Closing the Revolving Door – Part1

Closing the Revolving Door – Part1
By: Colin Taylor

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

Addressing turnover and attrition is a never ending process. With labour costs representing approximately two-thirds of your center operating costs, it is a battle you need to wage and a battle you really want to win.
In this article we will look at what you can do, today, in your center to reduce attrition. There are many ideas, methods, tools and tactics that you can employ to reduce attrition that require time to implement, develop the business case, ROI calculations and secure funding and management approval.
But what can you do today, right now, at little or no cost that will actually improve retention in your center immediately? Specifically we will look at rewards and recognition, ways you can involve, engage and motivate your agents, today.
Proven techniques
A number of proven techniques that can improve staff retention and we will address these under the headings I have named:
• Understanding Rewards and Recognition
• It’s not just the Money
• Recognition is over rated
• Motivating without money
• Building Community
• Challenges equal Opportunities

Before we examine how to improve retention it is critical we have a good understanding of what our current situation is. Do you know what your turnover rate is? Do you know why people are leaving your center?
We have worked with many managers that have answered yes to these questions only to later ask to revise their answers. It is critical that you know or at least believe you know the answers to these questions as we begin drill down through the challenges of retention management.
All centers today employ rewards and recognition within their centers, some with robust unified programs and others moving through a series of one-off tactics. However many of the centers in both of these camps do not have a good grasp of human nature or what truly motivates people.
The recent recession has caused many call centers to scale back, they have thinned the ranks of management, fewer VP’s per square inch, and have reduced or frozen headcount and budgets. So doing more with less; really has become doing more with none.

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

Finally we must remember that tactics are short term. One off campaigns, contests and incentives will be quickly forgotten.
Wherever possible you want to develop Reward and Recognition programs and incentives that are strategic, that is to say support and align with the goals of the center and those of business. Strategic and structural programs endure and become a part of the fabric of the center.
Having said this, don’t discount the value of using money as an incentive...It is still the right size, shape and color, but it should not be the only tool in your rewards and recognition arsenal.
One fact that many centers have reported to me is that their staff has become more transient. Staff is not career focused…some just want a job and not a career. Some may be working in the center until they find a job...what does that say about their perception of the call center and the company?
Turnover is a fact of life and will always be a concern to call center operators. And like it or not our Supervisors are likely not as well selected or trained as we would like them to be. All of these factors were true in call centers 20 years ago, so has anything really changed?

Recognition is not enough
Time and time again you will hear experts and pundits espouse that recognition is all you require to have a happy and engaged workforce. Unfortunately that isn’t correct. Recognition is wonderful and makes those being recognized feel special and valued, but alone it is not enough to solve retention issues.
By themselves recognition programs have a number of shortcomings: Event and time based programs end, ‘First past the post’ generally results in the same cadre of agent winning all of the time- remember our Mastery agents...they should be winning all the time! If you can not win, you will quickly give up trying. In this situation the reward program that was implemented to motivate and incent agents is actually a disincentive.
The key to long term success and ease of management is to implement programs that are aligned with the objectives of the center. They support the attainment of the objectives and goals established for the center.
For example if one of the centers objectives in 2010 is to improve First Call Resolution by 5%, then an incentive or recognition program tied to FCR or reducing repeat callers or increasing the percentage of customers who identify “fully resolved” on the post call survey are all examples of aligned programs. Programs that recognize those who achieved a 10 second reduction in AHT is not aligned with the objective unless its’ scope is expanded to include a while improving FCR. In fact in the AHT example it is quite likely that this program would actually reduce FCR at least in the near term as agents rush callers off the phone and struggle to find faster ways of doing things.
Similarly programs that incent sales can be great, but if that is not a center objective it is not aligned.
Lots of achievements that can be seen as positive improvement in a call center, but not all of them will be aligned with the stated and published business objectives of the center; reduce AHT, reduce costs, increase sales, improve center profitability, reduce calls, reduce cost per contact, increase FCR, increase CSAT, improve ESAT etc. All of these can be identified as call center business goals. But none of these operates in a truly independent manner. We know that a call center is an interconnected web of processes, people, technology and methodologies and many of these elements are connected...some in obvious and others in far more subtle ways.

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

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

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

In a real outbound example, one company had an inside sales team that sold new business to a large prospect database. Now the database had been cobbled together from multiple sources and had a lot of holes in the information, missing addresses, postal codes etc. The manager determined, reasonably, that if they had better information in the database then they would have fewer orders with incorrect and/or inaccurate information which required rework.
So the Manager implemented an incentive program that paid the rep $.50/ updated record. This worked, in fact it worked so well that once the agents realized that they could make as much if not more incentive dollars by simply updating records versus selling the service, they stopped selling. Now I ask you what should be the primary role of an inside sales team?
We know that other companies and organizations struggle with the exact same issues as we do. How do these firms motivate their staff?

Existing Recognition/reward programs
Before we dive any deeper on what programs could be deployed, let’s look at some of the recognition and reward programs that other organizations are employing.
• Rotating Trophies for Top Performers each month.
• Decorating agents’ workstations whenever they meet their daily and/or monthly goals.
• Managers calls: where the center Supervisor and Managers take the reps calls for an hour while the Rep coaches the manager.- The Scooter Store
• Reps pick songs and select management staff who must perform them.- Freedom Communications
• Call swapping- If an agent gets 100% QA score on 3 calls, The manager takes 3 calls for the rep.- Galileo Processing
• Top performers each month have their Manager pick them up every day for a week and drive them to work
• Earn a chocolate for a perfect call or a call resolved in X minutes. Each resolution (or perfect call) gets a round of applause from the whole center.- Wipro BPO
• 80/20 Elite Team, the Pareto principal rewards the top 20% of agents. They get a separate lounge, flex shifts, first choice of time off and are groomed for management roles. This is run and reviewed each quarter. – Wipro BPO
• Placing a rose on the seat of an agent who has gone above and beyond.
• Campaign pins, like military ribbons or scout badges placed on the agents nameplate on their workstation.- Embarq
• Producing ‘Baseball’ cards of your star performers- Embarq,
• We rely on Dr. Bob Nelson book “1001 Ways to Reward Employees”, it has been invaluable.- The McNaughton Group,
• Earning points for every call with FCR over 90, points redeemed out of a catalogue
• Call center radio, top performers get to pick the songs that will play in the lunch and break rooms

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


Tactical versus strategic
How can we move beyond the individual recognition event?
The answer is to move beyond the tactical and develop an aligned culture and community that delivers superior service? This requires structure and design, both of the real world examples I cited earlier shared the design flaw that the managers didn’t think through the process. They also didn’t appreciate that agents are smart. If there is a way to ‘game’ or cheat a system, they will find it and exploit it.
The second part of this article will explore the creation of an enduring structure in the call center that will foster employee engagement and motivation and permit the deployment of aligned reward/recognition programs that meet the objectives of the center and the business.

