Measurement That Matters

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Measurement That Matters
The Practical Application of Contact Center
Metrics

• Southern Gas Association Conference August-2007
• Tommy Harrison, Partner

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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

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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
• 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.

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Contact Center Architecture
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Boy Do We Have Numbers!
Water, water everywhere, but nary a drop to
drink.

• Time in Queue
• Average Handle Time
• Average Speed of Answer
• Abandon
• Available Time
• Transfer In /Out

• Cost Per Call
• Shrinkage
• Average Daily Volume
• Hold Time
• Idle Time

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First Call Resolution

• One and Done!

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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 Higher employee
  satisfaction
• Reduce revenue risk Higher customer retention
• Increase sales opportunities

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
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Service Level
One of the most manipulated

• Service level is expressed as X percentage of
  calls answered with Y secondscommonly 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 cant 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 T oolBox

• 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
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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
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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
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Interaction Quality

• The definition of Quality varies by organization.
  
• Measuring the contact centers ability to
  effectively communicate a series of messages to a
  customer during an interaction.
• Interaction quality criteria include
• Greetings
• Grammars
• Politeness and Professionalism
• Accuracy of data entry
• Accuracy of data conveyed
• First contact resolution

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Customer Satisfaction
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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
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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 1138 105 54
2 Orange 3630 746 4376 17 244 100 47
3 Magenta 646 220 866 25 524 57 32
4 Green 836 15 881 2 813 09 84
5 Red 781 7 795 1 111 10 74
6 Blue 1023 6 1035 1 438 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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Harmon Voice Solutions, LLC. Toll Free (877)
794 - 0444Telephone (703) 794 - 0444Email
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