By Kathleen M. Peterson

Here is a seven-step approach for putting together a budgetary case to senior management. It may also be a useful tool for evaluating the performance of your center.

1. Define your objectives.
2. Support your case.
3. Use an easy-to-understand format.
4. Tell the truth - avoid misleading information.
5. Include qualitative measures – not everything is by the numbers.
6. Define your budget requirements – what will it cost?
7. Establish an action and follow-up plan.

1. Define your objectives
In making the case to management, the objectives we cite will impact how we are viewed. The Call Center / Contact Center must be aligned with the enterprise objectives. Service level is not an objective; it is a planning and measurement tool. Service level may well sit on our list of key performance indicators. But, objectives presented to senior management must be linked to the enterprise - cost reduction, increased market penetration, customer retention, etc.

Ask someone if you are not clear on the objectives (which of course is highly unlikely). One place to look is the Annual Report. Read the message from the CEO to shareholders. This letter will outline the enterprise accomplishments from the previous year and highlight the objectives for the coming year. These objectives are your objectives. In any presentation to senior management, it is appropriate to quote the CEO and demonstrate how your organization is integral to the plan.

The objective of the Call Center is to assist in the realization of the enterprise objective. This is a great pre-frame and will make your case more compelling.

2. Support your case
How would you represent your current realities? Current conditions are supported by the current budget. So it is appropriate to illustrate what has been accomplished within that framework.

Create a view of the Call Center to illustrate where you are now. Begin by showing the total number of contacts annually handled by the center -

• How does this relate to the previous year?
• Are calls on the rise or the decline?
• Have the demand patterns shifted?

Show the impact of billing cycles, software upgrades, marketing campaigns, product releases – any and all dynamics that impact the center and about which you want to raise awareness.

Describe the total number of channels and the demands on each. Illustrate the number of voice calls, IVR (integrated voice response) transactions, email, web, fax, and written correspondence. Any and all channels must be represented. For example, did our automation investments produce the desired result, or have we simply expanded our availability?

Illustrate the current technology configuration. This provides an opportunity to illustrate the distribution and any limitations that may exist. This is key if your budget includes any technology upgrade, replacement recommendations, or enhancements. It is important to set the stage for the capital investment by clearly representing the current system and its realities. As well, you should deliver information on channels and desktop applications.

Set the stage for capacity, particularly if one of your objectives is growth. The center’s scalability model will be an important component of the presentation.

• Describe the current condition, including the current number of workstations equipped and occupied.
  
• Describe the current telecommunications and bandwidth capacities and how much additional demand can be handled by the current facilities.
  

This provides an opportunity to describe the facility’s conditions overall - Has it been ten years since chairs have been purchased? Are the facilities ergonomically sound? Are there a growing number of worker’s compensation claims? All this information is important to be represented!

Supporting your case via illustrations, reports, and examples creates an understanding of current conditions and provides a context for center enhancements and improvements.

3. Use an easy-to-understand format
The format for any case to senior management must be clear and concise; executives react to clarity.

• Use bullets to make major points.
• Employ charts and graphs to illustrate metric dynamics and tell a story.
• Stick to 1 - 2 chart types; don’t use pie charts, line charts, just because you can.
• Include supporting data or simply point to its availability.
  

When preparing the case, use data to illustrate dynamics that drive the unique conditions to which Call Centers must react – intra-day call arrival patterns, impact of marketing campaigns, resource utilization, etc.

Compare and contrast metrics service level and abandonment, experience level and handle time, channels, and costs.

In all, your case must be focused and presented formally, briefly, concisely. Practice before the presentation and anticipate questions ahead of time.

4. Tell the truth - avoid misleading information
It is time to tell the truth, to stop the polite lies we have become expert at creating with our metric maneuvers. Among the most common alterations we make are abandonment rates and service level achievements. We also alter data by measuring metric results and encouraging (even rewarding) behaviors that conflict with quality at the agent level. If we ask for sixteen calls per hour, or handle time to be exactly 120 seconds, we risk the metric that takes precedence over performance.

This is a delicate arena. We need our staff to be efficient, while still providing an effective response. Hence, a quality vs. quantity argument emerges. In this case, we must first tell our staff the truth in order to provide accurate information to senior management. And the truth is we want both quality and quantity. Quality does not take longer!

