Updated June 2020.

Due to the rapid growth of technology and the increasing use of holistic approaches in businesses, the competition in the customer support industry has increased substantially.

Not only have the developments changed the entire landscape of the industry, but they have also transformed business philosophy from a focus on productivity to customer-centricity.

The customer-centric business needs a thorough understanding of each customer individually to execute strategy and deliver more excellent results, creating higher value.

According to Gilles Beaulac, “Customer-Centric Contact Centers learn that one of the critical prerequisites is to create the most positive employee experience.”

Also, the contact center needs drastic changes in the system, capabilities, processes, attitudes, and the overall corporate culture.

The right call center reporting system and call center software package play a vital role in facilitating the necessary changes.

Most contact center businesses likely believe they are customer-centric; after all, that is the purpose of the organization.

Nevertheless, some contact centers are not living up to the customer-centric ideal and do need to change.

Indeed, many are operating within dated models and strategies that have worked, perhaps, in the past.

If your call center reporting system continues to rely on outdated software and practices that are not able to improve the experience of today’s savvy and demanding customer, it might be time to consider a change.

Today’s blog will help you answer the question, How does my contact center measure up?

In what follows, we will go over the five traits that customer-centric contact centers share, including a variety of tools, characteristics, and effective team leadership.

1. Customer-Centric Quality Measurement

The customer-centric contact center places its customers at the center of its business philosophy.

Therefore, these firms invest appropriately in quality monitoring tools that keep track of each transaction and measure the degree of customer satisfaction associated with each.

Firms also use customer feedback, collected through post-contact surveying tools, to identify opportunities for improvement in processes and workflows and identify the need for training and skill development.

Today’s contact centers collect regular feedback from customers to deliver better services.

2. Continuous Improvement in Service

These firms gather data from customers and use it intelligently to improve their products, personalize services, build relationships, increase productivity, and bolster revenues and profits.

Advanced CRM tools, evaluation of post-contact customer surveys, and dedicated analytics teams are some conventional approaches contact centers usually use to provide proactive services and support.

3. Use the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Previously, contact centers focused more on quantitative measures such as Average Handling Time (AHT) and Calls per Hour.

However, modern service centers recognize the importance of measuring customer experience and agent behavior more than quantitative metrics.

Adopting a customer-centric approach to contact center management does not imply that there should be no productivity-based measures in place.

Instead, it means that service centers should emphasize more on improving customer satisfaction than relying on increasing the number of calls.

To measure the agent’s productivity, you may utilize tools like schedule adherence to ensure that your team is involved and committed to increasing the profitability and growth of your business.

Their KPIs focus on customer satisfaction and emphasizes the quality of the customer experience rather than efficiency alone.

Today’s top centers understand the importance of contact center reporting software that drills down through mountains of data to find the measures that impact customer experience and agent behavior.

4. Social Customer Care

With social customer care, contact center agents respond to client comments, complaints, and requests more efficiently.

Social Customer Care allows agents to engage with callers effectively and provide proactive services as well as control the potential damages.

Some contact centers create an engaging online community for customers, which serves as a useful source of information and feedback for both the customers and the agents.

Besides this, these resources reduce the number of emails, chats, and phone calls to a great extent by providing helpful tutorials and blogs for the convenience of the customers.

Customer-centric call centers measure quality from both the company’s and the customer’s perspective.

The most customer-centric centers invest in contact center reporting software that includes post-contact surveys that measure the quality of the customer’s experience.

The software should also be able to track the performance of individual agents as well as team leaders.

How does this happen?

Call center software incorporates an IVR-based survey, an email survey, or a survey conducted by a live third-party specialist.

The follow-up survey follows each unique interaction.

The call center reporting software gathers critical customer feedback and quickly incorporates the data into agents’ monitoring scores and coaching.

The feedback, in turn, can be used to make improvements to training, operational processes, workflows, and actual products and services.

Call center software generates real-time reports that capture critical customer data and sentiment to enhance service, sales, and loyalty continuously.

The best centers collect and intelligently process massive amounts of customer data, thus enabling the organization to continuously personalize service, enhance products or services, increase revenue, and foster lasting relationships.

Call center reporting needs to be able to provide team leaders with the information they need to be able to adapt to fluctuations in call volume.

Social customer care is an important aspect of a customer-centric approach.

With the growth of social media, more and more customers expect a quick response to the queries and complaints that they post on social media.

The best contact centers incorporate social media training and policies for agent interaction via social media sites.

Your company might want to create an online community for your customers.

Dedicated online communities serve as a valuable source of customer feedback, which provides insight for the company.

Effective use of social media sites means agents can be proactive, and call volume might decrease.

They ensure high levels of agent engagement.

High employee morale results in higher customer satisfaction as employees are motivated to provide the best service.

Fully engaged employees are satisfied with their job, invested in, and loyal to their company.

This translates into a genuine commitment to customers and to the company’s goals.

