient and above all more enjoyable.



Of course this may just be me looking for a silver lining...but it is a happy thought.

AllTop- a Great Resource

I was speaking with Deborah from makeorbreakmoments.com and we discussed using LinkedIn and specifically a note I send to all new connections and she mentioned the high ranking this blog has on Alltops.com for Customer Service and I was blown away. I had previously kicked the habit of checking my own rankings long ago when I realised there were a million plus more interesting or relevant sites.

I checked out Alltop.com and there this blog was...above the fold!. What I also discovered was that there are a lot of really excellent customer service blogs out there. If you haven't visited Alltop, do yourself a favor and check out their 'magazine rack' of blogs, it is truly incredible.

I also recommend Deborah's LinkedIn article at Makeorbreakmoments.com

IQPC Call Center Summit- Review

Call Center Summit in Orlando just wrapped up and it was a bit of a disappointment. Attendance was about 150poeple (down by about 20% I am told from last year) with 15 or so exhibitors (also down from last year).

The show was O.K. a lot of recycled content and too little original material, but that is normal for most shows. A couple of very good sessions on on 'Maintaining Control in a Virtual Contact Center Environment', by Prem Uppaluru of Transera. The completeness of the Transera solution for integrated management of numerous disparate outsource centers is quite impressive. If you employ multiple outsource agencies with multiple locations you really should look into this solution to improve management and reduce costs.

The session by Steve Sullivan of CIT on 'Optimizing Contact Center Resources During Tough Times' was really mislabeled as it focused almost entirely on outbound IVR as a cost effective tool to improve communications and preempt inbound calls. While Steve's focus was from the collections industry the information has application to every contact center operator.

As with most shows of this kind there were too many commercials thinly veiled as presentations, too many "look at me I'm smart" case studies and the show management itself had some challenges with technology, a guide that didn't identify session rooms, incorrect titles and associated speakers and a keynote that turned into a webinar.

Personally, I don't think the show was worth the cost $2500 to attend, but as they say "you only need one idea you can use to pay for the conference"

The Shoemakers children...

I had reason to call the Disney resort reservation line yesterday to extend my stay next week at the IQPC Call Center Summit. If it wasn't so sad then the following would have been quite comical...
I called to add one day to my stay to accommodate additional meetings that I had scheduled. The call took more than 3 minutes before it was answered and then the security questions took 3 more minutes. The volume at the start of the call was about a million decibels and by the end I couldn't hear the agent. After more than 8 minutes of talking at cross purposes, the agent confessed he could help me and that I need to call another number. No he "wasn't allowed to transfer the call", but he did wish me a nice day and asked if he had resolved my reason for calling. I started to explain that, no he and I had concluded that he couldn't help me, but I came to my senses before that happened. I was the n connected to a post call survey which was heavy on touchy-feely agent engagement questions, but ignored topics like resolution, timeliness of response and the quality of the connection.

The entire experience was poor, long wait time, no resolution, no early qualification to determine if they could help and ridiculously long security process (none of which was repeated when I spoke to the correct person). The agent wasn't eager, helpful or touchy-feely.

Now I know better than many the challenges of working in and/or operating a contact center and the dangers of judging a center based upon a single snapshot or interaction, but let me tell you my opinion of Disney declined immensely due to this interaction. The fact that I was calling regarding a call center event does add an element of perverse humor.

Dell to charge for US based support calls

So Dell believes they have found a solution to the level of dissatisfaction that customers feel when dealing with their offshore contact centers. For just $13/month or $99 a year you can speak with US based support agents with a wait time of two minutes or less. Those customers who do not enrol in the 'Your Tech Team' service will continue to handled by offshore centers. See original article here .

So is this really a solution? Will customers enroll in this new service?

Well it may represent a solution for Dell as they struggle to balance the cost savings associated with offshore centers (estimated at 20-30%) with the ire these very centers raise with their customers.