Self Service – Of Cents & Sensibility Part 1

Self Service – Of Cents & Sensibility Part 1

By: Colin Taylor
A 1% improvement in customer satisfaction in utilities is worth 4.6% in market value growth so says Claes Fornell of the University of Michigan, producers of the American Customer Satisfaction Index. So if good service pays such high dividends: why is there so much poor service around?

Most customers encounter loyalty-eroding problems and situations when they engage with customer service, according to the Harvard Business Review;
56% report having to re-explain an issue
57% report having to switch from the web to the phone
59% report expending moderate-to-high effort to resolve an issue
59% report being transferred
62% report having to repeatedly contact the company to resolve an issue
After 2-3 self service attempt failures customers will not try it again

Service failures not only drive existing customers to defect—they also can repel prospective customers. Research shows:
25% of customers are likely to say something positive about their customer service experience
65% are likely to speak negatively
23% of customers who had a positive service interaction told 10 or more people about it
48% of customers who had negative experiences told 10 or more others

If this is the experience with live agents who have been hired and specifically trained to assist customers, why would any organization want to offer self service? So why do organizations want to employ self service? Traditional service with live agents or personnel is labour intensive. It costs a lot to deploy staff in a call center, in retail or even in a full service gas station. If we ever remembered the nostalgic service from multiple attendants we could find ourselves in a state of shock (as was the case in Back to the Future) or fear, as was the case in a recent CarMax television ad.
View the ad here. CarMax TV Ad

Costs Savings, Productivity & Technology
Having said that, fear is not a primary driver of self service. Self service is pursued for other reasons. It is cheaper to have customers serve themselves than to pay someone else to do this. The multiple attendants we saw in the CarMax video have been replaced by an intercom button to press if we have a problem pumping our own gas.

If we offer web based FAQ’s and customers can find what they want by themselves, it eliminates a call and or a live retail transaction, along with the associated labor costs. In this situation agents can and should then deal with more important, complex or urgent issues improving overall productivity.

Of course we can all be guilty of wanting the latest, greatest technology, technology envy perhaps. I recently upgraded my BlackBerry. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with my old Blackberry, but the new one did have a faster internet connection and an upgraded keyboard. It was the also quite cool in my estimation. So I upgraded. In truth the main reason I did so was that it was cool. When asked why, I pointed to the internet speed and keyboard. In doing so I proved that old chestnut that people act upon emotion and rationalize with intellect. So if there is technology out there and we have read how it helped a similar organization, then we may want to try it in our shop.

So Self service can be less expensive, more productive and leverage cutting edge technologies. Cheaper, faster and sexier…what can go wrong?

Self Service almost 100 years Old
Before we go any further let’s take a look back --- Self service as a concept is almost 95 years old.
In 1917, the US Patent Office awarded Clarence Saunders a patent for a "self-serving store." Saunders invited his customers to collect the goods they wanted to buy from the store and present them to a cashier, rather than having the store employee consult a list presented by the customer, and collect the goods. Saunders licensed the business method to independent grocery stores, these operated under the memorable name "Piggly Wiggly."

In 1961, Bell System developed a new tone dialling methodology (touch tone or DTMF- Dual Tone Multiple Frequency). In doing so Bell created the technological basis for the IVR or Interactive Voice Response system. It would take until the mid 80’s for the IVR to become commercially viable for call center applications. One of the first commercial uses in Canada was the Moosehead joke line that was created to support the launch of Moosehead beer in Ontario.

Invented by IBM, the first ATM was introduced in December 1972 at Lloyds Bank in the UK. Again it wouldn’t become a daily event for a decade.

1979: Michael Aldrich invented online shopping by allowing people to purchase product from his computer store, via his Usenet site. This was many years before the worldwide web became a reality.

The term "Web 2.0" was coined in January 1999 by Darcy DiNucci- denoting inter-operability. This is user centricity, and information sharing that gave birth to web self service. It took another 6 or 7 seven years to reach the masses.

More Volume and Less Success

So with self service existing for years and years what percentage of self service interactions are successful today? According TSIA only 39% of self service transactions were successful in 2010. But this is only half the story. The level of successful transactions has declined from 48% in 2003!

So we have a dichotomy here… people are more eager to deal with virtual agents according to Harvard Business Review, we are certainly more accustomed to interacting with technology than we were in 2003. Yet the success of self serve technology is declining. So why is this happening?

In part this is caused by attempts to implement more complex self service interaction opportunities and a frequent failure to properly plan and understand what the customer is willing and able to do.

In the past few decades we have seen a huge increase in self service transaction volumes even though fewer being deemed successful than we had in 2003, there are many, many more transactions today.

Airport Kiosk Check in introduced in 1995 and now represents 95% of all passenger check ins at Continental Airlines. It costs the airline less than 5% of the cost of a live ticket agent to process a passenger at a kiosk . Forresters reports the costs at $3.02 per live agent processing and $0.14 to $0.32 per kiosk processed check in.

Mobile airline check in, introduced in 2009 and ticket purchase are the new self service options on the horizon, with most airlines supporting this self service channel. 25% of airlines offer online check in today, rising to 81% within 3 years .

There are a number of Utilities employing self serve kiosks to deliver services to unbanked (those without bank accounts) and under banked (those that do not have access to online banking and therefore cannot employ other self service channels) customers. Some of these utilities include: Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Gas, San Antonio Water Systems, Arizona Power Service and Memphis Light, Gas, and Water.

The first self service gas station in North America was in Winnipeg MB in 1949 . Pay at Pump or prepay required by Law in BC. NJ and Oregon prohibit customers operating gas pumps…thereby making full service mandatory. Today there are 135,000 gas stations in North America, only 9% of these in Canada and more than 80% are self service.