Engaged employees are inspired to drive change in hopes of helping the organization, and themselves, to continually improve and evolve.

Some of the ways leading contact centers to foster and maintain employee morale include:

• • rewarding and recognizing agents in ways that are meaningful to them
• • providing ongoing training and development opportunities for staff
• • empowering agents to work on exciting and challenging projects and task forces
• • actively seeking agent feedback on ways to improve critical processes and practices in the center

In short, the most customer-centric centers are typically the most employee-centric centers.

As necessary as all the practices listed in this article are, nothing dazzles customers as human interaction with an agent that is courteous, knowledgeable, efficient, and, most importantly, inspired.

5. Customer-Centric Leadership

To deliver customer-led innovation, your leadership team needs to be composed of employees with specific qualities that will help transform the culture of the workplace.

In this case, we are looking at the qualities that facilitate a customer-centric call center environment.

The qualities are empathy, foresight, strong communication skills, the ability to develop partnerships and teams, and flexibility.

We will now look at the three most crucial leadership traits in more detail.

3 Qualities of a Customer-Centric Leader

1. Team leaders must be empathetic.

Empathy is the ability and desire to understand the feelings of another person.

The ability to understand the emotional impact of a customer complaint or query in order to best remedy the situation is a critical part of a customer-centric call center strategy.

A good leader must possess this quality and have the ability to enhance empathy amongst all of their team members.

Remember, too, employee morale is an important component in the strategy, so the ability to empathize with agents and their experiences is equally crucial.

Customizable call center reporting software can help to track the customer experience and agent interactions from start to end.

Customer experience, customer needs, and customer satisfaction are the driver for many decisions.

The guiding question is, “how will our customers feel about that?”

The right call center reporting system will help provide the data that your team needs to answer this central question.

2. Foresight

Foresight involves the ability to predict the future, at least to foresee potential problems and, more importantly, to be able to imagine a better experience or policy that will directly benefit customers or clients.

To enhance your customers’ experience, you need agents and team leaders who know about customer satisfaction, who genuinely care about the quality of the customers’ experiences, and have the ability to deliver by making each interaction the best it possibly can be.

The leadership quality of foresight has the ability to imagine a better future, to guide and direct agents toward an ever-evolving, and improving, customer/agent relationship.

As top management or business owner, you need to initiate and continue the discussion with your leadership team to galvanize their commitment and support to the goal of continual improvement to the customer experience and to recognizing and encouraging the role of each team member in reaching that goal.

Define your customer experience vision, establish service principles that guide employee behavior to deliver the desired experience, and continue to engage in dialogues that sustain the vision using good call center software to measure your progress.

In addition to foresight, your leaders need to be adaptable and flexible.

Agile leadership is necessary as shifts in customer expectations occur at an ever more rapid pace.

Your leaders need to have the ability and the desire to make positive changes in the workplace and for your company and customers.

You are looking for change-makers, people who will recognize and act upon opportunities to innovate in ways that will change the workplace, the business, or the customer experience for the better.

Empower your leadership team with user-friendly, customizable call center reporting tools.

3. Communication Skills

Communication skills are obviously very important in any workplace setting, and perhaps more so in a call center.

Communication includes listening to agents and to customers.

A good leader can hear the customers’ stories, complaints, and concerns and tell that story.

Encourage your team leaders to tell your customers’ stories frequently and enable team leaders to share the customer journey with their teams.

Transforming your workplace to a customer-centric one requires dedication and purposeful action.

One simple strategy is to start meetings with customer success stories.

Empower your team leaders and their decision making process by using the best call center reporting software and business intelligence.

Building relationships, collaborating with customers and agents, is central to the success of your company’s transformation.

To collaborate and build relationships, leaders must be excellent listeners, curious, diplomatic, and inclusive.

Always remember to connect the work of improving experiences to business results to keep the entire team focused on the contact center’s objectives.

Remember that you, your team leadership, and your call center agents all need to maintain good working relationships with one another as well.

A customer-centric call center is also an employee-centric workplace, as employee morale is also crucial if your changes are going to stick.

Empathy and good communication skills are critical traits for good leaders, and they are also qualities that contribute to solid relationships.

Today’s call center management teams recognize the importance of measuring customer experience and agent behavior more than quantitative metrics.

The customer-centric contact center places its customers at the heart of its business philosophy.

Choosing the right call center software can help to empower your leadership team and develop a customer- and employee-centric workplace.

You want call center reporting software that allows you and your team to gather data from customers and process and use it intelligently to improve their products, personalize services, build relationships, increase productivity, and bolster profits empower your team to develop a more customer-centric strategy.

To learn more about how to create an authentic and reliable performance measurement call center reporting system, contact us, and request a free demo today!

Updated February 2021.

Customer care is a crucial part of any business, directly influencing client satisfaction rates and, ultimately, sales.
But how much do you know about what is happening in your contact center?

