Contact center systems provide tremendous amounts of data about the agent’s performance, the call’s flow, and the caller’s experience.

However, it’s often difficult to sift the mountains of data into just the key metrics that we need.

So contact centers managers need insights instead of just swimming in that sea of data elements.

With access to a wide range of digital touchpoints for conducting research, connecting with peers, and making important buying decisions…

consumers are more empowered than ever before.

It is now left to organizations to provide a level of service that is outstanding across the board.

A recent survey showed that the top priorities for organizations were metrics, business intelligence, and reporting.

The survey also stated that improving call center reporting and analytics was one of the top challenges currently faced by contact center managers.

Expert reports have predicted that by the year 2020, customer experience will surpass product and price as the key brand differentiator.

There is no doubt that providing a flawless level of customer service is vital if you want to enjoy a sustainable and successful commercial future …

…and it is very likely your call center is the heartbeat of your entire consumer-facing operation.

That said, to improve the overall intelligence, performance, and productivity, you will have to leverage the wealth of digital data available at your disposal.

And the best way to do so is by using call center reporting.

Before delving into the various ways to improve your call center reporting, it is important to consider the role of data in customer service…

…and the level of insight these information can give you to develop a successful business intelligence strategy.

Importance of Data in Customer Service

“If you are able to listen to data, it will talk” – Jim Bergeson.

Data analysis offers the means to identify your triumphs, faults, weaknesses, and strengths in a variety of areas…

…and you can use this information to enhance and improve your business – customer service is one of these areas.

It is imperative to understand your consumers and their interaction to deliver a truly exceptional customer service level…

…that is where call center data analytics come in.

Call center reporting helps organizations take corrective measures to monitor agent performance, set internal targets, and analyze efficiencies…

…in different areas including response rate, complaint resolution, and overall productivity levels.

There is now an exceptional increase in the way data is produced.

For instance, 3.46 million searches are performed per day via Google alone and 1.2 trillion every year.

This means the data is out there already and you can significantly improve every element of your call center by using it to your advantage.

This history of commerce can be traced back to 150,000 years, with the only viable means of customer service being face-to-face communication.

Today, we have not only a multitude of communicative methods but also a depth of digital insights…

…that can help us make critical customer service-based decisions – and call center reporting makes sense of the wealth of available information.

What is Call Center Reporting?

Call center reporting is an intuitive visual reporting tool that displays a wide range of relevant call center KPIs…

…and metrics that allow customer service teams and managers to optimize and monitor performance as well as spot emerging trends in a central location.

The digestible nature of visual displays of these reports helps to simplify analysis, thus reducing data consumption time significantly.

The interactive nature of a call center report also empowers users to easily extract invaluable data in real-time.

The fast track to improved customer service intelligence are the data visualization tools and robust call reporting dashboards that exist for that very purpose.

Key Steps to Improving Your Call Center Reporting

1. Understand the Available Data

It is important to understand the underlying data that is available to you and how to calculate the various metrics.

For our customers, this is very critical to understand and not only ensure they truly know their data but can interpret it properly.

2. Track the Right Metrics

It is also important to focus on the metrics that matter most as there are so many and some are the wrong ones.

We will discuss more about which metrics you need to focus on for successful call center reporting later in this blog post.

3. Monitor Them Regularly

You have to monitor your results daily.

It is not every metric you need to look at every day, so we will discuss the important metrics you should look at and how often.

4. Implement Change Management

You also have to consider what call center reporting has on your agent’s motivation, your compensation, and your organization.

Who gets extra perks?

Who advances in their career?

Will the reports determine who gets more desirable shifts?

How will these metrics impact morale?

You have to put extra effort into Change Management and communicating with your teams repeatedly about any changes, especially when their career is impacted.

5. Take Corrective Action

The final step to improving call center reporting is to recognize when the metrics are telling you corrective action is needed…

…and the necessary steps to achieve your organization’s desired outcomes.

Key Call Center Reporting Metrics for Evaluating Customer Engagement

Service Level

Service level is calculated as the percentage of inbound interactions answered within your organization’s goal.

80/20 or 80 percent of calls answered within 20 seconds is still the most common goal in our industry for voice interactions.

Service level goal offers the optimal balance of contact center efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Many organizations like the average speed of answer (ASA) as a substitute for service level.

But we advise you to avoid it because it is an average and can be misleading.

This is because many callers are answered right away without waiting while many callers wait in queue longer than the average.

Another drawback of this metric is that it ignores abandoned callers.

Typically, this metric is applied to non-deferrable interactions like web callback, chat, and calls.