Self service in the grocery industry was introduced almost a century ago. Yet true self service was much slower to evolve. Only 16% of supermarket transactions were completed via self-checkout in 2010 (down from 22% a year ago). Supermarket self-checkout being phased out by a number of US companies such as Albertsons and Big Y.

So why are adoption and utilization rates are declining for grocery self check out? As with most failures in self service, the problem isn’t the self service itself. In the case of grocery self service, the problem isn’t really self check out. It is coupons and bags. The systems are not well configured to support various sizes and shapes of coupons. Plus the location and method for placing the bags causes frequent problems. It is not the technology. It’s the process! We need to focus on the “Why” before the ‘How’

Customers accessing Web based content increased from 2.5 million in 2008 to more than 10 million in 2010. Interaction Volumes are growing annually by 20% or more according to TSIA. More than 60% of your customers who phone have tried to find the information on your website FIRST. More than a third will be on your website when they call!

According to Forrester Research, the cost of the average Web self-service session is just $1 USD, compared to $10 USD for an e-mail response and $33 USD for a telephone call. Many utilities have expanded their Web-based menus to customers and include more services such as bill payment, bill presentment, eBill signup, view payment history, view energy usage and bank drafting signup. These six services are available on Web sites at least 70 percent of utility organizations across North America.
For some utilities (PPL Electric- a Pennsylvania utility with 1.4 million customers) process more Web and IVR Self Service transactions than they do live calls – 630,000 Web self service, 400,000 IVR self service and 975,000 live calls over the same 5 month period of 2010.

Starbucks now has 3 million customers using mobile prepaid to pay for their coffee. Apple and Facebook are able to charge 30% commission vs. the 2-3% credit card players charge. ‘Mobile money’ is the second highest priority for Google.

Why can Apple and Facebook charge these exorbitant commissions and why is Mobile money # 2 on the Google ‘To Do’ List? – The combined market for all types of mobile payments is expected to reach more than $600B globally by 2013.

Mobile operators worldwide have achieved an average customer e-billing adoption rate of 56.8 percent while traditional telcos lag at just 17.2 percent. In August 2011, EFMA (European Mobile Association) published a report after surveying 150 European banks with McKinsey on mobile banking. Their findings are that banks believe mobile will fundamentally change retail banking within five years (70%), and yet the majority have fewer than ten employees working on mobile and have yet to make any change in their operations to exploit this capability.

How do you begin to address Mobile solutions? First look at the web reporting and analytics. You must look beyond the overall mobile vs. non-mobile usage performance for the entire website. If you examine this you will likely see somewhere around 5% of your website visitors are coming from mobile devices. Look at My Account Login information, Pay a Bill and ‘Contact Us’ pages. Mobile Watch reports that mobile devices are accounting for 20-25% of all web visits during major utility outage events. Mobile devices can account for upwards of 50% of "Contact Us" page visits. And guess what? If your website isn't able to serve customers in a mobile-optimized and highly-usable way, 100% of those "Contact Us" visits through a mobile device will generate a phone call to your call center.

The second item to look at is, of course is your actual customers. If you use a customer satisfaction survey, you can add a question or two about customer's mobile/communication preferences and willingness to complete transactions via mobile-optimized interfaces (mobile website, native downloadable 'smartphone' application or via SMS texting).

PG&E mobile bill payment application has seen double-digit growth month-over-month since its release, and the application is now one of the most downloaded free financial applications available through the Apple app store.

Forrester analysis found that 70% of online consumers are willing to replace paper bills and statements.
Mobile operators worldwide have achieved an average customer e-billing adoption rate of 56.8 percent while telcos lag at just 17.2 percent. There are interesting attributes associated with eBilling customers…eBilling Customers are ;
22% more likely to pay on time when using online banking
6% more likely to pay on time if they use company payment website
64% less likely to phone call centre for online bankers
39% less likely to phone call centre for website payers

Numerous studies have identified the savings when compared to traditional paper bills: eBilling can save 40- 50 cents per bill instead of paper billing. eBilling can also ramp up quite quickly. A Whitby utility reached 15% penetration in 6 months. QuestarGas hit 50k paperless customers in just 6 weeks.


Info Trends Research shows that the majority of customers still wish to receive traditional mail invoices,

However other channels are receiving increasing levels of interest- with 45% preferring email and 27% on website and 6% by text message/SMS, voice mail or social media. The totals here exceed 100% due to the ability to select more than one preferred channels. When Gen Y respondents are examined we find that 51% wish to receive their bill electronically versus 44% of the general population.

It’s not just paying their bills on line, Gen Y respondents also want to receive their invoices electronically… by email, SMS, download or browser based.



Interactive Voice Response systems that tried and true tool for call streaming, processing and allocation can become Indifferent Voice Response when no matter what the customer enters (or says) the path and result all seem to keep them cycling over and over through IVR Hell.

Although intended to improve customer satisfaction, a survey taken by Amplicate in 2010 found that 88% of people hate IVR’s . IVR’s have changed over the years from simple call routing: press 1 for this and 2 for that and messaging, to a self service tool- listen to FAQ’s, report an outage based on phone number, from purely touch tone to speech enabled and today to intelligent AI enabled virtual agents – think Emily for Bell or Ted for United Airlines. Speech enabled IVR’s can create more customer alienation than touch tone IVR’s . This is a result of the higher emotional involvement in yelling into a telephone versus pushing buttons harder and faster.

The most commonly reported problems with IVR are:
1.) Menu options are either too short or too long
2.) There is an imbalance between functionality and usability
3.) Customers can’t find a menu option that meets their needs
4.) Menu options are focused on company needs rather than customer needs
5.) The IVR menu options use jargon that is not readily understood by customers
6.) There is no way for customers to start over if they make a mistake
7.) Error messages blame the caller
8.) Multiple language options may not be justified by the customer
demographic profile
9.) More than five seconds of dead air can cause users to hang up and call back

Yet in spite of the challenges experienced with some IVR applications the overall IVR market size now over $2 billion. Customers are now more eager to have interactions with these virtual agents and more satisfied with the outcomes says HBR (Stop trying to delight your customers).

Call Center Truth Stranger than Fiction

Originally posted by Tom Vander Well in Call Center Humor.