And how well do you understand the factors that affect your employees’ performance?

These answers — and many more — can be found through call center reporting.

If the bare thought of creating a report gives you a headache, we don’t blame you.

Call center reports used to be a drag, but we’re not here to talk about how things used to get done.

We’re here to discuss a faster, better way of tracking metrics, monitoring customer service performance, and ultimately improving your business’ outcomes.

This post will shed light on why reporting matters and why old-school approaches don’t work.

More importantly, we’ll share the best practices for effective call center reporting, plus a modern reporting software and a call center calculator that will boost your performance.

What is call center reporting and why does it matter?

Call center reporting measures performance, and helps businesses understand what is happening in their contact centers.

It does so by connecting several raw data flows and converting them into key performance indicators (KPIs).

Based on these KPIs, you can create graphs and charts to better visualize critical trends and patterns.

After a closer analysis, you’ll also be able to generate actionable plans that can shift your business in a better direction.

Call center reports can have a significant impact on your call center’s performance, helping

you diagnose and solve issues before they affect your customers’ satisfaction.

Reporting empowers you with customer journey insights, plus real-time dashboards that can drive data-infused decisions.

And, equally important, it offers you a way of visualizing how well your agents perform.

Tools such as a call center calculator can help you figure out how to handle your overhead, boosting performance even more.

When done right, reporting helps you pinpoint the areas that, when improved upon, will lead to more productivity and increased efficiency.

Think of reporting as a call center diagnosis that helps you unravel its weaknesses, strengths, risks, and opportunities.

The problem with current reporting approaches

In past years, call center reporting was manually done by developers, who spent countless hours trying to compile data from several databases.

Needless to say, this solution was fraught with inaccuracies, leading to multiple errors, and unnecessarily eating up indecent amounts of financial resources.

Plus, it was not very efficient, as developers could rarely put together all the data available.

Instead, they made what they could with what they had, which proved to be better than nothing but not merely enough.

This limitation meant that businesses could only glimpse into their call centers’ performance, unable to grasp the full picture or implement impactful solutions.

It was a reporting approach that dragged everyone along; it promised insights but delivered only bits and pieces.

Luckily, in recent years, new smart solutions emerged to help businesses automate their call center reports.

However, before you rush into selecting the first tool out there, exercise caution.

Not all reporting software solutions are created equally; some speed up processes but lack accuracy; others provide analytics, but crack under privacy scrutiny; ultimately, few deliver high quality all around.

So, before choosing a solution, carefully consider your options.

After all, you don’t want to flatline your efforts by betting on the wrong tool.

That being said, here are the best practices that should be supported by the software solution you choose.

Contact center reporting best practices

1. Select KPIs that support your goals

With so many KPIs out there, it’s easy to spread your efforts too thin by considering too many at once.

Don’t make that mistake.

Instead, focus your efforts on KPIs you know will improve your business goals.

Easier said than done, right?

You’re not alone in thinking so.

Many contact center managers admit they struggle to find the right metrics for managing their businesses.

But it doesn’t have to be a struggle.

Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the amount of KPIs available, flip your thinking on its head.

To decide on which KPIs to focus, start with the stakeholders; consider the customer, the organization, and the employees.

Build your way up from these three categories, plotting relevant KPIs to each.

For example, suppose you’re aiming to improve your agents’ productivity and problem-solving.

In that case, you must look at KPIs such as average handle time, average time on hold, quality assurance, and customer satisfaction score.

2. Compile data from multiple channels

 
The more data you compile, the more accurate your reports will be.

That’s why best reporting practices encourage businesses to collect data from all their call centers and from collateral channels too.

If you haven’t considered data from email, direct messages, and chats so far, you should start now.

These diverse data sets will help you piece together your customer journey to better adjust your agent experience touchpoints.

As the picture gets bigger, new solutions and opportunities will emerge, empowering you to advance your business.

Since consolidated data is mandatory for efficient and transparent management, the best reporting solutions enable their users to compile data from multiple channels.

If you’re looking for a multi-channel reporting solution, look no further than The Reporting Engine.

Our omni-channel software allows for multiple data sources reports (phone, sales sales, WFM, quality etc), for various locations, and for multiple business units.

3. Easy to access, simple to read reports

Reporting should be a simple affair.

Anyone in your company should be able to quickly generate reports and customize them without hassle.

Smart reporting solutions should focus on delivering information in an easy-to-read format that everybody — from agents to managers, and C-level executives — understand.

That’s not to say everybody should have access to all reports, especially to those reports that contain confidential or sensible data.

Ease of use should not be confused with the lack of access levels.

A good reporting software offers different user clearance levels and limits access accordingly.

This way, agents can create and visualize reports regarding their calls, emails, and social data, to get a better understanding of their performance.

Still, they won’t have access to crucial business insights that should only be seen by managers.

