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Thanks Dan but do you have the Contact Center metrics for BPOs?

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments
Dashboard and metrics

THANKS DAN BUT DO YOU HAVE THE CONTACT CENTER METRICS FOR BPOs?

I’ll never forget it.

After a quality coaching class with a group of Team Leaders in the shared services group of a bank, one of the Participants sent me this email –

“Dan, I loved the course. I learned how to better coach my people. And I appreciated that you shared the high level metrics we can use to track progress. 

But as you know, I work in a BPO setting. So those metrics don’t work for us.

Can you send me the metrics for BPOs?”

But there aren’t different metrics for BPOs

 

There aren’t different metrics for BPOs than for an in-house Center.

A Contact Center is a Contact Center.  Whether BPO or in-house.

Even those places that still don’t want to call themselves a Contact Center – but actually often are.

The pool of operational Contact Center metrics is well understood.

What differs from Center to Center are the decisions around which metrics are selected, prioritized and pursued.

  • In some Centers, the metric set choices are tangibly more Customer Experience oriented.
  • In some Centres, the metric set choices are tangibly more cost or efficiency oriented.  (And to say that the BPO Participants in this particular workshop were pummeled into efficiency wouldn’t be an exaggeration.)
  • In some Centers, there are metrics choices that are just plain wrong from an operational standpoint. Even today when the Contact Center ecosystem is well understood.

But whatever these metric choices are – recognize that they represent one of the single most important decisions you will ever make.

As shared by a Customer Experience thinker some years back, people do what is measured, incentivized and celebrated.

And when you’re talking about Agents, Team Leaders & Team Managers, metrics are very top of mind.

These metrics – the ones that have been selected, prioritized and pursued – dramatically influence the mindset & performance of the people in your Center.

To the point where they – including the Participant who emailed me – believe that the way your Center works is just how it is across the entire Contact Center industry.

That the way you do things in your Center is the industry standard.

Without realizing that the Center down the road or three floors up in the same office tower, has different strategies & priorities than you do.

And, as a result, has chosen a different metrics set.

https://www.omnitouchinternational.com/how-to-help-your-contact-centre-agents-improve-their-performance

You have to know what your doing

People don’t go to school to become professionals in the Contact Center or Customer Experience industry.

Many learn on the job – from people who also learned on the job.

What I’ve personally seen over and over is when a new ‘big boss’ comes in and realizes that the level of strategic Contact Center know-how in the current Team isn’t sufficient to achieve organizational business objectives.

So they set about to change that.

The choices around metrics takes know-how, thought and contextualization to your Customer & Business ecosystem.

  • Don’t just copy what someone else is doing.
  • Don’t rely on non-existent or irrelevant industry standards.
  • Don’t pursue the same things year after year without stopping to ask yourself why and if what you’re doing makes sense.

When I teach Operations Management work through all the metrics in easy to understand categories.

From there we begin to pull together the interrelationships that exist between metrics in the Center and even metrics for the Organization.

And perhaps my favorite part is when the Participants get together in groups and talk about how and why they’d design their Center metrics system. Based on everything they’ve learned up to this point.

The selection of metric sets for your Center is one of the most decisions you’ll ever make.

Because your choices have far reaching impact on the business results you will achieve.

And on the lives of the Employees & Customers that you serve.

It can’t get more important than that.

 

Thank you for reading!

Thank you for taking the time to read this today.

If you’d like to stay up to date on our articles, activities and offers just drop us your email address or add it to the contact form on our website.

Daniel Ord

[email protected] / www.omnitouchinternational.com

 

Don’t make a bad decision in the name of a good outcome

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

Making a bad decision in the name of a good outcome – is still a bad decision

Read the following statements and see if you can identify the pattern:

“I know that transaction surveys should be short and sweet but this is a chance for our Marketing group to build relationship with Customers so we’re adding more questions.”

“I know that transactional NPS isn’t a good metric to use for individual Agents but I think it helps with Agent Engagement to share the good comments.”

“I know that measuring Agents on number of calls handled isn’t mathematically ideal but I think it helps us be cost efficient.”

Take a moment now to describe what you see in each of these examples.

 

Here’s how I describe it

In each example shared a good outcome was used to defend a bad decision.

Or put another way, a bad decision was forgiven in the name of a good outcome.

It helps with cost efficiency (the good outcome) to measure Agents on number of calls handled (the bad decision).

And invariably, the person who uses this approach will start off with, “I know that…”.

Which in a way makes it worse.

 

Notice how the conversation gets shut down

Notice how this kind of statement shuts the conversation down.

When someone says, “…because it will make us cost efficient.” it puts the Listener in a difficult position.

I mean who’s going to argue against cost efficiency? Or Agent engagement?  Or Customer relationship?  These are all good and important outcomes.

It can feel awkward to feel that you’re debating against a good outcome. Especially if this statement comes from the boss. Or an authority figure.

But you know it’s a bad decision.  So its worth digging in and exploring.

 

Here’s how I do it

Is the bad decision being put forward – the too long transaction survey, the transactional NPS question, the metric on # of Calls Handled – a significant lever that drives that good outcome?

You can’t just have an opinion.  Show me.

Use a Scatter diagram, an Ishikawa diagram, financial modelling. Basically use whatever tool or method fits the purpose.

But  show me how that bad decision truly contributes significant impact on that good outcome.

