Stop Attacking the Queue!

Ping Pong – get on the phone, get off the phone.   This is a common challenge is many call centers and often the source of thousands of hours in lost productivity.   We put technology in place to create queues  (the ACD) and then we put policies in place to get calls out of queue.     Queues aren’t a bad thing and part of the plan – key is to know what the plan should be and educate others.

About 5 years ago I created a seminar titled “Stop Attacking the Queue!”    It has become one  of the most popular sessions at the industry’s top events.    I’ve now delivered this message to thousands of call center leaders and it continues to create buzz and interest.    Just two weeks ago, I delivered it at worlds largest call center conference – ACCE.    Here is a link to the session slides and additional readings.   If you want to hear more, email me at timm@servicelevelgroup.com and I’ll be happy to set up a call.

http://servicelevelgroup.com/acceoct09.html

Good luck!

Articles and free downloads can be found at http://www.servicelevelgroup.com

Creating a World Class Call Center One Contact at a Time

Every contact in a call center is an opportunity to deliver an exceptional experience.   Leaders often get distracted by all of the metrics and reports available and lose sight of the real value – the call.   I have worked with some great call centers and wonderful leaders – one of those helped me craft the article in the link below – Moments of Truth:  Driving Organizational Value through Every Interaction.  Sharon is an executive with Farmers Insurance and a former executive at USAA – both great organizations that others can learn from.

http://www.servicelevelgroup.com/files/LTsep09_OrgValue.pdf

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Good luck  -  more articles and free downloads can be found at http://www.servicelevelgroup.com

Moving from good to world class

I recently had the opportunity to deliver a keynote in Austin, Texas that was focused on how call centers make the leap from good to world class.   This leap isn’t easy – a recent study found that only 5% of companies are able to deliver world class service.    Many companies don’t think they can make the leap or have the resources to make world class a target – in today’s real-time communication environment, you don’t have a choice – not focusing on world class will cost you more.    As marketing guru Set Godin says “The opposite of remarkable is very good…very good is an everyday occurrence and hardly worth mentioning.”  World class gets people talking…and this type of talk is powerful and free.

Here is a link to download the slides from the session along with the participant notes and some additional information.

http://servicelevelgroup.com/accasep09.html

Good luck  -  more articles and free downloads can be found at

www.servicelevelgroup.com

Thoughts on creating a great call center culture

There are a lot of “great places to work” lists – national, regional, industry specific, etc…   Good news is several companies with big call centers have made these lists.   These companies treat the call center as a value vs. a cost and the agents that work in these centers are totally engaged – and, the customers feel it.   Getting to this point in a call center is no easy task and many find it easier to focus on the “necessary evil” of providing service via a centralized group.   Raising the contact center bar starts with some self reflection on the reality of the culture – and then starting to undo many of the self-inflicted barriers.  This doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t) be a top down exercise – great cultures have an openness that allows everyone to share new ideas and challenge conventional wisdom.

In a recent weekly email from Gazelles (worth signing up for at http://www.gazelles.com/index.html), they highlighted the Netflix approach to culture development and policies.    The presentation below is 128 pages of great ideas on addressing real issues head-on and creating a culture where employees can grow and customers will benefit.    I’ve been through the presentation at least 10 times and each time, I get a new call center culture “action item”.   No matter what level you are in your company, there are several ideas here for you to bring to the attention of others to help make the environment better for your employees…and, customers.

Culture

View more presentations from Reed Hastings.

