TRANSFORMING CALL CENTER
ADMINISTRATION THOUGH PROACTIVE
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
LEVERAGE THE POWER OF AUTOMATED
DECISIONING AND COMMUNICATIONS TO DRIVE SUPERIOR PERFORMANCE
In today’s call center environment a tremendous amount of agent and system performance information is being continually captured. Call center administrators depend
on this information to identify and address performance issues. Most large scale
call center operators track a multitude of Key Performance Metrics (KPM’s) including Average Handle Time (AHT), After Call Work (ACW) Cost per Contact (CPC), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Forecast Accuracy (FCST), Occupancy (OCC) and Schedule Adherence (SAD).
Call Center Administrators establish target performance ranges for KPM’s and analyze actuals versus targets to determine if corrective actions need to be taken. Analyzing all of this
information is complex and time consuming, making it a constant challenge to determine
and communicate what corrective actions need to be taken in a timely manner.
This white paper explores how automation of intraday data analysis, decisioning and
communications can fundamentally shift the performance management paradigm in
the call center from reactive to proactive, significantly improving the efficiency and
effectiveness of agent and system performance.
WORKFLEX SOLUTIONS WHITEPAPER
The Call Center Performance
Management Challenge
Call Center Administrators face a number of performance
management challenges in a call center environment
1. KPM Complexity
There are a multitude of call center KPM’s that are typically captured by workforce administration systems ranging from Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) systems to
Workforce Management (WFM) systems. These KPM’s
are not always captured at the same frequency or maintained in the same databases, making it difficult for administrators to capture a single consistent view of their
operations. Additionally many of these KPI’s tend to work
against each other. Placing an emphasis on one KPI may
negatively impact another. For example, driving high occupancy (OCC) is good from a cost perspective, because
it indicates that agents are very busy handling calls; however high OCC can burn out agents, negatively impacting other key metrics like schedule adherence (by driving
higher absenteeism) and lowering CSAT. These KPM
cross-impacts make analysis and decisioning complex and
time consuming for workforce administrators.
2. Timely Communication
A second challenge for call center administrators is in
communicating the right information to the right people
at the right time. It would be far more advantageous for
example, to notify an agent at 11:55am that their lunch
break is coming up in 5 minutes and not to take another
call as opposed to telling an agent at 12:35pm that he/
she needed to have started their lunch break at noon. Additionally, the impact of coaching from a team leader for
an agent struggling with AHT for certain call types is far
more impactful if the discussion happens within minutes
of the call conclusion as opposed to days later.
3. Prioritizing Actions
A third challenge for workforce administrators is deciding which issues should be acted upon first. It is very
difficult for a workforce administrator who is taking action to resolve one issue to simultaneously take actions
on other issues that may be happening concurrently.
As a result, there may be delays in identifying and addressing some issues and other issues may not be addressed at all.
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The Solution – Automation of Decisioning
and Communication
When you analyze the work of intraday workforce administrators, the majority of their time is typically consumed
with three key activities
- Monitoring of KPI’s and identifying issues
- Determination of recommended actions to take
- Effectively communicating recommended actions
to the right people in a timely fashion
Because administrators are generally looking at KPM’s
in a consistent way and often have a predefined response
based on past experience, it is possible to automate the
monitoring and real-time analysis of these KPI’s and develop a set of recommendations based on a set of policies
or “business rules” that the administrator can define in advance.
For example if the KPM for a certain agents After Call
Work (ACW) should be 90 seconds or less, and the system detects two or more times in a shift where ACW for
an agent is 5 minutes or more, this may be an indication
that the agent is using ACW to avoid taking the next
call, especially if OCC is high for the day. An automated
system could be configured to notify the agent that they
have exceeded the standard ACW KPM two times today.
Another automated action could be to notify the agent’s
supervisor of the ACW adherence issue so that they can
talk to the agent.
