Contact Center “best practice” is a term we use often, but I think it’s worth thinking more carefully about what we actually mean by it.
This article is part of our Contact Center Management Series — a collection of articles that bring together practical guidance and insights to help Contact Centers run better and deliver stronger results.
Learn from what others do. Then understand whether it’s right for you.
One of the questions I’m sometimes asked in Contact Center management training is:
“What is the best practice?”
I understand why people ask.
They want to know what good Contact Centers do. They want a benchmark to share with the bosses. They want to know whether the way they are doing something is right.
A best practice is generally understood to be a way of doing something that has proven effective and is considered worth following.
But I’m increasingly uncomfortable with the term best practice.
Because I think the term mixes up two different things.
- Sound Contact Center Management Practices which arise from the underlying dynamics and realities of how Contact Centers operate
- Operational Decisions which determine how we choose to operate within that environment, based on the particular needs of our Organization, Customers, and Employees
There Are Many Sound Management Practices to Learn
Earlier this month I delivered a Contact Center Operations Management class with participants from a variety of organizations.
A subject I’ve taught internationally for the past 25 years.
Over that time, I’ve found that many of the sound Contact Center management practices we cover are things participants simply haven’t learned before.
Even if they’ve been working in a Contact Center for years.
This latest class was no different.
As we went through the course material, I kept a list of the sound Contact Center management practices participants told me they hadn’t known before attending the course.
By the end, the list had 50 line items on it.
That’s not unusual.
Here are just a few:
- Service Level should be measured and managed at an interval level.
- There is a standard mathematical formula you can use to calculate Base Staff for Response Time-based contacts.
- You can’t calculate staffing requirements to meet Service Level with simple proportional math.
- The Pooling Principle teaches us that Advisor group size has a direct impact on Occupancy rates.
- Advisors do not control their own Occupancy rates.
- Much of what drives Average Handling Time is not in the control of the Advisor.
- Number of Contacts Handled is not a valid Advisor performance metric for Service Level-based contacts.
- One Advisor not being available as scheduled can have a disproportionate impact on Service Level performance.
- Average Speed of Answer is a secondary Wait Time metric when Service Level is available.
- Abandonment Rate should be studied and measured but not targeted.
- A Labor Budget isn’t based solely on the number of contacts expected.
None of these are obscure topics.
They’re foundational to being a Contact Center professional.
Sound Management Practices Come First
A Contact Center is an unusual but well understood operating environment.
It’s not a new industry.
Sound management practices aren’t matters of management preference or personal opinion.
They arise from the underlying dynamics and realities of how Contact Centers work.
The Pooling Principle doesn’t stop working because you’re in a different industry. Random arrival doesn’t disappear because your Center is in a different country.
These dynamics exist regardless of how well the people in a Center know and understand them.
Whether your Center is in Colombo, Chicago or Copenhagen, Service Level and Occupancy move in mathematically opposite directions.
Is the Contact Center Industry Maturing?
I see articles and posts that describe how the industry is maturing. That the metrics and practices of the past are being reconsidered.
That may be true for some Centers — but not all.
We shouldn’t talk about the Contact Center industry as if it were a homogeneous entity.
As if all Contact Centers moved in lockstep with each other.
We have clients who learned and implemented sound Contact Center management practices back in 2003, 2005 and 2010.
Their practices became so deeply ingrained that when the time came to add a new channel, deploy new technology, or implement an organizational CX strategy, it all went more smoothly.
Their early adoption of sound Contact Center management practices has paid off.
We’ve also worked with clients who haven’t embraced Service Level planning and management, measure Advisor performance on the wrong things, and hold flawed assumptions that negatively impact Quality.
As you’d expect, their Centers fall much lower on a formal maturity scale.
And that’s so much more than a tick-box rating on a consultant report.
It reflects missed opportunities over years to serve Customers and Employees well and deliver better organizational outcomes.
The people we meet in these Centers are already working to make things better.
They also learn that moving up the maturity scale takes time.
It can take a few years to embed the necessary practices and work through the people development and culture changes that come with them.
This isn’t a judgment. It’s simply a description of reality.
People often fall into the Contact Center industry by accident, and much of what they learn is on the job.
The robustness and quality of what they learn depends largely on the leadership team they work for.
Which is a hit-and-miss way to learn a business discipline.
That was my story when I was a VP of Operations, and why I always have empathy when I teach this subject.
When it comes to formally learning and embracing sound management practices, the rate of adoption looks to me more like the Technology Adoption Life Cycle.
Some Centers were Early Adopters, others followed as the Early or Late Majority, and others still sit in the Laggards category.
The Contact Center industry isn’t maturing as one entity.
Individual Centers are on their own maturity journeys.
Now Let’s Turn to Operational Decisions
Understanding sound management practices helps us make better operational decisions.
Many of which will be unique to our Center.
But operational decisions shouldn’t be random or based solely on someone’s opinion.
They still require sound professional know-how and judgment.
Let’s look at some examples:
Should your Service Level be the “industry standard” 80/20?
