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How to learn more about Customer Experience and prepare for certification

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

This article is about how to learn more about Customer Experience and prepare for Customer Experience certification.

I share my experience helping thousands of Contact Centre & Customer Service professionals obtain industry certification and how those learnings apply to Customer Experience certification today.

Customer Experience certification

If you decide to pursue the Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) Certification, there’s an important caveat.

You must apply to take the exam.

The following text is taken directly from the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) website:

Eligibility
“Anyone with a bachelor’s degree and three years of full-time CX-specific work experience is eligible to take the exam. An alternate pathway to eligibility is a high school diploma (or equivalent) and five years of full-time CX-specific work experience.”

Preparing for the Exam
“The Certified Customer Experience Professional exam is a 100-question test administered at convenient testing sites around the world.  Eligible candidates should not need training or studying.”

That last sentence really struck me (highlighting is my own).

That last sentence implies that folks who successfully apply to take the exam will – by dint of experience – be able to pass the exam.

That there is no need to prepare for Customer Experience certification.

But passing a certification exam – purely by dint of experience – has not been my experience.

Let me explain.

Ten years of Contact Centre certification exams

Over the course of 10 years, I helped thousands of individuals around the world prepare to take the rigorous Call Centre Industry Advisory Council (CIAC) certification exams.

CIAC was comprehensive and targeted to the senior level.

The certification involved:

  • No book, no notes, proctored examinations
  • (4) domains of knowledge including Operations Management, People Management, Customer Relationship Management and Leadership & Business Management
  • 60 – 100 complex multiple choice questions for each one of the 4 domains of knowledge (so 4 exams in total)
  • Certification processes managed and awarded by a reputable non-profit association

And here’s what I learned from that long and rich experience.

The folks who attended our various workshops and subsequently passed the exams were smart, experienced leaders in the industry.

They were committed to growing and demonstrating their expertise.

And it didn’t matter whether they were from Hong Kong or Houston.

They shared that their ability to pass each exam was based on a combination of their experience + formalized know-how.

Both mattered.

The valued both, they benefited from both and they felt they could confidently apply both back at work.

Experience + Know-How.

I’d argue that this same formula applies to prepare for Customer Experience certification as well.

How I went from Contact Centre amateur to Contact Centre professional

The 3 Personas to prepare for Customer Experience certification

I see 3 Personas related to taking and passing a Customer Experience certification exam.

Persona 1:  A working professional who is likely to be approved to take the CCXP exam and who is likely to pass the exam without too much effort or study.

I’d argue that Persona 1 is the rare bird across the 3 presented.

I’d list many Consultants (including myself) in this group.

Persona 2:  A working professional who is likely to be approved to take the CCXP exam, but lacks exposure, experience or know-how around some of the competency areas.

Given the breadth of Customer experience know-how across the required (6) domains of knowledge that’s to be expected.

My advice for these folks is to review the competency blueprint and self-diagnose on areas of strength & weakness.

Books, webinars, articles, networking forums are all relevant solutions to close gaps.

And of course, if desired, a structured workshop that covers the competency blueprint.

Customer Experience is a big topic.  Using a structured framework for your learning helps.

If you simply watch 10 webinars, read 5 books and follow 20 Linkedin articles, without a framework, you may find the overall experience confusing.

Persona 3:  A working professional who is unlikely to be approved to take the CCXP exam, perhaps in Contact Centre or Customer Service (or other discipline!) looking to level up into Customer experience but lacks exposure, experience or know-how around competency areas required in the exam.

The person who works to proactively prepare themselves for the next step in their career.

In the Customer Experience world, they might be someone who’s currently in Customer Service or Contact Centre management, looking to make the move to Customer Experience.

My advice

My advice for these folks is to review the competency blueprint, self-diagnose on areas of exposure (or lack of exposure) and work with your boss to see how you can get real hands-on experience in that area.

And one of my favorite bits of career advice for this group in particular is:

Run to trouble.

By that I mean, step forward and see how you can help your Organization solve some kind of Customer experience problem.

There will never be a shortage of Customer Experience problems!

You’ll gain exposure and build a reputation as a problem solver.

And as with Persona 2, remember that a structured approach helps.

The volume of information and know-how around Customer Experience can be overwhelming – especially when you’re first starting out.

A structured workshop could be helpful to clarify competency areas and explain concepts – even if the actual certification process comes further down the road.

In the Customer Experience industry there is an added challenge

The tendency for organizations to rebrand job descriptions with the words ‘Customer Experience’ creates an added challenge.

Especially when the underlying job responsibilities and scope don’t change.

Someone once wrote to me that all Contact Centres should be rebranded as Customer Experience Centres.

I heartily disagree.

Yes – Contact Centres contribute to the overall Customer Experience – sometimes mightily so.

But in and of themselves they don’t represent the entirety of the Customer Experience.

You can point to a dog and call it a cat all you want. But that doesn’t make it so.

What you end up with are a lot of folks who have Customer Experience in their job title, don’t actually work in Customer Experience and who lack fundamental Customer Experience know-how.

Not a great hallmark for the Customer Experience industry.

It might be stretching it – but if you have Customer Experience in your job title, you’d best consider putting a recognized certification behind that.

In closing

I hope this short article has been helpful.

As with anything worth learning and doing – remember that it is about the journey and not just the destination.

We offer both a 2-day CCXP Exam Preparation Workshop and online CCXP Practice Quizzes that can help.

CCXP Practice Quizzes

All the very best in your Customer Experience journey and as you prepare for Customer Experience certification.

Daniel

Daniel Ord

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Getting a handle on Abandonment Rate in the Contact Centre

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

Recently, a Call Centre benchmarking report made the rounds, stating that the industry standard  average abandonment rate was 12%.

It could have said 22%, 2% or even 82% and the report still wouldn’t have been that helpful.

But it was the long thread of comments that struck me.

