Updated May 2020.

Setting up a call center is not always straightforward.

There is a vast selection of call center reporting software, including hosted or cloud call center solutions and premises-based solutions, and you will need to do a little research to determine the best solution for your needs.

The different types of systems each have certain advantages and disadvantages. Each caters to different sizes of organization and call center needs.

Before we get to the crucial questions, we need to talk a bit about the differences between cloud call center solutions or other types of hosted solutions and premises-based solutions.

Types of call center reporting systems

A premises-based solution is, as the name suggests, is one that is based on-site in your call center’s location. In other words, your PBX or VoIP system’s physical server and all of the hardware associated with the telephone system will be situated on-site.

The customer can maintain equipment, but this requires internal IT staff.

Sometimes the equipment maintenance is covered through a contract with the provider.

Premises-based systems require an initial outlay of capital, as the company must purchase the equipment at the starting phase of implementation.

Your company will own all of the hardware and have immediate access to the hardware. As you can imagine, this involves a significant outlay of capital at the initial stage of implementation.

You may also be taking on monthly fees associated with network infrastructure and ongoing hardware maintenance.

Alternatively, you may be required to hire additional staff to tend to the maintenance of the in-house system.

According to Genesy’s definition, a hosted call center reporting system is a call center reporting “solution in which an organization’s central point of inbound and outbound communications is hosted on a service provider’s back-office systems.”

When it comes to call center reporting systems, there is often some confusion around the terms “hosted” and “cloud-based.”

People often use the words interchangeably without any clear distinction between them.

Often, when vendors claim to offer “cloud” services, they are, in fact, hosted versions of a legacy on-premises solution.

Hosted and true cloud services are two very different things.

Cloud-based call center reporting software is a type of hosted call center reporting system that stores your data in a secure network of servers that can find what you need and deliver it to you or your team wherever you are.

Cloud call center reporting software solutions are those that include a comprehensive suite of tools, applications, and cloud-hosted services for contact centers.

The cloud-based technology can accommodate the needs of large organizations that require multiple communications channels (including phone calls and messaging), sophisticated call routing, agent management, and analytics.

A Cloud Contact Center reporting system can help large organizations meet the challenges of communicating with their customers or clients.

In short, hosted PBX, or Hosted VoIP (Voice over IP) – also referred to as cloud systems – embody the latest phase in phone system technology.

With a hosted or cloud system, the customer does not own or house the physical server in their office – instead, the phone server resides in a service provider’s data center.

Since the system itself is offsite, hosted solutions use web-based access to configure, manage, and maintain the system.

What is the “cloud”? The technology industry uses many buzzwords.

Some examples of this include terms or phrases like the Internet of Things, Big Data, and 5G.

The problem is that these sometimes nebulous or arbitrary terms don’t make it clear what they mean to consumers from individual users to corporations; the meanings of these buzzwords are not always precise.

“The cloud” is one of those terms.

The cloud refers to software and services that run on the Internet, instead of locally on your computer.

Your team can access most cloud services by using a Web browser like Firefox or Google Chrome, and some companies offer dedicated mobile apps.

There are many business applications for cloud computing, but here we are only interested in call center reporting applications.

The advantage of the cloud is that you can access your information on any device with an Internet connection.

Before you choose a call center solution, you will need to consider several factors that will impact which choice will be best for your organization.

There are quantitative considerations, like the number of calls you expect to handle, the size of your team, and your budget.

There are other considerations, too. Continue reading to learn more about the ten essential questions to ask before you invest in call center reporting solutions.

10 Key Questions

1. Compatibility: How well will the system integrate with your existing tools?

If your business is well-established and already has a customer relationship management or sales system in place, then it is essential to choose a call center reporting system that is compatible with your existing infrastructure.

Why spend a significant amount of capital on a system that will not easily offer improvements in productivity and customer satisfaction?

You also want to ensure that the system and the staff have the experience and expertise to meet your company’s needs.

2. Security: How secure is the service?

Security is an important consideration.

Does the system have mechanisms in place to establish the security, confidentiality, and integrity of their customers’ data?

