User guides- Contact Centres

Managing business objectives Managing performance drivers Establishing targets for performance Focusing on resource management Setting staff schedules

rudence dictates that contact center managers pay close attention to finance, analysis, and resource management. Contact centers can be complex beasts and they run very much by the numbers, so all three items play a significant role in operating them effectively.

Miniscule changes in procedures can make an enormous difference in results, including — and especially — performance and financial results. Increasingly, contact center managers are turning to analysts to help identify improvement opportunities.

Understanding and improving performance isn’t just the concern of analysts. Ideally, everyone in the center is concerned with performance and the numbers. This part includes basic information that should be understood and practiced by as many people in the center as possible.

Business-Objective Measurements

Business objectives are the desired outputs of the contact center — what the corporation needs from the contact center by way of revenue generation, cost management, and customer satisfaction (see Part II for more about setting business objectives).

In the following sections you find some common ways to measure whether your contact center business objectives are being met.

Contact Center operating budget

The operating budget is the sum of all the costs associated with running a contact center for a given period, usually a year. The largest cost in the contact center budget is typically labor. In traditional contact centers, it is not unusual to base budgets on common assumptions, such as the number of contacts that the center will receive, how long those contacts will last, and what it takes to achieve resolution on the contacts. These assumptions are used to determine staffing needs and to anticipate other costs.

Companies need operating budgets, and managing a budget can help the company achieve its goals. Very effective contact center managers have a great deal of control over their costs and can generally tell you how much they’ll spend in any month — long before the finance department produces an expense report.

By understanding the factors that go into your budget, you can play “what if” with those factors to see the bottom-line effect. Being able to do a quick calculation on the impact of changing the drivers goes a long way to motivating management to find ways to make improvements.

Part III: Finance, Analysis, and Resource Management 29

Cost center versus profit center

Many times management views a contact center as a burdensome expense for the corporation. This may not be a fair assessment, however, because many contact centers turn out to be profit centers — they help create customer loyalty and generate sales that may otherwise have been lost.

You can pay attention to a number of measurements on the cost side of any equation, including the following:

Cost per contact. Calculated by dividing the total costs to run the contact center for a period of time by the total contacts responded to in the same period.

Cost per customer. Calculated by dividing the total cost of running the contact center for a period of time by the average number of customers for the same time frame.

Cost per resolution. Divide total costs for the period by the cases resolved, looking for improvement over time.

These are obviously very simplistic measurements, and will suffice for some contact centers. Others use more complex measurements that either build on or entirely replace these simplistic ones. Many of the measurements you should pay attention to are provided by the management applications used at your site; make sure you review what is available and determine which measurements fit best with your needs.

On the profit center side of the coin you can utilize entirely different measurements, such as:

Total revenue generation. Your finance or marketing department will calculate total revenue generated.

Revenue per contact. Divide total revenue generated during a period of time by the number of contacts for the same period.

Revenue per customer. Divide the total revenue generated for a period of time by the average number of customers over the same time frame.

If you can constantly reduce cost per customer and increase revenue per customer, then you’re looking the good life right in the eye — corner office, parking space, key to the executive lunchroom — it’s all yours!

One way that you can help decrease costs — while still handling more volume — is through the implementation of self-service technologies. Part IV introduces some of these technologies, such as IVR and speech-enabled systems, which enable customers to help themselves rather than tying up valuable (and costly) agent time.

Paying for it all

Those charged with overseeing the finances of an operation must always be concerned with one overriding question: How does the company pay for it all? In other words, how do you generate the revenue necessary to cover the expenses inherent in any contact center?

This is a fundamental question, and one that you need to ask often. You can go far toward answering the question by transforming, if at all possible, your contact center into a revenue source. Look for ways that you can upsell, cross-sell, and just plain sell. Chances are good that your contacts have a problem (why else would they be contacting you?) and any salesperson knows that problems are synonymous with opportunities.

Just because you see a customer problem as an opportunity doesn’t mean that the customer has the same vision. Make sure you are sensitive to resolving the customer’s needs, and don’t be overbearing in trying to sell.

