Driving Service Quality and Efficiency in Customer Contact Centres

1. Driving Service Quality and Efficiency in Customer Contact Centres Andy Cranshaw COPC Asia Pacific Inc

2. Agenda • The New Reality • Definitions of Service, Quality and Efficiency • Some Contact Centre Myths • Service level – How to set your target • Quality – Being right or being nice? • Efficiency – Driving down AHT the easy way • The COPC-2000® Standard

3. Improved Service Higher Quality The Way We Were…….

4. Improved Service Higher Quality Improved Sat The New Reality…. AND REDUCE COST!!!

5. Service…. • Is the speed with which we do things • For inbound phone it’s our service level • For inbound e-mail or other non-phone activities it’s our cycle time or turnaround time

6. Quality…. • Quality is the accuracy or defect rate of our transactions • It’s consistency • It’s our ability to resolve issues first time every time

7. Efficiency…. • Is the amount of output we get for our input • It’s AHT – the amount of calls that we can handle in a given time period • It’s utilisation – the percentage of time in a day that our staff spend doing productive work

8. Some Contact Centre Myths • Having a faster service level makes our customers happier • Driving down AHT will have a negative impact on our quality and Customer Satisfaction • It’s the quality of the interaction between our staff and customers that drives satisfaction • You can’t measure defect rate in a service environment

9. The Kano Model

10. Service Level Doesn’t Drive Customer Satisfaction Malaysia, Telco

11. Service Level Benchmarks Speed of Answer Benchmarks • COPC finds an approach adopted by High Performance Centres is to determine the slowest speed of answer (not the fastest) that can be achieved without adversely affecting customer satisfaction. • This can only be done with frequent (e.g., monthly) customer satisfaction data that can be correlated with actual service levels. • COPC has worked with several companies that have done definitive research on this • All slowed their speed of answer target because they found that speed of answer was not as critical to customer satisfaction as they had originally thought • In one case, they changed their Service Level target to 80/40 from 80/20 for customer service in the U.S. and Europe

12. Service Level Benchmarks Speed of Answer Benchmarks • High performance centers manage consistency and calculate Service Level based on the percentage of (prime) intervals the Service Level is achieved for the time period instead of the overall Service Level. • “Prime Intervals”—periods where 2/3-3/4 of daily volume arrives • “Targeted Band”—acceptable range for Service Level (e.g., 83% to 88% where overall goal is 85%) • Best observed target is Service Level must be within Targeted Band for at least 75% of Prime Intervals each day

13. Quality Monitoring Doesn’t Work India, Third party CSP

14. Being Nice Isn’t The Same As Being Right! India, Third party CSP

15. Being Nice Doesn’t Drive Customer Satisfaction % Sat, Vsat % Impact on Overall CS Satisfaction Authority to Handle Request Timely Resolution Showed Genuine Concern Knowledgeable Courteousness Understood Request Answered Call Promptly 56 28 55 58 53 29 51 56 71 69 21 71 Oct 67 Nov 18 65 67 Dec 88 1 84 87 80 2 74 77 81 2 80 US Customer Service 81

16. Being Right Does Drive Customer Satisfaction US Tech Support

17. Accuracy Benchmarks Benchmarks: Transaction Monitoring • High performance centres define and measure fatal and non-fatal errors separately. • Fatal errors are those which, by their nature cause a transaction to be defective • Non-fatal errors are those which may irritate the customer slightly but will not cause a breakdown in your relationship.

18. Fatal ErrorsA Different Calculation US, Health Insurance Measured by Opportunity Measured by Unit

19. Accuracy Benchmarks Benchmarks: Transaction Monitoring • High performance centres carry out quantitative calibration among monitors. • Training calibration is where monitors listen to a call, score it, discuss the call, and agree on a final score. • Quantitative calibration goes one step further. It involves quantifying the repeatabilty, reproducibility, and accuracy of the monitors.

20. Accuracy Benchmarks Accuracy Benchmarks—COPC 2003 Data • Phone Fatal Error Accuracy • Averaged 95% • High performance centers achieved 98%-99% • Phone Non-Fatal Error • Averaged 91% for all centers with this data • High performance centers achieved greater than 95% accuracy • Non-Phone: The best COPC has seen: • For high volume mail processing (i.e., two million pieces per month) a CSP is averaging 99.2% accuracy (for fatal and non-fatal) with a range of 98%-99.9% (measured by opportunity). • Non-phone: High Performance Centers • 98%-99% fatal error accuracy • 95%-98% non-fatal error accuracy

21. Managing Efficiency How Efficient Are We? Labor Efficiency Asset/Technology Efficiency Support Staff Efficiency How Productive is Productive Time Time in Productive State Wages & Benefits What supervisors and managers can control

22. Managing Efficiency Labor Efficiency How Productive is Productive Time Time in Productive State Handle Time as Percent of Paid Time AHT Reduction Work Hours as Percent of Paid Hours Handle Time as Percent of Work Hours

23. Managing AHT Outliers

24. Managing AHT Outliers S.E Asia, Bank Target 240 secs

25. No Relationship Between AHT and Quality US, Tech Support

26. No Relationship Between AHT and Customer Satisfaction India, Tech Support

27. No Relationship Between Talk Time and Quality US Customer Service

28. The COPC-2000® Standard • The COPC-2000® Standard is a globally recognised performance management methodology that drives results: • Improves financial performance • Lower Costs • Enhance Revenues • Increases operational performance • Shorten Cycle Times – how long it takes • Improve On-Time – achieving what you promise • Increase Efficiency – reduce costs • Improves Satisfaction levels • Staff • Customers & Clients

29. The COPC-2000® Standard • The Standard is administrated by the COPC Standards Committee, an international group of senior level Contact Centre practitioners committed to raising the standards of contact centre performance. • The current Standards Committee has representatives from: • Bell Canada • Blue Cross Blue Shield • Centrelink (Australia) • ClientLogic • Convergys • COPC • General Motors • Japanese Users Group • L.L. Bean • DHL (Singapore) • Microsoft • Motorola • Sykes B.V. (Netherlands) • TransWorks (India)

30. The COPC-2000® Standard • For further information and to download the Standard: • www.copc.com

31. Cost Customer Sat Quality Service The New Reality….. Any Questions?