4. Customize reports with meaningful information

To avoid vital information from drowning in a pool of superfluous details, customize your reports based on who will read them and with what goal.

“More” is not always better, and in this case, you need to focus on relevant information exclusively.

By narrowing your focus, solutions will emerge swiftly.

Plus, a single-minded report will be easier to read, which is another best practice we’ve discussed.

A reporting solution that brings added value to your business is one that allows for multiple customization options.

Reporting software such as The Reporting Engine will help you include or take out as many details as you want.

From customizable demographics to optimized queries and innovative databases, The Reporting Engine brings a new level of insights to your decision-making process.

This is the type of flexibility your team needs to assess performance promptly and to avoid chasing information that leads nowhere.

5. Blend reporting with analytics

 
Your call center’s data is filled with business intelligence.

While reports help you visualize what’s happening, analytics take you one step further, revealing actionable insights.

To make that extra step, you need to carefully balance the time you spend compiling reports with the time you spend doing quality analysis.

When selecting a reporting tool for your call center, look for one that has rapid compilation capabilities and in-depth analysis features.

By carefully considering both reports and analytics, you’ll pave the way to better decisions and improved performance.

6. Make sure your reports are secure

 
Call centers have the obligation to secure their clients’ personal data.

And, with privacy regulations getting stricter, businesses need to make sure this data is safe across all their channels — for the sake of their customers and their own.

How can weak security reporting affect your business?

Poorly secured reports will deter your performance efforts, creating more problems on top of those you’re trying to solve.

Improper reporting practices are breeding grounds for errors that can lead to operational chaos and brand image decline — if the word gets out.

Make sure the reporting software you choose has strict privacy features and unyielding security.
To save yourself a lot of trouble, select a GDPR compliant solution that checks even the sternest personal data regulations.

Software such as The Reporting Engine is designed with intrusion prevention, firewalls, and a vulnerability management system to protect your data.

Together, these features are a solid guarantee that your data will always be protected.

Boost performance even more with a Call Center Calculator

Reports are terrific for assessing efforts by compiling data and revealing patterns that influence your business’ outcomes.

Ultimately, reports enable you to make better decisions and improve performance.

However, when it comes to staffing requirements and overhead, the decision-making process can become highly complex.

To determine your call center’s staffing requirements for different times of the day and different days, you need to factor in multiple variables.

You have to consider metrics such as staff vacation days, staff activities, average call duration, expected calls per hour, arrival rate of calls per week, average wait times, average call load, and many more.

While reports will offer you all the data needed, calculating the final result falls under your attributions.

Luckily, a call center calculator can take the load off your shoulders, rapidly computing all metrics and variables to return an accurate result.

By correlating the data from your contact center’s reports, the call center calculator will help you determine how to schedule shift coverage.

Plus, you’ll know exactly the number of agents you need at every hour of every day.

The Reporting Engine’s call center calculator will help you calculate realistic vacation and absenteeism overheads, reducing the time needed for resource allocation.

The best part though? You’ll make the most of every minute and every resource you have.

Get business intelligence to improve your call center’s performance

Microsoft’s State of Global Customer Service Report found that 61% of consumers stopped transacting with a business after a poor service experience.

That’s a defeating percentage, which proves — once again — the vital role of reporting.

If you want to keep your customers and win new ones, you need to see where your contact center is losing ground and fix that territory.

Smart reporting will help you do that and more.

The Reporting Engine is proven to help businesses increase calls by 300% and turbocharge productivity.

Ultimately, the results translate into more satisfied customers and, of course, a bigger revenue.

Start improving your performance today.

Contact us for a demo, and let’s take your call center to new efficiency heights.

Nowadays businesses recognize that you can’t pigeonhole everyone with the same goal.

The goals must derive from the nature of your business and your market and what arsenal you choose to position yourself as a leader in your field.

Many managers and executives automatically assumed that if you had a call center your service level goal had to be this 80% answered in 20 seconds if you wanted to follow the standard.

But no one knew why it was set as the standard.

Consequently, companies started to choose different service levels for their call centers – this was a good thing: they recognize that the uniqueness of their business required a different goal.

When setting a service level goal, it is imperative that you realize that the occupancy rate of your agents is inversely proportional to your service level.

The occupancy rate formula is as follows:

Occupancy Rate = (Total Agent Logged In Time (or Staff Time) – Idle Time) / Total Agent Logged In Time

In other words, the busier your agents are the lower your results of Service Level will be.

Conversely the idler your agents are, the higher your service level.

The idler your agents, the more money it costs you to run your call center.

That is why many call center executives want to find the right service level at the right “price”.

Ask your business analyst to prepare an analysis comparing your service level results with your occupancy results for a period of 52 weeks.

Observe the relation between them – pay particular attention to the service level results of 80% answered in 20 seconds, and notice the occupancy rate.

Depending on the size of your call center, generally if it is greater than 100 agents, you will notice that whenever you achieve the 80-20, your occupancy rate might be between 80 to 85% which means your agents are idle between 9 to 12 minutes per hour.

