Call Center Perspectives

The Great Resignation, The Great Re-Think, or The Great Retirement

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 17:05:00 +0000

We are now into the fourth quarter of the year. Retail and ecommerce firms are gearing up for the holiday season, which means more staff. But where are they going to find more staff? It is hard to find new staff. We can blame the Great Resignation if we like, but where did all of the workers go? Have all of the frontline agents found new rewarding and well-paying jobs? Certainly, some have, but I think many people have decided to take a pause. Sure, some are opening a shop, trying their hands at gig work, changing careers, and certainly some have shifted completely out of the workforce.

Many in fact have exited the workforce, including those who deferred their retirement during Covid and are now looking to retire. That could mean 3 years of retirements occurring in a single year. Is there any doubt that this has helped to fuel low unemployment and the shortage of workers. What happens if we don’t have enough staff to deliver the services in the manner and with the proficiency that we wish? With our current and former staff members are considering their options — maybe even quitting or retiring — that is a sad commentary on us as employers. What does it say about the roles and the work these folks have done in our call and contact centers that leaving seems like a good idea?

We know that working in a front-line role and dealing with customers is challenging. In COVID and post-COVID environments, it can be even more of a challenge as it can be exacerbated by staff shortages.

Perhaps the Great Resignation is really the great Re-Think; our staff are rethinking their careers and asking themselves, “is this really how I want to spend the rest of my career?” We as employers need to look at ourselves and ask a number of questions... READ MORE

Hybrid Work...Scary Stuff for Contact Centers

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 20:22:00 +0000

By Colin Taylor

Halloween, the night of the dead, the end of all things, whatever you call it, this time of year with the harvest behind us and the ghouls and goblins; not to mention Squid Game characters who have now darkened our door; can be a frightening time. It is more frightening perhaps as we are all still dealing with the fallout of the pandemic.

While some areas of the economy are getting back to pre-Covid levels of activity and hiring is robust in many sectors, there are still some areas of concern on the horizon. We have all seen the pundits and experts wax poetic about the risk of a 4th wave, 5th wave, new mutations, and the likelihood that Covid-19 will shift from being a pandemic to being endemic and something we just learn to live with like the flu (or subtitles and bad dubbing on Netflix binge-worthy series). With these two twin challenges of Covid and Korean dramas addressed, let me move on to other less critical, but still important areas of concern…

First, why is it that corporate America, now that it has embraced the concept of remote contact center agents and hybrid work environments[1], is so slow in adjusting its management processes to support these new deployment models? We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that traditionally in the pre-pandemic world there was great resistance to remote contact centers, driven in part by technology concerns and by a management concern that “if we can’t watch them, how do we know that they are working and not watching Netflix”?

The early returns were very positive: productivity went up and absenteeism and sick days went down, to the surprise and delight of managers. Both of these changes were broadly seen as innate aspects of remote work and were taken as positive ”wins”. Both of these are emblematic of darker and more frightening (see how I brought this back to scary Halloween?) shifts that were occurring under the surface...READ MORE

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 17:12:00 +0000

The Evolution of Contact Center Scripting

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 15:30:00 +0000

By Colin Taylor

[This post was adapted from a webinar that Colin Taylor delivered for Customer Contact Central on September 8, 2022. You can see the replay here while available: https://www.customercontactcentral.com/frs/22041151/top-industry-secrets-for-successful-contact-center-scripting/email]

There has been a continuous evolution in scripting since we were taping printed copies onto cubicle walls. There are primarily 4 different types of scripts that are employed in contact centers and many variations on these.

Traditional scripts

These are the type I was writing 35 years ago. These outline an “Ideal” path with suggested verbiage for the call. They were disconnected from any systems. Of course, the biggest drawback for any script was that the customer on the other end of the phone didn’t have the script and consequently didn’t know how they were supposed to respond.

Often, these reflected a checklist of all of the elements that needed to be addressed. These could be compliance related or behavioral. These checklists in turn became quality evaluation forms. These checklists and forms tend to be more structured for Outbound calling (Greeting>Qualification>Presentation>Objection Handling>Close>Objection Handling>Close).

Individual performance, where we expected it to be similar between agents using the same script, could still vary significantly. Often the agent’s ability to “make the script their own” was the key to success, as was the agent’s ability to recall and use their product knowledge and training.

Real-Time Guidance scripts or RTG

RTG introduced a process based on interviews, call recording analysis, and internal best practices to scripts. It included sub-processes and screenshots of the appropriate systems with links. This type of script, however ... Read More

Contact Center Training should not be the Buddy-System

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Tue, 04 Oct 2022 19:54:00 +0000

By Colin Taylor

A lack of agent training is a sure-fire way of ensuring customers are disappointed. Learning a new skill or capability provide both enjoyment and a break from the mundane, and brings with it the opportunity to increase earnings. But to be effective, organizations need to ensure that they take a measured and consistent approach. Leaving staff to learn on the job or “wing-it” may work for a while, but, to quote Humphrey Bogart, “you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life”. Sooner or later this lack of training, knowledge, or experience will adversely impact a customer.

Now, let’s be clear: no one sits down and says, “let’s design a really lousy training program”.