Response Time

Often, response time is used for deferrable transactions like email where the customer is not expecting a live agent to be waiting to help them.

Response time is how quickly a customer will receive a response from an agent.

For instance, if your goal is to answer all emails within one business day, the expectation is that 100 percent of those emails will be answered within that period.

You need to measure how you achieve that goal consistently.

Answer Rate

Answer rate is simply the percentage of answered interactions.

This is critical because our goal is to address all interactions and perhaps we don’t get them as quickly as we would like to.

Typically, you should focus your secondary call routing approaches to ensure your customers get as many interactions handled as possible to minimize those abandons.

In reality, all organizations have a percentage of interactions abandon and that is quite normal.

It is very impractical to operate with no abandons unless you have unlimited funds.

Additional Call Center Reporting Metrics to Consider

Track Service Level by Interval

If you want to achieve a higher standard, you can track service level by interval and not as an average across all intervals.

There are periods where the call center is skeleton staffed in many organizations where the results are not quite as good.

But when combined with other intervals where you have a fully staffed call center, the overall service level for the day hits the mark.

The overall percentage of service level would drop if some organizations measured it by the percentage of intervals.

Tracking service level by intervals is a great way to see how consistently your desired results are delivered throughout the day.

Occupancy

Since you pay call center agents to be on the phone, you may consider any time not on the phone as unproductive – that may not be accurate entirely.

Occupancy is a by-product of leadership’s ability to set the right service level goals and properly staff the call center.

The higher the service level goal, the lower the occupancy.

Some people think occupancy equals productivity, but it is a measure of leadership’s ability to find the right balance of volume to service level goals to staffing.

There is an interrelationship here between these dynamics you need to understand.

Once you understand it, you are in a better position to effect change by championing the need based on this knowledge.

It is also an important barometer to know how close your call center agents are to burnout.

Most agents will be impacted negatively once occupancy gets into 80 percent or higher.

Idle Time

This is another measure that allows leadership to gauge overall resource capacity planning.

Are your agents sitting idle too much, are your service level goals too high, or are you overstaffed?

These are all important questions you need to ask to ensure a successful call center reporting.

Turnover

Turnover is a measure of an organization’s ability to provide the right compensation, the right tools, strong leadership, etc.

It is another bellwether metric that shows the overall hiring and employment practices of the organization.

Workforce Management

For those customers that have deployed a workforce management solution, key metrics include the actual volume vs forecast and the actual staff vs scheduled staff.

This solution allows consumers to achieve 95 percent forecast accuracy.

Having the right forecasts lead to optimal schedules, aligning staff with the inbound interactions which lead to higher customer satisfaction and service levels.

Accurate forecasting is a combination of art and science, as well as more precision achieved, will lead to a contact center with a strong plan for each day.

Benefits of Call Center Reporting

“Your greatest source of learning are your most unhappy customers” – Bill Gates.

Call center reporting is vital to the success, cohesion, and ongoing health of your business’s customer service activities.

To put the power of these reports into perspective, here is a glance at the benefits of call center reporting.

• Call center reporting can help to exponentially improve your customer-facing interactions by helping to increase overall productivity while also improving resolution rates and complaint response.
• Call center reporting provide a level of insight that will help enhance service, cut costs, streamline your processes, and spot service inefficiencies.
• Call center agent metrics will help you support those in need of help in particular areas of the role and also help you engage your staff by using a more personable approach. These will lead to a happier workforce and enhance the level of support given to your customers.
• Having a robust call center reporting and analytics lets you spot trends and deal with any potential threats as they occur. It also allows you to nip them in the bud before they spiral into more time-consuming and detrimental problems.
• As the data is presented in a visual, intuitive, and interactive format, it is possible to absorb, view, analyze, and share important call center data with ease, helping cross-departmental collaboration and saving time.

According to a survey, 54 percent of customers now have higher expectations from their customer service.

In this digital age, customers judge businesses and brands based on the customer service level they deliver.

So to thrive and survive in tomorrow’s world, it is essential to ensure your call center operates at an optimum level.

Using call center reporting to your advantage lets you make the enhancements, changes, and tweaks necessary for tangible long-term success.

This makes your customer service department an intelligent, productive, efficient, and well-oiled machine long into your organization’s future.

To find out more information, you can explore the incredible power of our custom demographics.

If you are eager to learn more about the world of reporting, contact one of our experts to guide you.

Updated February 2020.

A contact center workforce thrives on motivation.

The workplace environment contributes to overall employee morale, which, in turn, impacts employee motivation.

According to BusinessDictionary.com, Employee morale describes attitudes, emotions, and, overall outlook of employees during their time in a workplace environment.”

