(As printed in the March/April Issue of Customer Service Management)

By Kathleen M. Peterson

These conditions certainly do not have to be true. Just for the record, in a well-run Call Center, the agent is responsible for the call and the management is responsible for the queue. So what to do to create a high performance service culture within a Call Center environment? Here are four key areas to evaluate in your quest for Call Center mastery.

1. Make sure that the Call Center is part of the big picture.
To take on the responsibility of the queue, management must view the operation as a total process, one that is connected to the enterprise. This connection must be made in terms of the organization’s values, vision and mission. Is it clear what role the Call Center plays in the overall objectives of the company? This clarity will allow for inclusion and recognition instead of being thought of as a back-room operation.

Call Centers do not generally generate their own activity (queues); these are typically a result of marketing promotions, product enhancements, billing issues, service additions, changes in policies or procedures, and so on. This being true it would follow that the parts of the organization responsible for these functions should partner in the planning and audit process. This involves acknowledging that the Call Center is part of a total process, not simply a random series of phone calls coming in and being handled by our staff.

2. Evaluate your planning process.
Queue management begins with an effective "forecast" of demand. Strive for accuracy within plus or minus 5%. An effective forecast is tied to the other objectives we have for our center. These include customer retention and satisfaction, sales, employee satisfaction and shareholder return. In order to evaluate the planning process, we must determine if we have allocated the proper resources to the task. The forecasting tasks include storing and analyzing historical data, creating and adjusting schedules, managing the intra-day queue, reallocating staff and managing the scheduling software system, if you use one.

The forecast person is sometimes known as the "capacity manager." This person should also be responsible for formalizing the flow of information between other departments and the Call Center. The position of capacity manager should not be shared; to be effective there needs to be a dedicated source. This person may need the support of the Call Center manager (and occasionally even more senior management) to be certain that other departments provide the information necessary to achieve a high level of accuracy. Historical data is only the starting point for an effective Call Center forecast.

Call Center managers must radiate credibility to their counterparts. They have to be kept "in the loop." In order for that to happen, their peers must respect them and feel confident in sharing vital information with them - information such as two million sales brochures going out in Tuesday’s mail or listing the Call Center’s toll free number as a response mechanism, for example. The Call Center manager, as well as the "capacity manager," needs to be aware of this information in order to know how many people to schedule for what is likely to be an increase in the number of calls.

Sometimes, those information handoffs are never made. The result: lost revenue and frustrated customers. All the staff-forecasting software in the world cannot overcome a problem like that. To make matters worse, Call Center morale can take a nosedive when reps are faced with angry customers who know more about a sale or product launch than they do. A strong liaison with other department managers and a calendar prepared by the capacity manager or forecasting team can solve the problem.

Conversely, the Call Center can and should provide vital management information to other departments. Inbound Call Centers are staffed, to a large extent, on the basis of the number of inquiries and/or complaints they receive on a given number of issues. If, for example, an automobile manufacturer’s top consumer complaint last year was that customers’ keys broke off in the door, it is incumbent upon the Call Center to share that data with the engineering department. Fixing that problem will mean happier customers and fewer calls to the Call Center. Fewer calls will mean a need for fewer reps on the phones and will cut overall costs of the center.

3. Focus on quality.
Do you tell agents on the phone to act differently during busy periods? I have repeatedly asked this question of Call Center managers and often get an emphatic "well, yes, of course". "Exactly what do you tell them to do?" I ask. Some say, "We just tell them to hurry up!" Others say, "We tell them not to cross sell." So, we sacrifice revenue opportunities in favor of calls in queue. Ask yourself, "Does the answer to this question - what to change when it is busy - initiate a quality conflict for the people taking the calls?" If so you are making a mistake.

We must understand that it will always take longer to do it over than it will to do it right. If we ask front-line staff to compromise quality because we have a queue issue, we will be setting the stage for the oft-found belief of Call Center staff that management cares more about quantity than quality. This is not to say that our front-line staff may not be able to reorganize the workload or make some adjustments in their behavior during peak periods, just not at the risk of quality.

4. Commit to training.
Training is the single most important investment in the Customer Service Call Center. In most Call Centers, initial training is often lengthy and ineffective; ongoing training is often canceled and monitor programs leave much to be desired. Training also acts as a morale booster. One of the major contributors to turnover is when staff feels as if their growth doesn’t matter to the organization. To improve quality, improve training.

Call Centers must also be creative about training because we simply cannot take staff off the phone for instructor led programs, as you can with other departments. The use of the Internet/intranets, video tapes, CD-ROM and computer-based training all lend themselves to dynamic scheduling and self-paced learning.

When preparing your budget, plan for a minimum of ten hours per year per person for training. (This is a minimum – not a recommendation; I believe it should be much higher). Then measure whether the training took place.

Study the error rates and types of errors in your center to adjust the training curriculum. Have your training people do an analysis of the types of calls handled and the skills required, so they can maintain a skills matrix and prepare individual training plans.

Finally, make your monitor program an absolute training vehicle and not necessarily a strict performance measurement tool. The monitor program is like providing your front-line staff with a "personal trainer". This is a very expensive program when you figure in all the supervisor hours and in many cases, the technology investments. We must demand a performance return on this investment. Hold your monitor scores up against other measurements. If the program is effective (assuming your turnover rate is not in the double digits), you should see improvements in handle time, service level and occupancy.

Naturally, the right kind of training is essential - product knowledge training, Customer Service training and training in how to use the phones, computers and software needed to run a Call Center enterprise. However, when training lasts eight, ten, twelve weeks, there’s a risk your people will be overwhelmed with information. On-the-job training can go a long way toward teaching reps the practical skills of applying product knowledge to a factual situation or learning how to diffuse an angry customer.

The configuration of your people should also drive the type of training provided. For example, while all staff may be trained in answering basic product inquiries and complaints, several reps might be assigned to specialized teams which deal with technical issues, high ticket items, high volume customers or customers with special needs. Those special needs must be addressed in the training curriculum. Be aware, however, that productivity is a potential tradeoff though in an environment with many small teams. Larger generalized groups of representatives can take more calls than a consortium of smaller ones.

Many Call Centers receive training from a designated corporate training department, somewhat disconnected from the Call Center. It is important in a Call Center for the trainers to report to the Call Center director and to have continuous exposure to the Call Center environment.

Within that framework, trainers can take on a mentoring role during the first 90 days a trainee spends on the floor. It is key for trainees not to feel they have been cast adrift the moment the initial training period is over.