Instead... READ MORE

Mistakes are a Great Teacher

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 18:12:00 +0000

Alignment is Critical to Customer Experience Success

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 13:10:00 +0000

Keep your Employees Happy

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 17:54:00 +0000

Top Industry Secrets for Successful Contact Center Scripting

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 18:31:00 +0000

By Colin Taylor

When we think of a script a number of things can come to mind: The Cambridge English Dictionary defines it as both ”the words of a film, play, broadcast, or speech” and as “a piece of paper on which a doctor writes the details of the medicine or drugs that someone needs” (in other words, a ”prescription’”).

My experience with scripts may go back to my education in TV and Video. In the call or contact center context, however, it goes back to the 1980s when I worked with advertising agencies and was responsible for about half of all of the telemarketing scripts employed in Canada.

What do we exactly mean by Contact Center Scripts?

Scripts attempt to set out an ”ideal’” path to success on the call: a sale, a resolved inquiry, or a closed case.
Scripts can be verbatim (or word for word) or they can be guides.
Scripts can keep the messaging and communications from the call center consistent and accurate.
Scripts can also shorten call length as they follow an efficient flow or path.
On the negative side, canned responses and robotic delivery make customers feel that the organization doesn’t value them enough to have a genuine conversation

Scripts have been around as long as contact centers. They set out an ”ideal’” path to success. Scripts try to make it easy for the agent. For example, legal compliance requirements may mandate that verbatims be read, word for word, hence the use of a script. The aim of a script has always been to assist and help the agent. Today’s technology has enabled many enhancements, automation, real-time guidance, and agent assist capabilities, such as real-time sentiment READ MORE

FCR, and Real-Time Guidance

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Thu, 22 Sep 2022 11:18:00 +0000

Taylor Reach recently helped to sponsor the ContactBabel Inner Circle Guide to FCR (First Contact Resolution). This comprehensive report provides insight into the current state of FCR and will prove to be a valuable tool as you examine your FCR practices within your customer-facing contact centers.

You can download the ContactBabel Inner Circle guide to FCR https://thetaylorreachgroup.com/the-inner-circle-guide-to-first-contact-resolution

Lastly, I recently did a webinar on scripting and real-time guidance for Customer Contact Central. If you are interested you can access the recording here https://www.customercontactcentral.com/frs/22041151/top-industry-secrets-for-successful-contact-center-scripting/email

Understanding your Contact Center Costs: FCR

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 14:09:00 +0000

By Colin Taylor

Contact centers are always striving to improve efficiency, increase customer satisfaction and deliver a superior customer experience. Technology is frequently the strategy employed to achieve this goal. While technology can certainly support improvement in all three areas, improvement can also be realized through increasing First Contact Resolution or FCR.

FCR is a contact center performance metric that identifies the center’s ability to resolve an inquiry on the first attempt. While not a true measure of customer satisfaction, as the customer is not always asked if they are satisfied, or if the interaction met their need, it is nonetheless indicative of satisfaction for both your customers and your agents.

Whenever anyone reaches out to a contact center, they are looking to get “something done.” Completing that “something” to the satisfaction of the customer is resolving the reason for the inquiry. That is why contact centers exist, to resolve questions, issues, and inquiries. Those who can get what they want to get done, on a call or interaction will tend to be more satisfied than those who don’t. So, the higher your first contact resolution rate, the higher the satisfaction levels you will tend to see from those customers.

There are a number of ways to measure FCR. The simplest READ MORE

Advanced Contact Center Metrics: Speed to Competency

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 12:36:00 +0000

By Colin Taylor

Having their best agents poached by other departments is a common refrain from contact center operators. These center leaders do not have any issue with upward mobility of their staff, in fact they likely support it as it offers the opportunity for advancement within the organization which can be a motivating factor.

No, the reason for the lament is simple math. New staff cannot perform at the same level as experienced staff. We all know intuitively that it takes time and attention for new staff fresh from their onboarding to mature into competent agents. Heck, when an agent graduates from training they are about as poor a performer as you will find. They are barely adequate to perform the role, and this is a far cry from the competent staff we are asking them to replace. It will take time, training, coaching and support to assist the adequate agent to complete the journey to competent.

“Competent” we would define as the point where agents are independent, require little support, perform well in all metrics.

There is a cost to the center to replace an experienced agent with a newbie who
READ MORE

Taylor Reach NPS Score +100

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 13:35:00 +0000

By: Colin Taylor

Customer Satisfaction is critical for the success of any organization, and Taylor Reach is no different. Each member of the team strives to delight our customers and exceed their expectations.

To gauge the satisfaction of our clients we employ a customer satisfaction survey and all of our clients are asked to participate and complete a survey.

The results we achieved so far in 2016 have blown us away… our NPS[1] score is an impressive +100, a perfect score! This score is truly remarkable as “a Net Promoter Score of +30% is truly excellent” for B2B firms according to Deep Insight. Circle Research has indicated that score of +35 is the top quartile of all B2B NPS scores.

Thank you to all of clients that participated in this survey. We are delighted and honored to have our customers give us this vote of confidence. We will continue to work hard to earn and retain your trust and patronage.

Colin

October 7, 2016

UPDATE:

It has been almost 6 years since I published our attainment of a perfect 100 NPS score. Since then a lot has changed in the contact center customer service and customer experience industry, we have seen the pandemic drive work-from-home, technologies that we could only imagine in 2016 become realities in 2022.

But one thing hasn't really changed....Our clients still love us, since we began tracking NPS in2015 our scores have never been below 88, and as of today stands at 91!

We appreciate our client faith and trust in us. We appreciate the positive NPS score and know that this score reflects their satisfaction with our services and with the positive changes and improvements that they have been able to achieve with a little help from Taylor Reach.