The following conversation was reported to (the customer is) Not Always Right from a telecommunications tech support agent who was setting up a work order on May 20th, one day before the predicted return of Jesus, the rapture of the saints, and the consequential end of the world:

Me: “Now, sir, I have appointments open for the 21st. Would that work at all?”

Caller: “Well, yes, we should be around, unless we get Raptured. In that case, we might want to cancel it. Or, if we don’t, we might not want to cancel it. Not sure which one is the bigger problem.”

Me: “Sir, I do assure you we are well prepared for either eventuality–return of Christ or not. Now, barring Rapture, I have a 1 – 3 pm and 3 – 5 pm. Which would you’d prefer?”

Caller: “1 – 3 pm. If we don’t get Raptured, we want time for looting.”

Colin

Follow mw on Twitter @colinsataylor

Just saw this article on CBC.ca
As a call center consultant at a call center consulting firm, I am frequently asked to comment on the health of the call and contact centre industry in Canada. The environment today does have some glimmers of hope; such as the Convergys announcement of 120 new jobs, Telelink announcing 40 more jobs in St John’s and Swinton announcing 65 in Nova Scotia, but the industry is still recovering from significant contraction that occurred due to the double whammy of the recession and increased strength of the Canadian dollar.
Many call centres in Canada serve the United States market and these centres saw job cuts as a result of the recession in the US and significantly increased operational expenses as a result of the strengthening of the Canadian dollar. The political backlash in the US of outsourcing and specifically off-shoring has lead to protectionist activities and the establishment of outsource agencies in the US that state their mission as ‘bringing jobs back to the US”. This political pressure has caused US firms to reassess their Canadian call centres. Some of the victims of these factors have been Convergys which whose call centre in Winnipeg closed impacting 500 people earlier this year, Minacs closure in Nova Scotia impacting 200 people. Both of these firms are outsource or BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) firms and serve customers internationally. It is not outsources who are facing challenges; Canwest outsourced 300 jobs from Winnipeg to the Dominican Republic and Bell Aliant closed a number of call centres in Atlantic Canada.
As the recovery sputters along we will hopefully continue to see glimmers of hope in terms of new hiring in the call centre industry, but I expect most of these to be to serve domestic customers; the US is still far from a real recovery and faced with a weak economy, increased costs of operating in Canada and political pressure to repatriate jobs to the US and this will lead to additional closures and layoffs in the call centre industry.

Measuring FCR in your Call Center

FCR is a popular topic we see on our call center consulting engagements.
Yesterday’s post dealt with the cost of ineffective call or contact resolution, citing an 80% First Contact Resolution (FCR) rate will add 25% to your average cost per contact and the importance of budgeting accurately to reflect the actual costs. In today’s post I wanted to examine a number of ways that FCR is measured in call centers and risks, benefits and various ‘gremlins’ that can influence the accuracy of your FCR statistics and present some ideas to help address or mitigate these issues.

Increasingly pundits and call center consultants like ourselves are promoting the use of FCR as the most valuable metrics for call center operations. It is difficult to argue against FCR as the perfect measure. On the surface it looks easy. We know customers and prospects are calling us to do something (pay a bill, order a product, get technical help etc.). Studies have consistently shown that when people get what they want, they are happier than when they do not.

For the time being let’s put aside the fact that successfully resolving an inquiry may not give the customer what they want: I want a refund says the customer and we quote David Spade in those old Capital One TV ads and say ‘No’. But FCR should be measuring whether the contact; call, inquiry was resolved, not whether the customer liked the resolution.

It can be challenging to measure FCR in a contact center environment. If you ask ten people how they do it you will hear a number of different responses. Some of the measurement approaches we have heard of include:

• Telephone Call Detail based – If the customer calls back within ‘X’ hours/days (48 hours, 72 hours 1 week), so the theory goes then we did not resolve the customers issue.
• IVR Survey based – What could be better than offering customers the ability to tell us how we did by offering them a post call survey.
• Agent based – The agent asks the customer if they have resolved the customers issue and this is then entered into the CRM or similar system.

Each of these approaches has benefits and potential risks or shortcomings. For example the Telephone Call Detail approach has the benefit of presenting a black and white picture of FCR. Once you have accepted the time window associated and accept the premise that the customer could have no other reason for calling again then the results have a good level of consistency.

Of course there may be reasons for the customer to call back: they ordered the wrong size, provided the wrong ship to address, received a new bill in the mail, have a second account with different issues etc. In the absence of robust analytics to provide a high level of data interrogation most centers will end up with a level of ‘false negatives’. That is to say that they will identify calls as not resolved when in fact the subsequent contact could be unrelated. This will mean a lower FCR score than they may actually be the case.

In contrast the Agent based approach of asking the customer if their inquiry was resolved before ending the original call, can also result in “false positives’. All of us who have worked as agents or with agents knows that there is a different perspective when speaking with a customer versus listening to the call or being the customer. The agents may ask the customer the question “Have I fully resolved your Inquiry” or something similar or they may not. The agent may simply check the box thinking that they asked the question or because they provided the appropriate response from the knowledgebase, so it must be resolved, right? Of course if the customer sounds unhappy or rushed the agent may choose to answer on the customers behalf etc. All of these scenarios will result in ‘false positives’ that is to say reporting that will indicate a higher FCR rate than likely exists.

One of the most prevalent solutions these days is the IVR survey, which in most cases 3 to 5 questions dealing with the call, as well as with overall satisfaction or net promoter etc. On the surface it appears to be a valid approach. What could be better than asking the customer? But depending on how it is deployed: by the agent seeking consent or before the agent answers the call by the IVR, you can have significant problems.

First as we looked at above the agents will not always offer the survey…in short they will or could play a triage role in limiting who gets into the IVR. Second if the caller agrees to participate before the call is directed to an agent, they may change their mind based on what happens with the call. Consumers and customers will ‘self-select’ whether or not to participate in any survey. If they believe it will help them they often participate, if there is little perceived value then they often will not participate. In consulting projects we have seen customers who ‘believe’ that their problem was resolved and are satisfied with the resolution they participate at a far lower rate than those who feel it was not resolved or who did not like the resolution. This illustration of ‘vested self interest’ can skew the results and reflect a lower FCR than actually exists.