And if there’s a well document practice or principle that we’re not planning to follow tell me why it doesn’t apply to us.

For example # of Calls Handled as an Agent performance metric turns out not to be a big contributor to Cost Efficiency.

In fact that metric can potentially increase overall costs.

Oops.

 

And what about the impacts on the ecosystem?

Now let’s turn our lens to the impacts on the ecosystem. Because the decisions we make don’t operate in isolation.

There are always impacts on other parts of the ecosystem.

And I’ve always thought of professionals working in Customer Experience & Service as ‘Custodians of the Customer Ecosystem’.

What are the ecosystem impacts of using # of Calls Handled as an Agent metric?

Well when you sit down and study it, Agents who are targeted on # of Calls Handled invariably shortchange Customers on Quality.

Either in the style or completeness of their response or both.

Is that a good thing?  Most Organizations would say no.

A shortchange in Quality is going to potentially increase our unnecessary repeat contacts figure.  Which in turn increases cost and reduces Service Level.

And it also hits our Customer Satisfaction outcomes which can result in more complaints to handle and an increase in Customer defections.

And let’s remember that Agents who are targeted on quantity often lose the chance to develop their quality.  To develop those powerful communication skills that can serve them throughout their lives.

The ecosystem impacts are significant – and need to be considered as part of the decision making process.

 

 

 

It can seem that I’m talking about a small thing here

Even I can see how this might be seen as nitpicking.  Or that it’s just a small thing.

But step back and consider.

It only takes only a few such decisions of the “I know it’s not good/right/great to do X but we do it to get Y” variety to ripple through the ecosystem and potentially do more harm than good.

 

Thank you for reading!

Thank you for the time you took to read this today!

If you’d like to stay up to date on our articles and other information just send over your email address or add it to the contact form on our website.

Daniel Ord

[email protected]

www.omnitouchinternational.com

Cover photo by Happy Lee on Unsplash

How the Ruby Slippers and Contact Center Metrics intersect – a lesson from the Wizard of Oz

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

HOW DOROTHY’S RUBY SLIPPERS AND CONTACT CENTER METRICS INTERSECT – A LESSON FROM THE WIZARD OF OZ.

I read a post recently, from a Contact Centre expert, that went like this: “In this new era are some of our Contact Center metrics outdated? Is it time to change our metrics to better reflect the new era?”

From there, the author went on to talk about the usual suspects – Average Handling Time, Customer Satisfaction, Employee Engagement and the like.

But what had specifically gotten my attention was the lead-in to the post. That we were somehow in a new era.

Which means that, by default, we had left an old era.

I’m not so sure that’s true.

 

Remember Dorothy and her Ruby Slippers in the ‘Wizard of Oz’?

Towards the end of that wonderful 1939 film, Glinda the Good Witch of the North tells Dorothy that she always had the power to go home.

All Dorothy ever had to do was tap her magical Ruby Slippers together three times and she’d be right back in Kansas.

If you’re wondering how that has anything to do with Contact Centres here’s my answer.

There is no old era or new era. We’ve always had the power to set the ‘right’ metrics.

Doing right by your Customers, Employees & Organization isn’t a new era idea.

Clients we’ve worked with had these discussions back in 2003, 2007, 2012…you get the point.

The understanding and ability to do the right thing for your Stakeholders has always been there.  It just hasn’t always been in fashion.

Or the people in charge at the time didn’t have the credibility or know-how to make the change.

These are different issues. Ones that aren’t driven by the era we’re in.

 

Do you have a Glinda Good Witch of the North on your Team?  I hope so.

Because what I’ve seen over and over is that the calibre of the Center – and by extension the calibre of organizational Customer Experience – is driven by the calibre of the leadership in charge.

People who bring ability, know-how and commitment. And where needed, credibility to make change.

So if you can, work for those people. Work where they work. Join their Team.

Because in the same way Dorothy could always have gone home, we can always do the right things for people.

And it sure makes life a lot better for everyone.

https://www.omnitouchinternational.com/should-your-cx-head-be-a-contact-center-expert-too

Thank you for reading!

I appreciate the time you took to read this today!

If you’d like to stay up to date on our articles and other information just send me your email address or input it into the contact form on our website.

Daniel Ord

[email protected]

www.omnitouchinternational.com

Cover photo by Paulina Milde-Jachowska on Unsplash

The best $380,000 I ever spent

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

“If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.”
Adam Grant

In our first year of operation, the company I founded earned a profit of $80,000.  That was in Singapore in 2001.

We had done well with two Customer Service workshops I’d written and we’d landed two global Mystery Shopper research programs which were well underway.

Business was off to a great start.

But I knew that what had made us successful so far wasn’t going to necessarily make us successful in the mid to long term.

I hadn’t left working in the corporate world just to find myself having to go back in to that because I hadn’t helped my Clients solve their problems.

So I took $40,000 of that first year profit, signed a contract with a consulting firm in California and flew myself and a Singaporean colleague to live in the isolated mountaintop home of the firm’s founder.

For a month.

 

Why did we spend a month on a mountain top in California? 

It’s a reasonable question.

My colleague and I travelled to the U.S. to receive four weeks of private instruction in Contact Center management directly from the consulting firm’s founder.

I had done my homework before signing on the dotted line and everything went the way it was supposed to go.

It was a superb and intellectually intense month.

