Transcript Harmon Voice Solutions Metrics That Matter

Measurement That Matters
The Practical Application of Contact Center Metrics
Southern Gas Association Conference August-2007
Tommy Harrison, Partner
Agenda
• Fundamentals of Contact Center Management
• Key Performance Indicators
• Reading Between the Lines
• Questions and Answers
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Metrics and Management
The most important figures that one needs for management are
unknown or unknowable (Lloyd S. Nelson, director of statistical
methods for the Nashua corporation), but successful
management must nevertheless take account of them."
W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis
Call Center Management
Incoming call center management is the art of
having the right number of people and resources in
the right place at the right times to handle an
accurately forecasted workload, at service level
with quality.
*ICMI, International Call Management Institute
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Call Center Versus Contact Center
Where do you work?
Call center
•
A physical or virtual place where customers and employees connect by telephone and
possibly IVR. Basic CTI may be installed as a technology enabler to provide customer
information or to handle the contacts more effectively. The connections are inbound
and outbound and applications include sales, service, telemarketing, and credit. Some
self-service is provided by the IVR. Reporting is tied to call statistics such as Average
Speed to Answer (ASA), Average Handling Time (AHT), and occupancy rate of agents.
Contact Center
•
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A virtual place (can be composed of physical and/or virtual sites) where Web (chat, call
and call back), email, fax, and IVR connect customers to the company. Advanced CTI
is required to enable key contact center functionality as well as integrate customer
contact channels into the center. The customer relationship is the core of the contact
center. Efforts must include identifying the customer, differentiating the customer by
value and needs, interacting with the customer in his/her preferred method, and
customizing products or service. Connections continue to be two way and self service
plays a larger role because of Web, email, and also IVR. Reporting is tied to
integration across the channels. A contact center is a paradigm shift from a call center
in customer relationship, operations, technology, management, and the employees.
Contact Center Architecture
Contact Center Agent
`
Fax Server
CTI Server
Workforce
Management Server
PBX/ACD
Web Server
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IVR
Email Server
Application Server CRM Database
Boy Do We Have Numbers!
“Water, water everywhere, but nary a drop to drink.”
• Cost Per Call
• Time in Queue
• Shrinkage
• Average Handle Time
• Average Daily Volume
• Average Speed of Answer
• Hold Time
• Abandon
• Idle Time
• Available Time
• Transfer In /Out
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First Call Resolution
One and Done!
First Call Resolution
The percent of calls that do not require any further contacts to
address the customers reason for calling. The customer does
not need to contact the call center again to seek resolution,
nor does anyone within the organization need to follow up.
*ICMI, International Call Management Institute
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First-Call Resolution
The Grand Daddy of all KPIs
• Customer satisfaction scores exhibit an average 15 percent
drop with each call back a customer makes to a contact
center
• For every 1 percent improvement in FCR there is a
corresponding 1 percent improvement in customer
satisfaction
• Contact center with high FCR rates experience:
Lower operation costs
Reduce revenue risk
Increase sales opportunities
Higher employee satisfaction
Higher customer retention
*SQM Group
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First Call Resolution
Making an Impact
• Process, Process, Process
• Agent Empowerment
• Leadership Focus
• Technology
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Service Level
Service Level
One of the most manipulated
•
Service level is expressed as X percentage of calls answered with
Y seconds—commonly seen as 80/20
•
Inconsistent methods of calculation:
Call answered within Y seconds / (total calls answered + total calls
abandoned after Y seconds)  Eliminates short abandons
Calls answered within Y seconds / (total calls answered + total calls
abandoned)
Calls answered within Y seconds / total calls answered
(Calls answered within Y seconds + calls abandoned within Y seconds) /
(total calls answered + total calls abandoned)
–
–
–
–
•
There is no industry standard for Service Level
•
Service Level is a measure accessibility not quality
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Service Level
We Plan for Random Events Every 15 Minutes
• Call arrival patterns are random not linear
• We can predict the call volume that will be received in an
interval even with a random arrival pattern
• Although we cannot control exactly when each call will
arrive, we can predict the overall number that will arrive in
a given interval using Poisson's equation
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Service Level
Staffing Is Just A Math Problem
The Erlang C formula, or some variation thereof, is the basis of
most contact center staffing tools. Erlang calculators make
the math easy.
