Call Center Software | Quick Tips: Measure What Matters Most | Envision
Mar 27, 2007

Quick Tips: Measure What Matters Most
Posted by: Connie Smith

Flickr photo courtesy of labels_30









Today's quick tip comes from Morris Branson, quality assurance supervisor at VSP:

Measure What Matters Most
Constantly reassess whether you are measuring what matters to your customer. When one company looked at the results of their customer surveys, they found that several things they had assumed were important actually had little or nothing to do with their customers' satisfaction. This is called Derived Importance and is reached by looking at the answers to the survey questions and determining which behaviors actually led to higher satisfaction. One example is that the company was very strict about the way the caller was greeted, as some of you may be.  This ranked low in their caller’s mind. Using their name didn’t even show up in the results yet, we see call centers reinforcing this. The most important things to callers are:
  • Call resolution
  • Helpfulness
  • Next Steps
  • Knowledge of the CSR
  • Follow-through
  • Caring or empathy
  • Ability to make a decision
 
You may want to keep these in mind in the way you give feedback, audit and change call handling. 

 

Post tags: , , , , ,

flickr photo courtesy of labels_30

 
Quick Tips: Measure What Matters Most - 12:00 AM | Call Center Best Practices | Add Comment (0) |
Mar 26, 2007

Quick Tips: Evaluate Your Audit Process
Posted by: Connie Smith

Flickr photo courtesy of Thieving Joker















Today's quick tip comes from Morris Branson, quality assurance supervisor at VSP:


Don’t get married to your audit process 
Be ready to change and adjust based on what’s working. Beware of the warning signs that your current process is not as effective as it could be. Are your CSRs or supervisors expressing dissatisfaction or resistance to the auditing process? Sometimes we may start with the premise that no system is going to be liked by the person being evaluated and so we discount their input. Negative feedback is a warning sign that there is something wrong; don’t take it personally. A system that reinforces and rewards good call handling can be seen as a positive. If you aren’t seeing CSRs improve their performance and/or an increase in customer satisfaction, it’s time to re-examine your process.

 

Post tags: , , , , , ,

flickr photo courtesy of Thieving Joker

 
Quick Tips: Evaluate Your Audit Process - 12:00 AM | Coaching & Agent Effectiveness | Add Comment (0) |
Mar 23, 2007

Quick Ideas: Make it Fun!
Posted by: Connie Smith

Flickr photo courtesy of noinput












Today's quick tip comes from Cammy McCafferty of Northwest Airlines:

Make it fun!
For training sessions and meetings, use small prizes or giveaways to encourage participation. One idea is to get low cost items from the Target $1 bin. Everyone loves getting “free stuff” and people get excited about receiving something for participating.

Another idea is to put together a "stress cart," stocked with snacks for when the call queue is backing up and your agents become overly stressed. A small free snack or soda will brighten their day and give them fuel to keep going.

Post tags: , , , , ,

flickr photo courtesy of noinput

 
Quick Ideas: Make it Fun! - 12:00 AM | Coaching & Agent Effectiveness | Add Comment (0) |
Mar 21, 2007

Quick Tips: Creating Incentive Programs
Posted by: Connie Smith

Flickr photo courtesy of andrewb823










Golden rule when creating an incentive program
Before rolling out that new incentive program ask yourself:
  • Will this program incent my star performers?
  • Will it encourage my developing performers?
  • Will it discourage my slackers?
If it fulfills all three, you’ve got a winning program!

Post tags: , , , ,

flickr photo courtesy of andrewb823

 
Quick Tips: Creating Incentive Programs - 12:00 AM | Call Center Best Practices | Add Comment (0) |
Mar 19, 2007

Quick Ideas: Performance Improvement
Posted by: Connie Smith

Want performance improvement? 
Conferences are great for getting ideas and best practices but if you really want to know how you can improve the performance of your contact center you should be asking your reps. 
 
If you really want to get creative, break your reps into teams and have each team submit their best performance improvement idea. It can be process, people or technology related. Ask them to also do a bit of research to come up with a solution and possible ROI. If their idea is chosen, make sure they are involved in the performance initiative and if there is an ROI that is realized, give them a one time bonus for their efforts!

Post tags: , , , ,

 
Quick Ideas: Performance Improvement - 12:00 AM | Call Center Best Practices | Add Comment (0) |
Mar 15, 2007

Quick Ideas: Do You Know Your Customers LTV?
Posted by: Connie Smith

Flickr photo courtesy of thermophle








Do you know what the lifetime value (LTV) of your single customer is?
Loyal customers will continue to use your products and services until they die unless you give them a reason to become disloyal. They may have just one bad experience with your contact center and they are out the door to your competitor for life. Do your reps understand the concept behind the lifetime value of a customer? Have your reps work out what they think the average customer is worth using the calculation below…. They will quickly understand how important each customer is and why it’s so important to keep them loyal and coming back!
 
LTV = A + B
 
A = How much money the customer will spend in 1 year
B = How many more years will the customer be spending
 
Example: If you are a cable company and the average cable customer spends $720 a year (A) and your average customer has 20 (B) more years of buying cable then the LTV would be $720 x 20 years = $14,400.
 