Every morning we were up and seated in our Instructor’s home office to start class at 9:00AM.

Our 12:30 – 1:30 lunch consisted of sandwiches that he made for us in his big kitchen downstairs (which my Singaporean colleague despaired of at one point saying, “Argh, in Asia we prefer to eat warm food!”).

To highlight how isolated we were, the Instructor had his own small plane and airstrip and he flew himself to most of his engagements.

Aside from two or three trips into town, we lived as if we were in boarding school.  And I loved almost every minute.

Over the four weeks we covered four different domains of Contact Center knowledge in great depth:

  • Operations Management
  • Leadership & Business Management
  • People Management
  • Customer Relationship Management (for CX folks remember it was 2002)

The deep grounding in know-how that I gained in that month has informed my view of the Customer ecosystem ever since.

Which I can summarize as this belief –

I believe that leading & managing in the Customer ecosystem, whether Contact Center Management or Customer Experience Management, is a business discipline.

As with any business discipline, there is an essential level of know-how, across multiple domains, that an industry professional needs in order to avoid negative outcomes and achieve great outcomes.

In the Customer industry, as was true in my own case, people don’t typically go to school to learn these things.

Many people in Customer Service & Customer Experience end up in the industry by accident and then end up learning on the job, which as you’d expect can be very hit or miss.

I know this because I’ve met thousands of these folks in our workshops and have had the privileged opportunity to listen to their stories.

And it’s my own story too.

 

By Year 6, I had signed checks totallying nearly$380,000 

By the sixth year of my company’s operations, I had signed checks totalling nearly $380,000 to cover costs including IP & content rights, long distance travel expenses to join workshops and meetings and to pay for various membership & certifications for myself and our Team Members.

And it was worth every penny.

Clients were flying me all over the world to teach their people how to succeed in the Customer ecosystem.

I remember one week where I finished a class in Beijing in the evening, went to the airport to board a flight, landed in Delhi in the early morning hours and took a taxi straight to the venue to begin a class there.

And I continued to write training content of our own.

Which our Business Partners and Clients began to buy or license from us and which created another stream of business for the company.

 

I’m grateful I came up through Finance

I came up through Finance before entering the Customer domain. So the concept of a business discipline was second nature for me.

To get hired for the kinds of senior level Finance jobs I held required a relevant university degree and industry certifications.

Of course you learn on the job.

But I never heard any VP, Finance say that their bosses were fine that they learn how to prepare accurate financial statements ‘on the job’.

It’s both. Formal knowledge + experience.

Where you apply your knowledge based on the context and culture where you work.

In my last Finance role, I worked at a direct marketing company that sold music, children’s toys and gardening tools via TV commercials and catalogs.

We served our Customers through our own Contact Center & Distribution Center based in El Segundo, California.

I’d been preparing the financials and budgets for both the Contact & Distribution Centers for a few years and knew the numbers inside and out.

 

Then a remarkable thing happened that changed my life

One day the current VP, Operations had resigned from her post to take another job. An hour later the CEO called me up and offered me her position.

To move from VP, Finance to VP, Contact Centre & Distribution Operations.

I was honored and excited and said yes right away.

Looking back, I think my finance background was one of the key reasons the senior team extended the offer to me.

The fact that I knew the numbers and was able to explain them had earned me face time and trust with very senior people.

I was also fortunate that the outgoing VP, Operations had been so generous with her time, often explaining the art & science of Contact Center Management as we’d have lunch or take long walks around the grounds.

Of course over the next eight years of senior Contact Center positions in the U.S. and Asia I learned a lot on the job.

Experience matters and helped me grow.

But I absolutely knew that I wasn’t a master of the domain. That I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

And I was the VP, Operations with nearly a decade of solid work experience!

I filled the gaps as best I could but anyone who has worked in Operations will tell you that taking time off to learn is tough. You’re often on call 24 x 7.

So when I left the corporate world and started my own company, I was committed to closing the gaps in my knowledge as soon as I could.

I mean how could I credibly help Clients solve their problems and become their preferred provider if I didn’t have the know-how to do so?

And that’s how I ended up on a mountain top in California.

 

You’ve got to know what you’re doing

One of the most common comments we get from Participants in our workshops is this: “I wish I had taken this course earlier. If only I had known this stuff earlier. Now that I can see the full picture it all makes sense.”

To which I reply with Maya Angelou’s wonderful quote, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

And no, you don’t have to do what I did.  You don’t have to start your own company and spend $380,000.

I know what I did is pretty unique.

But the lesson for me has paid off.

In an industry that requires business discipline level know-how, and one where people generally don’t go to school for this stuff, it’s never a bad idea to look in the mirror and say, ” I don’t know what I don’t know.”

And then doing something about it.

What lessons can Contact Centre folks learn from CX folks?

Thank you for reading!

If you’d like to stay up to date on our articles and other information just send me your email or add your details to the contact form on our website.

Daniel Ord

[email protected]

www.omnitouchinternational.com

Daniel Ord teaches the Customer Experience Team at Agoda in Shanghai.

Cover photo by Lesly Juarez on Unsplash

 

 

I think our Reports Person has lost the plot

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

When you’re not sure why the reports you generate matter, or wonder if they even make sense, it’s time to take a step back.

“I think our Reports Person has lost the plot.”

That’s what one of our Participants said to the group after we had finished working through the Contact Centre metrics topic in a recent workshop.