Colin

September 15, 2022

[1] Net Promoter® and NPS® are registered trademarks and Net Promoter System^SM and Net Promoter Score^SM are trademarks of Bain & Company, Satmetrix Systems and Fred Reichheld

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Understanding Your Contact Center Costs: Training

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 12:59:00 +0000

Sometimes it seems inevitable that every time a budget is approved with funds allocated for new, additional, or improved training, something occurs and the training is the first thing removed from the budget. We have heard this refrain many times over the years. From the perspective of senior management, Training looks like a safe place to cut:

“We will be no worse off by cutting here than were are today.”

I would agree that this statement is true. However, if you are bleeding, staunching the wound might be a better approach than the status quo of continued bleeding.

Training, coaching, and personal development must be viewed as an investment. Only seeing the cost side of the equation is a common blind spot. It is not about the upfront cost; it should be about the downstream benefit.

Typically, when we think about the cost associated with new agent onboarding training we think of the trainer, the training room, the students being trained, and the cost of each of these. The Trainer for...
READ MORE

Understanding Your Contact Center Costs: Attrition

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 14:01:00 +0000

A recent report from Gartner[1] referenced the cost to replace a frontline agent at $14,113. We have seen similar figures when working with clients. A major municipality that we have worked with, shared that their cost is just over $10,000. While this cost seems high, it is likely too low. When we look at the cost to replace an experienced agent we must include costs that arise in four major categories:

Recruitment & Hiring costs
Training costs
Lost productivity costs
Reduction in quality costs / Potential revenue (there is also potential to damage organization reputations but for now we are only including the internal costs).

Recruitment costs include the cost to place or post the position, human support to review applicants, the time it takes to administer any assessments or tests and the cost of the tests themselves, candidate interviews, background, and criminal checks, drug tests, etc. There are then the hiring costs, setting up a new employee into your systems, acquiring licenses, registering them in the benefits program, etc. This cost varies by organization, some employ more automation than others and some may complete this process largely internally while others outsource the entire process. Our research has shown that a reasonable estimate of this cost is...READ MORE

SHOULD YOUR CONTACT CENTER BE BEST PRACTICE?

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 18:35:00 +0000

By Colin Taylor

We constantly hear about “best practices,” and these are held up as the shining examples of what the best organizations do. The desire for us to want our organization or contact center to be “the best” can be a heady goal and many blindly start down the road to get their organization to be a “best practices” organization. But is this the best approach for your contact center, your staff, or your organization?

Best practice is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a procedure that has been shown by research and experience to produce optimal results and that is established or proposed as a standard suitable for widespread adoption.” This certainly sounds like a worthwhile goal, but as with many other things, the devil can be in the details.

Best practices may be validated by “research or experience,” but are the organizations researched like your organization? Is the “experience” relevant to your contact center and your organization? Too often the companies establishing and being referenced as “best practice” are leading performers in their sector or well regarded for the service they deliver. They tend to be organizations that have mature and robust service operations. s that similar to your contact center?

Contact centers operate in an ecosystem where people, processes, and technologies interact to deliver service to customers and prospects. There are high levels of interconnection and inter-dependencies woven throughout the contact center. This is why centers are often described as having “thousands of moving parts.” This lattice of interconnected and interdependent activities, processes, and workflows complicate initiatives to make changes in this environment. Striving to implement a best practice in one area will often bump into a number of pre-requisite activities that need to be completed before said “best practice” can be actioned. This is a difficult and complicated task, and even if it is successful, it will often fail to secure the expected benefits as other areas in the operation lack the maturity or robustness to properly support the attainment of the new “best practice.”

In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins said, “good is the enemy of great,” and this is an accepted truth. If you are only striving for good, you may waste, time, effort and dollars pursuing an objective that may yield little more than what you had achieved as a good operation. This is the Pareto principle (commonly known as the 80/20 rule) in action. In contact centers, the same rationale can hold true. Most contact centers and most organizations stop at good, or in many cases “good enough.”

There needs to be a “bang for the buck” financial evaluation when considering implementing best practices. How will becoming “best practice” change the center or organization’s performance in the eyes of the customers or of leadership?

The costs to implement and the benefits achieved through best practices are not equal for all organizations as they will depend upon the starting point in terms of maturity as well as the vertical you are serving. Technology investments to support best practices may be “table stakes” in one industry and the rare exception in another. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. The cost should not be the only consideration, but it needs to be a part of the decision-making process.

While a “best practice” may have been shown to produce optimal results, the cost to achieve these optimal results may not make sense or be appropriate for all centers. It is important not to view “best practices” as exclusive of other improvement opportunities. There may be a few best practices that you can implement, but there will be a considerably larger list of “better” practices that are available to you.

The best practices that are accessible and that will improve the operation of a center will be related to the center maturity and current operating practices, structure, and available technologies. The same is true for better practices. We encourage every center not to consider this as a binary choice between becoming best practice or not, but rather as a journey from the current state to best or most appropriate practices. This journey is reflected in an iterative process of constantly employing better practices.

Follow Taylor Reach and Colin Taylor on Twitter at @Taylor_Reach and @colinsataylor.

To find out more about how Taylor Reach can help your company with contact center best practices, CLICK HERE to schedule a free consultation.

