breaking call center rules: find time to wow customers
DESCRIPTION
Knowlagent and Ventana Research shares insights into new research about key operational metrics, including idle time. View these slides to learn which call center rules can be broken in order to provide superior customer service.TRANSCRIPT
Breaking Call Center Rules:Find Time to Wow CustomersPRESENTED BY:Matt McConnell, CEO, KnowlagentRichard Snow, Vice President and Research Director, Ventana Research
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Agenda
Call Center TrendsAgent Performance & Customer ExperienceEfficiencies, Occupancy and UtilizationUnderstanding Idle TimeCase StudyFinal Observations
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Call Center Trends
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Priorities for Investing in Contact Centers
Increase Customer Satisfaction
Reduce Operational Costs
Adhere to Regulations
Gain Competitive Advantage
54%
18%
10%
Source: Ventana Research State of CC Technologies Benchmark Research
NOT to scaleBased on #1 responses
7%
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Handling Customer Interactions
Source: Ventana Research Agent Performance Management Benchmark Research
82% of Companies Indicated the Need to Improve the Handling of Customer Interactions
Increase Customer Satisfaction
Improve Business Processes
Increase Customer Retention
Reduce Operational Costs
89%
72%
70%
70%
Source: Ventana Research Agent Performance Management Benchmark Research
Quality of the Customer Experience
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The Attitude of Agents
The Ability of Agents to Understand the Issue
Queue Lengths
The Ability of Agents to Resolve Issues at the First Attempt
26%
23%
20%
20%
Agent Knowledge 8%
Consistency of Information 2% Based on #1 choice ONLY
Source: Ventana Research CEM Benchmark Research
Agent performance is vital to the customer experience and customer satisfaction
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Efficiency of Interaction Handling
Source: Ventana Research Agent Performance Management Benchmark Research
Optimize agent utilization
Divert interactions to self-service
Optimize call routing - skill-based
Improve agent training
30%
24%
18%
9%
Improve QM process 7%
Formalize agent coaching 2%
Source: Ventana Research Agent Performance Management Benchmark Research
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Key Objectives for Improving Performance
Priorities for Improving Agent Performance
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Improve Customer Satisfaction
Improve First Contact Resolution Rates
Improve Agent Satisfaction
Make Better Use of Agent Idle Time
82%
72%
66%
40%
Reduce Agent Turnover 30%
Increase Agent Training Times 29%
80% of Companies Say it is Very Important to Improve Agent Performance
Source: Ventana Research Agent Performance Poll
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9%
9%
11%
16%
17%
21%
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Training
Coaching
Team Meetings
Call Research / Follow-up
Projects
Paperwork
17% Email, Call Back,
Knowledge Base, etc.
Time Invested for Improvements
Industry Average Composition of Secondary Loss
Source: 2010 Contact Center Shrinkage Survey
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Efficiencies, Occupancy and Utilization
Target Agent Occupancy Rates
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Source: Ventana Research Agent Performance Poll
The Average Target for Agent
Occupancy is 83%
Target %
95% 11%
90% 17%
85% 19%
80% 18%
Reasons why targets are NOT 100%:
#1 Agents are required to do other tasks as well as answering calls #2 A rate any higher would cause agent burn-out#3 Raising the rate is impractical given the uncertainty of call volumes/patterns#4 This is an operational decision#5 We are not able to forecast idle time
Profile of a Typical Agent Shift
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Source: Ventana Research Agent Performance Poll
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Understanding Idle Time
Managing Wait Time
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40% of companies schedule agent time in 15 minute slots, 34% in 30 minute slots, and13% only do it by shift.
On average agents are only
idle for 2 minutes at a time.
17%
Call Handle Time
Secondary Loss (off-phone work)
Primary Loss (absenteeism, vacation, etc.)
Wait Time
There is a Lot of Wait Time in The Call Center
2010 Contact Center Shrinkage Survey
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Source: 2010 Contact Center Shrinkage Survey
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17%
Wait Time
The average agent waits:• 48 Minutes Every Day• 240 Minutes Every Week• 960 Minutes Every Month• 11,520 Minutes Every Year
• Five Weeks!Costs our industry $30Bn/Yr
Five Weeks of Really Bad, Boring Vacation
Can I Reduce Shrinkage Hours & Deliver Quality?
Shrinkage hours can be reduced by moving off-phone shrinkage activities into wait time creating “Active Wait”.
Active Wait
Secondary Loss (off-phone work)
Wait Time
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Active Wait
Off-phone activities are assigned to agents forming "Activity Queues”.
Content is dynamically delivered to agents during downtimes in call volume.
Active Wait - Shift Off Phone Activities
Call Volume
Occupancy
Tomorrow
Today
Occupancy
Call Volume
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Moving Shrinkage to Active Wait
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$7,830,000Labor Savings $810,000
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Training/ Knowledge
Communication
Back-Office
Performance
Push Almost Any Activity From Shrinkage to Wait
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Customer SatisfactionGetting First Call Resolution Done
Using Knowlagent to deliver more training, coaching, and communications to over 45,000 agents
Increased Delivery“Delivered more training time to a site in 5 days using RightTime than was delivered over 1 month when manually scheduling time”
Improved Take Rate“71.7% take rate for RightTime vs. 59.4% take rate for pre-scheduled breaks”
Major U.S. Telecommunications Company
Deploying the productivity gains
Increase training, coaching, and communications to:• Increase FCR• Increase Customer Satisfaction• Increase Retention
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Agent Productivity
AgentPerformance
Traditional Methods
Time
Agent
Perf
orm
ance
New methods
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Final Observations
• Customer requirements drive increased focus on customer experience
• Idle time is abundant and useful if optimized with appropriate tools
“Rule” to Bend – Wait/ idle time is unproductive. “Rule” to Break – High shrinkage is a fact of life.“Rule” to Ignore – Wait/ idle time improves agent satisfaction.
Key Takeaways
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