Some Contact Center leaders believe BPOs need different metrics — but that belief often hides a deeper leadership issue.
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.
Thanks Dan, but do you have the Contact Center metrics for BPOs?
I’ll never forget receiving this question from a training Participant.
Here’s the Story
After a quality coaching class with a group of team leaders in the shared services function of a bank, one participant 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?”
There Aren’t Different Contact Center Metrics for BPOs
There aren’t different metrics for BPOs than for in-house Contact Centers. A Contact Center is a Contact Center — whether it’s outsourced or internal.
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 — regardless of whether the operation is outsourced or in-house.
What differs from center to center are the decisions around which metrics are selected, prioritized, and pursued — including how leaders continue to treat measures like Average Handling Time.
- In some Contact Centers, metric choices are clearly more Customer Experience–oriented.
- In others, they are heavily weighted toward cost and efficiency.
- And in some cases, metrics are simply wrong from an operational standpoint — even today, in a well-understood industry.
This Is an Important Decision
Recognize that your metrics choices represent one of the single most important decisions you will ever make
As Customer Experience thinker Bruce Temkin has observed, 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.
Over time, this leads people — including the participant who emailed me — to believe that the way their Contact Center operates is how the entire industry works.
He thought that the way things were done in his Center was 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 chose a different metrics set.
Know What You’re Doing and Why
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 organizational business objectives.
So they set about to change that.
The choices around metrics take know-how, thought, and contextualization — especially when it comes to how Agent performance is measured and managed within your Customer and Business ecosystem.
- Don’t just copy what someone else is doing.
- Don’t rely on non-existent or irrelevant “industry standards.”
- And don’t pursue the same metrics year after year without stopping to ask whether they still make sense.
The selection of metric sets for your Center is one of the most important 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’s hard to think of a leadership decision with greater impact than this.
Thank You for Reading
I regularly share stories, strategies, and insights from our work across Contact Centers, Customer Service, and Customer Experience. If this resonates, I’d love to stay connected.
You can drop me a line anytime, or subscribe on our site.
Daniel Ord
[email protected]
www.omnitouchinternational.com