To answer the second question, yes, I believe that customers will take advantage of the service, in part to gain what they perceive to be better service, but also for patriotic reasons. Patriotism as a rationale may surprise some of you, but certainly we have heard the rhetoric about bringing back American jobs and the evils of outsourcing from politicians and in the business and mainstream media. But this sentiment resonates well with many Americans and this has been recognised by some service companies. Jitterbug a company that provides cellular phone service to older Americans states in the television ads that they have "US based customer service". and shows a headset draped in a US flag. Jitterbug has included or 'buried' the increased cost of domestic contact center services in their pricing.

Contact Centers of America (CCA) is an outsource service provider with a mission to to 'bring back Customer Service jobs to America'. Their advertising and marketing material is clearly designed to invoke a patriotic response. Now CCA does have a strategy to offset in part the higher cost by co located their centers on/near Universities and Colleges and partnering with these learning institutions to provide job training, Co-Op and student employment at lower and/or subsidized rates.

So CCA reduces the base cost of US based service through partnerships, Jitterbug includes it in the price and Dell offers pay for service.

None of this is really new, the same thing has occurred in the UK starting five years ago. With a backdrop of weekly and almost daily horror stories in dealing with offshore centers. Banks and insurance companies specifically began touting UK based call centers in their ads on television and in print. In fact a UK based call center was positioned a reason enough to move your bank account, since the actual products all banks sell is virtually the same.

Dells shift may just be the thin edge of the wedge as companies look for ways to improve customer loyalty and retention. Clearly forcing customer to deal with a contact center where the customer has difficulty understanding the agent can be frustrating. Frustrated customer do not align well with improved loyalty or repurchase

Facts, Figures and Trends

A few more or less random observations on the call and contact center space that has come across my desk in the past few days;
-According to Accenture 68% of respondents to a recent survey reported that they had moved their business to new companies as a result of poor service received at the incumbent firm. This is up from 59% last year. This is even a higher percentage than moved due to price (68% to 53%), in the US in particular this trend was even more pronounced with 73% switching providers due to poor service, compared with 47% who switched based on price!
There is a cost to these defections with half of the respondents reporting moving $4,000 worth of business to new providers.
-33% of consumers said their service expectations were higher this year than they were 12 months earlier, 50% said their expectations were higher than they were 5 years.
-20% said they would leave a company immediately over poor service versus 13% in last years survey.
- Embarq the telecommunications company spun off from Sprint/Nextel has announced that they have replaced their IVR with live agents, due to customer dissatisfaction with automated service. In addition these call are answered domestically.

It looks like it is finally beginning to dawn on companies that superior service can be not only a differentiator, but also one of, if not the primary driver of customer loyalty.

Colin

Piss off the Call Center Agent at Your Peril

The following article was published recently the UK Press and I found it to be very chilling.
Whenever any organization outsources work to a third party organization, in tranferring the business they also transfer a great deal of power. Power to mimprove or erode customer relationships and as this news story indicates power that can be used in a punitive manner. Let this story be a wake up call for all of those firms that outsource to ensure that they have appropriate controls and audit trails on changes made to their customer records.