Read the original post here

Resolving the Riddle of Retention

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Tue, 18 Dec 2018 13:48:00 +0000

By: Colin Taylor

The downside of a strong economy is low unemployment and job shortages. A strong economy doesn’t directly cause contact center attrition, but it does provide employees and agents options that may not exist in a weaker economy. This element of choice, though, will magnify any internal issues and challenges that may exist […]

UK Launch – Taylor Reach

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Thu, 06 Oct 2016 17:40:00 +0000

By: Colin Taylor

Well it has been a busy month for Taylor Reach and for our Senior Consultant, Peter Elliot leading our UK team. Not only have we launched our Contact Centre, Call Centre and Customer Experience consulting services, but Peter is also relocating and changing his home address. Should you wish to reach Peter his email is pelliot@thetaylorreachgroup.com

Both Peter and I participated in the recent UK CX Awards held at the Park Plaza hotel, Westminster, where he and I both chaired judging panels. Peter judged the ‘New Product, Product Improvement Making the Most of New’ Technology category and I, Business Transformation. There we some brilliant entries and the judging was close, with little to differentiate between the finalists.

In the category of Business Transformation, the winner was Royal London, with Pelican Business Services receiving the Silver award.

Figure 1: Royal London winners with Don Hale- Business Transformation

In the New Product/Product Improvement – Loving The Customer category, which Peter judged the winner was Close Brothers Retail Finance, with Barclays – Continuous Improvement Debit Card Disputes receiving the runner up award.

Figure 2: Close Bros with Peter Elliot- New Product/Product Improvement – Loving The CustomerIn addition Peter also presented a number of awards, including; New Product/Product Improvement – (Making The Most Of Technology), OmniChannelCX

In addition Peter also presented a number of awards, including; New Product/Product Improvement – (Making The Most Of Technology), OmniChannelCX

In the category of New Product/Product Improvement (Making the Most of Technology) the winner was My Home Move, with InMoment receiving the silver award.

Figure 3: My Home Move and Peter Elliot- New Product/Product Improvement – (Making The Most Of Technology)

The OmnichannelCX category was won by FM Outsource, with the silver award going to Virgin Trains in partnership with Opinsta.

Figure 4: FM Outsource and Peter Elliot- OmnichannelCX

All in all it was a great and enjoyable event. It was my first time at the awards, Peter was a veteran having attended and judged previously. I have judge contact centre and customer experience awards on three continents and was quite impressed with the process and quality of the submissions. For anyone who is considering participation I would encourage you to do so and can attest to the level of rigor present in the judging process. For more information on the awards or to see the full list of winners, visit the UK CX Awards website.

Concurrent to the UK launch of Taylor Reach, we have also introduced a free 1 hour consultation available to anyone who has questions regarding their contact centre or wants our perspective on the industry or any aspect of contact centres or CX. You can take advantage of this opportunity by visiting our website and completing a request form here.

September on this side of the pond has been a busy for Taylor Reach as we worked on a number of projects: we completed the design and implementation of a new quality program for a major power utility, continued to redevelop agent training for one of the most respected names in media, completed an contact centre assessment for a start-up in the cosmetics industry, and helped a major non-profit with the selection of a new contact centre telephony platform.

For more information on the consulting services offered by Taylor Reach, please visit our website or click on your area of interest below;

Contact Centre Assessment

Contact Centre Audit

Contact Centre Benchmarking

Technology Assessment

Outsource Suitability

Site Selection

Training Design and Development

Starting a New Contact Centre

Quality and CX Design and Implementation

Interim Management

CX Health Check

If you would like to stay informed on industry trends, news and updates from Taylor Reach, please subscribe to our Customer Reach Newsletter here

Remember Taylor Reach is vendor agnostic and does not ‘partner’ with any vendor and does not receive compensation from anyone but our clients, so you know we are truly independent.

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Auditing, Made Easy.

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 15:26:00 +0000

Operational Efficiency, Excellence and Best Practice improvements can only be achieved once the opportunities have been identified. The reality is however, that due to the ever changing world of technology, communications and the customers themselves, the metrics that reveal the opportunities are constantly changing and adapting to new innovations, fads and management concepts. When in truth Operational Efficiency, Excellence and Best Practice improvements always need to be at the core of the center's overall strategy.

But How Do You Ensure Operational Excellence?

Although content marketing and curation has alleviated the pain of searching through articles to identify what's new and improved, they are only half the battle. In order to create a transparent vision for the contact center requires an understanding of how the center is operating today and how it stacks up to other centers. Conducting regular center audits are the most effective and most revealing solution, to achieve this goal. Through conducting a center audit, a full 360 degree view of where the business stands today in relation to where they should be can not only provide indications for improvement, but will reveal missed opportunities or new solutions that have never before been considered or discussed.

Now, while stressing the importance of continual center audits, is it also important to discuss the kind of audit one conducts.

"What are you measuring and what are the conditions being compared?"

"Who are you being compared against, and how robust is the comparison?"
"What are the insights you are applying to your current situation and what are the steps to reaching the best practices?"

Snapshotz™ is the "All In One Audit", the online cloud tool that provides simplicity, clarity and in-depth detail of how a business compares on a global scale. Unlike no other on the market, Snapshotz ™ provides benchmarking from over 1700 other centers, across 700 data points.

Read below to see why Snapshotz™ is the tool your center needs to test.

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Extending Their Call Center Consulting Services Further, Growing The Taylor Reach Group

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 15:26:00 +0000

Most recently, Alton has been involved in working with call and contact centers to extend their reach online, focusing in on analytical and social development to assist organizations in moving to the cloud. His previous roles involved assessing strategic management and process planning for centers, verifying the customer experience gaps existing for clients, consulting on migration to cloud solutions and offering proficient and modern solutions.