You need to look at things like data isolation, data backup, and the security of the servers.

Is data isolated and stored on dedicated tables?

How frequently are backups run, and where are the backup data stored?

What security measures on in place at the data centers?

3. Scalability: Can the service scale in tandem with fluctuations in demand?

Contact center demands fluctuate.

You need a system that will be flexible enough to provide the capacity you need and are using according to the ebbs and flows of your customers.

Why pay for maximum volume all of the time?

Especially for small to medium-sized call centers, a system that can switch from higher to lower call volumes as needed makes good business sense.

Cloud systems are suitable for this because they provide a large and robust infrastructure and typically offer on-demand provisioning.

4. Usability: Does the system provide useful reporting capabilities?

Is the reporting system robust and accessible?

Look for the capability to generate reports from multiple data sources (ex.: telephone, sales, WFM, quality, and so on), for multiple locations, for multiple business units in one place.

Will your team be able to access amalgamated and roll-up summaries at every level of the organization.

Many companies unwillingly end up spending more time collecting data, compiling and distributing reports than they spend in quality analysis.

Delays in decision-making weaken a company’s market position.

So can making bad decisions.

Look for a call center reporting system that generates reports that lead to useful and timely decision making.

There is rarely a shortage of raw data, yet leaders continue to run short on business insight.

The challenge is not a lack of data per se; it is the transformation of data into insight that is absent.

Lack of insight limits opportunities and success.

Without new information, your capacity to find new solutions is severely handicapped.

Will your team be able to access reports in real-time? When reports are obsolete, decision-making is compromised.

The cost of revamping, refitting and reformatting reports to accommodate changes is rapidly mounting.

5. Capability: Is the system capable of tracking all of the channels through which you communicate with your customers?

With the growing popularity of social media, companies are offering their customers and clients options for customer care communication.

In addition to telephony, most contact centers also offer live chat, email, and message boards, to name a few.

Look for a system that offers “Multi-Channel Support.”

Multi-Channel support simply means that the system is capable of handling the various channels that your company may be using to communicate with your customers, either now or in the future.

6. Affordability and transparency: Check the pricing structure so that you know up-front what the system will cost.

As already mentioned, premises-based solutions often require an initial outlay of capital and ongoing maintenance costs.

In addition, there are the costs associated with an on-site IT team. By contrast, a self-serve user interface eliminates the need for in-house IT staff, or frees up their time for other tasks.

And a hosted or cloud-based solution eliminates the substantial up-front cost and investment risk.

7. Functionality: Are your team leaders and agents able to use the call center reporting software?

The system you select must be one that your agents and team leaders are able to use comfortably.

To best serve your end customers, you need a system that your employees can use.

The goal is to empower your team and enhance your customers’ satisfaction with their contact center communications.

For this to happen, contact center managers and supervisors need to be able to access reports as they need them.

So you want to be sure that this will be the case.

It is a good idea to ask your personnel for input.

8. Efficiency: Does the call center reporting software support blended agents?

In the context of a contact center, a blended agent, manages both incoming and outgoing calls and applications as needed.

Need is determined by contact center traffic levels.

The strategy of using blended agents is increasingly common as it contributes to the overall efficiency of your business.

You need to ask whether the system you are considering will allow your agents to move between answering incoming communications and dialling outgoing calls with minimal effort.

9. Accessibility: Can agents access the system from home?

More and more companies are relying on remote workers, and this trend is likely to continue.

You need to ask whether or not it is easy to add additional staff to the system as needed.

Will you be easily able to direct calls to an external number or numbers?

Will the reporting software be capable of monitoring this usage?

10. Testability: Can you run a demonstration before you go live?

Another critical consideration is whether or not you are able to run a demonstration of the call center reporting software before you invest any money or sign any contracts.

In most cases, you should be able to try the software on a separate network.

It is a good idea to have the agents and team leaders who will be working with the system on the ground involved in the trial run as they are well-situated and knowledgeable about the day-to-day flows and demands of their workplace.

In brief, there are ten vital factors to consider when you are selecting a new call center reporting software system or upgrading your existing system.