Colin



Indian call centre worker 'froze customer's account and changed his identity' as revenge for having service criticized
By Luke Salkeld
Telephoning a bank's call centre can be a frustrating experience. And after he was finally put through to a 'rude' and 'arrogant' operator, George Bates felt justified in making a complaint. Taking part in a follow-up survey to monitor customer satisfaction, the 23-year-old made clear his opinion of the call centre employee - who took revenge by putting all of Mr. Bates' finances on hold. When he contacted the bank later that day, the self-employed carpenter was unable to access his account for 'security reasons'. He then visited his local branch and was horrified to discover his identity had been swapped to that of a Ugandan divorcee ten years his senior. Mr. Bates also discovered his overdraft facility had been withdrawn and several direct debits had been cancelled - landing him with £60 in charges. He said: 'This arrogant phone operator has obviously seen that I've given him bad feedback and decided to change all my details in revenge. 'I rang up and I couldn't understand a word of what he was saying. He was rude, arrogant, and very pushy. 'He was really unhelpful but he had the cheek to pester me to give him a good rating after the call.' He continued: 'When I heard my details had been changed to Ugandan I was errified that my account had been emptied by somebody else and I'd never have my money ack. 'His spiteful actions have caused me a massive inconvenience and I've changed banks now because I'm scared he could still access my account.' Mr. Bates' rang Abbey's telephone banking service last month to extend his overdraft by £200 to cover direct debits which were due to come out of his account. The operator, who spoke with an Asian accent, extended it from £1,500 to £1,700, but refused to extend it a second time in one day. Mr. Bates claims the worker then pestered him to give maximum scores of seven in an eight-question automated survey which customers take following a call. The frustrated bachelor answered the questions with ones and twos, the lowest scores, because the phone operator had been so unhelpful. But when he rang up the following day to try and extend his overdraft again, he failed to access his account using his correct name, date of birth and account number. He was advised to visit his local branch but was unable to get there during the working week - and then had his cash card swallowed by a hole-in-the-wall dispenser.
The next week he visited the Abbey branch in Broadmead, Bristol, where a manager informed him he was listed on his account as a 33-year-old Ugandan divorcee born in July 1975. The bank manager corrected his details but over the next few days George discovered his overdraft and six direct debits totaling £750 had been cancelled - incurring 4 different charges totaling £60. Mr. Bates, who is single and lives in Bristol, then went back to his bank to demand his overdraft and direct debits were reinstated. All the changes have now been rectified, and Mr. Bates offered £200 in compensation. But he is still not a satisfied customer. He said: 'I am not happy with the service and the fact that the call centre Abbey uses is in India. They offered me £200 compensation but that's not a good apology to me. 'I've been forced to take lots of time off work which has costs me several day's wages and the stress of it all is really frustrating. 'Even though they did eventually sort everything out I'm still unhappy and I'll be switching back to a bank with call centres in Britain.' Abbey, who have five call centres in Britain and two in India - one in Bangalore and one in Pune, say they have 'fully investigated' the incident but refused to confirm whether any disciplinary action has been taken against the worker involved. A spokesperson said: 'An error occurred on Mr. Bates' overdraft. We have since returned his account to the correct position and refunded any charges relating to this error.
'In relation to Mr. Bates' other claims, we can confirm that we have fully investigated these complaints but we do not comment on individual employees.' In 2004, the bank came under fire after announcing plans to close three UK offices, which affected 1,300 jobs and
saw the majority of call centre work transferred to India. The following year following a barrage of complaints from customers, the former building society pledged to bring the jobs back to
Britain.
Originally published on MailOnline

Recessions and Contact Centers

Impact of a recession on contact centers

The US economy is generally thought to be in a recession today the Canadian economy is slowing and many fear is heading towards a recession as well. In the face of declining consumer confidence and spending many companies and organizations are looking to reduce expenses and improve efficiencies to help them weather the upcoming economic storm. What are the prospects for those of us employed in the contact center industry given the uncertain economic times? In this article we will examine the prospects for call and contact centers in the coming uncertain economic and potentially recessionary times.

Call and contact center were born from efficiency initiative: by gathering all of the staff that dealt with customers in one place a company was able to provide centralized management of staff, gained the ability to employ premise based technology such as Automatic Call Distributors (ACD’s) and provide more consistent responses to customer and prospect inquiries. All of these elements drove improved staff effectiveness and operational efficiency.

As companies realized the value of call centers as a lower cost method of providing customer service and support many of the traditional channels for customer service were scaled back or eliminated…when was the last time you went to your cable company’s office to speak to someone about your bill? The consolidation of service delivery channels spurred even more growth in call and contact centers.

In the past ten years an increased focus on efficiency has led to organizations working diligently to try to further reduce expenses in their contact centers and/or generate revenues to help offset or defray these expenses. The drive for ever increasing efficiency has led to a dramatic increase in outsourcing and offshoring of customer service and technical support activities, an increase in technologies to support self service and service automation within contact centers.

