Reporting --- Too much data, not enough actionable information.

Another inefficiency comes in the form of reporting. We’ve interviewed hundreds of call center managers over the years and still find many of them complaining about the inordinate time spent hand-assembling reports. Why is this? In this day of automation and instant access to information, it’s hard to believe we still have managers cutting and pasting data often from several sources. We even find some managers having to manually enter data!

Part of the problem is that every system in the contact center produces reports, dozens of them. There is no lack of data, there is simply too much.

Most vendors take a “one size fits all” approach, providing a canned set of reports to their customers. So, what the manager ends up doing is stripping out data from a number of separate reports and compiling a new report, usually using an Excel spreadsheet. Some of our customers have told us that they need to re-key the data by hand because they can’t get reports in an interactive format.

This is probably the number one waste of time in a contact center. It’s a shame because it is a relatively easy area to improve efficiency. How?

You can probably answer this yourself, but perhaps you rely upon an IT department, already overworked, to provide you with performance reports and every time you want to make a change you need to go back to them.

Usually a reporting module is included with the ACD you purchased. The problem is that these systems are locked alongside the ACD, behind closed doors and out of your reach. Even if they were accessible, there are security issues that make it difficult to get the kind of nimble reporting you need in the contact center. So, managers resign themselves to spending hours each week creating reports, repeating the process because someone else needs the information with a slight variation. Those “slight variations” can be a nightmare.

How can you create a nimble reporting structure that will adjust to your needs? First, do a little research on independent reporting vendors. Ask them where their software sits in terms of the ACD itself. Also ask how flexible their system is. Is it easily adjusted for those on-the-fly variations? What is the reporting structure? Excel? Crystal? Make sure it is standards-based and easy to maintain. A good independent reporting vendor can save your company thousands of dollars in time and energy, not to mention headaches!

The sample report above is for a collections department. Data has been taken from an ACD, a predictive dialer and from a collections database. Once created, reports should be easy to maintain and fine tune.

This is just the beginning

There are many more areas where inefficiencies can be squeezed out of a contact center with a little planning and input from the team. Remember that each inefficiency you identify may seem harmless by itself. But inefficiencies in one area will impact other performance areas.

Where there are people there are inefficiencies! However, these are also great opportunities to improve! Once you begin to identify areas where improvements seem possible, watch your team rise to the occasion. We mentioned earlier about the company whose employees actually created their own goals in terms of performance metrics. This is an opportunity to use your people to attach real numbers to those goals. That, along with a strong performance management and reporting system will take you a long ways towards achieving goals you may have thought impossible before. Isn’t that worth doing?

The Revolving Door Syndrome (Part 3 of 5)

Another inefficiency we should discuss involves the workforce itself. Even if you don’t care if your agents are happy, guess what? Your customers do! Just think of the last time you interacted with a contact center agent, how was your experience? Did the agent speak in a monotone voice or was he or she personable and attentive?

Wells Fargo is a great example. Their agents are well-trained and pleasant. As a result, I’ve remained a Wells Fargo customer for years. They are consistent in their approach and professional in conducting transactions. Come to think of it, I’d probably use the same phrases to describe Wells Fargo on the whole, as an organization.

That’s because contact center agents really are the face of the company. Period. If they aren’t happy, they’ll make customers unhappy. Soon, absenteeism will rise, they’ll become less and less motivated and they’ll leave. This revolving door syndrome is an expensive one.

According to a Benchmark Portal study, on average it costs companies over $6,000 every time an agent departs. For financial institutions, the average is over twice that amount.

Hiring, training and motivating are expensive!

The chart on the left shows the average cost of turnover by industry. This chart was produced by the Detroit News in 2005 from a study made by Benchmark Portal, Inc.

Employees need to feel connected to their goals. They need an offset to the stress of customer issues, in addition to sufficient training and, above all, strong communication from supervisors.

People also want to understand what they need to do to move up. That can equate to clear and attainable goals. Without that, especially in the hectic environment of the call center, they will quickly become disillusioned, complacent or downright hostile.

How do you think that translates to the customers? What is the most important to businesses?

Customers!

Okay, how do we squeeze inefficiency out of the workforce without cracking a whip? How to keep the team in place longer? Increasing salaries is not always the solution, by the way. Ever since Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was publicized in 1954, managers have known that “job satisfaction” is the most important factor in employee retention. With real-time performance management tools, providing targeted metrics can be very effective in communicating the here and now of the contact center.

You must start, however, with goals that are realistic. That may mean re-evaluating some of the current key performance indicators, or KPIs, you have in place. Are the thresholds realistic or are these metrics always green or always red? Nothing is more demoralizing to the workforce than the sense that management doesn’t care enough to adjust the performance metrics to meet the ebb and flow of the calling activity! So, take the time to make the adjustment. We have a customer whose agents actually help to create the thresholds for their KPIs. And they’re hard on themselves! They lowered their longest call waiting from 1:47 to :38 seconds!

Goal obtained! It can be and is done all the time.

Look for our next post! "A spoonful of sugar." (part 4)