The following is an excerpt from CMIQ contributor Alex Loach’s E-book "37 Tips for Customer Management." You can download a complimentary copy, courtesy AlexLoach.com and CustomerManagementIQ.com, here.
The biggest challenge with regards to looking at quality within the business or call center is the issue of the actual metrics you are looking at, and this is true with regards to quality monitoring as well. Too many times, there seems to be confusion between quality and company policy.
For example, just because the agent didn’t say the customer’s name three times doesn’t mean it was a poor call. Similarly, even if he did, it doesn’t mean it was a good call. Whilst this may be important to the company, it is not necessarily important to the customer, and so metrics such as this can get counterproductive, especially when questions such as ‘did the agent meet the customers needs’ are left out.
Defining ‘Quality’ - The Customers’ Perspective
Due to their different inquiries and different brand perceptions, customers might not have a singular view of quality. So with regards to defining quality from customers’ perspectives, the best thing to do is ask them.
Only this will give you a true barometer as to how the organization is doing from the customers’ point of view, and when this is collated and defined, the next step is to measure it.
Measurements within the Call Center
Performance measurements within the call center environment will be forever changing depending on the role and goals involved. If a team starts off being entirely service devoted, then this gives one set of measurements. Later on, when the subject of up-selling and cross-selling come into place, those measurements must change. At that point, which is more important, Average Handling Time or Revenue per Call?
The answer can only be within the aims of the organisation, but what I would say, is that if one agent has a much higher AHT, but also a considerably higher ‘Rev per Call,’ maybe the other agents should be trained to spend more time with the customer
This, in turn, leads to the question of whether you need more staff in order to move from the service environment to both a service and sales environment.
All of these measurements are co-dependent though. If ‘Average Handling Time’ increases by fifty percent, how does that affect ‘Customer Satisfaction’ and ‘Revenue per Call?’ How far does AHT increase before it is detrimental to ‘Satisfaction’ even if ‘Revenue’ continues to increase?
Crucial Metrics in a Multi-Channel Environment
Within a Multi-Channel Environment, the most important factor is going to be customer experience, with context for channel.
Whether a customer chooses to communicate over the phone, through email, via chat, or through social media shouldn’t matter in theory. In reality, however, it does, as the customer’s expectation is possibly different dependent on the method he chooses.
Therefore, it is essential to measure the service expectation for that channel, and then measure how you are performing against it.
The call center environment is very used to metrics. Whether via 80/20 rules, or responses within x-amount of days, these have always been very easy to measure if the contact comes through the phone or even through email systems
The next step is to look at customer segmentation and whether there are different targets and service levels based on the type of customer you are communicating with, and therefore which channel you are communicating through.