The tone ranged from mild annoyance – “This just can’t be…The sample size is too small…How do they calculate…” – through to the kind of responses you’d expect from an extinction level event and return of the dinosaurs.

“They should all lose their jobs!…You have to be where your Customers are!…Off with their heads!”  (ok that last one was mine).

If your Centre generates revenue – you can stop reading now

Clearly, if you’re in the revenue generation business – abandonment rate matters – a lot.

We had a Client in the hospitality business that calculated that every 1% increase in abandonment rate represented a potential US$1,000,000 in lost hotel bookings worldwide.

So if you’re DHL, a major hotel chain or even McDonalds delivery – and your Customers still call you to place orders – you have to care.

But if you’re in Technical Support or Customer Care, the importance of Abandonment Rate on the overall performance dashboard is secondary at best.

You are invited to read on.

The best & primary metric to measure the Customer’s wait time experience?  Service Level

Mastery of interval based Service Level performance is where your control lies.

The process for planning and managing Frontline resources to ensure consistent wait time experiences for Customers is well understood and well documented.

Whether you’re 90/10, 80/30 or 70/160, having the right number of people in the right place at the right time is the objective.

That’s how organizations plan for and manage labor cost as well as deliver a consistent Customer experience for wait time.

Intervals matter

Most mid to larger Centres plan, staff and manage down to hourly, half-hourly and even 15 minute intervals.

If the Service Level goes down during any interval – let’s say from 10:00 – 10:30 in the example shown here – the Customer wait time during that interval increases.

And as Customer wait time increases – that’s likely to have an impact on the Abandonment Rate for that interval.

Makes sense doesn’t it.

If I don’t perform to my Service Level objectives then my Customer Wait time goes up, and my Abandonment Rate will likely go up too.

In this situation, you don’t have an Abandonment Rate issue – you have a Service Level issue.

When your Service Level life is good

Operations professionals know that when interval-based Service Level is well managed, there are significant positive impacts across Quality, Engagement and the Customer Experience.

And when your Service Level objectives are being met – interval after interval – then my inner operations guru reminds me that Abandonment Rate will be what it will be.  

Abandonment Rate flows from a combination of your Service Level performance – which is in your control – and your Customer behaviour – which is not.

Let’s make one point very clear.

An accurate discussion on Abandonment – whether yours or that of others – has to be predicated on the understanding that interval-based Service Level objectives are being met.

If they’re not being met, then you need to have an entirely different conversation.

I’m not sure that any of these ‘benchmarking’ studies makes that prerequisite clear.  And that limits their effectiveness.

Back to revenue generating Centres for a moment

If you’re in revenue generation you have to care.  Abandonment costs potential revenue.

But what the smart folks in revenue generation do is set very high Service Level objectives.

Then they work hard to meet them interval after interval.

95/5, 90/10, 100/15 – this level of Service Level objectives is typically associated with revenue generating Centres – or those that deal with life & death or mission critical issues.

Sure – more Staff will be required.

Through the use of ‘incremental revenue analysis’, the additional cost of labor is calculated and measured against revenue gained through the reduction in Abandonment Rate (via quicker answering times).

That was a mouthful.

Customers & Abandonment rate

For non-revenue generating Centres we need to consider – what are the drivers of Customers hanging up before reaching the Agent?

Here are some common drivers:

  • Degree of importance – how important is it for me to get this done ‘right now’?
  • Time available to wait – am I calling from work where my time is limited?  Or am I calling from the comfort of my easy chair when I’m home?
  • What other options do I have? – can I get what I want from the website?  Perhaps the mobile app?  Did you share an alternative method on your delay announcement?  
  • What kind of mood am I in? – Relaxed? Impatient?  Calm? Anxious?
  • What are my expectations?  – Am I a VIP?  Is this a premiere line?  Do I hold some special status?

When I work with Contact Centre management in classes I ask – “Is Abandonment Rate a mathematical behavior?  Or is it a human behaviour?”

Invariably, they answer correctly.

Abandonment Rate is a human behaviour.

It lies in the hands of the Customer – what they want or need at that moment, their mood, their options, their expectations.

What I can control is how well I plan, staff and manage to meet my Service Level objective interval after interval.

What I can’t control is their mood, their unique expectations, what options we offer for digital self-care.

But you do have a viable option

If you are still unhappy about the ‘level’ or number of abandoned calls you receive – you can choose to raise your Service Level objective.

Go from 80/20 to 90/20.

Do the delay profile analysis against abandonment rate patterns to see how many abandons you can possibly do away with.

I’ve even seen Centres proactively raise their Service Level objective for certain intervals across the day.

You just have to ask yourself a classic trade-off question.

Is the increased cost of my labor pool justified by the reduction in Abandonment Rate? 

Or more generically:  Does the benefit exceed the cost?

Not a simple question to answer – but absolutely the right question to ask.

Let’s get formal about it

There are a lot of metrics in a Centre – and some great ways to look at how to classify them and understand their inter-relationships.

Formally, Abandonment Rate is best classified as a secondary measure of Wait Time.

Wait Time:  Because along with metrics like Service Level, Response Time, Longest Wait Time and Average Speed of Answer, Abandonment Rate reflects wait time.

Secondary:  Some metrics are drivers, some metrics are outcomes.   Abandonment Rate is an outcome of the ‘driver’ of Service Level.

You can’t achieve a Service Level objective and an Abandonment Rate objective at the same time – simply because one is a driver and the other is an outcome.

You tell me you can?  That you are?   That you have been for some time?

Then you’re just lucky.

The targets set just happened to work out.  There’s nothing scientific going on here.

What interests me more

The most mature organizations – again in Customer Care & Technical Support – look at Abandonment Rate this way.