Regardless of which of the above solutions is employed there are some other relevant issues that will influence the FCR reported. For example the customer believes or is promised that they will receive a credit, but that doesn’t appear on their next bill. In this case the customer and even the agent may believe the original contact was fully resolved, but it wasn’t. The same will be true if the product doesn’t arrive when expected (consumers hear 4 to 6 weeks and will expect it in exactly 4 weeks). The service isn’t restored when expected (told it would be back by 5 pm and at 5:01 they will call again); or the tech support routine they are told to run, doesn’t solve the problem. These are all examples of the customer not receiving what they expected, when they expected it. Of course the customers also contribute to FCR failures by not executing what they were to do (not following instructions) or providing inaccurate information of the original call (wrong size, incorrect address, an over limit credit card etc.) which will require a subsequent call.

As you can see effectively managing FCR is not easy and whatever approach you choose to employ, you will need to expect that it will take time for you to work out all of the exceptions, bugs and kinks. Remember that at the end of the day even if your model drives false positive or false negatives if you employ it consistently you will be able to chart improvement and declines period over period.

Let me know if you would like more information on this topic please email me directly at ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com or visit our website at http://thetaylorreachgroup.com as we have a number of resources which may assist you in the process of implementing effective FCR measurement and reporting in your call center.

Managing your Contact Center’s Telecom Costs

The economy is in decline, jobless numbers and unemployment are growing and companies are being asked to cut costs operate more efficiently. Call centre managers, used to “doing more with less” are now being asked to “do more with none”. Where can a manager turn in their efforts to improve the efficiency and reduce the operating costs in their call or contact center?

There are a number of cost centers within a contact center, including: labour, technology, service costs and overhead. In this article we examine the opportunities to save costs on telecommunications expenses. Telecommunications costs are one of the most significant cost areas in any contact center after labour. Telecommunications is also the second highest non-operating expense for the average Fortune 1000 firm. This cost includes local and/or long distance service fees, lines, circuits and features.

Telephone usage and service invoices always appear to be written in some arcane language regardless of the company issuing them. Instead of words and descriptions that can be understood telephone companies (telco’s) instead employ codes like ARX-325 to describe an off premise extension or tie line. The very language and structure of the invoices make them unintelligible to mere mortals. Some Telephone companies issue separate invoice for services and for equipment, which doubles the confusion. As a result few companies can genuinely verify if there invoices are correct and accurate.

In reality all companies should check their phone bills. Most telco invoices are inaccurate, often 30% of the charges are incorrect, and in some organizations the figure is even higher.

So in examining your phone bills the first place you need to start is with an inventory of the phone lines and circuits that you have installed and are using. If you receive separate equipment and services billing then the equipment invoice is the best place to start. Make a list of all of the lines and/or circuits, T1’s, PRI’s and equipment. For each line list the features or service that should be associated with the line/circuit. Look at the lines and circuits that show usage. If there is no usage on a line or circuit and you don’t understand why, then investigate. It is not uncommon for lines that have been removed to still be on the invoice, complete with the features and services that were associated with that line.

Usage, long distance, toll free charges are generally easy to identify as they show activity and likely someone is already reconciling these activities. Long distance fees may be significantly less today than they were a decade ago, but you need to track and reconcile activity to ensure that you are getting what you paid for. More difficult to identify are feature fees that are only a few bucks time. These fees add up and quickly. Check your contract, and see what the rates are supposed to be charged. Are these the rates you are paying?
Back billing or billing for services outside of the period of the bill happens. While not often it happens enough that it can come as a nasty surprise. Some jurisdictions and tariffs allow for back billing of up to 7 years. Telcos have to charge or recharge based on bills they themselves get from other carriers. Or they find something for which they forgot to bill or in very rare cases where they overbilled. This gives some leeway to you for going back through the bills and finding where you were overcharged. One case we know of got credit for 5 years of charge for circuits billed but not installed, in another case a refund for more than 3 years of circuits billed but not installed. These two situations resulted in the organizations receiving refunds of more than $500,000 and over $100,000. This also explained why the center was always experiencing a blockage problem.

Another area where charges can sometimes be found is for past Yellow Page ads you may have run. Compare the markets and locations where you believe the ads are to run and ensure they are. Also check markets where you advertised in past and see if the ads are still running or if you are paying for ads you don’t want or don’t have.

Analyzing your phone bills is something you can do, but there are also companies that will do this for you, generally for 50% of the saving they find.

Paying for services you don’t receive is just one way that organizations can pay too much for telecom. Many companies pay above market rates for services. Ask for prices from at least three providers for all of your telecom services. Check with your friends and acquaintances in the trade. There is almost certainly a lower price to be had. Almost as bad a paying too much for services is buying more services than you require. Most companies poorly configure their requirements and are motivated to ‘make sure they are up’ and the person responsible for telecom is often severely criticized for any ‘down time’. The motivation isn’t to ‘buy right’, but it is to ‘play it safe’. This contributes to an environment that results in over buying and overpaying.

Employees expect 100% up time all the time. Of course employees can also represent a source of inappropriate telecom usage. Most people have made a long distance calls from their companies. Some have made personal long distance calls and a small few regularly make extensive use of the company’s telephones to call friends and relatives half way around the world. A single call is not likely to break the bank. Hundreds or thousands of such calls will represent a significant expense. Worse, if the abuse is significant and on-going, it can actually blend into the business activity and mask the abuse. Implement Call Accounting and Best Available Routing selection. This way the phone system will route the call to its destination at the lowest possible cost and track who is making these calls. This technology is available on most telephone systems though a surprisingly small number of organizations actually employ them. Your use of these applications can be limited to employing account codes for staff long distance or up to blocking access to locations where you do not have business contacts. This approach will minimize potential costs should your system be compromised.

But internal threats are not the only ones your telephony systems may face. IP telephony systems are designed for remote access and to support remote workers. The remote workers access the IP telephony system through a login and password process. When a company access port is identified it is a relatively simple task to crack most 4 or 5 digit passwords. Once access has been secured hundreds of thousand of dollars of long distance costs can be incurred in calls to exotic locations. There have actually been reports of a black market in compromised phone systems that can be used for ‘free’ long distance. The telco can and will demand payment for these charges. So change your voicemail logins frequently and don’t use simple logins and passwords.

Telecom costs can be challenging to manage given the nature of the invoices and codes they contain. This complexity can also mean that savings are there to find. All you need to do is just dig.