Good luck  -  more articles and free downloads can be found at www.servicelevelgroup.com

Call Center Agent Utilization – Small Improvements Can Equal Large Returns

With about 75% of center costs tied up in labor, every leader should understand how to positively impact efficiency – simply put, with service level equal, you have to reduce volume or time to impact cost. Not rocket science and it’s easy to turn this into a real ROI to get everyone focused on improving the right things – not just the numbers.   Below is an example of a mid-sized call center and an estimate of the cost to provide service meeting an 80/20 Service Level Objective:

(click the image to enlarge)

Many centers focus on handle time — there are good things and bad things associated with this measure. If done right, better handle times can result in improved service to all customers and happier front line reps, but if not managed correctly, the outcomes can have disastrous impacts — higher turnover, loss of focus, management burnout, customer attrition, etc. In this case we’re going to assume that a handle time focused initiative is done right and it starts with the front line employees. For simplicity purposes, the above example has a center staffed to answer the same number of calls in each half-hour of the day at a consistent level of service (80 percent in 20 seconds). Again for simplicity, we also left out the queuing (hold time) associated with the telecom cost. The outcome is something that every contact center should know — how much does it cost to provide service each day and what is the average cost of each agent interaction. Armed with this information alone, everyone – from the front-line agents to the executive management — is able to gain a whole new appreciation for the value (and yes, costs) associated with the center.

Moving forward with a good handle time focused initiative, the center would then engage the front line to begin to tackle the things that will impact agent talk time, like — scheduling flexibility, effective coaching, agent metrics that motivate, and positive evaluations. The team would also provide feedback on the things that can improve After Call Work time — more efficient internal processes, better back office resource availability and systems/workflow enhancements. If done right, the front line agents will be able to provide you positive feedback on all of these topics and will most likely have great ideals on many other handle time related opportunities. If these ideas have just a 5% impact on the talk time and a 10% impact on the after call work time, the annual savings are tremendous:

(click image to enlarge)

This doesn’t mean anyone has to work harder — in fact, it will most likely be just the opposite — with improved tools and processes, agents are able to provide better solutions quicker and with more focus on the needs of the front line agents, managers are able to spend more of their energy focused in a positive direction. And for the customer, it feels better — no extra time on hold and there is less time taken away from them during the call.

Good luck  -  more articles and free downloads can be found at

www.servicelevelgroup.com

Understanding Call Center Economics is Key to Gaining Senior Management Buy-In

During my career, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a variety of organizations — some better than others, but all focused on how to do more with the resources they have. Whether it’s applying technology in new ways, implementing new training techniques to enhance sales, or simply making customer service representatives more “productive,” everyone has some type of improvement focus going at all times. The companies that are good at this often have formal, focused ways of getting the employees involved in the solution. The best actually get the front-line employees to not only generate the solutions, but take responsibility for the design and actual organizational implementation.

Unfortunately, in many cases, the contact center isn’t given the ability to invest the necessary people time it takes to realize a measurable return. Yes, to get the full impact of a focused front-line solution initiative, agents will not only have to be given time off the phone, it must be done in a way that shows the company values their input in the same manner as their handling of a customer.  Good, valuable employee feedback is obtained when you have scheduled formal meetings and everyone invited gets to attend because you’ve planned the workload and workforce around the customers. When employees feel like the company is making an investment in them, they’re more willing to share openly and help to provide solutions that make a difference.

While this approach makes sense to most people running contact centers and executives will typically, “buy-in” to the concept, there needs to be a formal, measurable plan developed to keep everyone on focus and engaged. And because just about everything in a contact center comes with the need to justify the investment, you’ll want to have something to refer to when the “buy-in” isn’t as strong.   The ROI is easy, but you’ll need to create ways for everyone in the organization to understand the real economics of call centers.    Just this past week, I did a web seminar for the National Association of Dental Plans (NADP) on this very topic  – here is a link to the Power Point file”

http://www.servicelevelgroup.com/files/NADP call center economics July 2009.ppt

Feel free to use anything you find helpful and if you have questions, email me at timm@servicelevelgroup.com

Good luck  -  more articles and free downloads can be found at

www.servicelevelgroup.com

How do World Class Call Centers Stay World Class?

Getting a call center operation to the world class level is something most leaders never experience.   A recent study by a leading service organization found that less than 5% of companies fall into the “world-class” category.   It also found that about 80% of companies fall into the average or below category  – many want to achieve greatness, they just don’t know how.