They say things like:

  • Wee don’t target Abandonment Rate – but we study it.
  • We look for and find patterns to Abandonment Rate – we know which intervals across the day tend to experience higher or lower rates of abandonment when achieving Service Level.
  • We don’t just study how many abandons we get, nor even the percentage – we like to study the distribution.  Do most hang up in the first 15 seconds or so?  What percentage of abandonment comes after 3 minutes (for example) vs. less than 3 minutes?
  • We’re experimenting with our messaging to understand if our messages contribute to abandonment (which can be good!) or if we need to change the timing or positioning of such messages to try and influence abandonment.

Agents & Abandonment rate

No – your Agents don’t control Abandonment rate – sorry but that’s just silly.

When you use accepted practices to calculate and schedule the number of Agent you need in place to achieve a predetermined Service Level and those Agents are actually there, logged in and part of Capacity – they’re contributing to Service Level performance. 

I met a Client some years back, that intentionally managed their Centre based on Abandonment Rate as a primary metric – not Service Level.

But focus groups with Middle Management and the Frontline revealed the level of extreme stress these folks experienced.

Because you can’t plan and staff to Abandonment Rate – it’s driven by Customer/human behavior.  And that behaviour that fluctuates from interval to interval, day to day.

So they operated like a fire-fighting outfit – chasing constant flare-ups in abandoned calls.

How stressful.  And ultimately not the right way to achieve Customer Experience.

In closing

One of the most important tenets of Customer Experience is to deliver a consistent experience.

In the Contact Centre, Service Level (and Response Time) are the best measures of delivering a consistent wait time experience.

Smart operations folks know not to chase outcomes – but to work on the drivers.

Abandonment Rate is a secondary measure of Wait Time.  It flows from Service Level performance.

And when you’re meeting what you can control –  the Service Level performance – the abandoned calls you get are reflections of Customer/human behaviour.

They change from interval to interval, day to day, month to month and year to year.

If you’re not happy with the level of abandoned calls you receive, you can raise your Service Level completely – or just select certain interval where abandonment happens most often.

Not all abandoned calls are bad.

If a Customer chooses to hang up and use one of my self-care or digital options that can reflect success in my digital uptake strategy.

As long as I’m not ‘pushing’ the Customer to digital self-care by providing a poor Wait Time experience (Service Level).  That’s clearly not ok.

Lastly, the Frontline job is hard enough, and getting harder.  Don’t layer on an abandoned calls objective or target on your Frontline.

It’s not only inappropriate from an operations standpoint – it makes the job of human to human service unnecessarily more stressful.

Thank you for reading!

Daniel

[email protected] / www.omnitouchinternational.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How I went from Contact Centre amateur to Contact Centre professional

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

This article is about how I went from being a Contact Centre amateur to a Contact Centre professional.

I’ve been on a nearly 30 year journey to become a Contact Centre professional.

And in this very personal article I share some of the highlights of that journey.

My purpose in writing this is two-fold:

  1. To share what I’ve learned that may be of help to others
  2. To answer questions that I get from Participants & Clients about my background

I hope you find something helpful in my story.

I entered the industry completely by accident – didn’t you?

By education I’m a Management Accountant (from the University of California) and after graduation I began running accounting functions within organizations.

I loved the work.

In the early 90s I ended up managing the accounting function for a large direct marketing firm that operated both Call Centre & Distribution operations.

Heartland Music

We were based in Los Angeles, California.

The VP, Operations, Janice – who came with some experience – developed and led the Centre & the Distribution Operations.

For myself, in addition to the normal financial duties (such as statement preparation), I got to do things like design Cost per Order, Cost per Call and various Financial models for her and the Marketing Team.

I was lucky – Janice was a sharer.  She was a Contact Centre professional.

She taught me a lot about how to run an operation. And for me it was motivating to feel so deeply involved with Customer Service & Operations.

We got along famously.

After a couple of years she tendered her resignation to join another firm.

Two hours after her resignation was announced, I got a call from the CEO.

The conversation went along the lines of “Dan, you know the numbers.  You’ve helped refine our operation from that side of things.  You’re also well liked and respected.  What do you think about taking up the position that Janice just vacated?”

Now I’m not sure where I learned this – but I always say yes to opportunity (thanks Mom & Dad).

So, without any specific operations background, I moved horizontally from VP, Finance to VP, Operations.

A famous Richard Branson quote comes up at this point of telling the story. 

Saying yes transformed my life.

And in my work around the world, most Contact Center leaders tell me that they too – through circumstance and happenstance – ended up in the industry by accident.

When you step back and think about it – that’s quite a unique scenario for an industry that demands mastery across many important and varied responsibilities.

And one of its Achilles’ Heels as you’ll see.

I loved my Operations career

The most obvious difference between Finance & Operations, was the ability to impact the lives of so many more people.

All of a sudden I had a large staff of Team Leaders and Agents in the Contact Centre and Warehousing folks in Distribution Centre (not to mention millions of Customers).

Fortunately, I wasn’t a stranger to these folks and I believe they were rooting for me to succeed.

And over the next years I did.

We grew and grew and I was part of two acquisitions to the company that tapped on both my finance & operations sides.

As I look back now, I attribute most of my success in my ‘operations’ jobs to the talent & calibre of the Team Leaders and Managers who handled the day in and day out work.

I always say that life gets easier as you go up the ladder.

Because they did their jobs so well, I could spend more time with IT, with Finance, with Marketing.  I could travel and do acquisitions.  I could help plan for the future.

And in our business, I never experienced ‘silos’ or silo mentality.

Our Marketing folks spent days in the Call Centre each month listening to calls and learning what worked – and didn’t work – for the Customers who bought our products.

The entire management team believed in ‘Voice of Customer’ and grabbing hold of ‘unsolicited feedback’ even before those terms had been coined.

Admittedly our survey process was light to non-existent.  But codifying and actioning Customer feedback was a norm.

We kept growing and growing up until we were acquired.

The story of that acquisition by a larger firm, having my job eliminated and then figuring out what to do next is for another post.

In 1998 I ended up in Singapore – in 2001 I opened my Contact Centre & Service consultancy

After years of working in inbound, outbound and outsourced Centres, I took the leap and set up my own company at the ripe old age of 39.