Motivating Without Money…Doing More with None

Motivating Without Money…Doing More with None

Motivating agents in a contact center is a perennial challenge for virtually every contact center manager. Just how can we motivate staff to excel? We know that engaged and motivated staff perform better and create and support a healthy culture within the call or contact center.

Traditionally money has been the primary and in some centers the only answer to this question. Money always seems to be the right size and colour to address motivational issues. But is money the best or only solution to a motivated workforce? And if we are going to employ financial compensation as a motivational tool how can we best manage this to get the maximum ‘bang for our buck’?

Lets look at how most contact centers employ money as a motivational tool: often they will establish specific targets or thresholds: calls/hour, orders per day, AHT, quality scores etc. and then associate a dollar value on reaching these thresholds. This approach is tried and true; it has been employed in centers for decades and does improve motivation; at least for some agents.

Not all agents have the skills or the experience to reach the thresholds or to achieve them consistently. I have seen some centers where overall performance and motivation actually decline or are eroded through some ‘incentive’ programs. Ask the agents in these centers and they will quickly tell you why: “the same handful of agents will get all of the incentive comp”; “I can’t win so why should I try”. As you can see this type of program can actual act as a disincentive and de-motivate staff. This clearly is not the outcome we are seeking.

Of course monetary programs can be tweaked to expand there scope an application, basing opportunity incentives not on achieving fixed thresholds, but based upon percentage improvement for example. However even this approach can back fire, are we incenting and rewarded staff who do as little as possible to keep their jobs each day, but work harder when there is cash on line, over staff that work hard every day and on the whole are much more valuable staff.

So monetary rewards are less than perfect and in today’s economy more and more contact centers have moved from ‘doing more with less’ and are now being asked to ‘do more with nothing’. Non monetary motivational tools and tactics are increasingly the only options open to many centers. As a result a number of Contact Center Managers are now in unfamiliar territory as they have only ever employed money or ‘stand ins’ for money (movie passes, restaurant certificates and gift cards etc.).

What guidance and advice can we provide these managers to help them navigate these difficult waters? First, the manager needs to understand that they while non-monetary tools can be effective, they generally require more planning and structure than cash incentives do. Most cash based motivational or incentive programs are either: Tactical or Ongoing.

Tactical programs are a short term incentive to improve performance opposite a specific KPI, goal or objective, i.e. increase revenues by 5%, reduce handle time to 300 seconds, achieve quality scores of 95% or better, etc. Ongoing programs tend to revolve around commission sales structures.

Similarly non monetary incentives can also be tactical or structural. Tactical non monetary motivation is not ongoing, though may be term based: Employee of the Month, Most Improved Agent etc. are both examples (which could include a monetary aspect) of term based motivational programs. Other engagement programs that can deliver positive motivation would include point program and/or shift swapping.

Point based programs are modelled after frequent flyer or loyalty programs allowing agents to earn points through various activities and/or achievements: one point for perfect attendance, 10 points for a quality score above the target, 25 points for a kudos letter form a customer etc. Such point programs then allow agents to redeem their points for preferred shifts, days off, preferred parking, gift certificates etc.

Your agents are adults, or we hope they are, so treat them as adults. Let them schedule themselves and swap shifts when required based upon the rules set down. These rules may include program or technical knowledge tenure or points accumulated through a point based incentive program.

Structural non cash motivation should actually be woven into the structure and culture of the center itself. There can be success with tactical applications of non-cash motivation. Centers, however, achieve superior and more sustained results from a holistic integration of non cash motivational elements into the underlying contact center operational structure.

At this point I am often interrupted as a manager will then suggest that they already employ Recognition within their center. The conclusion that one draws here is that recognition is the only non cash way to motivate staff. Of course recognition is a valuable tool and can motivate staff. Recognition is not just recognizing the agent with perfect attendance or a well handled call that should be acknowledged. Recognition should be a fundamental tenant of the contact center operating strategy. Research (The Neuroscience of Leadership by David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz) has shown that engagement is a key driver of staff motivation and recognizing and celebrating a job well done is a great way to engage with your staff.

Often effective contact center employ monetary program (tactical and/or on going), but they also employ recognition programs that value their agents contribution. The best practice contact centers layer these motivational initiatives on top of a structure that supports employee engagement and motivation. We are not just speaking of a manager trying to motivate their staff, but of a contact center environment and culture where the agents are motivated themselves and motivate those around them.

Creating a structure that supports this type of culture requires that each aspect and element that relates and impacts on the agents employment within the contact center is aligned to create motivated and engaged and effective agents.

If we look at the agents experience of the contact center from their moment of being hired and then chart that experience through to being a productive and engaged member of the contact center team we can see a number of opportunities to create a motivational culture within the center and to create and hire agents that support and grow the culture.

The environment that staff are hired into has an impact on how engaged the staff feels and how effective and motivated they are to perform. The first element on a career progression is the recruitment or hiring phase.

Hiring staff that possess the skills, competencies and attributes to perform well in a contact center environment results in staff that function better in the center. They are more motivated to perform. Still today far too many a center relies on previous call center or customer service experience as a stand in for demonstrated real skills and competencies. Then they wonder why their center is dysfunctional and the staff unmotivated.

When we look at the skills we desire in staff no two centers are the same. On top of keyboarding skills, attention to detail, sense of ownership and responsibility which are common to most skill & competency maps created, some centers add stress testing and resilience, or interest in yoga or meditation. Some seek those who will fight for the customer at all costs. Perhaps most famously, Zappos asks all applicants to demonstrate how they are ‘a little weird’.

You must look at the type of culture you wish to create and the type of performance you seek. Mirror these in the hiring and recruitment processes. Of course these attributes must be testable. You will need to verify that those who claim these attributes and skills actually have them.
Pre employment testing should include: typing, spelling, attention to detail, logic exercises which may include personality tests to determine if the person is a high ‘I’, a peacock or a tiger. The name of the game is to hire staff that can succeed and by succeeding improve to centers performance and reinforce the culture you have set out to create.

Job descriptions should set out exactly what is expected of an agent in terms of KPI’s. Staff can motivate themselves to achieve and exceed these goals once they know what you expect of them and how they will be measured or assessed.

It is critically important in this economy and in this ‘age of entitlement’ that staff understand that they are primarily responsible for their own career. By telling them what is expected of them and by telling them you only hire those who can succeed you establish a good basis for motivation and engagement.

