Moving Beyond the Queue – Focusing on the Real-Time Customer

Customers are now in control of business, and today’s call centers have the unenviable task of  meeting and managing  customer expectations that are moving at a lightning-fast pace.  The shift in control began with companies’ increasing reliance on the Internet, which has given birth to a whole new host of customer complaint (and accolade) tools – e.g., blogs, audio files, YouTube videos, and customer-powered Web sites that focus on satisfaction and dissatisfaction with specific products and services.

Many companies lack the ability to keep up with the new pace of change, and the old ways of establishing yourself as a service leader are no longer effective. Companies now must be sure to establish a culture of customer-centricity, with everyone in the organization trained to understand and appreciate the value of great service – no small feat. In addition, world class companies of today include customers in determining their real-time service expectations, and realize that customers are their new marketing vehicle.

The shift to customer control is so well positioned that many companies have moved away from celebrating survey success to focusing more on critical real-time indicators, such as the customer blogs, Web sites, discussion forums, etc., already alluded to.  By paying more attention to these forums, forward-thinking companies are connecting their processes with the ever-changing expectations of those they serve.  Gone are the days where a 95% satisfaction rate is something to brag about – in fact, if you’re an eBay seller, anything below a 98% satisfaction rating will push people away.   We’re in an era where consumers expect multimillion dollar companies to  be able to provide service that is just as friendly and personalized as that provided by the small mom and pop shop down the street. Thus, the new challenge for call centers is getting everyone in the center to think of themselves as providing “mom and pop” type service.  This may sound like an unrealistic endeavor, but the fact is, top companies are doing it and using it to create additional competitive advantage with every interaction. 

What follows are ideas on ways companies can refocus themselves on the new “real-time” customer and use customers in new ways to provide the organization with valuable information on what’s really happening.   By appreciating the real-time customer and understanding the right things on which to focus, companies can position themselves for success in this new era of service.   Best of all, the call center is well positioned to be the key enabler of success in this new era of customer control. 

Five Attributes of the Best “Real-Time Customer” Call Centers

1) They are proactive in providing resolutions – no complaint required.  

Let’s face it, most customer service activities are not generated by a customer that just wants to commend you for providing a wonderful product or service.   The call center is generally the place the customer looks to issue or problem resolution.   Armed with this realization, the best call centers are finding new ways to get out in front of the issue – using real-time information to generate proactive resolutions.  

Something we’ve all experienced at one time or another is the loss of a cable signal or a power outage.  Our first reaction is to contact the company to let them know there is a problem, and most of the time scores of other people have already done so – the recording tells you so.    Every call center can learn something from the utility companies – when you see trends from a certain customer profile, do something in advance.  Don’t wait for an issue that impacts a small portion of your customers to become a problem for all of your customers. If you do, everyone will suffer because of the increase in volume.   

2) They are focused on employee loyalty as much as on customer loyalty.  

It’s amazing how many times the same story gets written – happier employees provide better service.    Unfortunately, many call centers forget this and spend their time focused on increasing customer satisfaction scores while trying to control the agent efficiency metrics.   This often results in a vicious cycle that features a lot of finger pointing with very little improvement in either customer satisfaction or agent efficiency; in fact both often move in a negative direction.   

Let’s face it, the call center rep isn’t the most glamorous or desired job in the company.  Our industry turnover rates prove this. Often agents’ plans involve “doing their time” then moving to a job off the phones.

 The best companies treat the agent position with the respect it deserves – viewing agents as “voice of the company.”    It’s no surprise that organizations that are known for providing great service have lower turnover rates and happier employees.  You have to spend the time understanding what your employees want; you’ll find that call center reps are pretty simple.  They’d love to come to work and have some expectation of their daily workload, be provided the tools to be successful and have more flexibility.   All this can be accomplished by moving from managing the queues to managing the process. Every call center can do this, but the reality is, most make it a lot harder than it has to be.

3) They are visual in their dedication to customer service and the people that provide it.  

Celebrating a win is normally reserved for a sports team, but it is also a key enabler to successful customer service.  The reality is that call center agents have several “wins” every day that should be discussed, documented and rewarded.   It starts with helping agents to see things from the customer’s perspective, then, empowering them to make decisions and make a difference. Let agents know that it is okay to make mistakes as long as the best interest of the customer is the root cause.    Be sure to reward the effort, and to share successes with others.

Meetings with agents are often driven by a new initiative or a desire to “educate” them on everything that has happened since the last meeting.   A great way to create a “visual” dedication to service is to schedule quick daily or weekly “win” meetings, where the entire team can tell others about the wonderful things they did for customers since the last meeting. Everyone learns and starts to see the value of going above and beyond.  The leadership team can reinforce this by making wins a part of their daily discussions – followed by rewards and celebrations.   The best part for agents is that they’ll quickly realize they are in control of their own wins and that they have several opportunities to win every day.    Everyone benefits – the agents, the organization and, most importantly, the customer.  