OmniTouch International

OmniTouch opened in Singapore in 2001 and we began work with our two first Clients – The Economist Magazine, Singapore and Maxis Mobile, Malaysia.

Over the months, word of our work spread quickly and we were packed doing a lot of Frontline training for Contact Centre Agents across many organizations.

Daniel Ord, Marcus von Kloeden, OmniTouch International

We were also running a number of regional Mystery Shopper programs as well.  That was by design.

When I set up the company we had intentionally diversified our offerings so that Clients could choose between training or Mystery Shopper research.

But despite our growth, I realized that doing what was essentially Customer Service training – even with a solid Contact Centre background – was not sustainable in the long run.

Clients had started asking questions further up the value chain.

What can you teach our Managers? How do we set up a Centre?  How do we know if we are operating based on the right KPIs?  What’s the right way to forecast?  To coach? How do I prepare an accurate budget?  How do I explain all of this to my boss?  

So despite our early success in our first couple of years, I admit that I still felt like a Contact Centre amateur.

My years of senior experience – though valuable and rewarding – had not equipped me to confidently answer these questions.

I think that’s part of the downside of falling into an industry by accident.  I lacked the formal education around the Contact Centre eco-system.

This situation is more common than people care to admit.

So I decided to do something about it – to become a Contact Centre professional – not just someone with experience

I think it was in early 2003 that we found an ad in the back of a Contact Centre industry magazine.

A new industry certification had been set up in the U.S.  It looked promising.

What I very much liked about the certification was that it didn’t just cover operations – though that was critical.

It addressed the people aspects, the leadership aspects and even the customer relationship aspects – a complete ecosystem approach.

That appealed to me.  And I believed it would appeal to Clients in the markets where I worked as well.

I rang up the Director of the Association based in Nashville and she pointed me to 3 possible Business Partners in the U.S. who could assist us in our quest.

One firm, headed up by a University Professor, was based in California and after chatting with him on the phone, I booked myself and a colleague from Singapore to California.

For 3 weeks we lived at his large hilltop home.

Mondays – Fridays we had private full day sessions with him (just we two).

First we went through a vast array of material as Students – with required exams.  Then we went through the material again from the perspective of Facilitators.

It was a terrific self-development experience.  We would sit around his kitchen table at night and debate things like how to measure Agent performance.

The investment I made – which I saw as very strategic – was about USD$40,000.   But I knew we were on the right track.

By the time I got back to Singapore I felt much less like an amateur.

Eventually we shifted over to working with ICMI

After we got back to Singapore a weakness began to show up in our Professor.

He was so busy with his teaching and other responsibilities that he was unable to carry on and finish all the courses we were after.

On our side we didn’t have the luxury to wait after our initial investment. USD$40,000 had been spent – so we had to move forward.

I went back to the Director of the Association in Nashville, explained our situation and she then put us in touch with ICMI.

That was a fortuitous move.

I flew back to the U.S., concluded the discussions with the ICMI Team, signed the agreements and began an inspiring journey into becoming part of a global team of what were called ICMI Certified Associates and Global Partners.

To achieve this distinction involved passing various examinations and having my facilitation style videoed and analyzed to ensure that the appropriate standards of delivery and mastery were in place.

This wasn’t a one off activity.  It took place over multiple conferences and events – many in the U.S. – some outside the U.S.

I think that first check I wrote – of the many that we wrote over the years – was for USD$80,000 or so. I saw this as an investment in myself, our Team and our company.

To become a Contact Centre professional.

If you’re in the knowledge business you have to be at the top of your game.

Our relationship deepened

As our relationship with ICMI deepened we began co-creating courses.  One of my favorite projects was developing a complete Frontline Certification program for a telecoms Client in India.

I found I loved to write courseware – something that I have a passion for to this day.

As consulting jobs came up, Certified Associate resources would be deployed from the geographical locations that made the most sense.

I traveled and did onsite training and consulting for a number of Contact Centres across the US, Europe and the Middle East.  My company back in Singapore was flourishing and growing.

I let my colleagues also pursue their certifications regardless of cost.  It was the right thing to do.

Finally, in 2006, after a particularly successful engagement – and after nearly 15 years in the industry – I looked into a hotel mirror (in New Delhi I think) and said to myself – yes, now you’re a Contact Centre professional.

You’ve got to keep your eye on what’s next

Writing now, after that pivotal moment in New Delhi when I gave myself the permission to call myself a Contact Centre professional, I’ve continued to adapt and grow with the industry.

For many years we brought experts from the U.S. over to Asia to share on survey design, Customer experience, workforce management and more.

I was able to attend some of their courses 5 or even 6 times over the years which was always an honor.  I picked up something new each time.

We also listen carefully to Clients – at the end of the day they bring you in to solve problems or to create opportunities – whether those are ‘evergreen’ or new.

From this listening we developed and launched courses for both Live Chat and Social Media because channel preferences were changing.

We launched a complete middle management series specifically for Contact Centres because we found that the job role was underserved,

Judging industry Awards around the world has also been a terrific way to keep up with what’s happening out there.

In 2007, after years of focusing exclusively on Contact Centres we pivoted our work into Customer Experience.

That year, we changed our mission to what remains today – “We help & inspire Participants and the Organizations they work for to create great experiences”.

And we backed that up by moving heavily into the Customer Experience space – including offering CX & CX certification courses along with our Customer Service & Contact Centre offerings.

At the end of the day, you need experience – and you need formal know how

Someone at a senior level wrote to me recently and said – “Oh Dan, the industry is already very mature…”

But that comment made me a bit sad.  I don’t think it’s true.

Years of experience do not equal mastery – much less maturity. Practice doesn’t make perfect – it makes permanent.

You’ve got to make the investment to learn how to navigate complex eco-systems – whether that’s the Contact Centre or Customer Experience (which is clearly much bigger).