Performance Drivers: Managing the Results

Performance drivers are variables that have an impact on your contact center’s business objectives (see Part II for more detail). They’re called performance drivers because, like a person who manages the controls of a car, or like the programs that make computer equipment work, drivers are

Part III: Finance, Analysis, and Resource Management 31

things that make other things go. In this case, performance drivers make business objectives go.

Performance drivers are often different based on the method in which contacts are realized. For instance, performance drivers are different for phone contacts when compared to e-mail contacts, and completely different from contacts handled through self-service methods or IVR. (See Part IV for information on contact center technologies.) As you consider adjusting drivers to change your results, make sure you take into account the contact methods. This may mean examining different reports and establishing different tracking methods, but your results will be better when you take all information into account.

Examining performance drivers

A key component to controlling and manipulating outcomes is to designate responsibility throughout the organization — most importantly to the contact center agents, because each agent is a microcosm of the operation.

Table 3-1 shows how to track and improve results on the agent level. Individual agent improvement pulls up improvement in overall average agent performance, which in turn drives overall improvement in the contact center.

Table 3-1 Measures at the Agent Level

Contact Center Drivers Agent-Level Drivers

Cost per hour of agent time Agent utilization Call length Wage rate Schedule adherence Call length

Contacts per customer First-Call Resolution First-Call Resolution

Occupancy N/A

Conversion per contact Conversion per contact

Dollar value per conversion Dollar value per conversion

Accessibility N/A

One of the first things you notice in Table 3-1 is that some contact center measures do not correlate with agent-level measures, since agents cannot directly influence those measures. For example, occupancy and service level are group measures that individual agents cannot control, although individual agents’ ability and professionalism contribute to the group measures. However, if you implement some segmentation method, such as Direct Agent Calls, that enables customers to always get their favorite agent, you may be able to improve overall measures for the contact center.

You may also notice that cost per hour becomes wage rate at the agent level, because only the wage rate directly correlates to the individual agent; all other costs are for the entire contact center.

Probably hundreds of performance drivers can impact a contact center’s results. A big part of an analyst’s job is to identify these relationships and gain a better understanding of how the relationships between business objectives and performance drivers work.

Call-oriented metrics

Any number of performance drivers may be related to calls or other contacts. You can get a better handle on them by examining the measurements related to calls and contacts. The following sections detail some of the more common call-oriented metrics.

Call length

Call length is one of the most powerful measures in the contact center. It’s a little controversial in that some believe too much focus is put on call length without appropriate attention to other measures. However, customers want the same thing that contact centers do — a quick, accurate, and complete resolution to their problem or inquiry. In general, shorter call times mean everyone is happier.

A longer call can be a wonderful thing if it brings more revenue per minute. For example, if a customer gets a question resolved quickly and is so pleased with the service that he orders more product, the extra minute of tender loving care

Part III: Finance, Analysis, and Resource Management 33

the agent provides may well result in one-call resolution and repeat business.

Contacts per customer

Contacts per customer is another useful measure for forecasting and tracking contact center cost control over time. Tracking the number of contacts per customer on a monthly or daily basis and then multiplying that by the current number of customers gives a very useful forecast of call volume.

Don’t rely solely on an average contacts per customer statistic to do your forecasting. You need to factor in other data points as well, such as historical “busy periods,” such as holidays, along with any campaign and market changes.

Conversion per contact

Let me make sure I’m clear here. A contact is any time you say hello (via the phone, self-service, e-mail, chat, whatever). A conversion is any time you generate or save revenue on a contact. Conversion per contact affects total revenue generated and other revenue objectives.

Accessibility

Accessibility means how easy it is for a person to make contact — it’s how fast you’re answering the phone, e-mail, or letter. It’s important because it has an impact on customer satisfaction and cost control. Here are three common measures of the many used to calculate accessibility:

Service level: Refers to the percentage of callers whose calls are answered within a defined time.

Average speed of answer: Also known as ASA, this refers to the average amount of time your customers waited in queue before an agent greeted them.

Abandonment rate: The percentage of callers that hang up before an agent responds to their contact attempt.

