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