“They generate these complex reports that no one really understands. It’s a big relief to know I don’t have to just accept them simply because we’ve always done it this way.”

That share prompted another Participant in the course to display a report that was being used in their Centre.

As we all stared at the screen trying to figure out what the report was meant to achieve, here is what she said:

“My predecessor who created this report had been in the role a long time.

So our big bosses and everyone in the team assumed that they were an ‘expert’. And that this report was industry standard or at least ‘right’ in some way. 

Based on what I’ve learned in this course so far I’ve already emailed our CEO and told them that we’re going to redefine some of the terms we use and present our performance to them in a better report.

I got a very positive response to that!”

 

I had my own story to share

I shared the story of how, after delivering a global workshop on-site with a Client, the reports person for that company spent nearly two hours explaining one metric that they created and used to track performance in their Centre.

That explanation was so confusing that even to this day, with half a dozen photos of the whiteboard in my phone, I still can’t quite make heads or tails of it.

And as it turned out – as I met others in that same company – nobody else could understand it either.

The calculations presented may have been highly accurate.  And may have served a higher level purpose.

But complexity in place of clarity is never a good idea.

If you’re running a Contact Centre or Customer Experience group and your folks need a PhD to understand a metric that’s supposed to guide their behavior, you’ve already got a problem.

Because the very people who are supposed to make it ‘happen’ can’t explain it.Which means they can’t understand it either.

Lesson:  Clarity matters.

 

Sometimes people who are new to the role have an advantage over those with years of experience

I sometimes find that people who are new to the industry have an easier time to stand up and ask, “Why do we do this? What is this report supposed to help us with? Is it actually helping?”

Experience is great.

But be cautious about assuming that years of experience – and doing the same thing over and over – is a reliable indicator that we’re doing the right thing.

https://www.omnitouchinternational.com/the-london-tube-map-and-cx-strategy-a-story

Reports are more than just reports

It’s easy to say they’re just reports. But that’s a big oversimplification.

Reports – and especially what’s on them – tell people in a formal and structured way what matters around here.  If we measure it, then it must be important.

Which guides people’s behavior. And people’s behavior informs the work culture.

Challenge yourself from time to time to be really clear on which reports matter and which ones, perhaps, don’t.

Because it’s so worth it to get it right.

https://www.omnitouchinternational.com/why-years-of-experience-is-not-the-best-predictor-of-contact-centre-success

Thank you for reading!

Thank you for the time you took to read this today.  I appreciate it!

If you’d like to be kept updated on new articles and information just share your email address directly with my by email or on the contact form on our website.

Daniel Ord

[email protected]

www.omnitouchinternational.com

 

Why years of experience is not the best predictor of Contact Centre success

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

Why years of experience is not the best predictor of Contact Centre success

You’ve heard it, you’ve read it and you’ve seen it.

The years of experience line.

Whether it’s a conference speaker, a LinkedIn blogger or someone where you work.

Where they tell you some variation of “I have over 5, 15, 35 years of experience in the industry.”

But years of experience on its own has never been a reliable predictor of success in the Contact Centre profession.

Or arguably any profession.

 

Why not?  You’ve heard some of these too.

One of my favorite sayings is this one.

Practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent.

It refers to the idea that people can end up doing the same things in pretty much the same way, over and over.

To the point it becomes habitual and engrained.

The way they write their emails. The way they measure quality. The way they calculate productivity.

Sure, when you look at a calendar a number of years have gone by, let’s say five years.

But a closer look reveals that sometimes its been the same single year of experience that’s been largely repeated over and over for five years.

What’s ultimately important is the quality of experience you earn over time. Not just the duration of that experience.

Here are a few factors we see that influence that quality of experience.

 

Who’s your Boss?

We know that ‘who’ you work for makes a tremendous difference in the quality of experience that you earn over time.

Some bosses have a talent and zest for developing people.  For pushing them out of their comfort zone and into new possibilities.

The best career booster of all time is to hitch your wagon to a boss with high expectations – even when working for them can’t always be described as easy.

Other bosses are more hands off. It’s just their style.

Or perhaps they just don’t have the depth of their own that enables them to successfully grow other people.

“You can’t pour from any empty cup” is an expression used to talk about self-care.

 

But I think it can be repurposed to describe the depth required inside ourselves to grow the people around you.

Not all the bosses out there are ready or able to grow people – they don’t have that depth – or not yet.

 

Who is your Employer?

Years of experience working for a superb Employer beats years of experience working for an average Employer every time.

Sometimes when I’m asked for advice on how to grow in the industry I’ll suggest working for the very best organization you can.

Because they very often do things differently.

That Contact Centre across the street from you?  Or the one a few floors up from you in your office block?

They could be doing a much better job, simply because of who that company is and how much they actually believe in the value of Customers and Employees.

There are very real gaps between average, good and great Employers.

https://www.omnitouchinternational.com/cx-lessons-we-can-learn-from-the-contact-centre-industry

Delivering positive impact does not require years of experience

I regularly meet Contact Centre Leaders who are literally brand new to the industry.

The mission for these new Leaders?

To put it bluntly – to fix and/or reinvigorate the Contact Centre. To bring it back to life.

Typically these people bring real-world commercial success from another department, an open & questioning mind and the ability to reimagine and redefine Contact Centre success.

