Moving Metrics Into Action

1. Moving Metrics Into Action Tim Montgomery - The Service Level Group

2. Tim honed his expertise by working closely with and advising some of the world’s most recognized service organizations

3. About what percent of calls will queue for more than 1 second with a service level objective of 80/20 (80 percent in 20 seconds) with a six minute handle time and a 100 calls in an interval? 90% 80% 75% 45% 25% No Clue

4. How is overall (company/department/employee) success measured? (Numbers you look at every day) • Does everyone (senior leadership/front line/support, etc..) in the contact center have a full understanding of the metrics ? What’s missing? • Why do you have the ones that you do? (What drove the decision to pick these goals?) • What do your accessibility (service level, ASA, abandon rate, etc..) objectives mean to your customers, your organization and your employees?

5. Reality Check • Lost productivity cost companies $800 Billion a year • Employees admit wasting several hours a day • Why: • Don’t have enough work to do • Underpaid for amount of work • Co-workers distractions • Not enough time to get things done after work • Who wastes the most time? • Age range • 20-25: 2 hours a day • 26-35: 1.6 hours a day • 36-45: 1.15 hours a day (source: salary.com)

6. Reality Check Gallup Q12: • I know what’s expected of me at work • I have the materials and equipment to do my work right • At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day • In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work • My supervisor or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person • There is someone at work who encourages my development • At work, my opinions seem to count • The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important • My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work • I have a best friend at work • In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress • This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow

7. Reality Check

8. Reality Check Employee engagement has direct relationships to retention, productivity, profitability, safety, absenteeism, and customer satisfaction - Gallup Management Journal

9. A New Era Your World: Price Gets Attention (often encouraged by service…) Be afraid of customers… - Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO

11. A New Era

12. A New Era Your World: Use the call center as a competitive advantage

13. The New Era Email Blogs You Tube Ebay What “complaint vehicles” do customers have available today that didn’t exist 10 years ago? Online Feedback Online Forums Discussion Groups My Space

14. The New Era Do people really pay attention to this stuff? In a Big Way!

15. The New Era In a Month… Blogs – 65 million Social Networking – 120 million You Tube – 60 million Ebay – 55 million BizRate – 35 million

20. What Makes them Special?

21. What Makes them Special?

22. What Makes them Special?

23. What Makes them Special?

24. What Makes them Special?

25. “Helping employees to understand what it feels like to be a customer…. Thinking like that distinguished our Customer Service Champs from the rest of the field”

26. The Contact Center Environment What Customers are Saying • 75% are more likely to give more business to a company based on a great contact center experience • 50% have stopped doing business with a company because of a poor contact center experience • 67% - Frustrated with long hold times • 57% - Frustrated by IVR menu options • 77% - Feel like they’re being pushed away from live service • 52% - Frustrated by having to repeat themselves (source: Alcatel-Lucent Survey)

27. The Contact Center Environment What Customers are Saying My Taxi company knows ME and makes it easy! • 96% say a positive experience with a CSR would increase their sense of brand loyalty • 70% have changed products or services because of a bad experience with a CSR • 50% become dissatisfied when the CSR is not well informed or could not solve the problem quickly • 35% were dissatisfied when the hold time was too long • (source: Five9 Survey)

28. Creating World Class It’s no longer an option Your World: Done wrong- You can spend more on support that drives customers to “price” Targeting “Just OK” Service

29. Creating World Class “It’s all about diet and exercise”

30. Creating World Class All call center service improvements start here

31. Creating World Class Operational Metrics Your World: Most important is the driver…and then who controls the driver’s improvements Quality Quality Schedule Adherence

32. Creating World Class Operational Metrics Quality 82% of the intervals within the service level objective 86% of the intervals within the ASA objective 89% of the intervals within the answer rate objective 82% of the intervals within the abandon rate objective 79% of the intervals within the call forecast objective 50% of the intervals within the AHT forecast objective 90% of the intervals within the agent adherence objective Quality Schedule Adherence