Especially if you fell into the industry by accident, or have worked for only one or two organizations.

Maybe you don’t have to spend as much money as I have. But you need to make a solid effort.

Attend the conferences, go to the trainings, read the books, watch the videos.  Enter Awards.

In a world that’s ever changing – I’ve found that continually saying yes to myself and investing in myself and the people I work with – has never let me down.

Thank you for reading this very personal article.

Daniel

[email protected] / www.omnitouchinternational.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What you need to know about the Pooling Principle in Contact Centers

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

This article is about understanding Contact Centre productivity and how the Pooling Principle impacts how ‘busy’ Agents are when they are signed in.

It’s Monday morning and the calls are pouring in.

But you planned well and you’ve got the right Agent capacity in place.

For the morning interval of 9:00AM to 9:30AM, here’s what your stats look like using a simple Erlang C calculator:

Erlang C Example

Your Service Level objective is 80/30.

Based on a Talk Time of 4 minutes, an After Call Work time of 2 minutes and a volume of 1,000 calls, you require 209 Agents to login and be part of capacity so that you can achieve your 80/30.

All good.

Now let’s look at the Occupancy stats for this interval

In this same scenario, you can see that the Occupancy Rate – which is an outcome or result – stands at 96%.

Simply put – that means during this 30 minute interval, your Agents are talking or doing their after call work for 29 minutes.

That means that they will experience only 1 minute of Available Time over the course of that half hour (not much).

What about calls handled per Agent?

Well – if we are receiving 1,000 calls distributed across 209 Agents that works out to an average of 4.8 calls per Agent for that interval (using simple math).

Occupancy is a high level of Contact Centre productivity – telling us how busy Agents were when they were signed in.

Same Contact Center – later that same day

In this Center, the workload drops significantly in the afternoon.

For the afternoon interval of 4:00PM to 4:30PM, here’s what your stats look like using a simple Erlang C calculator:

Erlang C Example

Read more

A Culture of Fear & Compliance are poor tools for delivering a great Customer experience

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

This article proposes that a culture of fear and compliance are poor tools for delivering a great Customer Experience.

In the markets where I work most often, compliance still rules in Customer interactions.

Say this, wear that – act like this, act like that.

One of my students – who had worked as a concierge in a high-end Singapore shopping centre – told us that every morning their boss would line them up and critique all aspects of their grooming.

He told us the experience was a fearful one – and Team Members would begin their shift with a nagging unpleasant feeling.

Another student shared that they had been instructed to say, “Will you allow me to put you on hold?” vs. “May I put you on hold?”

It was never made clear why this use of language was so important to the Customer experience.

But there was a team of eagle-eared Quality Assurance analysts who fixated on language use and tidings of woe to the Team Member who in some way mixed up the verbiage.

 

Sure, compliance has its place – but not when it takes on Darth Vader-like proportions

Recently I had a meeting with a high-end hospitality company.

The course under discussion was how to help Team Members better interact with high-end VIP Guests through conversational engagement.

The challenge was that Team Members were either silent, monosyllabic or overly formal in the presence of ‘high rollers’.

The position I took was that in order to create a better Customer experience for these Guests, it was going to be necessary to back-off a bit on the compliance – and by association the culture of fear.

Perhaps it was time to allow for greater flexibility.

The whole room went silent.

You would have thought I had just ordered a double bacon cheeseburger in a vegetarian restaurant.

All eyes turned to the Senior in the room.

After a long pause, the Senior intoned that compliance was the most important aspect of their Service delivery and with that, I knew the conversation was over.

A culture of fear had shown itself.

I worry that to this day, these folks would rather look at their shoes than engage conversationally with a Guest.

 

Branding & the Customer experience

It is completely understandable that an organization would aim to live its brand promise.

The right opening, the right phrases, the right ‘look’ all matter.

They have their place in overall quality initiatives.

The problem comes in when these behaviors – and discussion around these behaviors – crowd out discussion about what’s really important.

It is well understood that what matters most in CX delivery is the Customer’s perception or ‘feeling’ about what they went through.

Clearly no Customer is going to get all excited about your greeting – or the fact that your Staff’s socks matched the color of their shoes.

When it comes to compliance, there’s very little opportunity to differentiate the experience.

But if you really consider your brand promises – either explicit or implicit – along with your values, mission, vision and the like – there’s a lot of rich context to develop powerful CX standards for conversation.

Let’s ask

The moment the Team begins to ask themselves – ‘What can we do to exceed the Customer’s emotional expectations’ for this kind of visit, call, email, live chat and so on’ – well that’s where the magic lives.

Thanks for reading!

Daniel Ord

Daniel Ord

 

 

 

 

It’s time to relook at the Contact Centre Outsourcer relationship

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

As pressure to deliver a better Customer experience increases, more Organizations are relooking at their  Contact Centre Outsourcer relationship.

And their hands are often tied by ineffective, outdated outsourcing agreements signed years earlier.

The serious Client – can you help us look at our Contact Centre Outsourcer?

Over the past year we’ve had about 1 – 2 inquiries per month along the lines of –

“Hey Dan, can you help us relook at our Contact Centre Outsourcer contract or Outsourcer performance?”

Most came from Organizations who wanted to up the game of their Outsourcer.

But they found their hands tied by poorly designed outsourcing contracts.

It’s tough to be locked into an existing outsourcing contract that was designed and executed years earlier.  

And by colleagues who are long gone or in different roles.

Some of these folks told me that when they approached their Contact Centre Outsourcer to ask questions, the Outsourcer replied – That’s not in the contract.”

Oh dear.

These Contact Centre Outsourcers shouldn’t be surprised that when the contract is up, the Client finds a new provider.

Some Organizations don’t want to be in the Contact Centre business

A few of these inquiries came from organizations where the folks in charge of the outsourcing relationship don’t seem to be happy about it.

The common thread to their situation was that ‘handling the Contact Centre Outsourcer’ was just one of their overall job responsibilities.