Workers with a positive outlook are more productive than those with a negative outlook, and they are likely to stay longer.

The working environment of a call or contact center is significantly different from a traditional office environment.

Employees sit in isolated cubicles for hours at a time.

Call center workers have a stringent break and lunch schedule, and it is essential to keep the agents motivated and to help them manage the stress of their job effectively.

Low morale contributes to a negative working environment, low productivity, and high employee turnover.

Employee turnover can account for more than one-fifth of a company’s payroll expenditures and thus constitutes a significant area for improving the overall cost of doing business.

High workplace morale contributes to a positive working environment, enhanced productivity, and low employee turnover.

In short, workplace morale impacts your company’s bottom line and needs to be a priority in decisions and daily operations.

Although motivation can come from good working practices and operational efficiencies, it is best to use effective motivational techniques to raise morale and improve employee performance.

Here are four proven strategies to help you motivate your contact center employees.

1. Create Teams

Creating teams in a call center environment can alleviate the sense of isolation that the cubicle represents; being a member of a group reduces this alienating aspect of call-center workplaces.

Support for the teams needs to be integrated into workplace policy and management to reduce the “silo effect,” the feeling that “we have to do this all on our own.”

Building teams allows management to create a good working relationship with their team members and thus fosters a pleasant and friendlier environment in the company.

Working as a team can help in promoting trust, respect, and harmony that can lower absenteeism and thus increase productivity.

Team-building allows management to connect diverse employees into a unified group.

Teams should be limited to 5-6 members for optimal effectiveness.

Team-building activities play a crucial role; some key strategies to promote cooperation include:

Small-Group Activities:

• Improv Workshop – groups of 5-6 get together and improvise various call center work scenarios and play around with different responses to generate different outcomes.
• Two truths and a lie – a simple party game and a great ice-breaker.
• Concentration (Marketing Edition) – a remake of an old television game show customized to your specific call center’s needs and goals.
• Jigsaw Race — provide each team with the same jigsaw puzzle; the first team to complete the puzzle wins a prize.

Large-Group Activities:

• Scavenger Hunt – can be within the call center or arranged outside of the workplace.
• What’s my name – another simple party game that can be customized to your specific workplace needs or used as an icebreaker.
• Board Game Tournament – an out of the office activity.
• Office Trivia – can be played in teams or individually.

As you can see, there are a variety of strategies available to promote teamwork in your call center.

Teambuilding is an effective way to boost workplace morale.

Strict schedules and the confined atmosphere of call center cubicles can take a toll on employee morale.

Working in teams provides a sense of belonging and reduces the stress associated with feelings of isolation.

Effective teams are more than the sum of the group members, and people with different strengths should be selected to make the most of the teamwork advantage.

Different perspectives and experiences unlock problem-solving abilities and enhance workplace creativity.

Collective decision-making and strategizing enhance worker commitment to action.

The diverse perspectives of each team member can be a valuable tool to enhance workplace performance.

To add an element of fun, allow members to create team names.

Teamwork can reduce workplace stress and boost employee morale.

Effective team building requires reliable information that enhances coaching and support efforts.

Introducing a level of competition is another strategy for improving morale in a call center environment.

2. Create Friendly Competition

Creating teams in a call center can stimulate healthy competition; teamwork motivates groups of workers to surpass sales targets and outperform other teams.

One proven method for measuring and enhancing employee morale is called “gamification.”

Gamification involves applying the essential elements that make games fun and applying these elements to activities outside of leisure time, such as the workplace.

These elements can include cooperating as a team, creativity, role-play, and competition.

Customized competitions based on your specific call center’s objectives and employee outcomes can promote employee engagement, boost employee morale, and stimulate increased productivity.

Gamification provides immediate gratification, taps into employees’ needs for feedback and rewards, and improves employee engagement and job satisfaction.

To implement successful gamification in a call center, be sure to:

• Draw on games and activities that are popular in the call center’s location.
• Emphasize cooperation and friendly competition; co-operating as a team requires strong group cohesion.
• Communicate clear goals.
• Ensure that team scores and results are readily available in real-time.
• Display scores in a shared area such as a breakroom.
• Use creativity; for example, icons can serve as team mascots.

There are potential pitfalls to gamification efforts such as creating an overly-competitive environment, failing to provide ongoing feedback, and neglecting the importance of rewards and recognition.

Employees are more likely to encourage their teammates if there is an attractive reward or recognition for exceptional performance.

3. Appreciate and Reward

Rewarding or recognizing the efforts of agents is critically important in a contact center environment; it is what keeps your workforce going to achieve higher goals and stay loyal to the success of your company.

