breaking call center rules: find time to wow customers

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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Contact Info

Matt McConnellmatt.mcconnell@knowlagent.com

Richard Snow Richard.Snow@ventanaresearch.com