4) They are in-touch with their customer’s real feelings and involve them in products and solutions.

As mentioned earlier, top call centers pay more attention to what their customers are saying on blogs, YouTube, discussion forums, etc.   These customers used to be dismissed as “complainers” and not the “target” audience; today, however, they are now viewed as the real influencers.  Their postings often point out the real problems and opportunities that don’t show up in customer satisfaction survey results.   

One of the best ways to really understand how your customers feel is to send them a three-question survey:  1. What did you like about the last interaction; 2. What didn’t you like;   3. What can we do better next time.     Then, once you hear back from customers, follow-up and do something….real-time.  

5) They are fanatical about leadership and provide the tools for success.

  A common mistake in call centers is not investing in the growth of the leaders.  Call centers do a significant amount of internal promotion – moving agents into supervisor or management positions, but few call centers have the luxury of formal one-on-one development or mentoring programs to grow new supervisors.   Most call centers often find themselves at the lower end of the maturity model -- few people in the organization with a formal understanding of the foundational requirements of call center leadership.   This knowledge gap makes it harder for new and upcoming leaders to gain a full appreciation of what it takes to effectively navigate the call center waters.  

You would never expect a fireman to be able to do their job without spending a significant amount of time training, learning and practicing.   While call centers don’t put leaders in life or death situations, several managers say they spend a significant amount of time putting out fires.   Every organization should develop a formal on-boarding program for new leaders -- a plan that outlines the training programs, policies and evaluation criteria.   By documenting the expected activities and holding monthly progress meetings, your new leaders will be engaged in the activity that makes every person (and organization) better – continuous improvement.   Once you’ve done it just a few times, you’ll create the internal mentors with the expertise to transfer the right knowledge to your upcoming leaders.

Communicating the “Real” Value of the Call Center

Don’t just measure – create action.

The majority of call centers are very metrics-oriented – measuring everything because they can.  Metrics reporting is one of the fasting growing segments of the call center technology industry.     Many times we overload call center agents and leaders with numbers to the point that no one really knows where they are or what to improve.   Call centers need to make it easy for everyone to understand what’s really happening now and what needs to change, and to provide such information on a real-time basis along with the required actions.   Given the number of disparate systems, pulling everything together is no easy task. However, the best companies are findings ways to make this happen.

Clearly defining the desired behaviors is especially important at the agent level, as their behaviors are what the customers’ experience.   Metrics are simply indicators of opportunities that something needs to change.    Leaders in the best call centers know they must connect with agents on a level that makes them want to change their behavior, not just the metrics.    Often the hardest part of making this transition isn’t getting the agents onboard, but changing the mindset and behaviors of the leadership team.   The entire leadership team must have a complete understanding of the basics of call center management activities that drive results – queuing theory, forecasting, planning, staffing, occupancy, quality and adherence.   And, they have to know this like the back of their hand -- it’s the price of admission to becoming world class.

Focus on First-contact resolution 

Improvements in first-contact resolution (FCR) rates can be directly correlated to improvements in customer loyalty, employee delight, operational efficiencies and sales growth. In other words, FCR hits both the top and bottom line.   Some companies struggle with this because they say it’s hard to get the real numbers – not so, just ask your customers that have called.   This can be done via post-contact IVR surveys, email surveys or phone surveys.    Make it simple by just asking them if they got what they needed the first time they requested it.   

More important than the FCR metric itself is understanding the success drivers   and foundational elements that must be in place.   If you’re not meeting your service level on a regular basis (by interval), you’ll never see improvements in FCR, as frustrated callers will hang up and call back later.  They’ll rate you low because you didn’t solve the issue on their first call to you.    Even if you get the service level part right, if you’re not providing quality, customers will be forced to call back because they don’t feel comfortable with the resolution, or because what was promised didn’t happen.   Ultimately, the lack of quality will negatively impact service level and vice versa – resulting in no actual FCR improvement. 

Look beyond up-selling and cross-selling to create enterprise wide value.  

Conversations about creating value in a call center are often limited to the amount of new revenue opportunities the center can create. Centers then start to focus on cross-selling or up-selling activities.   It’s true that call centers can become sources of additional revenue, but not without getting the foundational things right.    Many companies have invested heavily in agent training to give them skills to “sell”, but fail on creating an environment where the customer will be receptive to the offering.   If the customer doesn’t feel valued, offering them new opportunities will just drive them further from the organization.

The best call centers know that the real value of the call center is in every interaction.   .   After each call, train agents to ask such questions as “How can we avoid making customers call us about this issue in the future?” and “Who else in the organization would benefit from hearing the real voice of the customer?”   These two simple questions will unlock a tremendous amount of value for your call center. Your customers are telling you what they really want hundreds of times a day.   The key is to create a way for your agents to pass along critical information that can lead to quick and meaningful action.

Create a roadmap for everyone.