A useful call center reporting software is one that allows you to reward improved performance indicators and promptly identify areas for improvement.

Calculating appropriate rewards requires an understanding of employee motivation.

There are two basic types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic.

Intrinsic motivation refers to the internal satisfaction a person gets from achieving something; it is internal to the person.

Extrinsic motivation refers to the satisfaction that comes from rewards such as money and praise; it is external to the person.

Recognition and acknowledgment satisfy both internally and externally driven motivation.

It follows that one of the best ways to boost agent morale is by sending them a note to acknowledge their work.

You can also have on-site parties to acknowledge achievements or those who met monthly goals to show your employees that their efforts are valued.

Prizes and trophies awarded for “winning” workplace competitions can boost morale.

As in many games, it is vital to recognize effort and improvement as well as top performers and winning teams.

Recognition and rewards must be timely, too much delay can offset the positive gains in morale that these practices have the potential to promote.

A team is only as strong as its weakest member.

Effective call center reporting software helps to identify individual areas for improvement in real-time.

Gamification can be used to motivate teams and can also be used to stimulate individual improvement.

4. Create a Positive Working Environment

The best way to boost employee morale is by creating a self-motivating environment that promotes a positive attitude and effective teamwork for maximum success.

Gamification can be used to tap into employees’ intrinsic motivation by allowing them to set individual goals and track their success through each step.

One of the critical motivating tactics could be ongoing training and employee development programs to facilitate the personal and professional growth of employees.

Points keep track of individual employees’ participation in employee development programs.

Points earned by each member can contribute to their team’s overall score for the specified time (e.g., week, month, or quarter).

Call center reporting software that supervisors can customize to match the desired timeframes is optimal.

To maximize the benefits of gamification, team leaders and call center supervisors can offer one-on-one coaching to resolve issues that employees may encounter.

Positive reinforcement encourages employees to continue engaging in the activities and behaviors that result in rewards.

Badges or other rewards mark progress and thereby tap into extrinsic motivation factors.

Effective reward systems are an invaluable component of successful gamification.

CXService 360 offers thirty ideas to get you on the right track, and we have selected a dozen:

• Gift cards – gift cards redeemable at local businesses are a simple way to reward accomplishments and motivate workers.
• Meal vouchers – treat employees to a new restaurant in the area.
• Lunch with the CEO – bolsters the sense of being a valued member of a larger entity.
• Cash bonuses – cash is a powerful extrinsic benefit.
• Employee photographs – appeal to the intrinsic motivation of being recognized for your efforts.

• Award plaques – can be hung in the worker’s cubicle and serve as a daily reminder of recognition.
• Sponsored education and training – knowledge to enhance workplace performance can take place outside of the workplace.
• Movie tickets – provide relaxation and entertainment outside of the workplace.
• Create a “wall of fame” – another place to mount employee photographs or plaques of recognition is a wall in a common area such as the break room; this also provides a sense of belonging and engagement.
• Supervisor for a day – top performers can be rewarded with a day where their talents and strengths impact and motivate the rest of the team.
• Cubicle decoration – enhancements to the confined space of a cubicle can go a long way toward enhancing morale; the employee must have input into the design decisions.
• Promotion – possibly the ultimate motivation is the knowledge that successful job performance will have a long-term positive benefit.

Call center reporting software that provides concrete and measurable employee performance data can help users identify those employees who deserve rewards and help to determine which level of award is appropriate.

In addition to a reward system managers can use a selection of proven employee engagement techniques such as

• Certificates of Achievement – these can be placed in an employee’s cubicle or hung in a common area, such as the “wall of fame” mentioned above.
• Theme contests – customized to your specific operational needs as identified by your call center reporting software.
• Casual dress days – allow employees to express their personalities and to dress in comfortable clothing.
• Time-off programs – sometimes, the best workplace reward can be the promise of a bit of extra time away to decompress and reset.
• Employee Wellness Programs – contact center work involves a great deal of emotional labor, which can have long-term and detrimental health effects; wellness programs ensure healthier and happy employees and are vital to improving workplace morale.
• Employee Surveys – asking employees for their feedback AND acting on their input helps to ensure that workers feel valued and provides valuable information on employee morale.

Call center reporting software can play a pivotal role in your efforts to boost employee morale.

A positive workplace environment stimulates worker engagement and productivity and can reduce employee turnover rates.

Employee morale has a proven impact on your company’s bottom line.

Contact center employees work in unique and stressful environments, are subject to long periods of isolation in small cubicles, and engage in emotional labor.

Customizable reports that are easy to understand are essential.

Call center reports can empower managers and supervisors.