What is the prognosis today for contact centers in recessionary times? They say that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it and in this case the past presents strong themes which will govern the call/contact centers in the near term. The recurring themes have been: efficiency, technology and outsourcing, all three of these themes will continue to govern the landscape as we move forward into an economic slowdown or recession.

All three of the themes (efficiency, technology and outsourcing) will continue to combine and drive changes in contact centers. Companies faced with uncertain economic prospects will tighten their belts and look for ways to reduce costs. This cost reduction exercise will lead to increased examination of outsourcing as a potential solution. Outsourcing can, when it is well researched and executed can reduce operational costs and at the same time maintain or even improve service quality. Offshoring the call or contact center activities can further reduce the costs, but carry a significantly increased risk of service and quality erosion. Outsourcing can reduce costs through three primary organizational traits: labour arbitrage (they operate in lower cost environments and pay less than in-house centers), technology (they employ state of the art technologies that in-house centers may find difficult to fund) and process management (outsource agencies only provide outsource services and as such they have developed very robust operational model and highly efficient processes that are often absent form in-house centers).

The primary reason for an organization electing not to outsource their call or contact center activities is political, they have determined that they must serve their customers directly. Such organizations will look to technology as a driver for increased efficiency. Where once technology and the desire for efficiency motivated companies to create call centers to centralize and simplify service management, today technology and the desire for increased efficiency now leads companies to promote tele-working and home based agents. Home agents can access all of the tools that are generally available in a contact center and are delivered via the internet, often through a secured VPN. The voice can be delivered through the internet and/or through assuming the agents home phone line. Home or virtual agents reduce or eliminate the need for ‘bricks and mortar’ contact center saving the company on real estate and operating costs and further since the most common model is to employ home agents as ‘independent contractors’ the company eliminates their benefit and burden costs associated with employees, finally home agents have reduced expenses versus agents who work in a contact center: no transportation costs, reduced meal and wardrobe expenses and this often leads to lower labour related costs. Technology also can play a role in improving efficiency and reducing costs through the increased use of self-service options and non telephone contact channels. We are all familiar with the dreaded Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, that prompts us to enter one for this and two for that yet never somehow actually seems to have the information we seek nor any easy or logical way of getting to a live agent. IVR’s are ubiquitous today and are increasingly being replaced by voice enabled systems and systems such as Bells’ Emily that mimic a live agent interaction. More and more companies will direct inquiries to the web and reduce or eliminate access to live agents. Alternate communication technologies will also see increased use in poor economic times as they offer lower costs while still providing a level of service. These technologies include email integrated into the contact center, web chat and even SMS messaging.

Companies and centers’ under economic pressure may intentionally degrade the quality of service they provide: increasing the average speed of answer, the abandon rate or the resolution rate and laying off staff. These tactics can reduce costs, but it is a dangerous strategy to risk customers’ ire in this way.

Some companies will degrade service and, many companies will adopt or pursue Outsourcing, home agents, and technology enhancements and a few organizations may seize upon service as a key differentiating factor separating their contact center from those of their competitors. We have seen this happen already in the UK where a major bank in their television ads focuses on the fact that their contact centers are in the UK and not offshore. In the ‘Book of Five Rings’ it states “in chaos there is opportunity” and economic slowdowns and recessions can create chaos in contact center and service focused organizations. With most of the companies scaling back, degrading service, increasing automation there is likely a great opportunity for other firms to increase and improve service quality, and promote this as a key element of their value proposition. These same companies can employ outbound tele-sales and direct marketing to target competitors’ customers and increase share while the competitors have ‘hunkered down’ to ride out the storm.

Regardless of the tact your company elects to pursue in recessionary times, your contact will likely change and continue to evolve and each company must determine their own equation to calculate the impact on their company and brand of reduced service, increased automation on their customers’ loyalty. Regardless of the strategy employed we will be experiencing the Chinese blessing or curse of “living in interesting times”.