By implementing a flexible communication mechanism,
agents, supervisors and administrators can be contacted
using the most effective communication channels. If an
agent is working in the call center with no access to email
or a cell phone, a screen pop is the most effective communication mechanism. For a team leader walking the floor
a SMS message might make the most sense. A workforce
administrator may wish to be notified via e-mail. A key to
ensuring that the right people get the right message at the
right time is to take their contact needs/preferences into
consideration.
Dynamic Shifting of Call Volumes
It is very typical for Service Providers to manage the direction of call volume among internal and vendor centers. A
standard practice has been to provide a certain amount of
predetermined volume across internal centers and then to
direct variable traffic to suppliers based on forecasts that
they have been internally developed and reflected in contacts.
As the burden for forecast accuracy has shifted from Service Provider to Vendor however, Service Providers have
an incentive to direct their variable traffic to their best
performing vendors. If the best performing vendors can
handle more volume they will get more volume, while
poorer performing vendors stand to get less volume until
they improve their service levels.
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Proactive Performance Management
Examples
The following are three examples of how Automated Decisioning and Communication can be used to drive superior performance and agent satisfaction in the call center.
PPM Example 1 – Correlating KPM’s with Productivity Tool Utilization to Improve Performance
Some call center operators are introducing speech-to-text
(STT) technology in the call center which can reduce
AHT and ACW by enabling agents to talk instead of
type. Productivity improvements realized through STT
technology can be 10% or more. However since STT is
not required to actually handle a call (an agent can still
type), it is may be a challenge to ensure that agents are taking advantage of the capabilities of STT technology. By
automatically correlating agents with High AHT/ACW
and low utilization of STT, messages can be automatically
generated to team leads, identifying “high ROI” coaching
opportunities.
PPM Example 2 – Improving On-Line Training
Effectiveness
By leveraging desktop training technologies, call center
operators can take advantage of low occupancy times to
push training to agents, converting non-productive idle
time into productive idle time and reducing shrinkage due
to classroom training. The effectiveness of online training
can be improved by automatically monitoring key KPM’s
and automatically selecting the online training modules
for agents that will best address their specific needs. After an agent has taken AHT training, they could receive
screen pop messages thanking them for completing the
training and congratulating them on achieving a posttraining improvement in their AHT of X%.
PPM Example 3 – Implementing an Agent-Empowered Agent Bonus Program
Many companies offer bonuses to agents that achieve
superior performance based on their KPM’s. However
agents sometime do not have the visibility to know which
of their metrics need improvement in order for them to
earn a bonus.. An automated decisioning and communication system could be used to provide agents with current
information so that they know exactly where they need to
improve. This same information could be sent to supervisors to enable them to provide focused coaching with the
objective of helping their agents achieve bonus.
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Summary
Performance Management in Call Centers can be a challenge for Workforce Administrators from a complexity,
communication timeliness, and real-time prioritization
perspective. Automation of performance management
monitoring, decisioning and communications can help
address these issues and drive improved intraday performance at a lower cost.
The base ingredients to achieving dynamic scheduling
flexibility include:
• Capturing information related to agent availability and means of being reached
• Providing wage premiums for “on-call agents”
• Automation of the business processes to identify,
and reach the optimal set of “on-call” agents
An optional consideration would be to consider equipping agents with work-at-home capability which can increase the acceptance rate for agents being called, and reduce delays in getting on-call agents logged in.
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About WorkFlex™
WorkFlex is a venture-backed, Cincinnati-based software company focused on
workforce optimization solutions. Founded in 2009, WorkFlex products are deployed to major service providers and Business Process Outsourcers (BPO’s)
within Canada and the United States.
About the Author
Larry Schwartz is Chairman and CEO of WorkFlex Solutions. Mr. Schwartz
has 25 Years of Executive Management Experience in Large-Scale Operational
Streamlining, Enterprise-Grade Software Development, Strategic Planning,
Business Transformation, and Outsourced Services including Contact Centers.
WorkFlex Solutions, LLC
30 West 3rd Street, 6th Floor
Cincinnati, OH 45202-3559
info@workflexsolutions.com
Copyright © 2011, WorkFlex LLC. All rights reserved. This document is provided for information purposes only, and the contents hereof
are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor is it subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted without permission.
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