One thing call centers don’t have is a way to overcome the mathematical inefficiency that actually requires a portion of the center’s agents to always be “sitting around”.   While we can do things to help fill some of the gaps with other types of work, there is nothing we can do to make everyone take a call when senior management ventures through the center.    Management is often left with an unsettling feeling that money is being wasted because some of the people aren’t on the phone.   Overcoming this mindset starts with educating yourself in queuing theory and using this knowledge to explain things in laymen terms to senior management.   Spending a couple of hours creating some what-if scenarios in an Erlang calculator will provide you with several new ways to engage executives in appreciating the real complexity of running a  call center.  

Numbers alone won’t get you all of the support you need to move your center forward.   Spend some time creating an understanding and appreciation for the role you play in the organization’s success.  In every business there is a critical path to profit or fulfillment - - simply put, the most efficient way for the organization to reach its goal.  For example, in the case of an online retailer, the most profitable path would be the customer placing the order online, paying online, receiving the exact product when promised and being happy with it.    Any deviation from this self-service path (i.e., phone calls) costs the company more money in support. .     This is true, but if every one of those phone calls is viewed as a way to help improve the path for future customers, it’s not all money wasted.  Being able to connect the value of every interaction with the organization’s critical path is key to getting additional support and investments.

How to Make Others Want to Move Forward

 

“Senior management just doesn’t understand.” That’s a battle cry heard time and again from call center managers who are struggling with issues such as staffing, getting support for new technology or obtaining respect for their department. The recommended response is always the same: It’s the job of call center leaders to get them to understand, and you can’t stop until everyone appreciates the value and dynamics of our real-time inbound environment.  The easiest solution is making it happen in targeted, digestible chunks. I’ve worked with many smart people who, for one reason or another, have adopted a “keeping your head above water” approach to call center management.

The truth is that many senior executives with call center responsibilities have never run a call center. In many cases, they’re focused on other organizational issues that pull them away from gaining a true understanding of our challenges. But that’s not a bad thing – it actually makes it a lot easier to transform their opinions.

Lay the foundation by getting yourself up to speed

First and foremost, you need to be on top of your game. Make sure that you are able to intelligently describe the tactical stuff, and make the connection between the call center and the value it brings to the company. Yes, to get buy-in from others, you have to become a student of call centers and continually look for ways to sharpen your own skills.     

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel – chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re looking for new ideas, which is a great first step. Make sure that your knowledge of call centers is not only accurate, but current as well. Attend conferences, seminars and training courses that focus on the basics of call center management, or more advanced courses on strategy and technology. (There are several organizations that offer these types of programs)  Another way to keep abreast of the latest trends is to subscribe to – and actually read – as many industry publications as you can. There are lots of free ones available and most provide weekly email updates.

While you’re getting yourself up to speed, try to get a feel for what your senior management is reading. Many times, their ideas and strategies are derived from popular business books and non-call center periodicals. The next time you’re in a senior manager’s office, look to see what newspapers, magazines and books are laying around – and then get a copy for yourself. You’d be surprised at how many ideas and theories from mainstream articles and books can be applied to the call center environment. The best part is, you can use it as point of reference the next time you have an opportunity to “talk call centers” with the boss. 

Once you get senior management onboard, everything else becomes easy. Keep focusing on the value of the call center and pointing everyone back to the customer as the driver of all improvements.  Anyone, at any level, has the ability to drive change in a call center – the key is to never give up and to keep putting everyone in the shoes of the customer.   The best call centers know that you’ll never grow until every agent knows what it really feels like to be on the other side of a call.  And, every organization has several ways to make this happen – you’re only limited by your imagination and creativity.

Managing a small call center brings big challenges – and big opportunities. While it’s true that all call centers -- regardless of size, industry, function or location – share several core commonalities, small call centers (50 or fewer FTEs) often must contend with unique issues and obstacles that rarely if ever impact larger centers.  

 

For instance, whenever one or two agents in a large call center don’t show up to work or don’t come back from their lunch or break on time, the effect on customer accessibility and satisfaction (and the center’s costs) is often negligible. The same scenario, however, in a center with a frontline of just 25-30 agents can prove positively devastating.

 

And that’s just one obvious example of the challenges and issues that small call centers face. There are numerous others, which we will touch upon in this article. Now, I am by no means suggesting that small centers are impossible to manage effectively. Truth is, countless managers of small centers have achieved great success and transformed their diminutive operations into  powerful, influential entities that are highly respected within the larger enterprise.

 

All it takes is a solid grasp of the essentials of call center management, and an ample amount of creativity and insight. Following are 10 key tactics and approaches that will help you achieve very big things in your small call center.

 

Getting Big Results in a Small Call Center

 

Don’t skimp on the people  -- leaders are the key.

 

This sounds obvious and it is.  A common mistake made in small call centers is not investing in the growth of the leaders.  Call centers in general do a significant amount of internal promotion – moving frontline reps into supervisor or management positions.    Larger call centers typically have the luxury of formal development or mentoring programs to grow new supervisors.   Smaller call centers often find themselves at the lower end of the maturity model -- few people in the organization with a formal understanding of the foundational requirements of call center leadership.   This knowledge gap makes it harder for new and upcoming leaders to gain a full appreciation of what it takes to effectively navigate the call center waters.  