And likely the one that caused the most headaches and for which they were the least equipped.

I’d worry if I worked somewhere where Contact Centre or Customer Experience was seen as so simple that it could just be one of my responsibilities.

That’s a big barrier to working effectively with the Contact Centre Outsourcer.

Sometimes the Outsource relationship looks to be an afterthought

Early this year, I was invited in to discuss a Contact Centre Outsourcer vendor evaluation for a major brand.

Their existing Outsourcer contract ran into the millions of dollars.

I had expected a senior level audience and prepared accordingly.

After arriving at the meeting place, I was greeted by 2 mid-level executives who were nominally in charge of the Outsourcer relationship.

Neither had any Contact Centre or Customer experience credentials nor did they want any.

They simply wanted a quick and dirty report card on the performance of their outsourcer – and they wanted it to be done fast and cheap.

The risk of not stepping up to the plate in an Outsourcer relationship

Aside from the obvious financial implications and the impact on Customer experience, there is an additional risk when organizations fail to step up to the plate and partner fully in their outsourcing relationships.

Customer care, Customer experience, Contact Centres & Service delivery – whatever you choose to call it – is a complex business discipline.

It’s a lot more than ‘being nice’ while on you’re on the phone.

It takes time and mastery to build up what I call your ‘Customer chops’. 

For some people it is a life-long calling.

By not stepping up to the plate, these folks on the Client side – by design or circumstance – fail to build up their Customer chops.

So when the time comes when someone finally says – “Hey, why are we getting so many complaints?” or

“Hey, does anybody understand our outsourcing contract?” or

“Hey, how are we doing with successful implementation of self-care/human-care strategies?” no one is going to have a robust answer.

And that’s going to be a problem.

Build your chops

One of the biggest decisions your organization will ever make is who will manage your Customer outsourcing and how it will be done.

And the only way to get this right is to take it seriously.

Learn the industry, build your chops, partner closely with your Outsourcer.

You might learn a thing or two.

Thank you for reading!

Daniel

Daniel & M&C Class

Daniel Ord

Why are you still talking about Average Handling Time?

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

In this article we talk about Contact Centre Average Handling Time.

So put your feet up on the couch and tell the Dr. – for heaven’s sake, why are we all still talking about Average Handling Time?

The more you talk about AHT, the less you talk about Quality

A psychologist with a patient

I have a theory that’s been proven out over the years.

A see-saw going up and down

Contact Centre Average Handling Time & Quality

The more a Centre and its inhabitants talk (or fret) about Contact Centre AHT – the less they talk (or fret) about Quality.

Sure – Quality gets lip service (who’s going to bash Quality?) – but it’s AHT that reigns supreme.

And for some inexplicable reason, it’s almost always about the Agents.

Yeah – you know – those Agents who brush their teeth in the bathroom mirror every morning and plot how to sabotage AHT.

A young man brushing his teeth“Hmmmm (they say to themselves) – how could I drag the calls today?”

“A few more holds and a bit of nonsensical small talk and I’m sure I can knock AHT out of whack.”

Really?

Any Quality Assurance professional will tell you a simple truth

AHT flows from Quality.

Exhaust coming from an automobile tailpipe

Average Handling Time is an outcome

It’s an output…a byproduct…an emission.

You know those Monitoring Forms with the checklists and standards that QA likes to hand out to let you know how you’re doing with regard to Quality?

Those Forms dictate your Contact Centre Average Handling Time.

Want Agents to use the Customer’s name 3x? Ok – that’ll be about 15 seconds.

Want Agents to say “Is there anything else I can do to help you today (and mean it)?” – that easily adds 7 more seconds.

Need Agents to conduct 2 levels of verification – yup – takes time.

Are you fearless enough to put First Contact Resolution on your Form? Well that’s gonna cost you too (in time that is).

If your Agent scores 100% quality on their call and you still have to talk to them about their AHT something’s wrong with the Form or something’s wrong with your Quality process.

A guru floating in the air As I like to say when I transition into ‘guru’ mode – when your Agent achieves Quality – and it just feels right – then AHT will be what it will be.

Contact Centre Average Handling Time flows from Quality.

But most assuredly Quality does not flow from Contact Centre Average Handling Time!

A delicious piece of chocolate lava cakeDid you ever order chocolate lava cake for dessert in a restaurant? It’s delicious.

But the menu often says “please order early, or just be aware it will take about 20 minutes for us to make you this delicious chocolate lava cake”.

I’ve never seen it happen that a Diner bangs the table and says – “Hey, Chef baby – make me one of those delicious chocolate lava cakes in 10 minutes – you hear? ”

So what’s the best way to correct Contact Centre AHT at the Agent level?

The best way has always been – and it will continue to be – conducting root cause analysis at the Agent level.

Watch the Agent at work, listen to calls, correct what needs to be corrected (sometimes it’s a piece of equipment, sometimes it’s knowledge or skill).

When you fix Agent Quality – you automatically fix AHT. It’s an outcome – not a driver.

Of course having a guideline helps.

Contact Centre AHT lends itself beautifully to measurement as an ‘acceptable range’.

A graph showing acceptable range

Contact Centre Average Handling Time Acceptable Range

For example an ‘acceptable’ range for your Centre AHT in the mornings might range from a low of 3 minutes to a high of 6 minutes.

I’d set my ‘acceptable’ range based on my high performers in quality – if your call is great quality-wise – then by default the AHT is acceptable. (if it isn’t something is broken in how you measure quality).

Armed with a range, you can track performance across your Team Members and identify outliers – for example those who are consistently above or below the acceptable range for that time period.

This approach allows you to focus in on folks who may have some barrier in their way.

Do remember though –

Acceptable ranges are not consistent throughout the day – most Centres see longer AHT in the night hours as compared to the morning hours (for example).

You have to adjust your ranges based on your call mix, Customer mix and the like.