That’s the cost of doing business at 80% answered in 20 seconds.

Remember how you treat your employees will reflect on the kind of service they deliver to your customers.

So the next time you are thinking about setting a new target for your service level, remember to consider the occupancy rate that will co-exist with it and the impact on your people.

But this is not always as easy as it seems.

Usually your competitors are also out there scourging the terrain which creates a higher demand on an already short supply.

There are some things you may be able to do to mitigate this challenge.

As you already know, whatever industry you are involved in, you and your competitors experience the same ebb and flows of that market which in turn influence your decision-making.

Perhaps, you could adjust your recruiting timeframes and start sooner to avoid the “peak” in the demand from the industry.

However, that may be too costly.

You could also consider increasing the value-proposition to your employees, perhaps surpassing that of your competitors.

This is not limited to the salaries you offer, but to the entire employee experience.

When all else fails and you must hire people with little or no experience, there are certain important things to consider in order to limit the negative impact this has on your bottom-line.

Lack of experience is a result of lack of theory and lack of practice.

New employees are quickly overwhelmed with knowledge during training.

They get the opportunity to practice what they learned, but it does take time for a human brain to properly integrate the knowledge in a workable framework.

The process of integration is achieved when knowledge is tied to reality, and this is easily accomplished when what was taught in class is what they encounter once they hit the floor.

Tip #1: Ensure your training reflects what is happening in reality.

Any discrepancies between reality and the training material will slow down the integration process.

Humans integrate knowledge more easily when the instructions are clear and logical.

Even though we are learning about something new, we cannot help but feel a sense of uneasiness and disconnect when the process does not seem to follow logic.

Tip #2: Make sense of your processes – eliminate the ambiguities and limit exceptions.

At the beginning, a lot of the learning for a new hire is memorizing many instructions.

But there is a limit to the capacity to perform by rote.

Reviewing what they have learned is crucial to a proper integration of knowledge and to an effective transformation of knowledge to practice.

Many of your processes occur infrequently increasing the gap between theory and practice.

This creates additional problems for employees to remember what to do.

Tip #3: Review material regularly until employee has mastered it.

Leaving employees to fend for themselves at this point is suicidal for your business.

When productivity is low for your new hire, do not sit and wait for things to eventually get better.

Although, they will eventually get better, you are losing lots of money on so many levels while you wait.

Take the bull by the horns, and make this happen.

Provide a more robust support system for your new hires.

Perhaps you may even invest in creating a “certification” process where you define where you want a new hire to be at a certain point in time (preferably weekly).

Create expectations that take into account their starting point and gradually increase them over a period of weeks.

Provide the necessary coaching to help them achieve their weekly goals.

Meet with them frequently to discuss their challenges, and especially to acknowledge their progress.

Ensure you have staff available around the clock to help answer questions they have, especially if the new hires are on the phone with a customer.

Think of the handing time you will save.

New hires must contend with a tremendous amount of change.

Change is good, but it is not so easily integrated.

Proper methods of coaching and support will make the transition so much easier.

It will also create a much better employee experience.

An easier transition means faster gains in quality and quantity.

These gains ultimately translate in a better customer experience.

And we all know what better customer service means…

Yet this fact literally means the difference between a great brand and a dud.

We can spend millions of dollars on a great ad campaign and still end up short of establishing a great brand if we have lost sight of this critical success factor.

Amidst schedule adherence goals, handling time goals or sales per hour goals we can easily forget about the fact that our customers’ first contact with us (after the initial purchase) is with a human voice (after your IVR of course).

Our customers’ experience with our call center is wonderfully centered on the voice of our agents whether we know it or not.

Our employees’ voices become our “voice” which is part of our image which builds our brand.

How does your voice score with your customers?

What would Simon say?

What quality of voice should you focus on?

That depends on your market, your customers.

Whatever the type of voice you need, your recruiting process should reflect it.

Each of our call centers may be unique in terms of the market we serve but we do share a great number of voice quality requirements.

Voice qualities that exude empathy, appreciation for our clients business, voices that evoke a smile, voice that wrap the client with a warm caring sentiment.

Our voices should also know how to express understanding and should also have maturity and confidence not to take anything personally.

Our voices should be supported by a great customer service policy that allows the voices to do whatever it takes to fix our customers’ problems.

So much is at stake in your voice.

Let’s consider our current recruiting procedures and redesign them to recruit people based on the qualities you are looking for.

Perhaps you should even consider conducting your first interview entirely over the phone; why not?

After all, we should experience the candidate’s voice as the first element to be evaluated.

If a candidate does not win you over on the phone with their voice qualities when an opportunity for a job is at stake, how are they ever going to win over one of your clients?

Make that first phone interview your secret weapon in building your voice, in building your brand.