If staff asks you whether you want quality or quantity, you must first determine why they are asking the question. You must seek the truth to tell the truth. Defending your position on a quality outcome will fall on deaf ears if staff believes all you care about is numbers. Listen to your staff; it is possible we are establishing conflicting criteria. Investigate the operation to uncover the absolute truth in order to provide proper incentives and collect the most accurate data. Then we won’t have to fudge the numbers, subtract, add, recalculate, until we achieve the desired outcome.

The time has come to give senior management what they need, not what they want. The real information required to budget and plan is in fact the real information, not the altered data. For example, suppose senior management establishes an objective of 3% abandonment and you meet that objective through altering data. When budget time comes and you request additional resources, how do you respond to the observation that you have met the objectives all year? Will you tell management that you’ve been lying for the past year? It is critical to consider the short- and long- term impact of your reporting.

5. Include quality measures – not everything is by the numbers
Include quality measures in any presentation to senior management. Quality is one area that Call Centers often have difficulty with because it is not measured by traditional production metrics. But the fact is that quality has a significant impact on the customer experience and on the bottom line.

Many measures associated with customer relationship management include a quality component. For the most part, the one and done single call resolution models come from an understanding that doing it right is more economical than doing it over. Quality measurements typically come from a database; investment in front-end applications that support quality reporting is important.

A quality monitor program often serves as an observation post for quality. The program must be well defined and its effectiveness demonstrated in order to secure adequate funding. Advances in recording systems with the ability to capture voice/data records provide a vehicle to measure the interaction and the transaction. This improves our ability to coach to quality at the agent level. Accuracy and skill in utilizing the database are critical to the proper flow of information and in fulfillment of the customer request.

When evaluating quality, it is not only how well we are doing what we do, but how we do it. It is the channels we utilize and the attention paid to what we can eliminate. Take the case of a utility company that handles millions of calls per year. The single most frequent call-type is billing questions; the statements are often incorrect, cumbersome, and difficult to read. The quality team has launched an initiative to push more of the calls to the voice response unit, when in fact a better initiative may be to fix the billing system. This is an infinitely more complicated and expensive task, however one that will have much greater impact. Elimination will always be more powerful than automation.

Training is a huge contributor to quality. Deliver to senior management all the dynamics that create the need for a solid investment in training. The case must be made to have training in the budget, both for initial training and ongoing skill development.

• Use types of transaction data to illustrate the skills required and the training needed to have those skills available for new-hires.
• Show a calendar of marketing campaigns, system upgrades, etc. to make the case for ongoing training.

6. Present your budget requirements – what will it cost?
The stage has been set - now you must deliver the request for funding. Consider these questions:

• What are the operational changes from last year?
• What are the resource requirements, both human and technical?

You should provide 2 – 3 examples showing the impact of new allocations. For example, what is the difference between a service level of 80% of calls answered in 20 seconds and 90% answered in 10 seconds? It may be a couple of full timers or a couple of part timers at critical intervals. The point you want to make is that key performance indicators are linked to budget. If you don’t have the requisite staff and tools, the objectives are at risk.

We must link performance indicators to enterprise objectives. If our #1 objective is cost reduction, it may mean that eliminating calls by process improvement meets the need, despite up-front costs. If the objective is customer relationship management, it may mean an investment in front-end systems that allow better response to customers and increase revenue. The introduction of recording tools improves accuracy within the call. These tools reduce errors, thereby reducing cost and improving customer satisfaction. This is a solid argument for funding; we must spend the time to create a compelling and bulletproof story.

Present the request formally. It is also important to identify an executive champion and do a bit of lobbying from time to time. The presentation to senior management is the culmination of a multi- tiered initiative, not a single one-hour event.

7. Establish an action and follow-up plan
Present an action plan. Describe the initiatives for which you have requested funding, as well as expected outcomes and reporting mechanisms.

Include the ongoing support of senior management when creating a follow up plan. The time has come to close the gap between the Call Center and the executives. We are in an era that requires collaborative behaviors across the enterprise in order to create customers who are not only satisfied, but also loyal.