The crucial considerations relate to how much you are willing to spend, what you estimate your current and future needs to be, the reliability of service, the ease of use for your agents and management teams, and the overall improvement to your customers’ experience.

And, of course, you need to think about your budgetary needs and return on investment.

For many call centers, cloud-based solutions fit the bill.

Cloud-based models have a multitenant architecture with an intentional design that will maximize the secure and efficient delivery of web-based applications.

They feature interconnectivity capacities as part of the design.

Cloud-based consumer experience systems are quick to install and set up.

Additionally, your company will benefit from lower operating costs because you are using a secure and shared service.

You also benefit from the ability to increase or decrease capacity according to fluctuations in demand.

To recap, some of the main benefits of a hosted or cloud solution are:

• Cost-effective and up to date VoIP functionality
• Little to no need for in-house IT involvement in installing and maintaining the system
• Hosted and cloud-based systems feature scalability making them suitable for both small and large businesses

At the end of the day, you want to find a telecommunication partner that offers secure, reliable and affordable services.

You want a company that has the experience, capability, and expertise that you need. And you want a solution that your team can use with ease.

Finally, you want a solution that can adapt as your company’s needs change over both the short and long-term.

For more information about The Reporting Engine, Contact Us Now.

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?

In our hustle and bustle day-to-day bump and grind we may even miss the obvious signs.

Here are 3 fundamental reasons why employees do not perform:

1. They do NOT KNOW what/how to do certain things yet they care about doing things right.
2. They KNOW but do not care.
3. They do not know and do not care.

From these 3 reasons you can derive a few important strategies to help your business.

The obvious one being: making sure you hire people who care about their performance.

But if you inherit employees and had no say in the hiring matter, your avenues remaining will rely heavily on your leadership skills in order to get your employees to “care”.

Generally the good ones care when YOU care about them.

It is no longer a good leadership approach (not sure it ever was one) to rely on “fear” to motivate people to do a better job just because so many people are standing outside looking for a job.

We must be so much better at leading people.

When you lead people with clear expectations along with treating them with respect and ensuring you act fairly at all times, generally you will see employees turn around and begin to care about their performance.

(You’ve got to ask yourself how did they get to this point anyway?)

Empowering your employees by catching them doing something right and praising the work will go even further.

Make it your business to learn what motivates each person individually – make it personal.

Not everyone thrives on the same kind of rewards or recognition – just because you like to be praised in front of other people does not mean they do.

Once you have employees who care about their work, you must ensure you supply them with the knowledge they need to do their jobs.

The place we always look first for this is the new hire training and usually we are pretty darn good at that.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Too many companies rely mainly on their initial training and struggle unknowingly.

Once employees have completed the initial training, remember how much a human brain can retain after so much new information has been force fed in a short amount of time.

You need to make sure you have some form of follow-up program to fill the gaps that may exist the first day on the job.

This can be in the form of having the new employees sit together and assign a trainer or supervisor or senior employee to answer questions while they are doing their duties.

And you could have weekly questionnaires(quiz) to help them remember important things.

Keep their minds always learning and reviewing their training.

With existing employees who have already been through the training, track their current standings, i.e. find out how much they know and what they don’t know.

You need to know what they do not know in order to create the right follow-up training for your senior people.

Re-test everyone regularly, and customize their coaching plans according to each of their own weaknesses and strengths.

Throughout the coaching/follow-up programs regularly check the “care” barometer of your employees including your management teams.

Tweak your programs and leadership skills as you move along; sometimes you may need to modify your training program or your follow-up programs or simply adjust your leadership approach or maybe all of the above.

Sometimes you may even have to make the tough call and terminate someone’s employment – there are bad apples sometimes.

Never lose sight of the fact that once your employees care about their work they will be ready to move mountains for you – just be sure they KNOW how to do it.

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.

Everyone is also painstakingly aware of the disadvantages of focusing too much on this indicator.

Some experts and some companies have decided not to consider this factor at all using the argument that the cost and ramifications of managing handling time far outweighs its benefits.

For those who cannot afford to try this exciting idea, this article will provide you with some suggestions to alleviate the pressures brought about by managing productivity.