I’ve been fortunate to work with some really great companies and people – I take every opportunity to discuss the “how to” with leaders of  world class companies.   I recently had a conversation with the current CIO of Mutual of Omaha and former COO of USAA, Tim Handren.   I asked him the “how to” question and he started down the path of “diet and exercise”.    Like most people that hear the story, I wasn’t sure where this was going to go, but it all comes together in a way that easily reminds everyone that they have to focus on the basics every single day to obtain and maintain world class call center service.

After our conversation, I convinced Tim to help me write an article for an industry magazine on the subject and it can be found on page 14 in the below link.

http://www.servicelevelgroup.com/files/CCP200907.pdf

Good luck  -  more articles and free downloads can be found at

www.servicelevelgroup.com

What is the right service level objective?

One of the most misunderstood and misapplied call center metrics is Service Level.  Most call centers have established an objective to answer a certain percent of their calls in a defied number of seconds.   In my work with call center leaders, I often find that they understand they have to have it, but don’t really know “why” it’s important or “how” it’s calculated.    To illustrate this, I start my call center focused speaking sessions with a question on the percent of calls that will queue with an 80/20 SLO given a 100 calls and a five minute handle time.    In a good session, we’ll get 10% of the audience with the correct answer – yes, the most important metric to most call center leaders is more of a goal that must be hit, than a goal that must be understood.

Key is to understand call center dynamics – it’s not rocket science, but if you understand the REAL impact of losing a few percentage points of service level, you can quickly connect the dots to customer satisfaction, agent burnout and leadership focus.   Here is a quick primer on service level that has been effective in communicating the basics to call center leaders at every level:

http://servicelevelgroup.com/4%20slides.html

Below is a link to a McKinsey story on finding the right objective  – you might be over optimizing the center and got getting the best bang for your buck.  But, remember,  you have to be consistent in hitting the low end and you’ll see in their analysis how quickly a low service level object will impact the percent of customers willing to recommend you to others.   There are some pretty good call center articles on their site, so it’s worth subscribing and getting other points of view.

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/newsletters/chartfocus/2009_06.htm

 

Email any questions to timm@servicelevelgroup.com

More info available at www.servicelevelgroup.com

Free Metrics Into Action Slides and Sesssion Extras

I recently had the opportunity to present a half day workshop at the Call Center Demo Conference in Austin Texas.   Having presented to over 10,000 call center professionals throughout the world, I’m always amazed at how the basic needs never seem to change – call center leaders are looking for help in using the metrics to positively influence change at every level of the organization.     I’ve done this session “Moving Metrics Into Action” at several events over the last three years and it is always one of the most highly attended programs.

For this event, I created a web site to allow all the participants to download a soft copy of the slides and some additional information that they would find helpful.   I’ve decided to post the link on my blog  – feel free to download and use/share any of the information you find helpful.

http://www.servicelevelgroup.com/AustinJune09.html

If you have any questions, you can email me at timm@servicelevelgroup.com

Best of luck,

Tim

More info available at www.servicelevelgroup.com

Real-time management made easy

Many of the call centers I work with have very good processes and technology – but, for some reason it all gets thrown out the window when calls begin to queue. A disciplined approach to how you handle calls in queue is key to successful call center management. In the latest issue of Contact Center Pipeline Magazine, I outline ways to help call centers increase their real time management success. We also provide some tips on ways to move your center closer to world class.

Here is a link to download the entire issue and if you like it, there is also a code for a 50% discount on the subscription fee. Enjoy.

http://www.contactcenterpipeline.com/orderdownloads/100271_59550/CCP200905.pdf

The discount http://www.contactcenterpipeline.com/p-15-contact-center-pipeline.aspx

Be sure to enter the coupon code TM09 during checkout

Get more, including Free web seminars and articles at http://www.servicelevelgroup.com/