The Reporting Engine call center software offers features that are designed to meet the goals and needs of call center work environments.

If you are running a contact center business and are looking for an efficient business intelligence system for your company, check out the services at The Reporting Engine and request a free demo today!

As a business manager, it is your responsibility to make advanced resources available to your company in order to improve capacity and efficiency of your workforce.

With growing advancements in technology, buying simple computer hardware or installing a general purpose software suite might not be enough to meet the ever expanding needs of your business.

If you are looking for a better and more efficient data management program for your company, cloud computing is currently the best option available.

This is a web-based service that can run everything from email to complex data analysis programs.

For all those managers who have not yet adopted cloud computing for their business needs, here are top signs indicating that you need a cloud based computing now.

1. Your Data Is Increasing Exponentially

With an increase in the amount of data from social media sources and other modern communication tools, companies can extract more value from the analysis of data sets to gain a competitive advantage.

Nevertheless, the management of large amounts of data is one of the biggest challenges businesses encounter today.

In order to address the need, cloud computing offers substantial storage space to preserve large volumes of data and information.

Due to its greater data management and processing capacity, it is the optimum choice for companies that handle big data projects.

With a cloud based system, a company could get a reliable storage solution with lesser operational challenges and capital expenditures.

2. Your Data Management Cost Is Rising

Big data environment requires a costly infrastructure to process large volumes of data efficiently.

Conversely, cloud based services can help them save a lot of money via cost effective solutions that can support data management and advanced analytical functions.

Cloud computing can automate the data integration process reducing the need for a large IT infrastructure to process large and complex data.

3. Your Staff Spends Too Much Time on Data Management Tasks

With stand alone data management tools, your staff often spends too much time compiling, maintaining, and reporting data.

Besides, your IT staff may be too busy troubleshooting equipment that makes them unable to run other, more important projects.

With cloud computing services, your company can get infrastructure as well as management services which can free up your staff to work on other projects that are critical to the success of the business.

Are you a business manager and seeking a cost effective solution to manage large volumes of data?

Check out the Reporting Engine today.

To request a live demo, contact us now!

The broad functional capacity of the program can measure processes, methods, and systems to identify issues and trends as well as fine tune operations to meet business objectives.

The Reporting Engine is one such program that provides a comprehensive framework and efficient tools to manage business objectives evaluating actions and procedures of contact centers.

The application furnishes useful data and information for analysis and effective decision-making.

Considering the amount of data out there, the rate at which it is increasing and thus the growing need for information management systems, the Reporting Engine offers smart solutions to contact center businesses.

Here is what you can expect from the system.

Accuracy

The Reporting Engine removes errors, omissions, or duplication to provide managers with accurate and up to date information whenever they need it.

Whether you are looking for historic data, real time updates, or predictive data, the program can provide precise and updated information to help you make informed decisions.

Better Decision Making

Once your contact center has the Reporting Engine in place, you can see detailed data on all aspects of the business.

With financial, customer, and sales data, you can manage and read reports that synthesize all information in a pre-determined way to help management make fact based and effective decisions.

Improves Efficiency

Gathering, compiling, and reporting data from various sources could be time consuming and hectic.

With the Reporting Engine, however, all the information is available in a centralized location for quicker access and convenient use.

You can easily view the information in a dashboard and turn it into a report saving valuable time and eliminating inefficiencies.

Faster Response Time

Delayed decisions can affect the profitably and growth of the business.

With the Reporting Engine, managers can view reports on a daily basis instead of waiting until the end of a period.

This will allow them to correct errors quickly and bring operations back on track in a timely manner.

Equipped with appropriate knowledge, managers can immediately make adjustments to improve the performance of the company before it’s too late.

Better Strategic Planning

The Reporting Engine lets you know of emerging issues and growing trends which allow decision makers to use a proactive approach for the future.

The efficient availability of data and information allows managers to create better and more efficient strategic plans for future growth.

If you are a contact center manager and looking for an efficient business intelligence system for your business, check out The Reporting Engine today.

To request a live demo, contact us now!

But it does take the right ones.

And these key reports need to evolve with the company.

Fundamentally, there are 2 kinds of reports a business benefits from:

1) Reports generated for the purpose of large scale data analysis.

These are commonly known as data mining reports and perform tasks like cluster analysis and anomaly detection.

2) Reports generated to track results of primary goals.

These are known as performance management reports for example.

There never seems to be a shortage in demands for data mining.

Who can resist the benefits of discovering new anomalies or new insight?

Large sums of money are spent in purchasing such systems.

Even larger sums are invested year after year in manpower to design queries and programs to work with data mining systems.