As if managing productivity was not enough of a challenge, the telephone system your call center operates exacerbates the issue.

I will recall this issue later.

Let’s just take a moment to be clear on what are the usual elements considered in handling time.

Handling time is meant to track how long it takes an agent to serve a customer by telephone.

This means from the moment the agent answers the phone to the moment the agent is ready to answer the next call.

The time between those two events is what we all refer as the handling time.

There are different states within your telephone systems that can occur during that time.

Your agent can be in a conversation with a customer, can put the customer on hold, or once the customer hangs up, the agent can be in the after-call work state.

While the customer is on hold, or while the agent is in the after-call state, the agent can also make telephone calls – either internal or external.

The mistake I believe some call center managers make is to try and put expectations/goals on each of these states.

I hold that this creates much more pressure on the agents than is necessary and this contributes to productivity’s bad name.

Whether an agent is more comfortable writing notes while the customer is on the phone or during the after-call work or while customer is on hold, does not alter the overall handling time and therefore efforts to manage each state are useless when it comes to managing productivity.

Some may argue that the customer experience might be a whole lot different depending on which method is used, and I conquer, but if you are concerned about achieving certain operating expense goals you might want to consider my suggestion.

At the very least, you might choose to keep your goals/expectations on the amount of time an agent puts a customer on hold, but please remove the expectations from all other states.

(NB.: Pay particular attention to your telephone system’s calculations of Hold Time and Talk Time. Some telephone systems separate the hold time from the talk time, other include the hold time in the total talk time – so beware of double counting it).

How does achieving your productivity goals while removing pressure off of the team leaders and agents sound?

Great? Right?!

Then go ahead, globalize your objectives.

There are other steps you can implement to increase productivity while increasing empowerment.

The key is to think through your company’s mission statement, your core values and by understanding how important it is to streamline your goals accordingly.

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.

You focus on the quality, the quantity and the spirit of your service.

In other words you know your customers want it good, fast and they want to feel important.

Among the several factors that a call center executive might explore in order to optimize the return on her investment is the service level goal.

The higher the service level the higher the investment.

You already know this, and you have noticed that the higher the service level the more your agents must find themselves sitting idle waiting for calls.

Not exactly the kind of picture you want to see.

Realizing your agents are having more conversations with their colleagues than with your customers, you may wonder about reducing the number of agents.

Yet you know reducing the number of agents is tightly connected to the level of service you offer your customers hence the “law” of Occupancy Rate:

The busier your agents (high occupancy) the lower your service level, and the more idle time your agents have (low occupancy) the higher the service level.

In attempts to look for new ways to cut operating expenses you question if your customers would accept a lower service level?

How much lower can your service level be before your customers start to complain or move to the competition?

Before you answer the question “How low can you go” with regards to your service level target for your customers, I recommend you reacquaint yourself with the “law” of Occupancy rate.

In effect, the question of how much waiting your customers might be willing to accept should be balanced with the question of how busy you want your agents to be.

Remember the busier your agents are the lower your service level will be.

In effect, you will find the right service level target goal when you determine your occupancy rate goal.

Besides the obvious effect on customers, here are some other effects you will need to consider when setting an occupancy rate goal:

• When agents find themselves overwhelmed by calls, they can increase their after-call work to slow done their pace which will cancel out any savings you may have hoped for in reducing your staffing levels.
• Agents might choose other jobs within your company, or worst, they might go to the competition both of which will cancel out your savings by increasing your hiring costs.
• Eventually it will become harder to attract and retain good people.
• Agents who choose to stay might become disgruntled and this attitude might reflect on the kind of service your customers receive.

The Recipe:

Remember set your Service Level goal by determining your Occupancy Rate goal.

Service levels are often worded as follows: x % calls answered within y seconds (eg. 80% calls answered within 20 seconds).

Occupancy Rate is better described by the formula (Total Logged In Time – Total Idle Time) divided by Total Logged In Time.

Total Logged In Time is also known as Staffed Time, meaning the total hours all agents were signed in the phone system in order to take calls.

This may vary according to your telephone system.