Some of us have put great effort in looking for an IVR voice or a voice for a radio commercial yet we fail to do put the same effort in recruiting the voice that our customers will hear day after day.

The true voice is the one within your call center – are you hearing it for the first time?

Or ever wonder about why people do not visit your website?

Ever wonder why your employees don’t seem motivated about your rewards program?

The answer to these and so many other questions can help you improve your business.

The answer to these questions may mean the difference between success and failure.

So many managers and executives spend hours and hours in meetings after meetings discussing what they think the answers are.

Sometimes even committees are formed, reports are compiled and studies are performed.

All of which often come very close to getting the right answers, yet the results do not change.

Some companies create these wonderful incentive programs with exciting gifts yet they fail to gain any momentum on the sales results.

“We offer front row tickets to an NBA game!” why aren’t they trying harder to win these?

“We offer front row tickets to a popular play!”, why are the employees not clamoring over them?

Design your incentives, your rewards in terms of your employees’ interest not your own.

You cannot count on your employees to desire the same rewards/gifts as you.

Further still, do not assume they want monetary rewards, or gifts.

They may prefer intangibles like receiving formal recognition – in front of their peers.

Don’t discard the fact that they may even prefer the recognition to be done in private instead of in front of peers.

Most importantly, ask your employees what they prefer in terms of rewards and recognition.

Listen to what they have to say about it.

You will unavoidably receive many different answers.

Don’t be intimidated by that.

Welcome the information, explore the opportunities.

A few extra minutes of careful analysis and you will be able to design a better incentive program that will be based on what your employees have told you about their likes and preferences.

No more guess work.

No more hit and miss.

Ask and you shall receive.

Whatever you are wondering about today, there are people within your organization holding the true answers.

They are more than happy to tell you if you just simply ask.

When it comes to customers, you can ask them directly, or you can again rely on your front line employees.

Your front line employees meet and greet your customers on a daily basis.

They are the voice of your company, but they are equally important, they are the ears to your company.

Tap into the wealth of information your employees possess.

They have insurmountable data stored in their minds.

Leverage that.

Again, ask your front line employees, and you shall receive.

Sometimes one employee may not necessarily hold the key answer, but the key answer is held by the totality of the data held by several employees.

But the answer is there – explore it.

Tap into your creative side and learn to extract this data, and better yet learn to decipher it and build a stronger business.

Do not be afraid to continually ask your employees.

Think about it.

This is in effect a different way to open the communication between you and your employees.

That in itself is a rewarding experience for the employees.

Who knows what you might learn?

Regardless, imagine the stronger relationship you will form with your employees, and they with your customers.

True.

But that should never stop anyone from trying to achieve it.

What is perfection anyway?

If you treat the concept “perfection” as an objective idea rather than intrinsic or subjective one you might well achieve it.

What I mean is perfection presupposes the question “perfect for what”.

In other words, it depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

Is the screwdriver perfect for the job of tightening or loosening a screw?

Yes it is.

Is a hammer perfect for a nail?

Yes it is.

Yet the screwdriver or the hammer are not perfect for every job.

In your workforce you will find different people with different skills.

Some will be better at certain tasks than others, and others will occasionally be perfect for a given task.

All of these people need to have goals and direction and the proper encouragement.

Defining proper goals and incentives is critical to the success of your company.

So, what kind of goals and incentives do you define?

You send your kid to the store to buy 3 items, say 1 pint of milk, a loaf of bread and a pound of grapes.

If your child comes back with these 3 items, wouldn`t you say he has delivered exactly what you wanted?

Would that not constitute a perfect delivery of your expectations?

Yes it would if that is all you expected.

Say you asked your kid to come straight home after he bought the items, you also asked him to bring back the change, and you asked him to pleasantly accept to do this errand for you.

But he dragged himself home an hour later without any change left, i.e. an imperfect outcome.

Leading people effectively means setting clear goals.

It also requires you to set clear expectations by identifying the quality, the quantity and the spirit in which you want the goals achieved.

It is also very important to reward accordingly to encourage people to continue to do great work i.e. incentives.

Don’t be afraid to ask your employees what they want as rewards – don’t guess.

Giving undesired rewards/gifts can be as bad as not being recognized.

Start the recognition process by asking your employees what they desire as rewards.

If you evaluate your employees on a regular basis and if you employ some kind of grading scale do you ever score someone with the highest grade for a particular goal?

Too many managers are afraid to score a perfect score on a given goal/task.

This only serves to stunt the growth of their workforce.

What is the message it is sending to the people who want to achieve the best possible result?

The message is this: “My boss sets goals that he wants me to achieve but believes impossible to achieve by anyone.”

Another way of putting this: “My boss makes unreasonable demands.”

Soon no one even tries to achieve that lofty goal and they settle for the average or the “meet expectations”.

So next time you are setting goals and incentives, set them high, make your goals “stretch” your people, but make them attainable: make them aim high and please don`t be afraid to appraise someone with the perfect score.