Contact Colin Taylor @ ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com

Top 50- a great approach to share a message

It has certainly been a long time coming. When I read Claudia Hathaways' note on eCCF (http://www.callcentres.co.uk) regarding the UK Top 50, I thought this is a great idea and hopefully one that will cross the Atlantic to North America.

I think this is a great idea and approach that we should all get behind.


Introducing
The Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service
The Top 50 Call Centres For Customer Service is a groundbreaking initiative, poised to become the single biggest PR exercise in the history of the call centre and customer service industries, helping to redress the negative perception of call centres in a media-friendly way.
Modelled on The Sunday Times — 100 Best Companies to Work For programme, the results of The Top 50 will be published in its very own magazine supplement in The Sunday Times. These results will be judged by customers, making them incredibly powerful for reporting.
This exciting new initiative combines a robust benchmarking tool, rankings, a detailed research report to be published in the mainstream press, and a gala dinner and awards night.
“The Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service is the chance to highlight customer service best practice on a national level and will set the annual industry standard for organisations that are serious about the quality of service they deliver.”Steve Hurst, Editor of Customer Strategy
“The Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service provides a wonderful platform for call centres to shout about their achievements based on actual customer experiences, making it an incredibly compelling positive story for reporting in the mainstream press.”Claudia Hathway, Editor of CCF and CCF Online

New Issue Customer Reach

The October issue of Customer Reach is now available.

http://www.thetaylorreachgroup.com/data/newsletters/200710_Newsletter.pdf

In this months issue we examine 'Ten dunb things that Bright Contact Center Executives Do', this is a cautionary tale, that reminds us of just how easy it is to lose focus. We also take a look at 'Contact Center Site Selection' with labor markets tightening up and many markets at 7% or more of the total workforce being employed in contact centers, it behooves us to make the best decision when we are looking for potential locations. This article will help you to identify what the important aspects and elements are for your organization. The Survey of the Month looks at the increase of electronic communication within contact centers and we see that many centers and budgeting on increases in emails and web chats. And of course we have news and views from local to international sources, case studies and more.
This issue of Customer Reach is being read by 5,000 senior call and contact center executives around the globe and we encourage you to share the wealth. Please pass on you copy to your friends and colleagues or better yet suggest they subcribe to recive their own copy.
As always we welcome your feedback, suggestions and comments. Let us know what you are thinking about, how we could improve the publication and what you challenges, successes and opportunities are. Drop us a note to feedback@thetaylorreachgroup.com .
We hope you enjoy this issue.

Site Selection for your Contact Center

Site Selection for your Contact Center

The boss has just asked you to head up the search for a new location for your contact center. You are flattered by the confidence that the boss has in you, you are confident that you can accomplish this task, just as soon as you figure out what to do. The business of site selection has changed considerably in the past decade.

Ten or fifteen years ago we worried about moving our call center off the subway line and today we worry about relocated the center internationally. In both scenarios the key to finding the best or ideal location was tied to finding or keeping staff. In a intra-city move you are concerned with where you can locate and retain most of your staff. In a search to find a location outside of the urban location you previously occupied the focus become where can we locate a center and have access to potential staff.

Of course the connection between labour and location is not and cannot be the only consideration, or if salary cost was king we all would have off-shored our call centers long ago. No, labour, labour availability are critical factors but not the only ones. Other factors that require attention. At Watts we developed a center location matrix that considered 134 factors on a weighted score basis that created a range of more than 500 basis points from the worst possible to the best possible scores. It is important that you develop your own matrix for evaluating and assessing potential locations. Some of the factors that you should consider would include not only staff or workforce issues ( what is the population, what is the employment/unemployment levels, workforce participation, college, university or military base presence all speak to potentially available labour which could be potential recruiting targets for the call center. Assessing the number, type, function and staffing levels of existing call & contact center can provide guidance related to the level of saturation that call/contact center represent in the local workforce. It is important that we locate in a market where we can identify potential sources of employees and identify that there are enough potential workers to support the center, but we also nee to look at how many of them are presently employed in call or contact centers. In my opinion the lower the saturation the better, though you can no longer find locations without contact centers you can find locations that have low saturation levels. We recommend to our clients that markets with more than 6% of their workforce presently supporting call/contact centers will represent on-going recruiting and retention issues, while under 3% can tend to be stable and much easier to operate within. Given that labor is the single greatest expenses in a call center and the cost to recruit a single agent exceed $3,000 finding a stable and easily maintained environment is highly desirable. Other factors for general site consideration would include:.