I think they (often) succeed, in part, because they don’t carry the baggage of years of experience.  And the hard coded beliefs that can come with that.

They don’t have to unlearn and relearn. They can just learn.

And then consider apply what they learn to the context and culture of their Organization.

 

Most people don’t go to school for this kind of work

There’s no question that experience matters.

Being in the trenches gives one an understanding of the job, the context and the culture that can’t be achieved by studying for an exam.

But the value of experience shouldn’t be used to denigrate or diminish the value of know-how.

What about the essential dynamics, principles & practices that have been examined, tested and used successfully in the Customer industry?

Know-how has its role too.

Surgeons aren’t expected to learn on the job.

You wouldn’t want your appendix removed by someone who wasn’t, in some way, formally qualified to do so.

Nor would you want someone to do your taxes just because they have a ‘passion’ for taxes. Yikes.

Yet in Customer Service and the Contact Centre industry this is often the reality. Because many people end up in the Contact Centre profession by accident.

They didn’t go to school to be in the industry. They end up learning on the job.  Which as you’d imagine can be very hit or miss.

 

It takes leadership, not just caretaking

Some level of caretaking will always exist.

Once a robust process has been designed and implemented it should be nurtured and protected.

So that it can grow, develop and become a natural part of how you work around around.

I think of mature Voice of Customer programs when I think of this aspect. Or I think of how Interaction Quality is defined and implemented.

But at a higher level, it’s always amazing when folks in leadership roles take a big step back and ask:

Why do we do the things we do around here?

Are there things we can do better than we are right now?

Has what has made this Organization successful up to this point going to make us successful headed into the future?

Because to make things better we almost always be dissatisfied with the status quo.

Otherwise why would we change?

What’s the better formula for success?

(Know-How + Experience) x Regular intervals of reconsideration

When you’ve got mastery level Know-Howof your Customer ecosystem, you avoid wasting time and effort on topics that were solved long ago and by others.

You don’t make rookie mistakes that can have lasting damage.

Experience gives you the context and culture within which your industry knowledge needs to be applied.

No two Organizations apply the same know-how in the same way – they contextualize it. That’s as it should be and it’s so impressive in practice.

And Regular intervals of reconsideration simply means that we don’t sit back and let the years go by without reconsidering what we’re doing.

To make sure that what has made us successful up to this point still makes sense for us to keep doing- or not.

The best Contact Centre folks recognize the management of the Customer ecosystem as a business discipline. No different than finance or engineering.

And rather than talking about how many ‘years of experience’ they have, they talk about the impact they’ve made for stakeholders across Customers, Employees and the Organization at large.

And that’s a cool thing.

https://www.omnitouchinternational.com/when-good-people-follow-bad-contact-centre-process

 

Thank you for reading!

Thank you for reading and if you’d like read more simply send me your email address or add it to the contact form on our website!

Daniel Ord

[email protected]

www.omnitouchinternational.com

Cover Photo by Ben Moreland on Unsplash

10 Contact Center Operations Management questions – how well do you do?

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

In this post, I share 10 Contact Center Operations Management questions for Contact Center leaders who want to gauge their mastery of specific Contact Center know how required for successful operations management.

Because while passion and experience are helpful, Contact Center know how matters too.

A bit of background on the Contact Center Operations Management questions

Managing a Contact Center is a business discipline.  It requires very specific know-how. And when I teach Contact Center operations management I cover four modules:

  1. Managing Wait Time
  2. Creating Efficiency
  3. Forecasting the Workload
  4. Contact Center University

The questions presented below are in multiple choice format and are drawn from the Contact Center management workshops I’ve run around the world for over 20 years.

Read through each question and choose the answer that you think is correct – that’s either a, b, c or d.  There is only one correct answer for each question.

https://www.omnitouchinternational.com/what-kind-of-customer-experience-does-your-contact-center-deliver

 

The 10 Contact Center Management Questions

1.  Which accessibility metric gives management the clearest indication of the wait time a typical caller experiences?

a) Average Speed of Answer

b) Service Level

c) Percent Abandoned

d) Percent Answered

 

2.  Which of the following is the industry standard Service Level?

a) 80% answered in 20 seconds

b) 90% answered in 30 seconds

c) Industry standards only exist by industry (finance, hospitality, healthcare, etc.)

d) There is no industry standard

 

3.  When managing the queue in real-time, which of the following real-time reports should you look at first?

a) Agent status

b) Longest current wait

c) Number of calls in queue

d) Average time to abandonment

 

4.  Which of the following statements is/are TRUE?

I. Occupancy is the percentage of time agents spend talking to customers or completing After Call Work.

II. Occupancy is a result of random call arrival.

III. When Service Level increases, Occupancy increases.

IV. When Occupancy is extremely high for extended periods of time, Agents tend to work harder to clear out the queue.

 

a) II only

b) I and II only

c) II and IV only

d) I, III and IV only

 

5.  Which one of the following statements is true about Adherence to Schedule?

a) Adherence to Schedule measures the actual login time of an Agent compared with the scheduled login time.

b) The percentage of time Agents spend waiting for calls to arrive is the inverse of Adherence to Schedule.

c) When Adherence to Schedule increases, Utilization increases as well.

d) Within the context of Adherence to Schedule, login time does not include time Agents spend in After Call Work.