By that definition we all have been customers – a fact we often forget when we are on the other side of the “counter” and are looking for ways to attract more customers.

Let’s face it, you want to enhance customer experience because you want to attract and keep customers.

Delivering outstanding service is especially challenging in a call center environment.

It’s time to re-acquaint yourself with what it feels like not only be a customer but what it feels like to experience an extraordinary customer service experience.

Start off by walking a mile in their shoes.

Put yourself in the role of a customer.

And don’t think about your customers at this point, think about yourself.

Be selfish for one day.

To help you with that go out shopping for a day and take note of when you felt an outstanding customer experience and when you didn’t.

Pause to take note of what was good about the great experience.

Conversely, take note of the why’s of the negative experience.

Remember to track the quality and the service and how long you had to wait to receive the service.

Repeat this until you really start to see the difference between an extraordinary experience, a so-so experience and a negative experience.

The next step is to ask your leaders to do the same thing – to relate their stories about extraordinary service experience they had.

And finally, I strongly recommend you create some kind of fun contest for your call center agents and ask them to bring back their stories too.

In no time, you will find that your entire company will have a clear picture of what is an extraordinary experience and what it takes to deliver it.

Continue having people share their stories to keep the “buzz” alive.

Everyone has a clear mental picture that you can refer to in your mind when you think about excellence in customer service.

Employees follow leaders.

Leaders lead by example.

Employees are your customers too.

Guess what?

Make their experience extraordinary too.

Think of them as customers and see how you can change your methods of coaching to inspire them, to make them want to be better for themselves.

Let`s face it your agents are your front line, they are the ones delivering the service to your customers not you.

Everything you say or do can be held against you.

Remember if you want to attract more customers, you need to be extraordinary at attracting and keeping employees.

Happy and excited employees will deliver.

Call center managers are dying to find ways to be able to measure performance as it relates to First Call Resolution.

Perhaps only those with unlimited resources might even get a glimpse at it.

I recommend in cases where it is virtually impossible to get an accurate score to focus primarily on proper methods to improve first call resolution and attach scores to each of these methods.

The methods are more easily measurable because you control them.

To better illustrate my point let’s begin by applying a problem solving approach.

At the end of which I promise you will have plenty of ideas to improve your customer satisfaction.

What are the possible causes of the FCR problem?

• Client Influence
• Process adequacy.
• Employee understanding of process.
• Employee adherence to process.
• Employee knowledge base.
• Employee years of experience.
• Employee competency.
• Employee commitment.
• Product quantity and complexity.

Interesting Note

All of the causes of the FCR problem are the same causes that affect quality and handling time (AHT).

Therefore, a solution with a scope that solves FCR, quality and AHT will be a highly effective solution.

Let’s examine each possible cause a little closer.

CLIENT INFLUENCE

• The number of inquiries within a call?
• The number of changes?
• The client’s capacity to grasp the concepts/responses/information to his/her questions.
• The complexity of the client’s questions/requests.
• The language/cultural barrier.
• The client’s readiness with paperwork or necessary information etc…

PROCESS INADEQUACY

• Are the processes well defined?
• Are they as efficient as possible?
• Too many steps? Too many rules?
• Easy to follow? i.e. logically structured
• Easy to remember?
• Simple? i.e. intuitive
• Cumbersome to the clients? The agents?
• Are the systems adequate and helpful?
• Do they work efficiently?
• Are they reliable?
• Are the right tools available?
• Are they efficient?
• Are they reliable?

EMPLOYEE UNDERSTANDING OF PROCESS

• How well does an agent understand the process?
• How do we measure his/her understanding?
• What impact does your not knowing the level of understanding have on the productivity & quality of our results?

EMPLOYEE ADHERENCE TO THE PROCESS

• How well does an agent adhere to the process?
• How do we measure process adherence?
• What frequency?
• What version of the process is being adhered to?
• How solid is our communications about process changes, or process improvements?
• What system for following-up is in place when change has occurred?
• What accountability exists for process adherence? For the agent? For the Team Leader? For the Manager?

EMPLOYEE KNOWLEDGE BASE

• How do we measure the knowledge base of an agent?
• How frequently do we measure it?
• How can we increase the knowledge base?
• How do we ensure his/her knowledge base is up-to-the-minute?
• How strong is our communications approach regarding updating knowledge base?
• How can we improve continuous learning ?

EMPLOYEE YEARS OF EXPERIENCE

• From the moment a new employee hits the floor, how long does it take to reach the target productivity standards?
• Do we have support/programs to develop new hires to full potential?
• Are there different expectations for different experience?
• What constitutes an experience level?
• What is the number of experienced people? How much does experience cost? Or how much does the lack of experience cost?
• How effective are we at recruiting experienced people?