Agent professionalism and ability

Agent ability is probably the most important requirement in achieving customer nirvana. Whether calling a contact center or shopping for new shoes, most customers expect the same thing of the customer-service people they deal with: know what you’re talking about, and be nice!

Customer satisfaction surveys can help in this regard. Through the surveys, customers can tell you about the agents who aren’t nice or who can’t do their job. When you ask the right questions, customers will also tell you specifically what your company needs to improve at.

Many contact centers have people listen to agent calls to determine if they are professional and capable; this is frequently referred to as “call assessment” or “call monitoring.” The evaluator scores the agent calls against a template of key call behaviors.

First-Call Resolution

First-Call Resolution (FCR) refers to the percentage of customer inquiries completed on the first attempt. If customers have to call back once or many times because the contact center did not resolve their inquiry or concern the first time, then FCR will decline — and so will customer satisfaction.

The benefits of tracking First-Call Resolution are large. Improving this measure has an impact on customer satisfaction. It also improves cost control — improving First-Call Resolution reduces the load on a contact center as the number of repeat calls decreases.

Policies and procedures

The drivers listed so far in this part aren’t the only ones that influence your operation. A large part of your analyst’s job is learning how to identify and manipulate these and other drivers of contact center performance. After she has identified the variables that contribute to performance, she’ll look to your company and contact center policies and procedures to understand the process behind each driver.

Part III: Finance, Analysis, and Resource Management 35

Setting Performance Targets

Setting performance targets is extremely important. People work better with very specific targets, whereas vague targets create vague results. When setting performance targets, you first have to figure out what’s the right thing to target. You then have to determine what level of performance to expect for that target. This section provides some ideas that can help you set appropriate targets for some of the most important contact center drivers.

Accessibility/service level

Here are some examples of methods you can use to set performance targets for service level:

Do what everyone else does. The default level of service for answering phone calls tends to be 80/20 (80 percent of calls are answered in 20 seconds or less). E-mail and chat don’t seem to have generally accepted standards, perhaps because of their relative infancy.

Go with the industry direction. A number of industries are self-regulated or even government-regulated in terms of how fast contact centers must answer the phone.

Develop a business case. Do a cost-benefit analysis to determine your service-level objective. Evaluate each of your customer segments for tolerance levels for waiting in queue. For example, you may notice that for your premier customer group, the number of abandons spikes sharply after 15 seconds, whereas the tolerance level for a general help line is much higher. If you do this analysis well, you can find the break-even point between the cost of providing faster service and the benefit of providing that service.

Abandons

Abandons are defined as customers who try to contact your business, but fail to reach an agent for one reason or another. The most common type of abandon is a customer who hangs up before an agent is available to answer the call. Abandons

also occur in other contact methods (e-mail, chat, and so on), but are easiest to track on phone contacts.

You want to reduce abandons as much as possible. You won’t get rid of them all, since some are completely out of your control, such as someone who has dialed a wrong number. You do, however, want to minimize those you can. It is best to view abandons as a measure of customer satisfaction. If your customers are abandoning a lot, they don’t like the speed of your service. Speed up your service, and your abandons should drop.

One way that some companies have helped decrease abandons is to implement a self-service system that answers the most common customer queries, without the need to involve an agent. Self-service does away with the necessity of placing a customer on hold, so customer satisfaction can be improved even while abandon rates are dropping.

Call length

It’s difficult to come up with the proper benchmark for call length because there are too many variables that go into the mix. Product complexity, system capabilities, responsiveness, working environment, information collected via self-service, training, and a host of other variables can affect call length. Identifying the one right call length is nearly impossible.

What you can — and should — do is try to understand as much about your own center’s (or, more accurately, each of its own individual campaigns’) call length as possible. Of course, you can also attempt to make call length as consistent as possible. Ideally you should also measure the impact of a call. For instance, does a longer call result in more revenue for the company? If so, then the agent should not be penalized for longer call lengths.

Occupancy

Occupancy — how busy your agents are with current contacts — is an important measure of whether you are efficiently using agents. If your agent occupancy is consistently very high, you could be causing agent burn-out. On the other hand, if occupancy is too low, this unused agent time is adding significantly to your costs.