Before companies look to improve their customer service, they must first define how they measure performance. As the place at the heart of customer operations, the contact center is where firms can add value to their operation and positively impact upon customer loyalty.
In the past, however, there have been issues in balancing the customer service aspects with the bottom line, and this is where choosing the performance measurements which work becomes key. Among the first to realize this trend was the Cranfield School of Management, which noted five years ago that traditional metrics were becoming counterproductive.
"Companies must accept that it's better for employees to speak to a customer for longer and actually resolve their problem. This involves completely re-thinking their approach to performance measurement but in the long run can prove hugely beneficial," Bernard Marr, a research fellow from the school, said.
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Qualitative v Quantitative
Traditional performance measures generally take a qualitative approach, looking at how long something takes, how many times it is carried out and the value it adds to the bottom line. While some of these are always likely to remain popular, an increasing shift is being seen towards qualitative performance measures which engage the agents.
Colin Whelan, head of training at the Professional Planning Forum,said: "This is 21st Century operational measurement. It's a new way of doing things that, in my opinion, will just grow and grow."
One company which has employed this technique to great effect, according to Alex Coxon, writing for the Forum, is the communications company Orange. In 2009, the firm launched a new survey system which allowed comments as well as performance scores to be recorded. These were then passed on to the agents verbatim.
Nick Lane, Director of Strategy and Planning at Orange, said previously its quality control professionals were "getting information thrown at them from all angles – from call recordings, from the CRM system and from complaints analysis."
This didn't succeed in boosting quality. What it did was collect the comments from the surveys, and combine them with training and bonuses for agents, which helped improve rep performance by 12 per cent. By using customer comments within performance measurement, companies can also keep on top of the quantitative measures which continue to be important, particularly first-call resolution.
Yankee Group names first-call resolution as the single most important key performance indicator within a contact center. Some 35 percent of calls were said to be repeat queries, which means agents are responding to the same complaint more than once, wasting time and money and doing nothing for customer satisfaction.
Workforce Performance
Measuring the performance of individual agents and teams through a range of metrics, such as productivity, lateness and sickness, and churn, is an essential part of any performance measurement. It ensures the same standards are being met by all reps across all sites, which is essential for effective customer service.
Which?employed a Sabio system for Workforce Optimization at one of its contact centers a couple of years ago and claimed the solution improved their service, "not just operationally but also in terms of far more accurate performance measurement, allowing us to highlight existing inefficiencies and secure long-term revenue improvements."
"We're already seeing operational savings, improved performance levels – for example, we've increased call answering levels from 75 to 90 percent – and we've now got clear visibility of how we can increase revenues looking forward," Paul Simpson from Which?, said.
While performance measures have differing degrees of effectiveness, it is important not to employ any in isolation. To achieve the best results, the information must be placed in context and acted on to boost overall performance.