Call Center Performance Management
This article outlines some of the key areas in which call center performance can be measured and managed..
Call Centers, or customer services receiving and
transmitting multiple requests by telephone, were introduced as offshoots of
telecommunications providing streamlined service for consumers of large
companies with extensive customer support needs.
Normally, a call center is able to handle a considerable volume of calls at
the same time, i.e. to screen calls and forward them to skilled support
staff, where most issues can be resolved. Organizations starting from
mail-order catalog companies and telemarketing companies to computer product
help desks use call centers.
Typically, there are two types of calls, inbound and outbound. The latter
suggests the agent's calling potential customers with intentions to sell or
service which is amply used in telemarketing. Apart from it inbound calls
are made by the customer to get information or ask for help reporting
malfunction of the product.
That's where the problem of management performance is acute. Performance
measures and benchmarking are indispensable to any well-run call center to
eliminate criticism of call centres on common themes such as non-expert
operators, poor training of agents incapable to process customers' requests
effectively, automated queuing systems resulting in long hold time and
operators working from a script.
Benchmarking, typically associated with strategic management, presupposes
evaluation of business processes in relation to best practice and helps to
develop plans with the aim of increasing performance levels. Benchmarking
reforms all the levels of the company, from the state of mind of the
employees to that of top level managers, penetrating into the whole
hierarchical organization of the organization. The gist of benchmarking is
to break the resistance to change by employing methods different from the
currently used ones that might be less effective in order to increase
certain aspects of performance.
The most conspicuous performance measures include the mean conversation
time, or Average Talk Time (ATT), the time of delay a caller may experience
waiting while queuing, the mean dealing time, or Average Handling Time (AHT),
the number of calls (%) answered within the limited period, or Service Level
(SL%), the number of calls per hour the operator handles, the number of
calls (%) with the customer's problem completely resolved and others.
A variety of different technologies enables companies to measure and monitor
the performance of the workers. The Balanced scorecard, introduced by R.S.
Kaplan and D. Norton in 1992, is a concept for measuring a company's
activities to make managers focus on the important performance metrics that
lead to success. It's not only financial outcomes that are in focus, but the
human issues that drive those outcomes. Thus, it is said to balance the
financial perspective with customer, process and employee perspectives.
Since the time of the original concept the scorecard metrics have been
revisited by Kaplan & Norton with regard to more than a decade's experience.
Typically the following processes are focused on when the scorecard is
implemented: translating the vision into operational goals, linking the
vision to individual performance, business planning, learning and adjusting
the strategy according to the feedback. To improve the performance of call
centers one should know what metrics are best qualified. The right metrics
should be performed on a call center to fulfill the scorecard.
The hallmark of a good call centre is the staff's call management skills and
that means interactive training that can help achieve excellence at
different levels for the agents, supervisors and managers is important. It
is essential for managers to know how to recruit and train the staff to
reach the strategic goals of the company, to manage the key metrics and
consequently improve performance.
Different programs are designed to deliver training to call center teams.
They might include practice, role-play, feedback and coaching. As keeping
customers satisfied is a primary concern of any call center, training
courses must feature quality programs which enhance performance in this
area. Excellent training leads to reinforcing the appropriate skills
for performance improvement and achieving higher levels of customer loyalty.
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