Thanks Dan but do you have the Contact Center metrics for BPOs? I’ll never forget receiving this question from a training Partiicipant.
Here’s the story
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 Contact Center 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. Whether Contact Center metrics for BPOs or Contact Center metrics for in-house operations.
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.
Recognize that your metrics choices represent one of the single most important decisions you will ever make
As shared by Customer Experience thinker Bruce Temkin 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.
With Contact Center metrics you have to know what you’re 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.
I’ve repeatedly observed situations where a new boss arrives and realizes that the Team’s level of fundamental Contact Center expertise falls short of what’s required to meet organizationnal 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!
I help and inspire people around the world through professional training in Contact Centers, Customer Service & Customer Experience.
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Daniel Ord
[email protected] / www.omnitouchinternational.com