Alton lives in Montreal, with his family. He is professionally capable in both French and English. Alton is an avid writer and content curator, maintaining multiple social media networks, all with a “millennial” attitude and runs the Canadian Executive Leadership Group on LinkedIn.

With offices in the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe and China, The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. (Taylor Reach) is a leading Call/Contact Center Consulting Customer Experience and Customer Service consulting firm. This award winning company founded in 2003 by Colin Taylor boasts today a stable of Fortune 1000 companies. The consulting staff at Taylor Reach each possess more than 20 years of ‘hands-on’ Call/Contact Center, Customer Experience, Customer Service and Customer Satisfaction experience in delivering effective and significant benefits from Operational Innovation.

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Customer Satisfaction as a Primary KPI?

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 18:23:00 +0000

By: Turaj Seyrafiaan

There have always been a number of contact center efficiency and effectiveness indicators. While each has a certain and important role, it should always be emphasized that we cannot analyze these indicators in solitude and need to view them as part of a larger holistic picture. From time to time, however, I have been asked which one of these indicators is the most important measurement for the business? Is there one measurement that a contact center manager can / must follow?
Well, I don’t know if “Customer Satisfaction” should be the only measurement but I do know that it should be the primary measurement. You see, we are all in business because we are trying to generate revenue from our products and services. We are the “Providers” who offer those products and services to customers. Without customers there is nothing for us to offer! We need customers!!
As contact centers play a bigger and bigger role in today’s businesses, their impact on the customers, and as a result on their loyalty to a company, become more and more evident. In fact best-in-class contact centers pride themselves in making the difference and increasing the overall customer satisfaction. Many years ago while doing a benchmarking study; I had an opportunity of discussing the role of the contact center with a senior VP of a multi-million Dollar mail order company. Several of our questions were focused on the sales process at the center, but he simply pointed out that “the catalog does the selling; we are here to serve customers and are responsible for their satisfaction”!! He had clearly understood that without satisfied customers the business could not grow and had entrenched that as the main role for his centers. Don’t get me wrong! They did have all kind of efficiency and effectiveness measurements and he knew his operation in fine detail, but the goal of the operation was to increase Customer Satisfaction.
Impact on Business
In the past twenty years, there have been many studies trying to define the impact of customer satisfaction on long term revenue / profit in more tangible relationship in order to convince those skeptical executives who felt the cost of customer satisfaction would far over weigh its benefits. Majority of these studies pointed to the same conclusion that customer satisfaction matters and can increase both short-term and long-term revenue for the organization.
Here are three of the well known conclusions:
• It costs significantly more (6-12 times) to attract a new customer than keeping an existing customer (“Satisfied” or “Very Satisfied”).
• In a competitive environment, a company with “excellent customer satisfaction” can charge up to 10% premium for similar products and services than its competitor (in other words it take 10% price differential for a “Very Satisfied” customer to consider changing his provider). This premium drops to under 3% for “Satisfied” customers. On the other side, those customers who rate their satisfaction as “Poor” and “Very Poor” will consider a change as soon as similar products and services are available from a competitor.
• Companies that provide multiple products and services can have up to 60% higher revenue from “Very Satisfied” customers than from “Satisfied” customers.
As mentioned all these studies deliver the same conclusion: customer satisfaction is important to the long term survival and growth of an organization. So, if we agree that customer satisfaction is important, how do we achieve that and how do we measure our progress?
There have been many theories around what is it that customers value, and how to increase their satisfaction. In general there are many factors contributing to the customers’ overall satisfaction. These factors vary from customer to customer and from environment to environment but typically include factors such as product (functionality, quality), price, delivery and service. Contact centers don’t have much to contribute to the product itself, price or fulfillment but can have a major impact on the service and this is where contact centers can differentiate themselves while creating wealth for the organization.
Customer Satisfaction is an ART
As a rule, customers’ expectation of a contact center can be grouped into three major categories: Access, Resolution and Treatment (ART for short). “Access” defines how easy it is for customers to reach a center (long wait time or a convoluted IVR certainly does not help). “Resolution” deals with the solutions that were offered / delivered to the customers during their contacts and how easy or difficult was to obtain such solutions (FCR comes to mind). Finally “Treatment” describes how customers were treated during their contacts. Each of these three major categories can be linked back to one or more of the efficiency / effectiveness measurement. For example Access can be linked back to Service Level and ASA.
Customer Satisfaction Index
Having customer satisfaction defined around ART, makes its measurement a lot easier. Typically, contact centers develop a short survey (5 to 10 questions) around these three categories (plus one or two loyalty questions which we will discuss later in this article) in order to measure the overall satisfaction. At the same time a secondary (detailed) survey is developed around each of these categories. These surveys are only used if and when there is a need for more detailed analysis (such as an improvement initiative or investigation about certain category).
Obviously different organizations use different scale for their survey measurement. These scales fall into two categories: Quantitative (such as 0 – 10) and Qualitative (such as Very Satisfied”, “Satisfied” and so on). Quantitative scale is more adaptable for numerical analysis, however, it makes it harder for customers to pick a number that represents their true feeling (for example what is the difference between a “6” vs. “7”). Qualitative scales, on the other hand, provide a better definition to the scale for customers to choose. Regardless of which scale you decide to use, the result can be presented as an index that combines all the results. An index is simply an average of all the numerical results. In case of qualitative scale each grade is given a numerical value in order to cover entire range (for example if the scale has only 4 options, then the lowest grade is 0, the highest grade is 100 and the other two are 33 and 66).
There are still a few organizations who report their result for top 1 or 2 grades only (for example “79% of customers rank their satisfaction as “Satisfied” and “Very Satisfied”). By choosing a specific grouping of the respondent, this method fails to provide a complete picture of what customers (all of them) think as we cannot tell if the majority of customers are “Very Satisfied” or just “Satisfied”. In addition there is no report about satisfaction of the other 21%.
Although it has been proven that customer satisfaction can and will lead to higher revenues, there is still the question of customer intention, especially when it comes to the large ticket items such as automobiles. Is the customer satisfaction a valid indicator of future revenues? Would a satisfied customer purchase the same brand when it is time for an upgrade? The problem here is that there are many other factors involved that will impact customers’ intention and as a result even a “Very Satisfied” customer may not become a repeat customer. (Although even in these situations, the probability of a customer becoming a repeat customer increases with the level of their satisfaction).
In order to gauge the likelihood of customers repeating their purchases and becoming repeat customers, many organization – large and small – have introduced one or two questions with regard to customer’s intention, loyalty and potential recommendation to others. When reviewing results from such surveys, we must keep in mind that: a) customers are evaluating the entire organization (including product features and quality, price, delivery and service); and b) customers provide their feelings at the moment of the survey which is highly influenced by their latest experience with the company. Such feelings may change over time depending on more recent interaction with the organization.
Net Promoter
Over the years, loyalty questions have expanded from individual customer’s purchase intention (would you use us again?) to his or her willingness to recommend the company’s products and services (would you recommend us to your colleagues?). The idea here is based on the old adage that word of the mouth is the best advertising. By including the question about recommendation, organizations hope to capture a simple and accurate indicator for future growth.
In 2003 Bain & Company introduced a more formal / structured format for this question and the related analysis called Net Promoter. The survey simply asks about the likelihood of a customer recommending the product and/or service to others on a scale of 0 (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely). Customers with scores between 0 and 6 are considered to be ‘Detractors’ while those customers with scores of 9 and 10 are considered to be ‘Promoters’ (customers with scores of 7 and 8 are considered to be ‘Passive’). Net Promoter Score (or NPS) is the difference between the percentage of ‘Promoters’ and ‘Detractors’. A positive number indicates that there are more customers recommending the company than those who are denouncing it. Clearly a higher positive number indicates higher number of ‘Promoters’ and higher possibility of revenue growth.
Although Bain & Company introduced this metric as the “the one number you need to grow”, there is no statistical evidence that this indicator is more accurate than any other loyalty indicators or for that matter any typical customer satisfaction indicators already in place.
The Bottom Line
Regardless of which method is used to survey and report customers’ intention, there is no question that customer satisfaction has a major impact on future buying decisions either from current customers or their network of acquaintance. In many organizations contact centers are major source of providing services to customers which magnifies the impact of customer satisfaction with the center on the overall survival / growth of an organization. For these contact centers customer satisfaction must become a major goal (if not the only goal) for the operation.