EMPLOYEE COMPETENCY

• Measuring Listening skills. Is the agent really understanding the client’s problem?
• How do we measure the agent’s capacity to effectively take control of a call? Is he/she too forceful? Too timid? Diplomatic ?
• How do we measure his/her organizational skills?
• How do we measure
  • Typing skills?
  • Sales techniques?
  • Communication skills?
  • His/her self-assurance, confidence?

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

• How do we measure employee engagement?
• What is employee engagement?
• What does engagement depend on?
• What is the agent’s time utilization?

PRODUCT QUANTITY AND COMPLEXITY

The more products and the more complex these are, the more difficult the agent’s job is.

• Product changes?
• New products?
• Underwriting changes?
• Legal changes and requirements?

What does this all mean?

What it comes down to is that your success depends on how much your agents know and do.

To have highly skilled agents capable of resolving client questions on the first call, we need to focus on our coaching approach, coaching skills and coaching manpower.

We need to constantly ensure that our people know everything they need to know, and do everything they need to do in order to improve the first call resolution, quality and AHT.

But the “KNOWING” must come first.

• What can prevent an agent from knowing everything he/she needs to know?

• If she is a new on the job,
• If she missed a training session,
• If she did not receive the communication,
• If she did not read the communication,
• If she misunderstood the communication, the training, the coaching,
• If she doesn’t care,
• Hired the wrong profile,
• Information overload.

• What can prevent an analyst from doing everything she needs to do?
  • If he did not know, and/or
  • If he is a new on the job.
  • If he doesn’t know and doesn’t care.
  • If he knows but doesn’t care.
  • Competing priorities
  • Barriers
  • They have a better way.

Conclusion

As you can see, what an employee knows is crucial to our success? And ensuring they know everything they need to know is a critical success factor.

You rely heavily on your team leaders and trainers to build and maintain your workforce.

The proper coaching methods and especially having the appropriate methods of follow-up are the keys to ensuring that our people know everything they need to know, and do everything they need to do.

This is certainly not news to any of us.

Yet, it is impossible not to feel as if we are discovering it for the first time as we see just how significant the impact really has on so many critical fronts mainly client experience (FCR), quality and productivity (AHT).

You know how it is.

The delicate balance between customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and shareholder satisfaction is an on-going struggle.

Some companies have gone as far as determining that putting their people first makes for better service which leads to more profit.

No matter what your position and approach to managing the delicate balance, you have wondered about how to measure your service level.

You may have considered evaluating your service by limiting the number of abandon calls (abandon rate), or the flip side of this which is measuring the number of calls answered (also known as answer rate or accessibility).

You may have measured the average speed of answer.

You may have combined these measures into a single indicator that goes under so many different names but comes down to this: “x” percent of calls answered in “y” seconds.

By working with the ” x” percent of calls answered in “y” seconds indicator, which I’ll call Grade of Service (GOS), you have realized that setting a goal for the GOS is much more demanding: should you go with with 80% calls answered in 20 seconds, or 90% in 0 seconds or 70% in 30 seconds?

Back in the 90′s when the world of call centers was booming the rule of thumb was 80% calls answered in 20 seconds.

Soon however managers realized that setting an appropriate GOS was dependant on their type of business/industry.

Many theories exists on the origin of the proverbial 80% in 20 seconds like the Pareto Principle for example.

As a workforce management expert I discovered an answer that left me thinking that the 80 in 20 was perhaps more than a rule of thumb concocted out-of-the-blue.

I discovered my answer when I learned that the GOS had an inverse proportionate relationship with the Occupancy Rate (the rate of how busy agents are – see my article “Call Center Service Level – How Low Can You Go”).

Regardless of the potentially great reason behind the 80% in 20 seconds GOS goal, I would like to point out that there are ways for you to confirm which GOS goal is best for you.

Let me demonstrate what I mean in the following table:

The table above contains the results of a tedious analysis that shows how many FTE (Full-Time Equivalent) requirements for each GOS goal.

Notice that if you staffed your call center with 35.6 FTE you could achieve 2 different GOS goals: you could choose 65% calls answered in 20 seconds or 70% of calls answered in 60 seconds.

Still if you staffed with 37.2 FTEs you could choose 75% in 20 seconds or 80% in 60 seconds.

You can perform the same analysis with your particular data.

You need a Worforce Management Software that can create forecasts and schedules.

Simply get the WFM software to generate schedules according to your business model against your particular call volume, and Call handling time.

Run each schedule generation with a different GOS and track the FTE results in a grid like the one above.

(Do not try this with a simple Erlang-C calculator; this analysis requires the creation of schedules to deliver realistic results based on your scheduling complexities).

The above analysis will help you determine the various GOS you can choose from based on the number of FTE you can afford.

Conclusion:

Do not lose sight of the Occupancy rate that increases in the event you choose a lower GOS.

Otherwise, you may end up creating a “sweat shop” instead of a motivating working environment.

The delicate balance is a constant challenge and keeping our sights on our people, our customers and our wallets is the way to success.