After you have set an Occupancy Rate goal, you can then determine the equivalent Service Level goal by performing an analysis based on historical data for your call center.

Correlate the past Occupancy Rate with the Service Level achieved.

You will look for instances where the new Occupancy rate goal was achieved and you will collect the corresponding Service Level data wherein you will observe a pattern which will serve as your new Service Level target.

Conclusion

When you set your service level by determining the right occupancy rate, you gain on all fronts.

The right occupancy rate becomes a competitive edge: you will attract the best employees because you are offering the better working conditions.

Better employees deliver superior service ergo you will attract and keep more customers.

Your agents are happy and your customers are happy.

This equation delivers happy shareholders.

Process versus People.

This simply means to focus primarily on your processes rather than on your employees when it comes to improving results.

I am not suggesting ignoring people’s performance but merely switching the emphasis on processes.

Furthermore you must realize that your results come from the strengths and weaknesses of your processes as much as the strengths and weaknesses of your people.

It is important to recognize that your basic opinion of your employees plays a crucial part in how you lead them in regards to achieving your goals.

It comes down to this: Do you view your employees as people with good work ethics who want to earn an honest day’s work by giving their best, or do you view them as generally lazy or dishonest folks?

Or quite simply do you have a positive opinion or a negative opinion about your employees.

That is what sets the tone on whether or not you have a positive or negative working environment.

(Note: A web search will help you discover many articles on The Pygmalion Effect which further explains how your expectations based on your opinion of your subordinates, plays a significant role in the end results)

So the first step to a positive work environment will come from within you the leader.

Begin by changing your generalized opinion of your employees and watch how your mind begins to look at the problem of quality and productivity improvements very differently.

You will begin to identify other possibilities and you will be inspired by the refreshing discoveries that will yield both results and motivated people.

To help you get started on your creative problem skills start thinking about your processes.

Analyze every process and ask yourself questions similar to the following:

• Why are we doing it this way?
• Is there a better way?
• What conditions made this the right process at the time and have those conditions changed since then?
• What internal policies forced us into this process and can this policy be modified?

Although you will do this with complex processes, do not shy away from challenging even your most “tried and true” processes – you will be astonished at how your own biases limit your potentially greater successes.

You will find plenty of inspiration and areas that hold lucrative benefits while you focus your problem solving skills on improving your processes rather than on improving your people.

If you want some good positive changes in your business, first change your mind a little and see how that changes your employees’ minds too, for the better.

Productivity – can’t live with it, can’t live without it.

When it comes to productivity measurements within a call center environment, we are all but too familiar with the AHT (average handling time) indicator.

Basically, it refers to the total time spent talking with a customer plus the total time in post-call processing divided by the number of calls answered.

Lately many call centers have decided not to hold agents accountable to this measurement to create a better environment while aiming for better call quality.

Other call center managers put too much emphasis on productivity as they try to improve the service levels and prevent productivity cost from rising.

I suggest that there is a balance that can be achieved – there is no need to “throw the baby out with the bath water”.

There is a way to hold agents accountable for productivity without sacrificing quality and maintaining a positive environment.

For most organizations each call is unique in that they the call duration varies greatly.

Yet quite often managers seem to forget this fact.

Ultimately, managers tend to put a lot of pressure on agents to keep their AHT down, and to make matters worst they tend to go back and forth between talk time and post-call processing time which sends mix signals to the agents!

This obsession makes agents feel like quantity is more important than quality.

Here is what I suggest: come to terms with the fact that every call is different, and every agent is different and allow some flexibility in how they handle the calls.

Do not emphasize lower post-call or lower talk time.

Some agents groove better with less talk and more post-call or vice versa.

Instead, keep your sight on the overall AHT and let them decide how to split their time. (Obviously be aware of extremes).

Let’s go one step further.

You are concerned about productivity because you want to be able to keep costs down to deliver the expected service level yet you want the best call quality.

Be aware that in the equation used to calculate the number of agents required to achieve your goals, you may need to consider other factors.