Maybe.
For many, probably not.
Our high-end hotel clients would gasp at how slow 80/20 is for their guests who book a $1,000 per night room.
The same gasp might be heard at courier services taking bookings or airlines and cruise lines serving premium passengers.
What matters to these clients is the wait time experience they’ve determined is appropriate for their Customers and the resources they are prepared to commit to achieve it — not a best practice or industry standard.
Tech-support clients who serve internal employees might tell us they don’t need to commit the level of resources required to achieve 80/20. A lower Service Level objective may be perfectly appropriate for them.
Because while the planning and management process for achieving Service Level may be remarkably similar across Centers, the right Service Level objective for one Contact Center may be completely inappropriate for another.
What time interval should you select for Service Level planning and management?
In a small Tokyo-based Center with 16 Advisors, we saw planning and management intervals set at an hourly level.
At the Manila headquarters of a global BPO, planning and management intervals were set at 15 minutes.
But these aren’t examples of best practices.
These are operational decisions based on a solid understanding of sound Contact Center management practices and professional judgment.
How do you interview new Frontline professionals?
I’ve seen Centers use panel interviews very effectively.
They design structured behavioural interview questions, rotate questions among the panel, and score those questions together at the end of each interview.
Other Centers approach the interview process differently, using individual interviewers, role plays, assessments or some combination of these.
This is exactly where learning what other Contact Centers do can be helpful.
Someone from another Center shares a particular interview question, assessment tool or panel approach that makes you think, We could use that.
Great.
Learning from others is valuable.
But learning what another Contact Center does isn’t the same as declaring what they do a best practice.
What they do and why they do it may or may not be right for you.
Sometimes the Question Is the Problem
When sound management practices are not understood, Contact Center professionals sometimes ask the wrong questions.
For example:
“What’s the best practice for Abandonment Rate?”
If by that someone means, “What Abandonment Rate should we target?”, the answer isn’t 3%, 5% or 18%.
The correct answer is more fundamental. There isn’t a best-practice percentage.
Abandonment Rate is a human behaviour — it lies mainly in the hands of your Customers.
It’s driven by many factors, including the motivation of the Customer and how well you manage Customer Wait Time.
And I urge caution when reading benchmark reports. Those figures are derived from only those who participated.
We’ve worked with very well-run Centers that choose not to participate in benchmark studies at all.
By all means, study and measure your Abandonment Rate. There are some very useful approaches to doing this.
But don’t look for a best practice number.
Similarly:
“What’s the best-practice trade-off between Service Level and Quality?”
The entire premise of the question is wrong.
Service Level and Quality aren’t inherently opposing objectives.
Or:
“What’s the best practice for how many calls an Agent should handle?”
Number of Contacts Handled isn’t an appropriate Agent performance target when we’re talking about Service Level-based contacts.
Understanding sound management practices changes the questions we ask in the first place.
Before You Jump In to Solve a Problem
Without realizing it, we can default to adding new things when we look to solve a problem.
Let’s say we want to improve Advisor well-being — an important topic.
We might begin with a list of on-site wellness programs, new employee benefits, and other initiatives.
But sound Contact Center management guides us to look first at the system in which Advisors operate.
- Are we staffing appropriately?
- Are Occupancy Rates regularly too high or low?
- Have we prepared our Agents for the more complex and emotional interactions they face today?
- Do we allow for easy schedule change requests and swaps?
- Are we measuring Advisor performance on the right metrics?
- Are we clear about the kind of Quality we aim to deliver?
- Do we train Team Leaders appropriately to lead a team of Frontline professionals?
Start with the things that impact their daily experience of work. Then consider what else might contribute to well-being.
Just remember: You can’t compensate for poor Contact Center management practices by implementing a well-being initiative.
What I Will Never Do
I won’t ever write a list of 20 Contact Center best practices.
That strikes me as largely unhelpful.
Because without context about the Center, its purpose and how it fits into the overall organization, one or more of those 20 best practices could absolutely be the wrong thing to do for your Center.
I could give you a list of 20 sound Contact Center management practices.
But that’s not helpful either.
A disconnected list of management practices won’t help people master Contact Center management.
I’ve learned from teaching this topic over the decades that it takes structure, narrative, and plenty of examples and stories to help people understand sound Contact Center management practices.
The next time you hear someone say best practice, think it over for yourself.
Are they talking about a sound Contact Center management practice, an operational decision, or something else entirely?
Because knowing what someone else does isn’t nearly as useful as knowing why it might or might not be right for you.
Continue Exploring
15 Quiz Questions on Contact Center Operations (Part 1)
Contact Center KPIs and the Green Jaguar
Help Your Contact Centre Team Leaders Do Better — Part 1
Thank You for Reading
I regularly share stories, strategies, and insights from our work across Contact Centers, Customer Service, and Customer Experience. If this article resonated with you, I’d be pleased to stay connected.
Feel free to get in touch anytime, or explore more of our work below.
Daniel Ord
[email protected]
www.omnitouchinternational.com