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Brexit – Good for the Irish Tech and Call Center Industry?

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Sat, 06 Aug 2016 13:43:00 +0000

Which Direction for Tech and Call Centers

By Peter Elliot

As an avid participant in the tech industry for the last quarter-century, I have seen a lot of change. Let me start by saying I do hope that Brexit won’t be of much note as we look back on the UK tech scene in five years’ time. That said, I have not encountered a single colleague who is not surprised, saddened and concerned by the result. Voters expressed their concerns based on emotions rather than economics, highlighting the cultural issues that immigration has caused in many communities, and the perceived loss of control to European institutions. Which leaves UK firms to figure out their own way forward in a new economic and political landscape.
The debate about the UK’s trade and immigration policies will continue for the next few years, and if one thing is certain, the accompanying uncertainty will cause firms to delay plans for change, and this will create recessionary forces in the UK economy.
I have been enjoying the freedom of Europe as a UK citizen living in Ireland for the past 18 years, and I can honestly report life is good here. I heartily sympathise with my UK colleagues who must now deal with the Brexit consequences. Ireland has done well from its EU membership since 1973, and most people here see themselves as European citizens. The recent bailout after the 2008 crash was contentious, however the EU prescribed medicine was taken, and the patient is now healed and active again, albeit saddled with significant debt. Ireland will remain in the EU for the foreseeable future.
Tech businesses here are eyeing the political and economic fallout in our nearest neighbour and, after breathing a sigh of relief that we are still in Europe, are trying to gauge the impact on our own vibrant tech industry.
There have been some knee-jerk reactions from UK tech companies announcing a shift of operations into Europe, and Ireland is well placed to pitch for their business. Others have deferred expansions and some such as Lloyds Bank have downgraded their outlook and announced thousands of redundancies.
Here are some of the main pros and cons for doing business in Ireland vs rest of Europe:
Pros
• English speaking
• Excellent education system
• Closest neighbour with good travel links
• Good power and network infrastructure
• Low corporation tax
• Pro-business culture supported by state agencies
Cons
• Higher cost base than many eastern European countries.
• Lack of housing and accommodation
• Underdeveloped public transport system
• High personal taxes
So what are some of the likely Brexit impacts on the Irish technology sector?
Availability of skilled staff. UK software businesses who rely upon a steady flow of skilled staff from across the EU are worried about potential impact upon their existing EU workers and whether recruitment will become more difficult when Brexit is invoked. A valid concern because immigration was the major issue in the vote, so the UK cannot allow the current freedoms to continue. These firms may look to relocate or establish satellite operations within Europe, and Ireland is conveniently close and English speaking. Whilst the increase in economic activity is welcome, it will mean increased competition for skilled staff, and potentially more immigration into Ireland.
Access to UK markets. This becomes tougher due to the falling pound, however currency swings are something Eurozone-based firms should be used to. Neither can I see the UK raising tariffs on Irish and EU based services, so whilst competitiveness may be impacted, unless the pound falls further businesses selling unique services into the UK should be OK.
In contact centres, multi-lingual skills are required to service a pan-European or global business. Ireland has been good at attracting native language speakers from across the EU, and conversely it will become more difficult in the UK. Centre operators in the UK are faced with uncertainty regarding current and future staff from Europe, uncertain economic conditions and uncertainty of the suitability of their UK based centres to support a European market. We will likely see more investment in the multi-lingual BPO sector in Ireland, and possibly wholesale relocation of centres into Ireland and beyond. Most multi-lingual contact centres are comfortable with English as the primary language and Ireland is unique in Europe in this respect.
Future Investment and progress. Often overlooked, the uncertainty of the economic environment in the UK may stall investment and expansion for a period of time. Un-hampered by this, tech businesses in Ireland should grab the opportunity to expand and innovate to gain advantage over their UK rivals.
With an English speaking, well educated workforce and pro-business attitude, it all looks good for net expansion of the Irish tech scene. However in the short to medium term, an influx of tech business may create skills shortages and yet more competition for places to live.
If your contact centre business may be affected by Brexit and you would like to discuss options with a truly independent party, contact the Taylor Reach Group Inc. for more details.
Peter Elliot advises businesses on best practices in customer service and data analysis, and with the Taylor Reach Group helps contact centres benchmark, improve, expand, consolidate and relocate their operations.