 

You would never expect a fireman to be able to do their job without spending a significant amount of time training, learning and practicing.   While call centers don’t put leaders in life and death situations, several managers say they spend a significant amount of time putting out fires.   Every small call center should develop a formal on-boarding program for new leaders -- a plan that outlines the training programs, policies and evaluation criteria.   By documenting the expected activities and holding monthly progress meetings, your new leaders will be engaged in the activity that makes every person (and organization) better – continuous improvement.   And, once you’ve done it just a few times, you’ll create the internal mentors with the expertise to transfer the right knowledge to your upcoming leaders.

 

Create flexibility with your schedules and your organization.

 

Schedules in small call centers are typically defined by the open and close time of the environment supported.   If the rest of the company works 9 am to 5 pm, then it only makes sense to have the call center work the same hours.    Keeping standard hours can be a source of frustration and challenge in a small call center.  Everything about running a call center of any size comes down to managing the interval (e.g., every half hour).   If everyone comes in at the same time, the obvious challenge is breaks and lunches – this is even more compounded in smaller call centers.   An easy fix is to stagger start times and provide the call center more off-phone type work to keep them occupied during the earlier and later times when the phones aren’t on.   This approach helps with coverage, but there is an even bigger benefit – happier employees.  Because the call center typically isn’t  the most desirable job in the company, you can use schedule flexibility to help boost the morale of agents in the center and allow them to do something no one else can.

 

Creating flexibility in schedules also helps small call centers reduce turnover by allowing call center agents to do things not available to other parts of the organization.   Once you’ve got the interval challenge completely understood (no small task), you can become creative with schedules – allow agents to work consolidated shifts, split shifts, shared shifts – anything is possible as long as the interval requirements are covered.   Allowing agents to learn other skills between calls is another advantage in a small call center – time between calls is almost non-existent in large call centers, but a requirement in small centers.   Use this time to help the frontline learn the skills they need for their next job outside of the call center.  This helps to encourage realistic conversations about the agent’s future desires.  

 

Consider size in establishing agent measures

 

Smaller call centers have to overcome the productivity challenge; we really want to keep people busy, but the math in running a small call center doesn’t allow for agents  to occupy the same amount of time as those in larger ones.  In addition, growth and time of day both have to be considered when setting any type of performance objectives.    Conventional wisdom in most call centers is to focus on the things within the agent’s control – e.g., schedule adherence and quality.   This is also true in small call centers, but is often a challenge of because technology and resource limitations.   While lack of technology can be overcome to some degree with spreadsheets and desktop recorders, the fact that small call centers typically have to be more flexible makes line- in- the-sand agent measures more challenging.

 

In most cases, small call center agents are required to wear several hats that move them outside of the normal inbound measured activities.  For example, a lack of internal transfer options will lead to more outbound follow-up calls to complete transactions that require additional coordination.  And, don’t forget about the time that has to be taken to actually get to the resolution.  

 

There are several other activities that tend to make small call center agents behave differently – fax/printer duties, manual paperwork for internal communication, last-minute break changes to handle the queues, managing back-line/voicemail, etc.    With fewer resources to manage the customer service processes, smaller call centers have to get creative -- resulting in some slight changes to typical agent expectations.  

 

An important stating point is really understanding what the expectations should be and dividing them between ACD and non-ACD activities.   ACD activities are easy to measure and typically are automated – you can get reports on just about everything an agent does from the time they log in to the time they log out.    The non-ACD activities are harder to track and often ignored in favor of the things you can get out of the phone system with just a click of the mouse.   Understanding the real expectations of  agents allows you to use the ACD reports but find a way to balance them with all of the other non-phone activities required.    Too often, small call center leaders set ACD goals with the best intentions that end up forcing agents to behave in ways that are actually counterproductive to providing great service.    

 

Understand what growth really means to your environment

 

As the company grows, so does the call center – in fact, once the value of the center is realized, more activities get centralized and the call center begins to grow faster than the other parts of the organization.    Small call centers typically have a very tight workplace community – everyone knows each other’s strengths and habits.   Change is easy to make when call centers are small and just about everyone can be included.   The smallness allows the environment to be managed without a lot of documentation or policies -- things just seem to work because everyone knows what’s happening.

 

Leaders of small call centers must avoid becoming a victim of compliancy and believing they can cut corners because everything is running fine without all the “formalities”.     Without formal processes and documentation, growth becomes difficult, change is harder for everyone and the clean-up effort is painful.    A simple way to get started is to approach things from a new center perspective.  Ask yourself, if you were going to duplicate your activities in another city, what would  the new center need to know to be successful?  Create teams to document your standard work processes, agent expectations and scheduling rules.   Just getting them down on paper is eye-opening for small call centers, as it allows them to begin to rethink the way things have always been done.  

