Improving your Contact Centre

I’ve worked with a number of organisations since early 2021 and these are the common factors that I see emerge within Contact Centres and Help Desks and my tips on how to improve your Contact Centre.

I have found many who have lost sight of their mission. Who is their customer, how are they meeting the needs of that customer, and how are they championing their customers internally, and what is their role.

I then find that they are measuring performance based on metrics that either can’t be effectively measured and/or their frontline staff have little influence or impact upon.

I also discover that they have failed to invest in technology that can improve the employee and customer experience. In many cases this has been a lack of knowledge management capabilities, in others it has been the basic contact centre platforms that are either out of date or are not really fit for a contact centre.

It all stems back to people, process and technology. The basic fundamentals that need to be addressed in order to be successful.

Let's unpack this a little bit and gather some tips for improving any Contact Centre.

The most fundamental lesson for any customer-facing business or team is to know your customer.

Who are they? How do they contact you? What are their most common issues?

I interviewed a frontline team during a project and when I asked about the customer, I got different answers from every single team member. I then got different answers again from the Team Leader and Manager. If you do not have clarity on your customer and your mission, you cannot be successful.

Similarly, you need to have clarity in the role your people are performing. In that same team, I had a myriad of answers about the role each of the frontline team performed. Role clarity is important for two key reasons:

1. You need to understand and be clear on your role to perform it to the best of your abilities; and
2. Lack of role clarity is one of the most significant triggers for psychosocial stress in the workplace.

Once you have clarity on the customer and the role of your people, the rest starts to come together.

The next piece of the puzzle is performance. What are you measuring and why?

I still see Contact Centres measure Grade of Service and AHT (Average Handling Time) like it is the holy grail. The simple reality is that your people will perform best when they understand what is important and they have the ability to influence and control the outcome.

Performance measurement should suit your business. For one client, their goal was to improve retention of members. In developing new metrics, we focussed on what the team could control. They could control the quality and flow of the call. They could control when they sought to engage the member in purchasing new products or services, or in renewing their membership. That often meant the call would be longer so if you focussed on a limiting AHT metric, you sacrificed retention of members. Can you see the problem?

It is also important that when you focus on role and performance clarity, that your processes and technology do not inhibit your ability to deliver the best possible results.

In most cases I find myself recommending upgrades or replacement of Contact Centre technologies. In most organisations I've worked with, the Contact Centre has historically been seen as a cost of doing business and there has been chronic under-investment in new technology as a result.

Technology can either hinder and detract, or it can empower and enable your people to perform their roles and to achieve the outcomes you seek.

In a Contact Centre, you need a mix of the following technology to enable your sales, service or support outcomes:

• Automatic Call Distribution (ACD).?Having a system in place that automatically routes callers to relevant individuals cuts down on wasted time and resources. ACD systems distribute calls according to user-specified criteria, such as sending the call to a phone that is idle, or sending calls about billing to the accounting department, etc. Nearly all contact centre systems have some form of ACD. They vary from simple push-button virtual operators to those that use caller ID or voice recognition.
• Contact Centre Monitoring and Analytics.?Being able to scrutinize call durations, costs, and other useful metrics can help supervisors and managers make informed decisions on issues such as employee performance and staffing and training needs. Some of the best systems allow real-time statistics, letting you know what's going on in the contact center second by second. Historical reporting allows you to compile hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and annual statistics for detailed long-term analysis.
• Call Recording.?Useful for training and monitoring, call recording allows supervisors and operators to record and store phone calls as audio files on the server. However, the storage requirements for call recording can be quite large. Third-party hosted systems and cloud-hosted systems are better suited for this function because it's easy to upgrade the size of your storage space without buying new hardware.
• Contact Management or Customer Relationship Management (CRM).?These systems enable different calls to be tagged and stored with relevant information attached to the call file. This permits better management of customers, as it provides historical records of all calls by an individual account holder.
• Computer Telephony Integration (CTI).?CTI systems use desktop PCs as telephone systems. These software packages enable a desktop computer to serve and display all call-related functions-from providing caller information, routing calls to other workstations, and controlling the phone system. Most contact center systems utilize some form of CTI. Usually a simple USB or Bluetooth headset is all that's required to turn a standard PC that's running CTI into a complete contact centre workstation.
• Workstation Recording.?Workstation data recording enables you to make a movie of what's happening on an operator's screen. The recording can be analyzed to learn how operators are using the system, what tricks they know that could help others, and what problems they're having that could be addressed.
• Interactive Voice Response (IVR).?IVR uses voice-recognition software to allow callers to route themselves to specific departments. IVRs vary in sophistication-from the very basic, which enable simple routing functionality, to systems that allow customers to access their accounts. At the high end, IVR empowers customers to serve themselves, reducing the workload on human operators.
• Knowledge Management. These solutions allow for the creation and maintenance of core information assets that equip the frontline agents with the information necessary to handle customer enquiries. These solutions rely on search, or integrated analytics to empower the operator with the information needed to resolve the current and next issue faced by the customer. These solutions can improve quality and consistency of information provision, and reduce call times.
• Live Call Coaching.?This allows a third person to interact with an operator without the caller hearing, thereby enabling training and mentoring.
• Performance Evaluation.?By monitoring an operator's performance, you can identify gaps in training and areas where operators need improvement. This type of evaluation can create reports, graphs, and other data while scoring an operator's performance.
• Predictive Dialer.?For contact centres that make a lot of outbound calls, a predictive dialer enables a list of phone numbers to be called simultaneously. Operators are connected only when someone picks up. These systems can save a lot of time and prevent operators from having to wait for a call to be answered. Predictive dialers also monitor the availability of operators to ensure that calls aren't made when there are no operators available to route the call if someone answers.
• Workforce Management. A workforce management solution is used to capture and interrogate historical contact information in order to develop forecasts and schedules. The forecast predicts the likely incoming call or contact arrival in increments, usually in 15-minute increments, allowing a scheduler or team to identify the resources required to meet incoming demand and achieve service objectives. The outcome is a published schedule which identifies when operators need to be available to handle customer contacts. The latest solutions offer flexibility, shift trading, schedule analysis and much more.

Once you have reviewed and identified the solutions you have today, and need to deliver the best services, sales or support outcomes, you can go to market. This is also a major challenge, with over 700 providers in the market offering Contact Centre and CX technology solutions.

This is where a Contact Centre Consultant can help. By leveraging the expertise and independence of a Contact Centre consultant, you can improve your performance and outcomes, and gain assistance in identifying, sourcing and procuring the technology needed for your business.

I have decades of experience with Contact Centres, and offer my consulting services to tackle your people, process and technology challenges. If you need guidance or assistance to improve your Contact Centre, get in contact with me today on +61418627102.

Michael Clark has been recognised as one of the Top 100 Influencers in the Contact Centre Industry in APAC and as one of Australia's Top 50 Small Business Leaders for 2022, and is the co-founder and Principal Consultant at CXTT Consulting.?

Who is?CXTT Consulting?

We are a 50% Aboriginal owned company providing consulting, coaching and facilitation services.?

We deliver solutions across CX, Transformation and Technology helping you get ahead of the competition and navigate today’s challenging business conditions.??

Our existing client portfolio covers a range of sectors including Government, NFP, BPO, Utilities, Financial Services, and Technology providers. Why not book an obligation-free discussion and see how we can help you:?Book an obligation-free discussion