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Pokemon Go And Your Contact Center

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 15:15:00 +0000

mirror.co.uk

By Colin Taylor

It has just been a few weeks since Pokemon Go has unleashed mobs of zombies walking in search of new Pokemon to capture, and other players to battle. The game quickly eclipsed Twitters total number of users and at more than 21 million players it shows no signs that the growth is abating anytime soon. Cemetaries, museums and private homes have posted notices asking player not to play at their location. Players have walked into buildings, signs and driven into police cars. Playing any game while driving is probably not a good idea. Calls to 911 requesting access to fire stations in LA are ‘impeding emergency service’.
But what does Pokemon Go mean for the operators of call centers and contact centers? The invasion of your call center by Pokemon is likely to reignite the debate about smart phones in the contact center.
Make no mistake Pokemon is a distraction for staff and management alike, it is not just a game played by teens and millennials. So all staff in the center are at risk for being affected by the need to capture Poke’s that are hovering on the next desk, in the parking lot or in the lunch room. In a contact center operation this equates very quickly to a new category of labor shrinkage, right up there with lunch, breaks, and washroom trips. It also can impact and agents’ performance if they were hunting Pokemon until 4 am, they may be a little tired at the start of their 7 am shift.
But it is not all gloom and doom. Pokemon Go also represents an opportunity. Just as some businesses have benefited from proximity to PokéStop and Poke Gyms, others have been spending money to become a hub of Pokemon players. A pizza restaurant in New York city spent $110 in ‘lures’ and increased their order volume by 75%. One enterprising outsourcer employed a lure at their center to attract people to their job fair, bringing more people and candidates to their facility.
How centers will balance the risks and challenges of Pokemon Go on their staffing and workforce management is still an open question. But there is opportunity here as well, the use of lures may help centers to recruit staff and the possibility of leveraging Pokemon Go as an element of gamification shows great promise.
Only time will answer these questions for call center operators, but rest assured Pokemon and augmented reality is here to stay, so we need to get used to the idea and think creatively about how we can turn this technology to our advantage.

Let me your take on Pokemon Go and the implications for your call center or contact center.

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Profit Centre vs. Cost Centre

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Mon, 11 Jul 2016 20:28:00 +0000

By: Turaj Seyrafiann

July 11th 2016,

Traditionally, call centers were managed in order to minimize the costs. The reason for that seemed simple and obvious; taking the calls and providing service on the phone appeared to be of no additional value to the organizations. The call centre activities were concentrated around providing the after sale services and at best would be considered as revenue protection (a necessary evil!!). It was many years later that organizations started realizing the value of their contact centers in not only protecting revenue but also in generating revenue from both new and existing customers. This new realization brought a new operational concept to the contact centre environment: “invest more in the centre in order to generate more revenue”!

In today’s environment, contact centers operate in two distinct modes: Profit Centre vs. Cost Centers. In a profit centre environment, the centre is operated similar to an independent or self sustaining business unit. The budgetary and operational decisions are taken with focus on generating revenue for the organization. Although revenue generation may not be the sole purpose of the centre, its management is responsible to operate – and perhaps expand – using internal funds. In a cost centre environment, the budgetary focus continues to be on minimizing the costs. Majority of the operational decisions will be scrutinize in order to find the lowest cost approach with less regard for their value to the centre or the organization. In fact in most cases it would be very difficult to quantify the value of these decisions in a tangible manner.