For instance:

1. are your agents allowed to make outbound calls (when on inbound queue)? If they are, factor that time as well into their overall use of time.
2. Are they allowed to listen to their voicemails? If so, factor this in your productivity equation.
3. Is your ACD set to “force calls”? If not, factor ring time in your productivity equation.
4. Do agents make calls to their supervisor, or helpdesk to get support? If so, add this too.

You get the picture.

You might be thinking “how can I keep track of all this?”.

Simple.

Start using “True Calls per hour” as the indicator that will encompass all and any other form of process that affects the overall productivity of an agent.

“True Calls per hour” as opposed to “Calls per hour”.

What is True calls per hour?

It is easier to define by showing what the formula is:

True Calls per hour = (Total Calls answered DIVIDED by Busy Time*)

(*Busy time = Total Logged in Time MINUS Total Agent Idle time)

By removing the Idle time (time agents spend waiting to receive calls) you get the total amount of time an agent is busy.

Busy is the keyword; if they are on an outbound call, or on the phone with your helpdesk, they are still actually unable to answer calls for you and this still reflects their level of productivity.

If you focus solely on AHT you will completely miss other important areas of productivity losses or gains.

It is possible to have an agent who has a low AHT but spends a lot of time on outbound calls or calling the helpdesk or other forms mentioned above.

They are actually less available to answer calls which in turn means you would actually be short on staff which translates to lower service levels.

Yet, you would be unaware of the cause because you focused solely on AHT.

If you focused on True Calls per hour you would have had the necessary information.

Removing your focus from AHT to True calls per hour provides a more empowering environment for the agents as they are no longer subject to nit-picking on talk-time or post-call processing time.

Instead they are coached with a different language such as: “You seem to be experiencing difficulty, do you need help with managing your time?” – it might even be possible for a manager to understand the effect of all processes before talking with an agent.

The essence of micro-managing vs macro-managing.

And remember, an agent is demotivated by how you treat them when you handle the situation when they do not achieve their goals much more than by a demanding goal.

Next time, I will conclude the 5 great ideas with a talk on Process vs People as a more positive coaching approach.

On the previous blog I covered how to set clear expectations and establish effective historical schedule adherence goals.

I will now provide a suggestion on how to create accountability within a historical schedule adherence framework.

IDEA # 3

Reminder: This series of blogs was intended to provide suggestions on how to create a motivated workforce within a call center environment.

The key is to create empowerment within your workforce.

To ensure agents feel empowered they must not only be responsible to achieve their goals but they must also have the authority to achieve them.

This authority takes the form of the flexibility to make decisions on how to manage their schedules during the day.

Your clear communication of expectations will govern each agent’s decision-making process.

Your clear communication starts with establishing a daily objective for schedule adherence and schedule conformance.

You should ensure agents are aware of the guidelines on how to manage their time.

Say for example, you set schedule adherence goals at 90% and schedule conformance at 97% after conducting a proper analysis of your cost and benefits of moving from a real time adherence framework to an historical one.

Here is this blog’s suggestion: you provide another level of flexibility by establishing a Hit Rate (Success rate) evaluated on a monthly basis.

(This extra flexibility for the agent will go a long way to making agents feel empowered and less confined.)

The Success Rate is calculated by the number of days the agent has achieved the daily goal within a month.

For example, if an agent worked 20 days in January, and actually achieved adherence goals 18 times and conformance 16 times, the agent would score an adherence success rate of 90% and a conformance success rate of 80%.

What your organization needs to establish next is what Success rate is best suited for their business and their employees’ experience: 80%, 85% or 95%.

Once again, this decision should take into account the delicate balance of Customers, Employees and Shareholders.

The success rate for schedule adherence and schedule conformance is what you track for performance management.

This removes the need to manage daily results even hourly results (which is real time adherence).

Agents should be aware of their daily results to ensure they are accurate so that their monthly Success rates represent their true performance.

This approach lets managers and supervisors delegate the responsibility and authority to agents for managing their goals.

This approach also reduces the cost of managing schedule adherence, and it empowers agents while holding them accountable on a monthly basis.

Join us next time as I will provide idea #4 which relates productivity measurements such as average handling time and employee empowerment.