 

Start with understanding the drivers – what are the things that cause customers to call, and how has that been trending?  The drivers are the very high level company activities (sales, shipments, customers, etc.) that will increase or decrease over time.   Getting to the root cause of the call (the driver) will allow you to begin to create new opportunities to improve efficiency and is a great way to show the center’s value to others in the organization.   For example, if you’re able to reduce the driver to call ratio from 50 percent to 40 percent through better training, first-call resolution, and leadership, you can easily correlate this to an improvement in satisfaction and support cost savings.   Documentation of the ongoing improvements in your processes helps get the attention of everyone in the organization and makes support for new initiatives much easier to obtain.

 

Develop your internal improvement agents

 

Large companies typically have teams of people that are continually looking for new ways to become more productive and effective.   A continuous improvement approach can save large companies millions every year while improving the quality of work/life for the frontline agents.     The annual budget of many small call centers is less than a million dollars, so the improvement attention and resources are typically disbursed to the other areas of the organization that have the most potential bottom line impact.    This leaves the leaders of small call centers trying to balance the day to day running of the business with the challenge of improving the operational efficiencies – and, normally keeping the business running takes priority.

 

A way to help get more “eyes” on the improvement opportunities is to help frontline agents view their job differently.    Provide them training that focuses on life from the customer’s perspective and how small internal changes can make the overall experience better.  Help them connect the dots between happy customers, improved efficiencies, profitable growth and ultimately more opportunities for call center job opportunities.    Soon you’ll have an internal team of customer advocates looking for new ways to learn from each interaction.      If every agent sees every contact as an opportunity to grow the business, they’ll be more passionate about their job and more aware of their role as an ambassador of improvement.   

 

Creating this mindset change must come from the top, and starts with a continuous feedback and recognition loop that is focused on frontline generated improvements.   Allowing the frontline to create, participate in and actually run a frontline driven program requires a commitment of time, and if done right, will provide a return on investment in several forms: happier customers, improved employee satisfaction and reduced cost.  An easy way to get started is to ask the frontline to identify a “top-three” list – what three things are we doing internally that are causing customers to call?   Keep it simple and focused on the opportunity – changing the way something is done or communicated.  By allowing the front line to meet and discuss these opportunities, you quickly have a laundry list of “avoidable” call activities.  And, you’ll find that many of them are easy fixes with immediate return.  

 

Be careful to not go overboard with WFM and quality

 

The majority of workforce management (WFM) and quality “how to” books and papers are written from a large call center point of view.    The reason for this is simple: larger call centers typically have the budget and challenges that make automated WFM and quality monitoring tools a requirement.    These tools help larger call centers ensure they have the appropriate number of people available and that they’re saying and doing things that are consistent with the organizations policies and customers’ expectations.   Larger call centers often have dedicated teams to manage both programs and some even have sub-teams under each, creating a more granular focus on what’s scheduled and said.   These processes allow larger call centers to continually redefine the way work is routed and how agents are trained, leading to more specialization and efficiencies.

 

Small call centers typically don’t have the luxury of segmenting callers to specific agents in ways that make them more efficient.   As a result, all calls eventually end up being handled by the same pool of agents – any specialization efficiency gets lost in the generalist overflow.    When agents are required to wear many hats, there has to be more flexibility in the expectations – a quality program that is too focused on scripts and exactness can quickly lead to frustration and conflict.    With a smaller agent pool, the scheduling process must be flexible enough to overcome last minute changes or unexpected call fluctuations.   A WFM process focused on always having the exact number of bodies in chairs can quickly backfire in small call centers, creating environments of continuous push and pull.    With less workload predictability and fewer frontline agents required to handle more transactions, smaller call centers must be more flexible in how they approach the documented best practices in quality and WFM.    Both are a key enabler to success in call centers of all sizes, but leaders of small centers need to spend extra time outlining the potential pitfalls of becoming too inflexible.

 

Quality programs should be focused more on improving the environment than on managing  agents.  In smaller call centers, it’s easy to know who isn’t providing quality – in some cases everyone can hear it, and in others, agents find themselves cleaning up after the same people.   When the opportunities surface, a quality score isn’t going to change the behavior; more attention and feedback will help identify the root cause.   The real opportunity is to take the quality program and evaluate every call from the customer’s perspective and ask yourself what could we (the company) do better next time.   The same is true on the WFM side – adherence to schedule  as a score isn’t effective if it doesn’t reflect the reality of the environment.   Because agents in small call centers are often pulled to do a lot of other things during the day, the adherence score isn’t as important as spending time helping agents understand what the appropriate behaviors should be and allowing agents to apply more ownership to their daily activities.  

 

Accomplishing this starts with creating an awareness of the difference between the real-time customer service requirements of a call center and delayed queuing environments.   Call centers require a more immediate response, and there is a science to making these responses happen within seconds at every interval of the day.   Everyone plays a role in the success, and small call center leaders have to spend time explaining the impact of a single agent and how all the pieces fit together.   Small call center leaders should first become students of call centers by learning the foundational skills very well.  Then, they must evolve into teachers – helping everyone in the organization remain focused on the value of every contact with every caller.