By extending this through a vision of their career path you cement the goals and hurdles that agents need to meet before they can proceed within the center. One model employed is the ACM model or Adequacy, Competency and Mastery. This model recognizes that when an agent is hired and trained they are Adequate. That is to say that there is no reason to fire them. Over time with experience coaching and learning they will proceed to the second stage in their agent career: competent. Now they are valuable members of the agent pool, they can perform most desired tasks and can regularly meet the desired performance metrics and KPI’s. The next stage along the way is mastery, here the agent have become the ‘go to’ person for knowledge, help and assistance. They are likely subject matter experts within the centre and they likely coach and mentor other staff. These staff are poised to move in a supervisory or specialist role and will likely have completed special projects or worked on various teams.

By defining and publishing what skills, competencies, achievements and performance criteria are required to move ahead in the center and in their career, agents self motivate and self identify. A self motivated and engaged agent is the ideal to be sought in any center. Of course any career progression with defined performance criteria requires commensurate increases in compensation. Ideally the pay ranges should also be published. They should include an element of re-earnable incentive compensation in addition to a base salary. By requiring agents re-certify their performance annually it ensures that they stay engaged and motivated and prevents them from becoming lackadaisical or ‘resting on their laurels’.

Into this career progression adding peer feedback is valuable. In a center with an engaged and motivated culture agents want and seek input and feedback from those around them. Peer quality reviews as a component or in addition to your formal Quality program creates this feedback. Let the staff review each others calls, provide kudos and feedback to the agents, select the best calls, the most improved agents etc. This empowerment motivates not only those recognized, but also those involved in the selection process.

Money is and has been the easy answer to staff motivation in the past and while money alone can improve performance building a culture of engaged and motivated agents will produce results long after the money has run out.

Shouldn't 911 calls be answered?

911 call centers generally have a service level of 100/5 that is to say they answer 100% of calls within 5 seconds. This is the level of service that everyone expects when we call a 911 center.

A news story on the week end told a different story. In Harrison Township Ohio they recently launched their 911 center, but on the 26th they were experiencing problems…calls not being answered, calls dropped, calls transferred to wrong extensions and departments and then transferred back. In any call center this would be a problem, in a 911 center this could be a fatal catastrophe.

In this particular case more than 15 phone calls were placed to report a fire, some of these calls went unanswered, on others agents couldn’t even spell the street name. The fire department responded to the fire in 4 minutes once they received the dispatch. Unfortunately the dispatching took more than 10 minutes from the time of the first call to 911.

The house was destroyed by fire, but fortunately no one was injured.

Sheriff's Department Captain Rob Streck stated that the problems were caused by a ‘computer malfunction’. In the news video I saw on CNN referenced ‘problems’ with their new Nortel phone system. The new center performance was still summed up by the Captain Streck who said “the first day in the new center went smoothly”. This attitude is and should be unacceptable.

Now I don’t have any special or unique insight into this Harrison Township 911 call center, but I have seen similar problems and challenges unfold in other call and contact centers. Symptoms of: dropped calls, missed transfers, transfers to unmanned extensions, and uniformed agents, all of which have been reported to have occurred in this situation, are due to a lack of planning, lack of training, and a fundamental lack of appreciation for the complexities inherent with this type of a technology upgrade that is bordering on negligence.

I certainly hope that the individuals who were responsible for this call center implementation are never allowed anywhere near a call center I rely on.

Lots of empty call center space out there

According to King White at Site Selection LLC, there are more than 200 empty call centers on their database in representing more than 1.3 million square feet. By my calculation this would also represent approximately 75,000 empty seats and 100,000 jobs lost. This is one of the clearest indications that recession is biting in the contact center space.
So where have these jobs gone? By and large these went offshore.

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.

January Issue of Customer Reach®, now available

Ten times a year The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. (TRG) publishes our call and contact center newsletter Customer Reach®. The January issue marks our 6th year of publishing the newsletter. This issue was sent out to 10, 488 senior call and contact center executive around the globe. Customer Reach® has been described by Frost & Sullivan as “A great newsletter” and by other industry leaders as “the best contact center newsletter out there". A readership study indicated that more than 54% of Customer Reach® readers implemented change in their contact centers based on what they first read about in Customer Reach®.

In this months issue we address creating community and the value of small talk, Dells' recent move to offer premium domestic call center support services, and a review of the recent IQPC Call Center Summit in Orlando Florida. In addition we feature call center news and views from around the globe.

We welcome your input, comments and suggestions on how we can improve our publication. So please email your feedback to us at info@thetaylorreachgroup.com

Colin Taylor

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.

FCR adpotion and utilization

First Call Resolution or FCR as it is known is arguably the most significant and important metric in use in contact centers today. Yet this metric is infrequently used and when employed internal approximations or 'stand-ins' often have to be employed. A recent study completed by at Ascent Group ( http://www.ascentgroup.com/) of more than 100 companies in 14 industries found that in companies that are measuring FCR only 44% are competing this measurement based on customer feedback, the balance or 56% employ approximations or 'stand-ins' such Call Monitoring (20%), Agent assessments (8%) and internal calculation (27%).

It is critical to all contact centers to not only know why customers are calling (call types), but also whether and how well the call/contact center performs at resolving the inquiry. Without measuring FCR an organization cannot know how well they are meeting their customers' expectations. In addition at The Taylor Reach Group ( http://www.thetaylorreachgroup.com/) we have encountered numerous organizations that have been able to reduce operational expense while increasing customer satisfaction by implementing FCR in conjunction with Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and process review to increase resolution rates significantly.

If you are not measuring FCR today, you need to start immediately. The most accurate measure is to ask your customers at the end of each call if you have resolved their 'issue' or reason for their call. (Of course if they say no, you must be prepared to revisit the issue.) After all the customer knows why they called and what their expectations were regarding resolution. If you ask your customers you must be prepared to track the results in your CRM or CIS system. In addition you must validate the results periodically through recorded call verification...this will stop/reduce agents improving their own scores by answering the question for the customer. If you don't have a CRM or CIS then most likely you will employ a stand in such as a second call from the same customer within 48 hours as an indication of FCR not being met on the original call. Depending on the nature of the call and the type of center you operate the time metric of 48 hours may not be appropriate and 24 or 72 may be better. This may also take some fine-tuning to improve the comfort with the result.