 

6.  If an Agent arrives 30 minutes late to work at a Contact Center, which of the following actions would benefit the Center the most? Assume the Agent is unable to consult with his/her Team Leader on the most appropriate action.

a)Stay 30 minutes extra at the end of his/her shift.

b) Skip his/her morning and afternoon breaks, each of which is 15 minutes.

c) Come back from his/her hour lunch break 30 minutes early.

d) Take his/her breaks and lunch as normal and leave at his/her scheduled time.

 

7.  Which one of the following statements is FALSE?

a) Measuring the number of calls handled by Agent is a good productivity standard.

b) Adherence to Schedule is typically an important productivity measure for a Contact Centre Agent handling Service Level-based contacts.

c) When Adherence to Schedule improves Service Level improves as well.

d) Most of what drives the Average Handling Time lies outside the control of the Agent

 

8.  The best definition of Time Series forecasting is:

a) A method where the past is a good basis for predicting the future

b) A method which is only used in rare circumstances

c) A method that covers the qualitative side of forecasting

d) A method that does not require judgement

 

9.  Your Call Centre supports email and is expecting 200 email messages to arrive between 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. The Average Handling Time of email messages is 8 minutes.  Your promised response time is 4 hours.  Assuming the Agents can work uninterrupted on these email messages only, which of the following staffing scenarios would meet your response time objective for these email messages?

I. 4 Agents working from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

II. 9 Agents working from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

III. 14 Agents working from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

IV. 40 Agents who each spend at least an hour working on email from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

 

a) II only

b) III and IV only

c) II, III and IV only

d) I, II, III and IV

 

10.  Which of the following are ‘factors’ you need to incorporate in a monthly Agent labor budget?

I. Is my Agent in the building?

II. What is the monthly weighted average Occupancy rate?

III. Is my Agent on a break?

IV. Is my Agent on leave?

 

a) III only

b) I and II only

c) I, II and III only

d) I, II, III and IV

 

Would you like to know how you did?

https://www.omnitouchinternational.com/contact-centre-kpis-the-green-jaguar

If you’d like to know if your answers are correct I’m happy to help.

I’ve intentionally gone ‘low-tech’ here.  There’s no need to register anywhere, set-up an account or pay to access answers.  Your name won’t be added to a mailing list unless you give specific permission for it to be added.

Once you’ve answered all the questions just drop me an email to [email protected]

Let me know the question # and the answer that you chose (either a,b,c or d).  Remember there is only one correct answer for each question.

You can use the following format in your email to me:

  1. a
  2. d
  3. c
  4. c (and so on for all the questions)

I always do my best to answer quickly and let you know which ones you got right and what the right answers are for the one(s) you got wrong.

Of course taking a few specific know-how questions won’t fully reflect the experience and effort that have gone into your Contact Center management work.

But it helps to know that it takes more than passion and experience to succeed in the industry.

And it’s the folks who have that know how, combined with their passion & experience, who create great outcomes for their Center.  And that’s good for everyone.

Good luck with the questions!

Daniel Ord

[email protected]

 

 

 

What Conway Twitty taught me about Agent resilience

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

How the popular country music Artist, Conway Twitty, taught me a life-long lesson about Agent resilience in the Contact Center.

 

What do I mean by Agent resilience?

Here’s a useful definition of resilience –

The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, toughness.

Contact Center folks at the Frontline are always going through a lot. Constant changes in the work environment, unhappy Customers, stressed Bosses.

So while the topic of resilience is always relevant, it has a special resonance in the Customer Service industry.

The capacity for Contact Center Agents to recover from difficulties.

Here’s a lesson I learned very early in my Contact Center management career.

 

The lesson

Early in my career in the 90s, I was Vice President of Call Centre & Distribution Operations for Heartland Music.  Based in Los Angeles, it was the job that got me into the Contact Center & Customer Experience industry.

Heartland ran TV commercials and mailed out catalogues to millions of Customers across the US.

TV commercials and catalogues that featured titles like ‘All the Elvis Presley’ hits you need to own or the ‘Top 100 Love Songs’ of all time.

Customers then called into our Contact Centers to place orders which we packaged and shipped from our own warehouses.  And of course we provided Customer Service as well – anything from suggestions on what titles we should stock to ‘where is my order ‘enquiries.

It was a big and growing business.

 

So how does Conway Twitty fit into Agent resilience (and who was he?)

Country music was a big part of our offerings.  And country music fans were generally sweet, loyal and supportive.

And though it sounds a bit macabre, whenever a popular Artist that we carried passed away, there would always be a marked and sudden upsurge in sales for their work.

That’s still the same case today – though it’s reflected these days by increases in streaming figures vs. how many ‘units’ were sold.

And an Artist passing way was an event that a Workforce Manager couldn’t really plan for.

We relied on our own internal back-up plans and a strong committed Agent workforce to get through most of our unexpected surges.

But Conway Twitty was the surge to end all surges.

An American country music singer, he also recorded rock and roll, R&B and pop music. And he received several Country Music Association awards for duets with Loretta Lynn – another beloved country music star.

I don’t remember which day of the week it was, but when I entered the office, our Operations Manager made a beeline straight for me.

‘Dan, Conway Twitty died.’

That’s all Frank had to say.  We’d both been around enough years to shorthand the conversation.

The volume of calls in the Center had already picked up and we knew we were only at the beginning.

CX lessons we can learn from the Contact Centre industry

Six weeks later

I’m not exactly sure why Conway Twitty was different.  But we were now six weeks into the surge and his sales were still going up.