If you’re in WFM or Process AHT matters

Of course – if you are in WFM (Workforce Management)or you are in Process improvement and/or Customer journey mapping, AHT is super important.

And WFM folks tend to understand that the biggest improvements in AHT come from technology and process improvement.

When you look at all the factors that ‘drive’ AHT, Agents themselves have only minor control over AHT – namely applying their knowledge, skills & abilities as trained and coached.

Industry-wide AHT for voice calls is going up

Children in front of a fun-house mirrorAs the world increasingly becomes digital, Customers reach out to voice channels when their issue is complex or they are confused or unhappy with something.

Coupled with the digitization of ‘simple’ inquiries the outcome is clear – while voice volumes may be ‘stabilizing’ in volume for some Centres, AHT continues to climb.

Feel better? I do

In an era of Customer experience, it won’t do you or your Team Members any good to have an artificial clock ticking in their ear while trying to listen, empathize and resolve a Customer call.

If you’re a Manager or Team Leader who still harps on individual Agent AHT it’s time to rethink your value.

It’s not 1973 anymore.

Thanks for reading!

Daniel

[email protected] / https://www.omnitouchinternational.com

A picture of Daniel Ord

Daniel Ord

 

Can your Contact Center Agents compete with a robot?

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

If I were employing Contact Center Agents today, I’d be asking how my training and development processes helped my Agents be better than a robot.

A lot of Contact Center management complains that they can’t recruit or hold on to their Contact Center Agents.

But I think that the smart Contact Center Agent has a fair question to ask.

“Dear Boss…I’m aware that you guys are doing everything you can to off-load voice calls to self-service options.  So if you want me to stay with you there’s something I need to know.  How are you going to prepare me to be better than a robot?”

Now I’m one of those people that believes that, at critical moments, a person is going to want to talk to another person.

And with the growth in greying populations around the developed world, we’re still looking at demand in voice-based service for some time.

So now’s the time to prepare your Agents for what’s coming.

It’s an interesting industry – but Contact Center Agents don’t know that

The Agent recruitment videos that I watch on YouTube look like they came from the same cookie cutter –

  • You’ll need to have empathy!
  • We’ll give you a buddy to work with!
  • Look – we have a pool table!

I’d love to see an Agent recruitment video that said –

  • Our Centre is at the heart of our CX strategy – and we will teach you all about CX and your role in it.
  • There’s a lot of technology & operations going on here – and we’ll teach you all about it.
  • The world is changing – so we’ll help you to be come better than a robot.

Liz Ryan advises –

It’s time to leave a job when a half-year has gone by and you haven’t learned anything new.

That advice doesn’t just apply to the big bosses.

Take your Contact Center Agent development seriously

When I was running large Centres in the U.S. back in the 90s, we purposefully hired our Contact Center Agents from places like McDonalds and Burger King.

By and large they already had the right attitudes.

Our job was to equip them to become better versions of themselves.

A few years later, when a big corporate restructuring came along, we had to let go hundreds of our Agents over the course of a few months.

It was tough, and emotionally draining.

But over those few months we were proud that each and every one got a new job.

Every Friday afternoon, we would take Polaroids of the people that were leaving that week, and stage a candlelight ceremony to commemorate their being with us and then moving on.

We all cried.

In that early Contact Centre era, some of the processes we take for granted today were still immature

In those days, we didn’t have a lot of QA.

Our training could have been better.

As a result, our folks probably weren’t very good at saying the Customer’s name two times or asking for further assistance at the end of the call.

They would probably have failed some of the current assessments that I see so often today.

But because we didn’t script them, they were forced to learn the fine art of conversation.

How to sell, how to calm, how to influence.

Even how to stay calm during large scale fluctuations in volume – a powerful self-management skill.

Our secret to success – and we were very successful in our day – was the caliber of our Team Leaders.

These direct Line Managers were the heroes who made our operation tick.

In closing

The world is changing.

But the need for people to learn and grow to succeed hasn’t.

Are you preparing your Contact Center Agents to be better than a robot?

Thanks for reading!

Daniel

[email protected] / www.omnitouchinternational.com

 

 

 

How to write a Tender for Contact Centre Outsourcing

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

In this special 1 day session we will help you write a Tender for Contact Centre outsourcing.

Choosing the right outsourcer for your Customer contacts is one of the most important decisions you will make.

And every outsourcer is different.

Some outsourcers have very specific niches they serve and they don’t perform very well outside of those niches.

Some outsourcers act as strategic partners while others just do what they’re asked to do.

Quality and the ability to deliver on your Customers’ expectations varies widely across different providers.

And the person or Team that manages your program might be a Contact Centre expert – or again they might not.

It can be hard for a layman to tell.

So it’s important to develop a Tender document that helps you hone in on your specific objectives.

And that helps you select the right outsourcer for your program.

The challenge is that the folks who have to develop the Tender and select the provider may not be Contact Centre experts

Many of our Clients & Friends have come to us with serious concerns about their outsourcers.

They also say they don’t have enough mastery of the Contact Centre environment to ask the right questions.  Or to know when they are getting what they should.

To address this need we have developed a special 1-day session to help Participants develop a Tender document for Contact Centre outsourcing.  And from there evaluate submissions.

In our 1-day workshop we will –

  • Establish the ‘right’ KPIs against which to measure outsourcer delivery
  • Understand how different channels of communication work – independently and together
  • Understand who is responsible for ‘what’ in the outsourcing relationship
  • How to handle rapid change in Customer communication channels
  • Know what to look for to determine if your Outsourcer is the right ‘fit’

Over the course of the day, we will work through a solid template for developing a Tender for Contact Centre Outsourcing.

We will also discuss what the ‘best’ answers look like when comparing different outsourcers.

Simply go to our Public Programs page here to register.

Public Programs

Or simply drop me a line to [email protected]

Thank you!

