Measurement That Matters

Southern Gas Association Conference August-2007Tommy Harrison, Partner

The Practical Application of Contact Center Metrics

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Agenda

• Fundamentals of Contact Center Management

• Key Performance Indicators

• Reading Between the Lines

• Questions and Answers

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

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.

Where do you work?

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Contact Center Architecture

PBX/ACD

CTI Server

IVR

Fax Server

`

CRM DatabaseEmail ServerWeb Server

Application Server

WorkforceManagement Server

Contact Center Agent

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Boy Do We Have Numbers!

• Cost Per Call

• Shrinkage

• Average Daily Volume

• Hold Time

• Idle Time

• Time in Queue

• Average Handle Time

• Average Speed of Answer

• Abandon

• Available Time

• Transfer In /Out

“Water, water everywhere, but nary a drop to drink.”

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

• 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 satisfactionReduce revenue risk Higher customer retentionIncrease sales opportunities

The Grand Daddy of all KPIs

*SQM Group

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First Call Resolution

• Process, Process, Process

• Agent Empowerment

• Leadership Focus

• Technology

Making an Impact

Service Level

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Service Level

• Service level is expressed as X percentage of calls answered with Y seconds—commonly 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

One of the most manipulated

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Service Level

• 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

We Plan for Random Events Every 15 Minutes

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Service Level

The Erlang C formula, or some variation thereof, is the basis of most contact center staffing tools. Erlang calculators make the math easy.

Staffing Is Just A Math Problem

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Erlang C formula

• 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

Given any three criterion we can solve for the fourth

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The Inconvenient Truth

• Agents can’t 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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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

The Contact Centers Managers Best Friend!

A.K. Erlang

Forecast Accuracy

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Forecast Accuracy

Why do we care:

Measure of efficiency

Prevents over staffing

Impacts service level

Impact agent retentions

Impacts customer satisfaction

Forecasted Contact Load vs. Actual Load

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it. Robert Heinlein

Self Service Percentage

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Customer Self Service

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

Customers must want to self serve

If confusion is the first step to knowledge, I must be a genius. -Larry Leissner

Interaction Quality

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Interaction Quality

• The definition of Quality varies by organization.

• Measuring the contact center’s 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

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

Reading Between the Lines

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The Power of A Good Story

Team Number of Calls Answered

AbandonCalls

Total Calls

Percentage Abandoned

Average Abandon Time

Answer Speed

Service Level

1 Purple 580 178 758 23% 11:38 1:05 54%

2 Orange 3630 746 4376 17% 2:44 1:00 47%

3 Magenta 646 220 866 25% 5:24 :57 32%

4 Green* 836 15 881 2% 8:13 :09 84%

5 Red* 781 7 795 1% 1:11 :10 74%

6 Blue* 1023 6 1035 1% 4:38 :08 81%

Data Taken Out of Context is Dangerous

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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