.jpg)
Original Publication: Customer Management Insight - February 2009
With customers guarding their wallets like its 1929, organizations have a lot riding on the level of customer care they provide. But shrinking wallet share is also having a direct impact on the resources that organizations can allocate to the very thing they need to focus on. These hard times call for both skill and creativity from the contact center — the pressure is on! The contact center can’t let itself be forced into reducing the level of customer care it provides. Instead, work with other business units and find ways to leverage the valuable stream of information you get from them. And where you might typically let service level fall, work to manage controllable costs instead.
Brad Cleveland
Senior Advisor to and former president/CEO
of ICMI.
In an uncertain and ever-changing global economy, customer care has become a key battleground for revenue and market share. The expectations customers have of organizations are evolving rapidly, both because customers are more sensitive to the perceived value and service they receive, and because improvements in services in any organization or industry continue to further expectations for all. Given these developments, this is an important time to further – not reduce – the level of customer care you are providing.
One of the most fundamental developments in organizations leading the pack is a distinct mind-set: Customer care is not a program… or a prescription… or a call center, self service capability, or IT thing: It’s much more. It’s a commitment, a “way of doing business,” that spans the entire organization and its key suppliers and partners. When customer care is seen through that lens, it both takes the misplaced pressure off – and underscores the responsibility of — every functional area.
And the role of the call center? Working with other business units is where you can really begin to leverage the call center’s potential to deliver customer care that can differentiate in a tough market. Call after call, day after day, the call center is getting information on products, services and processes — directly from customers, partners and suppliers — that can literally transform an organization. When captured and shared, this intelligence helps other departments improve quality, further development efforts, find ways to improve the clarity of customer communications, learn how to improve self-service systems, and identify ways to cut unnecessary costs.
Customer care is just that — customer care. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s a specific technology, or proactive service initiative, or survey methodology. Great customer care can and in many cases should include these kinds of things — but it’s more. It’s also less, in the sense that you don’t need a specific tool or prescription to get started. The most essential ingredient to great customer care is an understanding from top to bottom that it is an organizationwide way of doing business.
Macklin Martin
Practice Director of ICMI’s Customer Experience Practice.
Efficiency, effectiveness, economies of scale! Customer service leaders, dig in, it’s going to be a turbulent ride if your service enterprise is not nimble and adaptable.
Innovation becomes essential in the face of the competitive pressures service leaders are witnessing across industries today. Retaining and growing wallet share with existing customers are results that now must be achieved with less resources and smaller budgets. I’ve highlighted two trends that are starting to impact small to mid-sized call centers: Business Process Automation and Real-time Analytics.
The great thing about both of these tools is that they do not necessitate the purchase of new technology. Instead, customer service leaders simply need to look at their current operations with a new set of eyes, focusing on rapid response to business change and creating efficiency through better control of process variance.
Real-Time Analytics
Real-time analytics solutions often provide tools that innovative leaders are using today to stay ahead of customer expectations while winding back the costs of service.
Resource Planning and Workforce Management
Real-time adherence monitoring/analytics provide the actionable intel needed to impact service levels immediately. This may be a critical application for small to mid-sized centers that have a WFM system and accurate forecasting, but that are experiencing ongoing adherence challenges.
Customer Experience Monitoring
Leveraging call analytics solutions to monitor the overall customer experience is a high-value application of real-time analytics. Software suites like Avoke from BBN Technologies make it possible to identify callers who are having a less-than-optimal experience (e.g., cable service picture quality challenges or utility power outages). Enterprises are empowered with mission-critical information to promote real-time causal analysis and mitigation, boosting caller satisfaction.
“With the AVOKE Call Browser, changes in the entire dialing-to-hangup caller experience can be detected, enabling immediate action. You get visibility of external factors that impact the center, such as IVR performance, switch or trunk issues, and how your partners are handling calls” says BBN Technologies’ Joe Alwan, vice president and general manager of AVOKE Caller Experience Analytics.
Business Process Automation
Contact centers have long been the wayward home for customer-oriented processes. Many organizations are “greening” their contact centers and saving money on materials and labor through business process automation. Business process automation does not always entail purchasing some expensive software package, exhaustive integrations and deployments that take months or longer to complete. Small contact centers that process fax and paper orders can save time, money and even the planet by leveraging simple off-the-shelf document imaging technology often integrated into fax machines and scanners. Viewing, sharing and working off of electronic documents versus paper can reduce costs significantly in smaller paper intensive environments like insurance claims centers, order processing centers and dispatch centers.
BPA solutions can help mid-sized call centers dramatically reduce the time and expense associated with manual processes like correspondence processing and order fulfillment. How do you know if BPA is right for your center? First ask these four questions:
1. Do we have all of our processes documented?
2. Have we developed an activity cost analysis for each of our major processes?
3. Have we reviewed the processes to identify potential improvement opportunities?
4. Do we have established process performance indicators in place?
Once you can answer yes to each of these questions you can confidently pursue a Business Process Automation initiative with the ability to develop a comprehensive cost benefit analysis and the functional requirements necessary to initiate the process for requesting proposals. For more information on business process management refer to
www.bpm.com.
Dan Rickwalder
Practice Director Of ICMI’s Planning and Analytics consulting practice.
OK people, put down your Erlang calculators! In these harrowing economic times, contact center managers are called on to “do more with less.” This usually translates to staffing savings through lower service level, but there are alternatives if you are willing to take a hard look at how your operation is really running.
While focusing on service level is tempting, knowing and managing your controllable costs will deliver the biggest bang for the buck — but this will take some work. Focusing on metrics that affect costs like attendance, adherence and average handle time (AHT) in non-traditional ways can create real long-term savings and improve service and morale all at once.
Instead of focusing on the “poor performers,” look at how management practices affect these metrics. Attendance provides a great example. Most companies provide five sick days (about 4% of payroll), but most call centers run between eight and 12% absenteeism. Focusing on poor performers leads to a few terminations and some improvement, but digging a little deeper reveals the root cause: Poor scheduling practices lead to understaffing on Mondays. Agents, recognizing this, call out more frequently on those busy days because they are harder. The solution: more flexible schedules that correct for staffing gaps and improve Monday morale.
This is but one example of how looking past the performer and focusing on management practices can improve the bottom line without sacrificing service.