In our constant struggle to keep or grow our market shares, we do well to invest some money in some form of “data mining”.

However, if left unguarded this could become a money pit.

Its lure of so many revenue-generating and cost reducing discoveries may seduce you until your ROI becomes non-existent.

You can safe-guard your investment by being mindful of the following:

a) Lack of basic understanding of corporate goals

b) Disconnected front-line goals

c) Inconsistent and conflicting goals

d) Inter-departmental goal conflicts

e) Lack of principled leadership

f) Lack of clearly defined objectives

The existence of these weaknesses will spiral your data mining costs out of control.

Where that be in countless meetings where people argue with no specific guidance the necessity of one more report.

Conversely we are tempted to put strict rules for people to follow before making requests – these rules may stifle your best problem-solvers.

Companies with smaller budgets may not benefit from data mining but are also sheltered from the additional costs they incur.

On the other hand, fortunately, all companies live with performance reports.

Unfortunately, they also suffer from the same challenges that data mining reports create.

Many companies have their own in-house developers just like the data mining group has.

Because companies evolve and that their markets are constantly shifting, business managers and executives rely heavily on practical insight provided by both types of reports.

So the demand for changes and add-ons will never cease.

How can you increase the flexibility and reduce the costs of having new or modified reports?

1) Clear connected goals from front-line to the top executives.

2) Effective communication of plans.

3) Efficient yet flexible report request guidelines.

4) Don’t underestimate the benefit of a corporate-wide structured problem-solving approach. (There are great one-day courses offered in your city.)

5) Use of third-party reporting software that leverages benefits of data mining and performance reports, offering complete flexibility to any non-programmer in the company to generate their own analysis or reports when they see fit.

Check out: The Reporting Engine

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

This is true of every aspect of our businesses.

Remember that it also applies to our expenses with regard to your data mining and performance report requirements.

Our operations are running relatively smooth.

We achieve our goals month after month and year after year.

We even manage to improve quality and productivity.

Our employees are happy to work for us and our customers remain loyal year after year.

What else could you want? Why would you want to “mess with success”?

Well, if you insist, perhaps you want to sustain these results at a lower cost?

Or maybe improve these results at lower or same cost?

Perhaps your customers would be just as loyal with a slight increase in wait time making your shareholders even happier with increased profits due to productivity gains?

“Don’t fix what is not broken” is an old adage that has a lot of truth yet we must all be careful not to let complacency cozily settle in.

We all know that in order to stay ahead of the competition we must continue to surpass ourselves.

To surpass ourselves we need to know our business thoroughly.

We need to know where we are.

We need to know where we have been.

We need to know our strong points and we need to know our weak ones.

We can leverage our strengths and proceed to transform weaknesses into strengths.

“Knowledge is power” – the knowledge of your strengths and of your weaknesses – the knowledge to ascertain your areas of success and to discover new areas of improvement.

Does your business intelligence, your data-mining, or whatever reporting system you use continue to help you discover new knowledge, or does it leave you staring at the same over and over again?

Discovering new areas of improvements is a challenge in and of itself, yet discovering solutions to improve these areas is quite another.

The key is to know how to synthesize the tons of data stored everywhere in your business.

Most businesses do not have a shortage of data.

The shortcoming is in the expertise to synthesize it into insight that can help guide you to make even better decisions.

What can you do?

1) Ensure you company goals are aligned with the corporate mission.

2) Build contextual goals for each department and ensure there are no inter-departmental goal conflicts.

3) Build hierarchical goals for each role within each department. Ensure these goals connect to the departmental goals and the corporate mission.

4) Communicate the goals clearly to the employees. Ensure they understand the rationale behind each goal.

5) Solicit employees for their input in uncovering and discovering new areas of improvement.

6) Corroborate their ideas with data.

7) Guide your business analysts teams. Set expectations for them to analyze data relating to the goals.

8) Begin to categorize results of your employees, your queues, your departments.

Categories such as year of service, education level, schedule, training, skills, experience level etc.. And try to extract data by categories and discover new ways to see your business.

9) If you cannot afford to hire business analysts to perform such analysis, consider investing in a reporting software like The Reporting Engine by Emetrix Systems, where it lets you categorize your data for further analysis.

10) Guide your Team Leaders, Managers, Business Analysts to take a step back and to look at the forests, not just the trees.

Help them draw business decisions from a bigger picture.

11) The power of categorizing is much like the functioning of the human mind – it constantly tries to reduce tons of information into “categories” for example “chair” rolls up into “furniture”, and “furniture” into “household goods” etc…

12) The art of conceptualizing (categorizing) is a distinct human trait that allows us to retain and process more information in order to increase our knowledge.