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Erlang C formula
Given any three criterion we can solve for the fourth
• How many phone calls are going to arrive in a given
interval
• On average how long does is take to complete a phone call
• How quickly calls should be answered
• How many agents are needed
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The Inconvenient Truth
• Agents can’t be blamed for idle time
• Queues are not inherently bad, unexpected queues are
what we look for
–
–
Service Levels less than 100% in Zero seconds by definition
require queues
ACD are designed to hold call until agents become available
• When queues are adjusted real-time, more damage than
good is normally done
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Adding to the ToolBox
• Most managers gear their days toward eliminating Queues
and Idle Time
• Idle Time is a necessary evil that allow managers to
overcome random call arrival
• Queues are inevitable for any service level less 100% of
calls answered in Zero Seconds
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A.K. Erlang
The Contact Centers Managers Best Friend!
Agner Krarup Erlang was born in 1878 in Lonborg, Denmark. He was a pioneer in
the study of telecommunications traffic and, through his studies, proposed a
formula to calculate the fraction of callers served by a village exchange who would
have to wait when attempting to place a call to someone outside the village.
In 1909, he published his first work: The Theory of Probabilities and Telephone
Conversations. He gained worldwide recognition for his work, and his formula was
accepted for use by the General Post Office in the UK.
Erlang never married. He worked for the Copenhagen Telephone Company for
twenty years, until his death in 1929. During the 1940s, the Erlang became the
accepted unit of telecommunication traffic measurement, and his formula is still
used today in the design of modern telecommunications networks.
-- www.erlang.com
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Forecast Accuracy
Forecast Accuracy
Forecasted Contact Load vs. Actual Load
Why do we care:
Measure of efficiency
Prevents over staffing
Impacts service level
Impact agent retentions
Impacts customer satisfaction
In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.
Robert Heinlein
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Self Service Percentage
Customer Self Service
Customers must want to self serve
The off loading of basic customer
transactions to automated systems such as
interactive web applications and IVR
applications.
Benefits:
•
Frees up agents
•
Decreases cost per call
•
Enhance operational ours
Challenges:
•
Forget to track quality of the interaction
•
No option to interact with a live agent
•
Poor prompting or menu structure
•
Takes too long to perform simple tasks
•
Poor recording quality or voice
recognition
•
Hyper-sensitive security measures
If confusion is the first step to knowledge, I must be a genius. -Larry Leissner
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Interaction Quality
Interaction Quality
• The definition of Quality varies by organization.
• Measuring the contact center’s ability to effectively
communicate a series of messages to a customer during an
interaction.
• Interaction quality criteria include:
•
•
•
•
•
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Greetings
Grammars
Politeness and Professionalism
Accuracy of data entry
Accuracy of data conveyed
First contact resolution
Customer Satisfaction
Customer Satisfaction
Studies suggest a direct correlation between customer
satisfaction, customer retention, employee morale and
corporate revenue
Customer Satisfaction metrics should be a key component of
overall quality assurance programs
Determine acceptable response rates
Whenever possible match customer satisfaction responses to
the actual recorded interaction
Attempt to utilize IVR in addition to web and mailed surveys
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Reading Between the Lines
The Power of A Good Story
Data Taken Out of Context is Dangerous
Team
Number of
Calls
Answered
Abandon
Calls
Total
Calls
Percentage
Abandoned
Average
Abandon Time
Answer
Speed
Service Level
1 Purple
580
178
758
23%
11:38
1:05
54%
2 Orange
3630
746
4376
17%
2:44
1:00
47%
3 Magenta
646
220
866
25%
5:24
:57
32%
4 Green*
836
15
881
2%
8:13
:09
84%
5 Red*
781
7
795
1%
1:11
:10
74%
6 Blue*
1023
6
1035
1%
4:38
:08
81%
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Teach a man to create an artificial
shortage of fish and he will eat steak. – Jay Leno
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Please contact us for more detailed information:
Harmon Voice Solutions, LLC.
Toll Free: (877) 794 - 0444
Telephone: (703) 794 - 0444
Email: [email protected]
Website:www.harmonvoice.com