Great for business but not so great for our Agents.

Occupancy was through the roof, hours got longer, and admittedly a few people started to get edgy.

And while we were dealing with normally sweet country music lovers, long wait times and out of stock situations put them on edge too.  Meaning even more frustration for our Agents to deal with.

It ended up being about a 3-month period overall.  Much longer than the normal two or three week ‘lift’ that we had seen before.

 

And here’s what I learned about Agent resilience

My Operations Manager said it to me first.

‘Dan, they’ll be ok. Do you know why?  Because they know there is light at the end of the tunnel. 

What to look for when you hire a new Contact Centre Manager

The light at the end of the tunnel

If you’ve been a fair boss,  you communicate honestly, and you have a management team that’s aligned to the purpose – it’s amazing what your people will give back to you.

And I’ve seen them give back for a year and even more (in some cases).

But the real caveat for Agent resilience is that there is light at the end of the tunnel.  You must be very open & honest about what you’re doing to bring things back to ‘normal’.

Even if what normal looks like coming out doesn’t look exactly like the way it did when going in.

 

Thank you for reading!

Daniel

[email protected]

What to look for when you hire a new Contact Centre Manager

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International 1 Comment

In this article I share what to look for when you hire a new Contact Centre Manager.

Our scenario – you need to hire a new Contact Centre Manager

Let’s say you’re the new Chief Customer Officer and you need to hire a new inbound Contact Centre Manager for your existing 200 seat Centre.  You’ve been given a mandate to implement a CX strategy and you have a small CX Team at hand.

You don’t come from the Contact Centre industry yourself.  But as a CX professional you understand the value of the Contact Centre.

Your overall business is in good financial shape though the Centre has been somewhat neglected for the past few years.  And tech-wise the Centre has the basic building blocks though there’s room for improvement.

You’ve learned from past experience that the number of years of experience held by the Contact Centre Manager doesn’t correlate to mastery of the job role.  You need someone who ‘knows’ the Contact Centre – not just someone who has spent a lot of time in one.

So the essential question is this – what do you look for when you hire a new Contact Centre Manager?

 

The key domains of know-how required

The job of a Contact Centre Manager is a rich and full one.  And that’s because there’s a lot to know to succeed.

I recommend the following key domains of know-how when looking to hire a new Contact Centre Manager.  Or when you’re looking to upskill a current Manager or Management Team.

1.  Operations & Technology

Includes Centre design, forecasting the workload, calculating staff and resource requirements, selecting the right metrics and ways to measure those metrics, understanding the interrelationships between metrics, understanding the underlying dynamics of the Centre, channel management and the ability to articulate the impact of business decisions on the operation.

In this domain I’d include essential & evolving technology knowledge.  That’s because of the significant impact any technology choice has on the operation with cascading impact on Customers, Employees & the Organization itself.

When I’m asked which domain should come first in the hierarchy I always recommend Operations.  That’s because so much of what happens in a Centre, from how people are managed through to how Customers experience the Centre, flows from strong operations management practices.

How to use the True Calls per Hour Calculation in the Contact Centre

2.  People Management (or the broader ‘Employee Experience’ if you prefer)

This domain includes organizational design, strategic resource planning, hiring & selection, retention & attrition management, training & development, performance management, compensation & incentive strategies, coaching and employee engagement, satisfaction & motivation, career & skills pathing and succession planning.

In this domain, I’d specifically include the design and implementation of the monitoring & coaching process.

For organizations that are evolving into Employee Experience – a big topic today – I’d recommend adding those competencies to this domain.

3.  Leadership & Business Management

From a leadership perspective, this domain includes competencies around the vision, the mission, values (or principles) and development & execution of strategy in the Centre.  It also includes how to build healthy cross-functional relationships and put the Centre front and center on the organizational radar screen.

From a business management perspective, this domain includes the ability to make credible business cases, calculate Contact Centre budgets, calculate ROI and understand change management project management.  I’d add that it’s vital that the Contact Centre Management bring strong financial and analytical skills to the job role.

In my experience, very few Centre Managers have a strong grasp of how to correctly calculate a Contact Centre budget.

If I were conducting a hiring exercise for a Contact Centre Manager I’d ask the candidate to walk me through how they budget for a Centre.  You’ll learn a lot about how much they know (or don’t know) about a Contact Centre operation.

4.  Service Management 

Service Management is the art & science of delivering value to Customers through any channel or combination of channels.  Often times the Contact Centre is at the heart of the Service Management function.

Service Management includes know-how around developing and implementing a Service Delivery Vision, the selection & definition of relevant Quality standards, Quality assurance practices, Customer research practices including service monitoring, Customer communication strategies and the nurturing of a service culture.

And of course it includes a strong & practical understanding of the specific service and relevant sales skills for each channel in use.

The skills for handling a Customer email are different than those for handling a Customer live chat for example.  Omnichannel service requires a different approach than multi-channel service.

And yes – your ever evolving mastery of what are commonly called ‘digital’ channels goes here as well.  That incorporates chat, messaging and to some degree even chatbots as there should be a solid bridge between chatbot-assisted and Agent-assisted service.

I think some folks confuse Service Management with Customer Experience Management.

Service Management very specifically relates to Customer interactions with the brand.  It’s a subset of the overall Customer Experience.