If you would like additional information on FCR or other critical metrics in contact center operation please drop me a note at ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com.

Nortel files Chapter 11

My how the mighty have fallen. Nortel shares once traded at over $124 each, yesterday fell as low as 8 cents apiece. Frankly they are likely overvalued at that. Please don't misunderstand me I don't believe the company is wothless, just that the current shares are likely to be effectively wiped out as Nortel goes through their reorganization.

For the employees it is business as usual. Those who are still there, about a quarter of the staff that Nortel had just a few short years ago, will carry on and to a large degree so will the company. Seeking bankruptcy protection allows Nortel to avoid making interest and other payments and plan a structured return. The plan will likely involve selling off assets and whole business units.

Nortel has good products and customer base, but I suspect that they will lose some deals due to uncertainty about the future. If you are spending millions on telephony you want to know that the vendor will be around to support their equipment.

I expect Nortel to survive, but it will be a much smaller shadow of its former self.

Outbound, Outsourcing and the New World Order

Outbound, Outsourcing and the new world order

With the introduction of the Do Not Call (DNC) list most people both within the call and contact centre industry and those outside of it, assumed that this would be the death knell for outbound calling. The DNC eliminated huge volumes of people who you couldn’t phone and while there are exemptions and exceptions it forced many firms and organizations to change the way they did business.

Telemarketing or outbound calling was once the primary activity of call centres. Companies employed outbound telemarketing because it works; thirty years ago people often were genuinely happy to receive a call from hundreds or thousands of miles away. Over time more and more companies and organizations began to use to outbound telemarketing themselves or contracted with a third party outsource agency to place call on their behalf. The introduction of predictive dialling greatly improved the number of calls that an agent in a call centre could make and the number of calls soared. Pretty soon consumers were receiving two, three five calls a day and their frustration with telemarketers calling to ‘sell them something’ became common.

Enter the Do Not Call list and the frustration with telemarketing calls crystallized into 150 million Americans signing up. In Canada a DNC list has just been launched and on the first day the number of people calling overwhelmed the operator. It is likely that we will see more than half of all Canadian phone numbers registered under the DNC.

According to Contact Babel Legislation has had an impact on outbound telemarketing activities “14% of respondents said that their outbound calling had greatly
reduced due to legislation, although 56% said that it had reduced in some way (which is up from 41% last year)”. This reduction of outbound activity has been seen over the past decade from approximately a 50/50 split between inbound and outbound to today only an estimated 18% of call centres would define themselves as exclusively or primarily as outbound.

So with fewer people to call what are companies and organizations doing? Perhaps surprisingly they are still calling. Sales calls to new customers are still the number one activity even though the universe of ‘call-able’ numbers has been greatly reduced, cross selling and customer service activities represent other significant segment of outbound telemarketing.

Increasingly companies and organizations look at outsourcing and off-shoring their outbound calling requirements and much of this activity is provided through third party outsource agencies. There are a number of reasons for this:
Outsourced firms tend to cost less than completing the work internally (much less if an offshore provider is employed),
Access to skills, staff and technology that the company may not possess internally,
Compliance issues related to legislation (DNC)


Outbound calling completed by third party firms will generally be completed on a cost per hour basis, on a dollars per sale basis, often called ‘pay for performance’ or P4P, or on a base plus bonus structure. These rate structures reflect risk and which of the parties (outsourcer or client) is accepting the risk. As expected cold call selling is often outsourced on a P4P model as it does not cost the company any money unless the outsource firm actually makes a sale. Of course this is not completely true a company the sponsors high volume P4P campaigns does run the risk of eroding Brand value due to the volumes and/or quality of the calls. Hourly rated programs tend to be service and customer satisfaction type of calls and Upselling, cross-selling and renewal activities are often structured on a base plus bonus basis.

There is a high correlation between P4P programs and offshoring. A casual study completed by the author found that more than 75% of P4P program opportunities reviewed were targeted to offshore firms calling into North America. The reason for this is cost. While it is virtually impossible to make a cost comparison on P4P activities as the unit price varies by product and/or service it is possible to look at hourly costs to establish as baseline. A recent survey completed by The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. found that hourly rates varied across Canada from a low of $20 per hour to a high of $32 per hour for outsource firms located in Canada. Generally Toronto (and other major urban centres) had the highest rates and more distant and/or rural locations had the lower rates. This compares with hourly rates in the $12 to $14 dollar range offshore.

There are challenges and risks to bear in mind before you rush to offshore your outbound telemarketing activities. From an effectiveness perspective these include; language issues, geography issues, inflexible scripting , issues understanding the product or service if it is not prevalent in the culture of the off shore location and issues of context if the offshore agents are not familiar with the culture in North America. There are also risks from a financial point of view; the stated rates do include the cost to source, vet, negotiate nor contract with an offshore service provider, nor do they include the 20%-30% premium to manage an offshore partner. Lastly offshore outsourcers generally have a lower sales conversion rate due to the challenges above. Once these considerations are taken into account to costs offshore become similar to those onshore.

If you are presently completing outbound telemarketing outsourcing to a third party firm should certainly be considered, but you need to ensure that the rate structure is appropriate to the type of calls you wish to have placed (sales, service, satisfaction services etc) that the technology employed is appropriate (predictive, progressive or preview dialling) and that you risks related to legislation are mitigated through a compliance program. The first organization to be fined for violating the US DNC was AT&T, through one of their outsource partners. This is not what you want to have happen.

Outbound telemarketing is not going away any time soon. Companies and organizations that employ or wish to employ outbound calls will need to be vigilant and know and mitigate the risks. Third party outsource firms have developed compliance programs to ensure that their actions are compliant with the rules. Outsource firms have significant risk to their livelihood if they are not operating under the rules, far more than most of their clients would have. And as a result these companies will have and continue to invest in maintaining their compliance.

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

Butterfly Effect

I was speaking at Reinventing Call Center Management in Toronto last week and describing Chaos theory (otherwise known as the butterfly effect). "CHAOS theory- a butterfly flaps its wings in marketing and the call center has problems. We are all familiar with this occurrence though few realize it originated in call centres. Marketing (or Sales) activities result in Substantially Higher Incoming Traffic which adversely impacts the Forecasted Agent Number. Of course in colloquial speech we call this the SHIT hitting the FAN"

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