“When’s the right time to centralize different divisions or receptionists into a centralized center?”

This is a question that a lot of companies struggle with and mirrors the simple question of

“Should I start a contact center?”

The easy answer is: It depends.

I know. It’s a co-out. It is, however, true as well. The fact of the matter is that businesses have different expectations, requirements and designs. Some companies manage their personell through different budgets and are not interested in consolidating the numbers. Others would prefer to have centralized costs that can be evaluated for actual talk costs and values.  Some organizations have a large, matrixed management structure where the agents or administrative professionals handling calls are best managed by the small groups. Others take a different approach and want a singular management section that handles the service fashion.

Not only that, the question becomes what are your goals? Would it make a difference? Are there cost benefit savings? Is there a customer satisfaction improvement aspect? Are you trying to reduce headcount? Improve efficiency?

There are hundreds of reasons for putting a contact center together — and there are probably just as many not to.  You need to evaluate your process goals, your cross training potential, and your concepts.  In my opinion, if you have multiple locations taking calls and any of the groups have downtime where others don’t? You have a very obvious area of efficiency that can be gained.  If you have multiple locations regardless, you should consider looking at a centralized option.

Hire someone to come look at your numbers.  Ask a friend that has experience with this sort of thing if you need to.  It’s worth looking at.

Contact centers tend to be at the core of this arguement. Quality vs Quantity. What is truly the most important? Does a person’s Average Speed of Answer (ASA) mean more than their customer feedback score? Is the abandon rate the key or does customer satisfaction play a role? In truth, the answer is not a simple one. One thing does hold true regardless of your company’s size, situation, or industry.

Contact Centers are the primary point of contact for your company and have an immense impact on customer loyalty, satisfaction, and retention.

A contact center for a small company may be the only employee, programmer and owner — it is still the place where customers come. Larger companies, more obviously, have call centers that have an impact on the customer. Ranging anywhere from 5 to 500+, these customer support organizations (including billing, customer service, technical support, returns, etc) are crucial.

There is a simple reason that the QvQ quandry is not easily resolved. Both are important; Neither can be sacrificed. If your customer satisfaction rating, of those customers spoken to, is through the roof but 20% of your customers abandon before speaking to them, you’ve alienated 20% of your customers. More than likely, these 20% would also rate your customer satisfaction extremely low — you just can’t easily survey them as they’ve hung up before speaking to someone. At the same time, if you’re able to reach a 1% abandon rate and your customer satisfaction is on the floor, the center is not doing your organization any favors.

It takes a strong team who understands client support and call center management to put together metrics that are appropriate for your organization. This team can be a consultant company or an in house team — its irrelevant, but it is important to make sure that you have someone measuring the right data.

Some crucial scores to look at:

• Average Speed of Answer
• Abandon Rate
• Service Level
• Overall Customer Satisfaction
• Professionalism
• How well was the issue resolved

One pitfall to avoid while looking at these numbers — it ignores the outliers. An average abandon rate of 5% per day (fairly industry standard) when measured over the course of a month may show that 4 days a week has a rate of 2% and one day a week has 20%. This is an extreme example, but all too often, contact center agencies and management tries to expand over a month — days do matter. ]]> http://www.mesritz.us/blog/2009/02/quality-v-quantity/feed/ 0 http://www.mesritz.us/blog/2009/02/call-center-metrics/ http://www.mesritz.us/blog/2009/02/call-center-metrics/#comments Sat, 14 Feb 2009 18:15:17 +0000 pmesritz http://www.mesritz.us/blog/?p=42 “I believe that an over reliance on metrics plague the call center industry at the expense of the customer experience.” (Metrics-Schmetrics « rich mclafferty’s customer experience weblog)

Rich has an interesting point. Although I only partially agree, the fact is that metrics alone is not the way to measure your call center. Measure your center by understanding what it is your customers are looking for and then focusing on those aspects. As he said, a customer that doesn’t get a resolution when the phone is picked up because the agent is rushing through is a customer that will be extremely dissatisfied. The point of the call isn’t to get the customer’s question rushed through … it is to get the customer’s question answered. If it’s not, then reconsider why you’ve got a call center.

Customer satisfaction. Isn’t that why you’re answering the call? Look at the reasons — the REAL reasons.

Possible Reasons

1. My product doesn’t work. I need help. — What is this really? It is an unsatisfied customer who, if resolved, will be satisfied.
2. My bills wrong and I want it fixed. — Again, what’s the customer looking for? They’re currently not happy. They want to figure out what it should be and hope to walk away satisfied.
3. I can’t find X. Where do I buy Y? — Again! Satisfying the customer is the goal behind the reason for the call. The customer can’t find something. Help them find it. They wan to buy something. Help them buy it by telling them where that can be done.

I’m sure there’s reasons that customer’s call up because they’re not looking for satisfaction, but I can’t think of any off the top of my head. Because of this, think about why your call center is currently running and focus on the necessary aspects of managing it.