Customer Experience includes product, pricing and every single aspect of the organization from the way the bill looks to how fresh the chicken is in the restaurant.   It’s so much more than a call to the Contact Centre.

With that said, let’s look at the last domain of know-how – Customer Experience Management.

What I learned running 60 classes on CX values and Culture for one Client

 

5.  Customer Experience Management 

There is a ‘real’ Customer Experience Manager job role out there.

And the Contact Centre Manager role is not that role.

The Contact Centre Manager job role – by its very nature – only involves some subset of all Customers (never all Customers), at some point of time (not all points in time) in that specific Customer journey (not all Customer journeys).

If it was really true that the Contact Centre Manager job = the Customer Experience Manager job then why not rebrand every Customer Experience Manager as a Contact Centre Manager?

Because that’s what’s implied. It would have to work both ways to be true.

So you honour the Contact Centre profession when you keep the phrase Contact Centre in your job title. Not when you decide to jump on the rebranding of everything as CX bandwagon.

Sure – the Contact Centre has impact on those Customers who experience that touchpoint. But it’s not the same thing as the perception the Customer has of the entirety of their experience with your brand.

Once you get that – and master your understanding of and contribution to the overall CX – you become a better Contact Centre Manager.

So after that big build up, what does the Contact Centre Manager need to know about CX?  From my perspective, the more the better.

But we need to be careful here.

While having our Contact Centre Manager understand CX as a business discipline is important and helpful to our CX efforts, let’s remember the Contact Centre Manager already has a full-time job.

Just relook at domains of know-how we covered so far.

So it’s likely that much of the actual ‘work’ of CX will be done by the CX Team.

That’s because the CX Team is in the best position to handle activities like VOC research, developing the CX strategy, cross-functional journey mapping. implementing organizational accountability measures and the like.

The CX Team has a higher elevation across functions as well as a broader mandate.

I think that in real life, the Contact Centre Manager has a lot to learn from the Customer Experience Manager with regard to CX.

And I think that the Customer Experience Manager has a lot to learn from the Contact Centre Manager as well.  The Customer Experience Manager will benefit from the rich experience, know-how and Customer insight residing in the Contact Centre.

Ultimately, both roles will work closely together for the benefit of the Centre and the Organization.

CX lessons we can learn from the Contact Centre industry

You don’t have a CX Team?  I see that all the time.

Then it’s likely that you have a ‘Service Quality Team’ or variation.  As is implied in the name, a Service Quality Team tends to focus on service – including research and analytics, high level complaint management and targeted improvement efforts across the organization.

But again – avoid confusing a Service Quality Team with a Customer Experience Team.  The mandate and activities are different – as well as the scope of authority.

For Contact Centre Managers (or anyone) that wants to develop competency in Customer Experience – I recommend the CXPA 6 Competency Framework as a basis.

In that framework, the essential domains of knowledge for CX are CX Strategy, Voice of Customer, Experience Design, CX Metrics & Measurements, Governance and Customer-Centric Culture.

To those domains I add Maturity Analysis & Implementation Strategy as well because I think that’s important.

10 CCXP Exam Practice Questions for Customer Experience Strategy

 

Of course there’s more to consider

Of course when you’re selecting your Contact Centre Manager you will also look at their past track record of success and their ‘characteristics’.  Such as how well they seem to ‘fit’ your culture.

But know-how is an obvious and critical component in the selection process.  And it often takes a backseat to how much ‘experience’ the candidate has.  That’s definitely the wrong way to go.

The key to success will always be KNOW-HOW + EXPERIENCE with DEMONSTRABLE SUCCESS.

 

In closing

I hope this article has been helpful.  It’s a big nut to chew on for sure.  And each heading and domain could be an article or set of articles on its own.

But I hope the high level overview is useful for you.

Thank you for reading!

Daniel

With one foot planted solidly in the Contact Centre industry (29 years!) and the other foot firmly planted in the CX industry I have the ability to connect the dots for people in the Contact Centre that want to understand CX and for folks in CX who want to understand the Contact Centre.

I’m one of 6 Trainers in the world designated as a Recognized Training Provider by the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) and I help people learn more about CX and prepare for their CCXP Exam.

[email protected]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do your Agents really talk too much?

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

In this short article I talk about Agent KPIs in the Contact Centre.

“But Dan…if we don’t have an Average Handling Time target the Agents will talk too much.”

That’s what so many Team Leaders tell me in classrooms.

But I’ve never yet met an Agent who says, “Dan…I go to work and make sure I talk a long time to everyone.”

So where’s the disconnect?

For a lot of Team Leaders it comes down to justifying the KPIs set by management. Because if the big bosses say we have to keep Agents from talking too much there must be some truth to the belief that Agents will talk too much if you give them the chance.

Usually when you dig a little deeper with the Team Leader you find that it’s one person that’s ‘talking too much’.

Not everyone.

So that instance can be analyzed and fixed.

When you set KPIs across a majority population just to catch a few outliers you end up creating barriers to great performance.

Folks in the Centre talk more about what not to do vs. the important work of what to do.

If you really want to know how important Customer Experience is to a Contact Centre – don’t just listen to what the Centre management says. Look at the KPIs they ask their Team Leaders to ‘bring out’ in their Agents.

That’s where the real story lies.

Why are you still talking about Average Handling Time?

 

Daniel

Image by Suju at Pixabay.