Population local
Population 45 minute draw area
Workforce Local
Workforce 45 minute draw area
Unemployment %
Unemployed
Under-Employment %
Under-Employed
Participation Level
College/University
Military Base
Other Call Centers
# Type of Centers
Total Call Center Seats
Call Center Saturation
Call Center Saturation
Proximity to airport
Available Real Estate
Estimated Operating Rent
Estimated Leasehold Improvements
Build to Suit' Options


Population Growth %
Average Income
Average house price
Level of Education (% of Pop)
Quality of Life
Public Transit
Infrastructure- Public
Infrastructure- Electricity
Infrastructure- Telecom
Severe Weather Occurances

Available Incentives
Incentives
Right to Work State
History of Union activity
Starting Call Center Wage
Median Wage Customer Service


Some of these suggested criteria are straight forward and others require some explanation. Infrastructure is critical to call center operations. We expect the call center to operate regardless of external factors. Of course we can provision for business continuity through back up power, redundant telephony connectivity etc, but the single largest factor influencing operational survivability will be the location and its pre-disposition to: floods, power outages, hurricanes, snow etc. Of course we must remember that some locations such as the Canadian Atlantic region may get a great deal snow each season they are used to this and have built buildings and infrastructure in expectation of these conditions. Businesses in the State of Virginia lose more work-days to snow than does Prince Edward Island.

Real estate in any considered location is alos critical. If you have found a great market with no available real estate that is suitable, then you options become delaying the project in hopes that something suitable becomes available (unlikely in a small market) or to delay the project and build to suit. This is often a longer and more capital intense option, though can proven to be have the lowest total cost of ownership/operation over a 5-10 year operating window.

The prevalent wages in the target market, associated level of education at that wage level, prevalence of union activity are all valid considerations and ones you must assess and incorporate in building a budget.

If you are considering a US location you will find some additional considerations: Right to work states, which ironically really reflects that the opposite of the right to strike. Right to work states tend to be significantly more favourable to business than non-right to work to work states. The second key factor can be one party versus two party states. This refers to the number of parties that need to be informed that a call is being monitored or recorded. Of course a two party consent state will require that the customers consent be secured whereas in a one party state this is not required.

Incentives opposite job creation still exist though the salad days of governments handing out millions without any real basis for accountability or reconciliation. Today the available incentives are closely tied (where present) to long term employment and are generally available as tax credits in the US and training grants within Canada. In both countries this is positioned as ‘recoverable’ meaning that the government can recover these dollars should the company fail to deliver the agreed employment levels.

Finding a new call or contact center (or any back office function can be very challenging) and that is why a number of firma and organizations have come into existence to serve this market. They generally fall into two camps: real estate driven companies, often spun off from commercial real estate firms that see call and contact center as desirable tenants, who seek new tenants for suitable vacant space. The second type are consulting firms who approach this from a form & function perspective. There are a number of excellent firms within each of these groups and your determination of which is better for you often comes down to the level of specialization and uniqueness your center possesses. The more specialized in terms of staff, space requirements and the smaller the size the less interesting it will be to a real estate based firm.

Before you do anything to find a new location, assess what has worked well and what has work less well in your current location and start to compile a wish list for your new location and the either start to contact potential jurisdictions you feel align well with your goals and objects or begin to interview and external firm that has the experience and capabilities to assist you in this endeavour. In my experience building, operating our own centers and assisting client to source more than 40 center locations I have employed all of the above approaches and no one is the best. Your choice will be , as mine have been based upon the specific goals, objectives, timelines and budgets of the project. So long as you do your homework you can succeed in creating a productive, efficient and cost-effective location for your new call center that will remain so for many years.