 

Non-addressed issues are more visible to all

 

Everyone gets to know each other in small call centers – this can be both good and bad.   On one hand, it helps to make it feel more like a team and agents are able to pitch in and help everyone improve.   On the other hand, everyone is able to see who isn’t pulling their weight and not trying to improve for the good of the team.    When you have a group of people all sitting in the same room and talking to each other every day, they’ll eventually run out of personal stories to tell and focus more attention on the activities of the “other” team members.     These conversations quickly evolve from the activity itself to the leadership’s ignorance of the issue and lack of responsiveness.   Once teams start to blame the leadership, everything becomes “their” fault and is the reason nothing gets improved.   

 

With small call centers becoming like a family, it’s easy for leaders to get caught up in a new kind of parent trap – being too close to the people to see and address the real problems.   Small call center leaders need to develop a formal coaching regiment that ensures every front line agent is receiving improvement feedback at least once a week. With small groups and teams, there is a tendency to eyeball the results vs. spending the time to document results in a scorecard format that ensures all opportunities are addressed and visible.  

 

It takes more than just on-the-job training

 

A formal training program is a luxury for most small call centers, and because of the low turnover, most new hire training is done one-on-one.  Many small call centers find an additional agent on the phone is more valuable than a full time training resource that can’t be fully occupied because the people that need to be trained will have to be on the phone most of the time.    It’s very difficult to find an hour for a team meeting, much less a week off the phone for a formal class.  This approach leads to a lack of documentation of the standard operation procedures or even an update of the internal knowledge base.  Over time, several ways of doing things will evolve and the internal best practice will be based on who influenced the new person the most.  

 

Training starts with something that was described earlier – standard processes in place and documented.   The lack of a formal training department or dedicated trainer is not an excuse for not having a clearly defined “on-boarding” program.   These programs can be a combination of one-on-one meetings, private computer-based role plays, agent monitoring and individual testing.   All of these can be easily created from the formal process and documented against an expected time line.     And, the rest of the organization can be an incredible training resource for new front line telephone agents.   A program focused on allowing new agents to spend time with the other departments “walking in their shoes” will reduce the learning curve time and improve their overall confidence when addressing customers.    And, it’s a great way to continually connect with other areas of the organization and facilities an environment of on-going improvement.

 

Create a road map for senior management

 

One thing small call centers don’t have is a way to overcome the mathematical inefficiency that requires  a significant portion of the  center’s agents  be “sitting around”.   While we can do things to help fill some of the gaps with other types of work, there is nothing we can do to make everyone take a call when senior management ventures through the center.    Senior management is often left with an unsettling feeling that money is being wasted because “half” of the people aren’t on the phone.   Overcoming this mindset starts with educating yourself in queuing theory and using this knowledge to create a simple example of the “why” for senior management.   Spending a couple hours creating some what-if scenarios in an Erlang calculator  will provide you with several new ways to engage executives in appreciating the real complexity of running a small call center.  

 

Numbers alone won’t get you all of the support you need to move your small call center forward.   Spend some time creating an understating and appreciation for the role you play in the organization’s success.  In every business there is a critical path to profit or fulfillment - -  simply put, the most efficient way for the organization to reach its goal.  For example, for an on-line retailer, the most profitable path would be the customer placing the order on-line, paying online, receiving the exact product when promised and being happy with it.    Any deviation from this path costs the company more money in support as the customer falls off the most efficient way for them to make money.  In this case, every call to the call center costs the organization profit margin.  This is true, but if every one of those calls is viewed as a way to help improve the path for future customers, it’s not all money wasted.  Being able to connect the value of every interaction with the organization’s critical path is key to getting additional support and investments.

 

Technology is becoming easier to obtain, but still never an excuse

 

Call center technologies are continually evolving and larger call centers are normally the initial beneficiaries of the latest features.   Customer’s expectations also continually evolve as the larger call centers implement the new tools to improve service or internal efficiencies.   This puts smaller centers at somewhat of a disadvantage because the newer technologies are typically priced out of reach, and the center’s limits how much advantage it can ultimately receive.    The good news for small call centers is that a lot of technology companies are paying attention to the largest segment of the market – centers employing fewer than 50 agents – and developing tools that fit these centers’ unique needs.   And, there is resurgence in the hosted solution approach  that allows you to pay as you grow. 

 

In centers of any size, the technology won’t change anything by itself; you’ve got to create the foundation for success, streamline the processes and have the right people doing the right things.  If done right, technology will make you more efficient, but if done wrong, it can become the crutch and is the scapegoat for everything.

 

 An advantage in small call centers is being able to create a community of help where agents continually share ideas and tips with others.  Your knowledge base and improvement can come from the interactions and learning that agents have on a daily basis.  Spend time with agents to get a better feel for their special skills and desires – you might just have someone that can create an internal Web-based knowledge tool that everyone can update and share.   Once you begin the path of internal automation, the ROI for external tools becomes much easier to explain and achieve.