33. Creating World Class Agent Incentives Don’t Punish the masses Engage them to improve the process Quality Quality Schedule Adherence

34. Don’t make it any harder than it has to be….. GATEWAY - I Built This Company, I Can Save It Many of these changes hurt more than just morale. They hurt business. For example, one policy put a time limit on customer-service calls; reps who spent more than 13 minutes talking to a customer didn't get their monthly bonuses. As a result, workers began doing just about anything to get customers off the phone: pretending the line wasn't working, hanging up, or often -- at great expense -- sending them new parts or computers. Not surprisingly, Gateway's customer satisfaction rates, once the best in the industry, fell below average. What's more, many customers stopped recommending Gateway to their friends and families; Gateway's referral business -- once 50% of total sales -- fell to about 30% FORTUNE - April 16, 2001

35. Don’t make it any harder than it has to be….. On DELL's customer-service woes…Michael Dell: We were doing some things that were just plain wrong. Last year we had parts of our company where we would say, "Hey, let's handle the calls faster." The problem is that if you handle the call faster, you solve 90% of the problem instead of 100%. So the guy calls back. And you've just pissed him off more, and you haven't accomplished a damn thing. This year we said we're not going to measure how long we're on the phone, we're going to measure how well we did solving the problem. What happened in the second quarter was we had two million fewer calls than we had planned. The average hold time before we answered the call was cut by more than 50%, and the satisfaction rate went up quite dramatically--like seven or eight points--in just a couple of weeks. The team was managing cost instead of managing service and quality. It's totally the wrong answer. Stop managing for cost. Manage for a great experience. – Fortune Magazine 2006

36. Basics of improving results • Focus on the drivers • Understand the root causes • Develop action plans • Communicate expectations and accountabilities • Measure results and take action In organizations

37. Basics of improving results • Focus on the drivers • Understand the root causes • Develop action plans • Communicate expectations and accountabilities • Measure results and take action In people

43. From the customer’s perspective • Service Level/ASA • Is the door open when promised? • How much of my time are you willing to take? • Should I begin to look for an alternative? • Abandon/Answer Rate • I’m too busy right now • I don’t have tolerance for wasting time • I have alternatives Accessibility

44. From the companies’ perspective • Service Level/ASA • How few people do I need to staff? • What’s it going to cost me? • Meeting it is managing the contact center • Abandon/Answer Rate • Some don’t even give us a chance • An outcome of the SL/ASA • Zero is an unrealistic expectation Accessibility

45. An alternative perspective • Service Level/ASA • It’s the price of admission • Impacts everything down the line • Must be measured and “managed” by interval • Abandon/Answer Rate • Changes everything about the plan • An early signal of customer frustration • Different based on customers and products Accessibility

46. From the customer’s perspective • Quality • Was it right and do I feel comfortable? • Do I feel valued? • Did I get everything I needed? • Productivity/Adherence • How much time was taken from me? • Did I feel rushed? • Was someone available when I wanted? Agent Quality and Productivity

47. From the companies’ perspective • Quality • The resulting score on the monitoring form • Team and group comparisons of the score • Number of audits completed • Productivity/Adherence • How much time was focused on customer work? • A number, goal, or range • Encouraging and rewarding better results Agent Quality and Productivity

48. An alternative perspective • Quality • Scores don’t change behaviors • Trends indicate opportunities • Goal is to improve service not manage agents • Productivity/Adherence • Without the reality, the planning process is flawed • Indicators of opportunities to coach new behaviors • Fluid – changes with the processes Agent Quality and Productivity

49. What The Best Companies Know Focus on Reality “The key is to get your arms around the reality of the environment -- no goal, no desires, no targets; it’s all about what’s really happening.” - Tim Montgomery

50. Principles of Effective Measures “Remember: If you spend too much time keeping score, you won’t have enough time to play the game.”