Calculate the LTV for your customer and make sure every employee knows what it is!

Post tags: , , , ,

flickr photo courtesy of thermophle

 
Quick Ideas: Do You Know Your Customers LTV? - 12:00 AM | Call Center Best Practices | Add Comment (0) |
Mar 13, 2007

Quick Ideas: Call Evaluation Guide
Posted by: Connie Smith

Flickr photo courtesy of songlines










Continuing with my quick call center ideas series, I thought that I would share with you a little bit about call evaluation guides. On today's Webinar, Mary Gooding mentioned that ShopNBC has a call evaluation guide that has proven invaluable to their QA and coaching process.

Here is a quick idea from Morris Branson of VSP on call evaluation guides:

What, why and how definitions guide
Have a definitive guide that outlines exactly what you are measuring in audits and the expectations you have of your representatives. This should include three things for each area of evaluation:
  • The skill you want them to demonstrate. (What)
  • The purpose behind measuring that skill. (Why)
  • A definition and guidelines around that skill. (How)
This guide needs to be completely separate from the audit sheet itself. The guidelines should be clear and achievable. The purpose gives you a chance to really examine what is important about that skill and how it relates to customer satisfaction. The definition and guidelines should be concrete examples. Certainly you can’t list all the ways someone could demonstrate the skill but the better you can define this the clearer your audit expectations.

Post tags: , , , , , , ,

flickr photo courtesy of songlines

 
Quick Ideas: Call Evaluation Guide - 10:50 AM | Coaching & Agent Effectiveness | Add Comment (0) |
Mar 09, 2007

Quick Ideas: Ask Non-Customers for Feedback
Posted by: Connie Smith

Flickr photo courtesy of Dashka K








Hello everyone, I am continuing my "quick ideas" series with today's idea: soliciting feedback from non-customers.

When was the last time you were asked to complete a survey from a company you did not buy from? Often we only get feedback from people who are existing customers, but this type of feedback is not always as objective as it could be. The secret to balance feedback is to contact non-customers and to ask why they didn’t buy your company's products or services. This can be done in several ways including: telephone which is direct and immediate and offers a good two-way dialogue, by email if this is a channel that the potential customer uses, by post but this means there is no dialogue and your return rate could be rather low, face to face where practical. You may wish to offer a product or service incentive to potential customers for taking the time to talk with you. You will not only be collecting valuable information but you will be giving the potential customer an opportunity to try your products and services.

 

Post tags: , , , ,

flickr photo courtesy of Dashka K

 
Quick Ideas: Ask Non-Customers for Feedback - 12:00 AM | Call Center Best Practices | Add Comment (0) |
Mar 08, 2007

Performance Coaching
Posted by: Connie Smith

Flickr photo courtesy of mdt1960














I just returned from facilitating Envision's first two roundtables of 2007 “An Insider's Guide to World-Class Contact Centers: What You Need to Know.” During the roundtables, we discussed the importance of coaching and the direct link between coaching programs and customer satisfaction.

Clearly one of the most difficult challenges contact centers face is coaching the coaches. I have developed this Performance Coaching Worksheet to help companies assess coach strengths and weaknesses. It can also be used when recruiting coaches into this position. What kind of 'coach the coach' program do you have in place?

To read more about coaching in the contact center, click here.

Post tags: , , , ,

flickr photo courtesy of mdt1960

 
Performance Coaching - 12:00 AM | Coaching & Agent Effectiveness | Add Comment (0) |
Mar 06, 2007

Best Practices: Timing is EVERYTHING
Posted by: Connie Smith

Flickr photo courtesy of j6 Photo








Timing is EVERYTHING!
Deliver your evaluations as you complete them. Rather than waiting until you have all your audits completed for a representative, try spreading them out. This is especially effective if you use Agent Desktop to deliver the calls. The CSR gets immediate feedback on their performance, hopefully on a call taken that day so they remember it. This also manages the number of CSRs off the phone listening to their calls so that it has less effect on the service level.

Post tags: , , , ,

flickr photo courtesy of j6 Photo

 
Best Practices: Timing is EVERYTHING - 12:00 AM | Call Center Best Practices | Add Comment (0) |
Mar 02, 2007

Quick Ideas: Best Practices eLearning Library
Posted by: Connie Smith

Video Library: Flickr photo courtesy of Jim Lindley













Throughout the years, I have picked up a lot of quick tips and tricks for the contact center. Many of these ideas have been shared at the Envision Customer Forum "30 Ideas in 30 Minutes" sessions. I thought that over the next few weeks, I would share a few of these quick tips with all of you. Enjoy!

Best Practices: eLearning Library
Make a library of your best representatives handling a call. We have nine different areas for review, 6 of which are finesse or soft skills. We make a variety of calls available to our teams and they can be used either for one-on-one coaching or in team meetings. The intangible effect we didn’t anticipate was the ego boost it gave when the CSR was asked if we could use their call as an example.

Post tags: , , , , ,

flickr photo courtesy of Jim Lindley

 
Quick Ideas: Best Practices eLearning Library - 12:00 AM | Call Center Best Practices | Add Comment (0) |