10 Dumb Things Smart Contact Center Executives Do

Ten dumb things smart Contact Center Executives Do

There are a lot of smart, very smart individuals managing and directing call and contact centers today. Yet, these bright, bright people still manage from time to time to do things that defy understanding. This is my top ten list of really dumb things that smart call and contact center executives do. If you have any dumb things to add to the list let me know by email at ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com .

1- Don’t invest in training or professional development.
We spent enough money to train them when they were hired, why would we want to keep them current on changes in the company our processes our customers or technology. They’ll figure it out. Besides we can always use the dollars allocated to training for other areas like executive retreats.

2- Don’t stay current on new technologies impacting on the call and contact center operations.
After all why would we want home agents, speech recognition, higher quality or better staff morale and management?

3-Don’t read trade press, blogs and newsletters.
We already know everything, and besides who has time to read when I an constantly in meetings.

4-Don’t include remote staff in your operational budget.
There aren’t very many of them out there…is there?

5-Don’t share new technologies and their capabilities with senior management.
They will just say no, so what is the point.

6-Don’t share ideas concepts and results with Marketing.
After all they never share with you.

7-Don’t consider the agents point of view when you examine new technologies.
Its just one extra open window on their desktop…they have done fine with the current 14 so what’s one more window?

8- Don’t give agents authority to make any decisions.
It is important that managers make all decisions…I know it is only a $.49 credit, but it’s the principal of the thing.

9- Don’t take a long term view of your incentive program.
Incentive programs are designed to generate short term results. I just don’t understand that while our incentive to reduce average handle time was so successful our call volume increased substantially.

10- Don’t share with HR the staff and skills/competencies work best in the center.
Turnover is a part of life in a contact center so we shouldn’t try to address it.

Each one of the above list reflects comments (or a paraphrased version) that I have heard from contact center executives. Each of the above points reflects a narrow and/or short term view of the center. Now as I said above these are clever people, so how can such ‘tunnel vision’ exist within a group of specialists? The can be many causes that can create situations of ‘tunnel vision’, these can include:

Lack of time: The old saw that “meetings are a nice alternative to work” rings true in many organizations and contact center are not exempt. Days filled with meetings, limits interaction with direct reports, free time to review news stories, white papers, technology articles etc. it also reduces time to speak with industry peers, to attend conferences or seminars. All of this leads the manager little option but to continue to rely on the status quo in operations as this is the only environment the manager is comfortable and knowledgeable about.

Conflicting objectives: Often contact centers are asked to deliver multiple objectives simultaneously: improve customer satisfaction and reduce costs, or increase first call resolution, but don’t spend anything on additional training. These examples of conflicted objectives are frequent occurrences in contact centers today. Mission Statements focus on “providing world class customer service”, but the contact center receives no budget to deliver this.

Unclear objectives: Centers are often charged with broad mandates to “deliver excellent customer care” but benchmarks and standards are not defined to allow the contact center to know how success will be measured.

Each of the above three examples leads the contact center management to revert to what they are most comfortable and those things that they can quantify without ambiguity. Further they tend to focus on the short term as there is no clear long term vision or plan. In short this is what they have done before and what they are doing now. This approach is not conducive to looking forward or acting proactively. To the contrary this approach ensures that the management focuses on the past. The end result is bright contact center executives then make dumb decisions.

What is the value of Customer Service?

What is the Value of Customer Service?
Can we quantify it?
Can we get senior management to understand it?
We all know what good customer service is when we experience it, but few organizations can translate this into profit or margin at the end of the day.
Why is the value of good customer service so elusive?

The studies are clear 92% of consumers base their opinions of an organization based upon their call/contact center experience (Purdue), 54% of consumers have a higher opinion of an organization before they contact center than after (transversal). So what is the value of customer service? Does it affect lifetime value? if so how? Does change loyalty, repurchase, RFM analysis? If so how? Can we stop speaking of customer service as we do the weather...everyone talks about it, but nobody does anything about it? Come on weigh in, lets get your point of view.