Which one of these two approaches is right for your centre? Well, the answer depends on the role of the centre within the organization (for example “Technical Help Desk” vs. “Sales & Services”) and the overall mandate for the centre. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. In a revenue centre, the management has broader control over its internal decisions, but with the control comes broader responsibilities and accountability in making the right decisions. On the other hand, in a cost centre environment, there is constant pressure in maximizing the efficiency of the operation (which is not entirely a bad thing) while the management may feel they have none to very little control over decisions that would impact their centre.

The dividing line between the two approaches is not always clear but it is extremely important for the contact centre management to decide on an approach since it will determine and establish the contact centre priorities.

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5 Reasons New Call Centers Fail

noreply@blogger.com (Colin Taylor) — Mon, 11 Jul 2016 14:15:00 +0000

5 Reasons New Call Centers Fail

By: Colin Taylor

There can be many reasons for an organization to decide it is time to create a call center or contact center. Perhaps organic growth, a new product, service or acquisition is resulting in calls swamping the switchboard, or customers are tracking down the administrative offices to trace an order, or email volumes are surging and going unanswered?

By creating a call or contact center and being able to direct and centrally manage all call, emails, chats and other channels of communications organizations can realize both financial savings, but also improvements service quality and customer satisfaction. Whatever the cause once an organization has determine it is time to create a call center the next steps can be both daunting and critical.

There are more than 800 discrete tasks associated with building a call or contact center. Common Challenges include; Accurately sizing your call center requirements, Determining which channels to support, Identifying the telephony and technologies required to support your business activities, Mapping your business processes impacted by the call or contact center, Identification of the integrations and links required to CRM or back office systems, The physical design of the call and workflows, Design of the physical call/contact center space, Creation of an organizational design and the people requirements. People are the largest cost in any call or contact center. People requirements include; job descriptions, Identification of skills required for each role, compensation modeling, quality management, workforce management (forecasting and scheduling) and the reporting required to provide the business with the knowledge to make data driven business decisions related to the call center / contact center and the customers they support.

Taylor Reach assisted thousands of organizations to design, develop, implement and improve their call and contact centers. We have developed a proprietary approach to simplify and streamline what modeling and decision making around what can be a very arduous 6 to 12 month process, resulting in lower cost to implement and higher effectiveness and efficiency from day 1.

Common Fails

In supporting our clients in the development and implementation of new call centers and contact centers we have seen a number of challenges and decisions that can adversely impact the development process. These challenges include;

The lack of a cohesive vision of the role of the center. Is the center designed to be a profit center or a cost center? Is the purpose to deliver service that exceeds customer expectations or to be delivered a cost effectively as possible? Has the organization defined the desire customer experience when interacting with the center? Without a clear vision it is impossible to develop a center successfully. Fuzzy goals will produce fuzzy results.
Failure to realize that a call center or contact center is a unique and independent business service and must be properly researched and resourced in terms of both people and technologies.
- The failure to complete proper research has led many organizations to select technologies that don’t meet the needs of the organization. Many solutions can appear on the surface to do what we want them to do, it is only be drilling down to the details of ‘how’ that we can often surface inadequacies. Research takes time, but it is time well invested versus selecting and installing a telephony or technology solution that doesn’t work or handicaps the organization going forward.
- The failure to realize that a call or contact center requires staff with unique skills and competencies can result in the wrong people being on your contact center ‘bus’. Just because someone likes to talk doesn’t make them qualified to be an agent and a good salesperson isn’t always the best solution to lead a call center or inside sales team. Putting the wrong people in the wrong roles can handicap your center for months or years to come.
Failure to plan for growth or seasonality. Nothing is static, companies evolve over time and the reasons our customer contact us also evolve. Organic growth in contact volume may be linked to organizational growth, new markets, products or services. Increased focus on ecommerce can increase seasonal spiked and volumes. If the center planning has not taken these factors into consideration, you can find yourself without the ability to scale the center to support the customer needs. The solution to this can include center expansion and/or outsourcing. Both of these scenarios are disruptive and will reduce service quality while often increasing costs.
Failure to understand the labor market. In a call or contact center labor is the number one expense. Center also often have high staff turnover, both externally and internally. The location selected for the center must be sustainable and the labor costs and budgets need to be realistic. Failure to properly plan can lead to a center unable to secure the desired staff with the desired skills and/or force it to pay more than was budgeted for these roles.
Failure to seek guidance and expert advice. There is certainly a cost associated with retaining an expert to guide you through the process of designing and implementing a new call or contact center, but there is also a cost for not doing so. We have seen organizations select technologies only to have to remove and replace them within months, build and then shutter center locations due to staffing issues, deliver degraded services because their budget was incorrectly set in the first place and be hampered by center staff and leadership without the skills, competencies or training to excel in the role.

The preceding is by no means an exhaustive list of challenges associated with creating a new call center or contact center, but the examples cited above are some of the common failures, that can spell disaster for a new center initiative.

To find out more about The Taylor Reach Group or our services to support the development of a new call or contact center please check out our website http://ift.tt/1eYfdez review our case studies or contact us directly at info@thetaylorreachgroup.com You can reach me directly at ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com or by phone at 416-276-9068.

Colin Taylor is the CEO and Chief Chaos Officer at The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. a call center, contact center and customer experience consulting firm with offices in North America, Europe and Asia. Colin is an award winning industry pioneer with 40 years of call, contact center, customer experience and customer service experience. Colin has been regularly ranked as one of the top industry experts by leading industry publications.

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