 

Pulling it All Together

 

Leaders of small call centers must not only master the fundamentals of running call centers, but must also develop creative ways to do those things just a little differently.    There is never a single-size solution – even small call centers can’t do everything exactly the same.  As described above, small call center leaders must spend the time to develop organizations that don’t see themselves limited by size.   If done right, the opposite will evolve – an organization that is only limited by their service imagination.

Where does the time go? That is a question that many people ask themselves from time to time but if you are saying or thinking this often than you may need some help with your time management skills.

Some people think that time management is something you either have or you don't, but this isn't the case at all. The fact is that yes, some people find that these skills come easier and others may have to work a bit harder than others to make time management a reality, but it's certainly not impossible!

A simple tool you can use to better manage your time is positive affirmations.

Make Time Management Part of Your Life

If you constantly feel like your running around putting out fires, chances are you need some serious time management skills at your disposal. Using time management affirmations can help get into the right frame of mind so you can manage your time more effectively.

There are a lot of free positive affirmations that you could use, or you could make your own depending on what you need help with and your specific issues with time management. Time management affirmations such as, "When I stay on task, the job gets done quickly and easily" may be helpful. Or you may find other affirmations helpful, such as "Time management helps me to live my life on my watch, not someone else's." These affirmations will remind you that these skills are necessary in all aspects of your life.

It doesn’t matter where you live or what you do, you probably have a lot of things going on. Whether you are a corporate executive, stay a home mom, or a pizza delivery boy you need to know how to manage your time. How can you get the most done in the least amount of time? How can you assure that you have enough time to complete each task properly? Time management skills are essential in every day life. You can build time management skills through positive affirmations, which help to remind you of your key priorities in life.

Manage Your Priorities to Manage Your Time

Time management is about prioritization. When you can prioritize the tasks that need to get done, each day becomes a whole lot easier. With time management affirmations you can remind yourself each day that prioritizing your tasks is important. On those days when you think about just tossing your responsibilities to the side and leaving them for tomorrow, you can use these time management affirmations to keep you moving forward.

Time management skills are one of the most important skills that you will develop. If you find that positive affirmations alone are not enough to help you develop these skills, you can read books, take classes, and use one of many different prioritization methods to help you. Don't forget though, that affirmations will help you even after you have developed skills from another resource. It's never too late to develop the time management skills that you need to get through life so you don't always have to run around putting out fires. Instead, you will be able to deal with problems as they come and positive affirmations will be a critical part of this continued process.

Ronnie Nijmeh is the president and founder of ACQYR.com - an inspirational resource where you can download free wallpapers, motivational articles, and inspirational affirmations. Ronnie has been a featured expert on national television, radio, and print. You can read more of his positive affirmations at ACQYR.com.

Source: http://www.callcentercafe.com/2008/06/17/managing-your-life-by-managing-your-time/

Picture it: You’re a student in a classroom. The instructor is throwing out fact after fact. At first, you listen intently, trying to grasp everything that’s going on. After about 15 minutes, your attention drifts. You try to attend, but your mind starts to wander. After trying to focus a few more times, you feel so overwhelmed (and possibly irritated and bored) that you just give up.

What happened?

You just experienced “fire hose training.” Did you like being on the receiving end? Are you drenched?

Hey, have some sympathy. The instructor was just trying to “cover the material.” (How many times have YOU used this line?)

Hosing learners down with information only drowns them. Here’s why.

The Mystery of Memory

Get a pencil and a piece of paper. When ready, stare at the number below for seven seconds, then look away and write it down. Ready? GO!

9217053

Check the number you wrote down. Chances are you got it right. Now try it again. Stare at the number below for seven seconds, then look away and write it down. Ready? GO!

4915082637

Again, check the number you wrote down. Did you get all 10 of the digits in the correct sequence? Probably not. Because the digits were random, you had to treat each digit as a single item, and your working memory just ran out of functional capacity.

So what?

Brain research shows that adults can only keep up to seven pieces of information in their working memory at one time. Furthermore, we can only hold onto each piece of information for 10-20 minutes unless we do something new with it (like physically using it, playing a game with it, or connecting it to other learning.) If something new is not done with the information, it will nearly always fade from working memory.

What does this mean for you as an instructor?

Strategy: Narrow the number of informational items in one lesson to fit students’ memory capacity limit. When you package lessons into several 15-20 minute segments, students are more likely to remember and maintain interest than in one longer, 40-minute session.

Does “Less is More” Mean I Must “Dumb it Down?”

NO!

The key to preventing fire hose training is to identify the material’s absolute “must knows.” Grant Wiggins, in describing his Backward Design approach to training, suggests that instructors ask, “What is it I hope that students will have learned, that will still be there and have value several years after the course is over?”