Leverage categories in your business.

No matter how successful we are, the marketplace always requires the best out of each of us.

Having a way to discover opportunities for surpassing yourself is going to be a key to your future success.

Don’t sit on your laurels, get up and look at your business for the first time.

Start building categories, start building knowledge and start ensuring continued success.

Statistics are an integral part of any business.

They are superb when you want to understand your market and your performance.

They are invaluable when you have no way of knowing the future outcome of a given situation.

They help us make predictions through simple or complex analysis of historical data.

They allow us to calculate probabilities.

They enable us to make decisions in the absence of information.

With the right reporting tools its likely you will reveal areas of improvements unbeknownst to you.

The Bad:

While some folks have sophisticated databases, multidimensional data-mining tools and perhaps even powerful reporting tools, they may inadvertently omit to include first-hand observations in their decision-making process.

If you have a way to determine what is going on rather than limiting yourself to calculations of what could be going on, then including observations of first-hand experience will go a long way.

If you want to know how your agents are doing, spending time looking at what they are doing along with analyzing their statistics will provide the best picture.

Be sure to balance and leverage real observations and statistical data.

Each method on its own does not contain the same effectiveness as when you combine them.

Analysis backed by observation is a powerful persuader.

The Ugly:

In the world of call centers there are a multitude of different ACD systems and each comes with its own data field names and its own methodologies of tracking activities and performance indicators.

This very fact creates mass confusion and ultimately prevents your call center from reaching its full potential.

Despite user groups created for each ACD system, managers continue to be challenged in attempting to get the right story on their reporting fields.

To add salt to the wound, many business analysts then build elaborate reports on the misunderstood data fields.

They say “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”; imagine well-intentioned managers measuring the wrong things because they fail to grasp the nuances and complexities of the fields in their reports/databases.

Far worst is the fact that most of these misinformed managers are absolutely clueless that they are interpreting their statistics incorrectly.

Unfortunately, in my career I have had to inform too many such managers who were dumbfounded by the discoveries.

If you feel you have been trying to improve on a particular aspect of your call center and never seem to quite achieve it, then I urge you to consider facing the possibility that you too are a victim of this inconspicuous threat.

The Antidote:

It remains a challenge for managers, especially new ones, to navigate through the myriad of indicators and methodologies of tracking, here are some suggestions that might help you dissipate some of the fog and limit the damage:

1. Balance statistics with real-life observations;
2. When in doubt, perform real-life time and motion analysis whenever possible;
3. Conduct regular calibration sessions: compare statistics to reality;
4. Keep it simple: stick with basic indicators;
5. Review ACD lexicon and feel free to consult with supplier;
6. Use generic call center reporting software: their experts had to learn most ACD systems methodologies and logic;
7. Seek out expert call center consultants with workforce management experience;
8. Do not ignore your intuition when things don’t look right;

If you make first-hand observation your ally it will always come to your rescue.

They say “you can make statistics say anything”, well “reality” will always help keep your statistics honest, but more importantly to keep them real, useful and effective.

Collaborate with reality and corroborate your statistics.

Therefore, when it comes to real-time or historical management, both are definitely crucial for anyone in a leadership role.

They each have a specific place in our management acumen.

By “real-time” I mean that observations and perhaps even decisions are made from information drawn from the current day’s recent hourly data.

By “historical” I mean observations and decisions are made from information drawn from days, weeks, months and even years of data.

Successful leaders believe in the importance of leveraging both approaches. We also recognize that one comes before the other i.e. Historical precedes the Real-Time approach.

The Historical approach exists to provide managers with the opportunity to prepare for the future by extracting trends from the past.

Managers equipped with an understanding of their business’ trends are in great position to achieve their future goals.

They live and breathe by the necessity of having a plan.

A plan inspired by the analysis of their historical patterns.

Because managers accept that plans are a critical success factor, and that plans are not always 100% accurate, managers employ the Real-time approach to tweak their plan throughout the day, hence real-time management.

Let it be known that whatever skill a manager hones while in the Real-Time mode, one must realize that they are the same skills required during the Historical analysis mode, only in the Historical phase one analyzes much longer time frames of data.

Nonetheless, some managers are intent of spending more time in one mode versus another.

The proportion of time one should invest in each mode is relative to the industry you are in and how volatile the market is in terms of trends.

One thing is certain, great managers invest in both modes in order to achieve their goals.

Sometimes a weak historical approach will forcibly make managers and their teams spend more time reacting in the real-time mode.

Ultimately this would weaken their chances of success and would surely increase their operating costs.

Conversely, a feeble real-time approach can render your historical efforts virtually meaningless thereby potentially limiting your success.