Daniel

[email protected] / https://www.omnitouchinternational.com

Daniel & M&C Class

Why your call quality doesn’t deliver on Customer experience

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

Call quality in today’s Contact Centres hasn’t improved enough to keep up with today’s Customer expectations.

Recently we released a new training course – “How to have Great Conversations with your Guests & Customers”.

Within days, we received a number of inquiries from banks, hotels and even two shopping centres.

While the industries were different, the inquiry was the same.

“Dan – we’ve got the Team to a level of standardization and compliance.

But despite that fact that we are an amazing company in our industry, we still have to urge (push, pull, scream) to get our Frontline staff to engage in conversation with our Guests & Customers.”

That got us to thinking – why isn’t call quality getting better?

Why do Team Members in hotels & retail environments sound so robotic?

The call mix has changed

What Customers called about 10, 5 or even 2 years ago has changed.

In a North American study, 41% of voice-calls received in Contact Centres were driven by failures in other channels.

So voice-based Centres are transitioning into channel-resolution Centres.  Working to solve more complex and challenging inquiries than ever before.

When you’re dealing with more complex inquiries, the stakes are higher.

A nice tone of voice and saying the Customer name two times isn’t going to cut it anymore.

Proportionally calls related to difficult situations have gone up

Ask any mid to long time Contact Centre Agent about the behavior of Customers today.

They will tell you that their Customers are more demanding.

Your longer-serving Agents might feel that organizational performance has declined over time.  A direct result given the increase in the volume and intensity of difficult situations.

That’s an important leadership challenge that needs to be addressed before the Centre shifts into ‘all Customers are jerks’ mode which is an experience killer.

If you’re an Agent who thinks Customers are jerks, your call quality is bound to suffer.

Contact Centres as an industry remain siloed

Unlike industries such as health-care, law, accounting and the like, Contact Centres are deeply tied to their vertical organization with rew ties to the ‘horizontal industry’ at large.

This means that the folks running the Centres might not have the necessary knowledge, skills and exposure to run multi-channel or omni-channel environments.

Once a Contact Centre has managed to achieve a ‘base-level’ of performance around Operations & Quality, a Business As Usual inertia sets in.

A sense that ‘we’ve done it, we’re there – so for heaven’s sake don’t rock the boat by changing anything now’.

So what is this mysterious Wow Factor everyone talks about?

You still hear the terms, Wow Factor, Go the Extra Mile, Customer delight – but it’s very seldom that Contact Centre leadership can define it well.

How can an Agent deliver this mysterious Customer Delight factor if their bosses can’t even define it?

No – this is not an Agent attitude problem.

This is a management failure.

And the lessons of Customer Experience teach us that consistent (good) performance beats isolated Wow Factors every time.

That doesn’t mean ignore Wow.  It simply means that you have to get the consistency right before you design the Wow.

You can’t build a house with Legos

Of course behaviors like tone of voice, etiquette and courtesies matter – but they are expected and don’t really provide differentiation.

When you listen to calls across organizations in the same locale or region, it all sounds pretty much the same.

Colin Shaw of Beyond Philosophy calls it the ‘blight of the bland’.

I love that term, despite its inherent negativity.

What you get these days when you call a Contact Centre is truly bland – not great, not bad – serviceable.

I’ve yet to meet a Contact Centre Manager who promotes the mantra of ‘Let’s be Serviceable!’

So why is this so common?

Primarily because most Centre leadership and Quality Assurance Teams focus heavily on the compliance standards like ‘fillers’ and ‘use the Customer’s name 3 times in a conversation’.

Agents become compliance driven – because that is what their bosses tell them they want.

And it’s what they hear their bosses talk about every day.

It’s unreasonable and illogical to expect Agents to suddenly dig deeper into their souls and find a way to ‘wow’ Customers when their ‘Quality life’ revolves around tick-marks on compliance-based behaviors.

Recently a senior executive said to me – “We are the most famous hotel in a famous country – surely my Staff can find something to chat about with the Customer!”

While on paper that sounds reasonable, at the Agent level we can’t operate on wish fulfillment.

It’s like expecting flowers to bloom in the desert.

So what can differentiate?

In today’s CX environment, the standard bundle of KPIs that exist in many Centres continues the blight of the bland.

To be differentiate, we find that there are 3 common things – across industries – that Agents can bring to life in their conversations.

The ability to deliver any of these involves a variety of other competencies including listening, empathy, confidence, product knowledge and the like.

  • Relevant opinions

    Imagine you call for a dining reservation in the restaurant of your hotel and after a brief but valuable conversation, the Agent provides their informed ‘opinion’. “In my opinion sir, you’d be happier in the La Sala restaurant as it carries a wider selection of dishes as compared to our La Marina restaurant which is exclusively fine dining and for which options are more limited…”

  • Appropriate Recommendations

    Recommendations are linked to opinions but stronger in depth & intensity.

    “Sir, thanks for answering all my questions. Based on your situation I’d recommend that you take the XX version of our product – while it’s a bit lower than our higher end solution – it will serve you well based on the parameters we spoke about. It’s always superb to hear a Contact Centre Agent use the phrase “I recommend” appropriately (i.e. after careful listening and weighing of options – not simply pushing a product or service).

  • Conveyance of Emotion

    There are so many definitions and descriptions of this important topic and it’s a topic we never tire of studying. One of the best and simplest definitions I’ve seen is this – “The Guest or Customer leaves the interaction feeling better than they did entering it.” 

When it comes to creating a positive emotional experience with a Customer (or at the very least mitigating a negative experience), it’s important to understand that it’s not achieved by tacking on a new KPI such as “Small Talk”.

It’s a matter of rethinking the entire conversation and learning how to identify solid opportunities to express opinions, recommendations and trigger emotions.

Some time back we did a Mystery Shopper which involved asking Agents about the various attractions to be found in a resort.

The question was this – “Can you tell me about the Aquarium?” .

The answer was, “It has fish”.

You can’t build a house using Legos.

Thank you for reading!

Daniel