When you answer this question honestly, you discover the “meat” of your training. By converting this “meat” into learning outcomes, you’ve created your training’s structure. Now just include content that helps to achieve each of those outcomes. Don’t add anything more.

“Less is More” Allows More Time to Process the Information

Remember that adults learn best through active learning. By focusing solely on several “must-knows,” the instructor discovers that there IS enough time to do much more than just cover the material. Here is a short list of instructional strategies you can use to bring your lesson’s content alive. Remember that each of these strategies can be done in small groups to enhance cooperative learning:

• Hands-on activities
• Surveys
• Contests
• Case studies
• Drills
• Reflective writing
• Imagery
• Mind maps
• Jigsaws
• Field trips
• Brainstorming
• Role-plays
• Simulations
• Discussions

Fire Hoses are for Fighting Fires, Not for Training

No one wants to be drenched with information. If you want your students to change their behavior as a result of your training, this motto is for you:

Less IS More!

Read more articles about Training Development and Presentation Skills. Learn about Guila Muir’s Trainer Development Workshops or Individual Coaching. Visit www.guilamuir.com for more information. © 2007 Guila Muir. All rights reserved.

By Leonard Buchholz

 

There are so many things we try to improve Customer Service. And the most effective are the simplest. Read about 5 ways you can improve right now!

 

There are 5 Simple Steps that you can do that will make a difference in your Customer Service right away. Some of the Steps will seem obvious.

 

It’s just that we assume everybody has what is commonly referred to as “The Basics.”

 

I’m here to tell you…….WAKE UP! And smell the coffee before it’s too late.

 

Here are the 5 Simple Steps to teach that will make a big difference.

 

1. Teach them to SMILE. I know, it seems too simple, doesn’t it? Why would I need to point that out? It’s because I travel all over the country and consistently receive better service whenever I am Smiled at. And I can always tell when I am about to receive less than Average Service when I don’t receive a Smile.

 

In today’s faster, unfriendly and discourteous world it makes a HUGE difference.

 

It may not seem too scientific, that Smiling thing. Just try NOT Smiling to your Customers for a couple of days and see what happens. Understand this is a big part of the Perception. When people Smile at us, we perceive it to be a much better experience, even if it was mediocre.

 

I recently had a meal at a restaurant in Bellingham, Wa. that quite frankly, was average. It was not bad, it was not great, it was good. Average. However, if you asked me my Perception of that restaurant I would say it was Great! based on the interaction and Smile quotient that my waitress gave me. She was outstanding! Smiles will make the meal taste better and the Service sweeter.

 

2. Say their Name. It’s the most wonderful sound to our ears. Our Name. And when someone takes the time to learn ours, we feel really appreciated and will respond appropriately. Even in a quick Customer Service environment like fast food or dry cleaners, we will always return to a place that remembers our name.

 

It’s quite simple to do actually. Introduce yourself, and ask their name. It goes like this, “Hello, my name is Leonard, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Your name is…?” Whew, that was hard, wasn’t it? Here is the trick. Remember it by focusing on their name and either the color of their eyes or an article of clothing.

 

If you are in the restaurant business, introduce yourself, ask their name and when delivering their order, set it in front of them and say “Mary, you’ll really enjoy this dish.” Watch your tips go up.

 

3. Use Courtesy. Use those words you learned when you were little. They include “Please”, “Thank You”, “May I help you”, “How are you doing”, “Is there anything else I can do for you today”, “How did you find your service experience today”.

 

Courtesy also extends to actions, not just words. I worked at a dealership that emphasized things like walking your Customer to the item they asked about, cleaning the bathroom sink with a paper towel after using it and presenting the best possible face to the Customer along with other things that demonstrated their commitment to the Service Experience.

 

4. Ask for feedback from the Customer on the use of and experience of your Customer Service. Ask the right way. Instead of “How was our service today?” which will get you a “Oh, it was fine” kind of answer, ask “On a scale of 1 to 10 how would we score on providing Service to you today?” (It is the “Specific” question that gets results) You might get a lot more interesting answers especially if you ask the follow up question “Specifically, how could I make it a 10 in your eyes?” for any answer that is not a 10.

 

5. Invite your Customer to come back. The right way. It’s all in the presentation. “It was good to see you today, and I look forward to seeing you again. If for any reason you remember something we could have done better, call me at 111-111-1111 and ask for me personally.” If that is too long winded, say “My name is _____. Please ask for me when you come back.” You might even say “It was a pleasure to take care of you. Please come back and ask for me, ________.”

 

I read somewhere that the most complex questions we face in our society are often solved with the simplest of solutions. Here are 5 Simple Steps you can take right away.

 

Customer Service is not that complex. It’s a Simple Business. We make it complex.       

 

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Leonard_Buchholz

 

You would be amazed at how many organizations today, both small and large, have a serious moral issue lurking beneath the surface of all the smiles, happy faces, agreement and apparent cooperation between employees, employees and managers, and employees and customers.

Last night we went out to dinner at a French Bistro restaurant in our home town in