In conclusion, it is fair to say that great leaders develop skills in both the real-time and the historical mode.

They are disciples of good planning.

The know how to execute the plans, and they have the wisdom and skills to make prompt changes.

Be sure to include both approaches in your management strategies.

And as the saying “if you fail to plan, plan to fail” seems to suggest: one should invest a little bit more time in the historical mode than the real-time mode.

Where do you spend most of your time?

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.

Most of you have some kind of reporting tool, some tools even work relatively well, but the odds are you are all victims of the same problem: Your business evolves faster than your reports.

For over 20 years, I have witnessed call centers struggle trying to obtain critical insight necessary to guide their decisions.

Invariably, they have been willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to create reports to retrieve the data that might provide them with a sense of direction.

Doubtless, they have cemented the careers of countless IT department heads trying to develop yet another crucial report.

But what makes this so frustrating is that when they finally receive the report they have been waiting for, it no longer quite applies to their current context.

Many companies are nevertheless successful, but they inevitably leave some “cash on the table”, and often that cash represents hundreds of thousands even millions of dollars.

Why?

Although great businesses do not achieve success by number crunching alone, the old adage “if you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it” does apply to many critical success factors.

When such factors are not measured accurately or at all, your business is at risk of not reaching its full potential.

How do you know if you are at your best?

Which squeaky wheel needs the oil?

Without the right reports and the right reporting approach the management teams are left to rely on guesswork.

It’s a hit or miss situation and your customers can’t always wait for you to hit the bull’s eye.

Whether you currently have reports or a reporting tool or not, chances are you feel like you are always a few steps behind.

And catching up is like building a money pit, or if you are not attempting to catch up, you might be losing money to hidden inefficiencies.

What is behind this problem?

Change. Constant change.

Your business, your market, your customers all are subject to change and at a far more rapid pace than ever before.

You simply cannot keep up.

And the few that keep up pay a hefty price.

What are the main drivers behind this struggle?

Technological advancement coupled with very competitive markets.

Increased standards coupled with demanding workforces.

Savvy customers and growing industry regulations.

What should your ideal world look like?

Your reports adapt to your ever-changing environment with a simple click of the mouse at no additional time or expense.

You no longer rely on your IT department and expensive infrastructure.

You no longer rely on Excel Gurus to redesign your favorite Excel reports because your organizational chart has changed again.

You no longer spend countless hours designing or compiling a report, and instead you invest your time analyzing the information to make better decisions.

You no longer lose money by retiring obsolete reports that cannot be recycled or modified.

You no longer spend time in countless meetings justifying your needs for a report.

CEOs, managers, team leaders, business analysts are capable of generating any analysis or report within seconds.

No programming skills or training required.

CEOs, managers, team leaders are more responsive, more agile and more effective.

You no longer spend time sifting through 3 or 4 pages of reports to get one line of information.

You quickly zero in on the real cause of problems and provide effective solutions.

You react quicker than your competitors.

Your customers appreciate the continuous and rapid improvements to your service.

Your employees are motivated to be part of an organization that empowers its employees with self-actualization reports.

You inspire your shareholders in your power to sustain your success because you know what works and what doesn’t and why.

How do you get there?

Change can be your Achilles Heel, or it can be your Ace in the Hole!

Embrace change and look for a solution that leverages change by design.

A solution that recognizes the fast changing landscapes, the increasing turnovers, and the need for rapid-response systems.

A solution that gives you the power of a software engineer with the flexibility and ease of use within 3 clicks of a mouse.

As powerful as E = mc² and easy as 1-2-3.

You need powerful.

You need flexible.

You need easy-to-use.

One such tool fulfills these requirements: The Reporting Engine®.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and so as it was, we developed The Reporting Engine®.

The Reporting Engine picks up where Crystal Reports leaves off.

The Reporting Engine® was design to let anyone with zero programming skills produce the same kind of powerful reports that their IT teams would – any time, any place – with just 3 simple clicks of a mouse.

To achieve this, it required more than simply trying to create a reporting software, it was important to incorporate an approach that completely understands the business of running Call Centers.

At eMetrix Systems we are experts in the field of Call Centers optimization surrounded by expert software developers.

Our focus is to deliver solutions that cover the wide spectrum of requirements, from the sophistication of long-range vision and immediacy required by CEOs, to the hit-the-ground-running practicality needed by rookie team leaders.

Nobody needs another report to tell them what to do, they need intelligence to corroborate what they already sense.

That is why The Reporting Engine® makes sense.

That is why The Reporting Engine® was created.

That is what The Reporting Engine® delivers.