What do you actually want your Contact Centre Advisors to do?

The title of this particular blog seems to pose a fairly simple and straightforward question at first glance.? But is it really as obvious as it seems?? I thought I’d take a look at the various things that we are currently asking our workforce to do and, more importantly, why.

A Contact Centre advisor’s role requires a lot of skill and attracts a varied amount of focus and scrutiny in a multitude of ways.? Have a think about the KPI’s by which you measure the success (or otherwise) of your front-line workers; it could be talk time, hold time, sales conversions, direct bookings, calls answered, available time, quality scores, schedule adherence, after call wrap - the list could go on and on.? And, in some businesses, the list DOES go on and on, and as a result, advisors are pulled this way and that, trying to be all things to all men (and women).

Imagine how exhausting that must be.

I often wonder - honestly, more often that I probably should - does anyone really understand what the core skills are in a Contact Centre and how to truly measure what good looks like for all of them?? Sometimes it feels like we are considering some of these metrics simply BECAUSE WE CAN rather than because of any intrinsic value that they bring.? You should choose what you measure wisely for, if you get this wrong, you could be promoting a whole range of undesirable behaviours and outcomes to chase a number of seemingly ‘key’ performance indicators.

I want to take a closer look at a brief selection of some of the more problematic metrics in a little more detail.

AHT

One of the big things that businesses seem to focus on is AHT (Average Handling Time).? I’ve seen LinkedIn posts recently discussing this topic and I’ve commented to the effect that I cannot believe that, in the 21st Century, we are still seeing businesses looking to drive AHT down. I’m incredulous because the link between a poorly completed call and a surge in repeat calls has long been established.? If you force agents to end a possible-400 second call in 300 seconds, the likelihood is that they will have failed to successfully - and fully - resolve the caller's queries and the caller will have to call again.? Repeat contacts cost much more than a few extra seconds of talk time so choose your battles wisely.

Don’t get me wrong - the average length of a conversation with a customer should not be allowed to go on unfettered and free!? It is right to look to have some control over AHT - through training and coaching, call control can become a valuable skill making you a more efficient and effective call handler.? However, it is much more important to understand the make up of AHT - how much of it is talk time, hold time, after call wrap? You should be looking to understand what the AHT is telling you about your advisors, your customers and your systems.? And, of course, for the planners out there - AHT is an absolutely vital cog in the calculation of your staffing requirements, so we need to understand what the AHT realistically needs to be so we can set a realistic budget.

Ask yourself - do you want the advisor to simply answer the customer contact or to actually RESOLVE the reason behind the contact and provide excellent customer service?

Adherence

Quite possibly the single most misunderstood metric in the entire world.? The more businesses I talk to, the more I am concerned over this metric as I hear that businesses are either placing too high a level of importance on adherence or they’ve ‘kicked it to the curb’ and stopped measuring it altogether.? Both of these are the wrong approach on so many levels.

Schedule adherence is important, but only when understood correctly, applied appropriately and used as an aid to understanding and not a measure of performance.? The worst thing to do is to treat schedule adherence as a target - it is not a target, it is an expression of tolerance. As a business, you should expect everyone to strive towards 100% schedule adherence wherever possible - your ‘target’ of 90% (as a typical example) is actually your business’s acceptance that this is not always possible and an indication of your tolerance based on factors such as average call length. Once you view it in this light, you are forced to ‘police’ it in an entirely different manner.? For further reference on this, please read The Forum’s Best Practice Guide for 2020 which has a fantastic article on ‘Target Typology’.

The SECOND worst thing to do is to measure it without also measuring schedule conformance.? Adherence without Conformance is like Morecambe without Wise, Cannon without Ball and ‘To Me’ without ‘To You’.? They should come as a package as, together, they provide you with a great insight into positive and negative behaviours in your workplace.? And, finally, the THIRD worst thing you can do is ignore it completely!? I’m sure businesses feel it is terribly ‘woke’ of them to stop measuring schedule adherence but, believe me, this can only lead to anarchy and confusion.? You should always have a view on schedule adherence - but use your knowledge of it like a wand rather than a sledgehammer.

Ask yourself - do you really want people to be targeted on their ability to stick to a schedule or would you prefer to measure their capacity to do so and use the data you receive to make your plans and operation more effective?

Sales Conversions / Booking rates

In the world of sales, these are undeniably of huge significance.? What percentage of customer contacts your advisor can turn into cold hard cash is a great and necessary measure of the performance of your sales machine.? Driving people to achieve more and more in this area can only add benefit to your bottom line.

But what else does this measure show you?? Well, it tells you about the quality of the leads you are presenting people with - are you providing them with the highest octane fuel that you can or are people - to continue the analogy - trying to make fire with damp twigs?? It also speaks about your approach - your scripts, your system prompts, your training and coaching.? It does not always mean that a failing agent lacks the skills, attitude or motivation to hit targets. Businesses that beat people about the head with this single metric without looking at supporting metrics will fail to deliver the results they desire.

Pushing people on these measures too hard can also promote some less-than-desirable behaviours.? Are your agents dropping or transferring calls once they discover there isn’t a sales opportunity so they can move onto the next one, leading to an appalling customer experience?? Are your agents going the other way?? We’ve all encountered that salesperson that simply won’t stop until they get a yes - are they spending far too much time pressuring customers to say ‘yes’ and giving an entirely different, but ultimately just as appalling customer experience?

Ask yourself - even in the cut-throat, target-driven world of sales, do you really want to make a judgement on performance and ability based on a single metric or do you want to look at a more balanced view of an agent’s contribution?

In summary, I think it’s absolutely vital that you view all of your contact centre metrics with three words firmly in the front of your mind;

BALANCE - Think about each of your metrics and see how performance in each of them affects others.? For instance, is it really possible to drive down your AHT and, simultaneously, increase your Quality and NPS scores?? Is it possible to ask your agents to dedicate themselves fully to a customer contact and punish them harshly for not adhering to their schedule (whilst offering no flexibility)?? If your main focus is on Quality, is it fair to ask your advisors to go at 200 mph just to hit all of your other productivity metrics?? Looking through a single lens will always give you a very restricted field of vision - make sure that you are looking at your data with enough breadth to give you the full picture.

CAUSE - If you are really going to force after call wrap to new depths, have you considered what is actually possible with the tools at the agent’s disposal?? Have you multiskilled your agents onto competing skills with different, non-compatible computer systems in play?? If so, can you really expect to see the kinds of productivity levels you have modelled or aspired to?? Make sure that your agents are well equipped and prepared - don’t send them mountaineering in flip-flops!?

INSIGHT - Contact Centre work is absolutely brilliant if you like stats.? There are lists as long as your arm, detailing exactly what your agents did, when they did it and how.? It is tempting to dive head first into this wonderful sea of data - ‘come in, the data’s lovely!’ - and swim about in event-level detail about hundreds and hundreds of people.? However, data is NOTHING without insight.? ‘Why’ is much more powerful than ‘What’ and ‘When’. Make sure that you take the time to understand what the data is actually telling you.? A lot of Customer demand is driven by a failure somewhere along the line - self-service offering is poor, part of the system isn’t working as expected or we failed to signpost something correctly. Understanding the real drivers, considering how A affects B and finding out WHY something happened (and fixing it!) means that the Contact Centre and customer experience become the priority of everyone concerned, not just the advisors and leaders.

QStory’s Intraday Automation software is designed to provide you with the insight behind the data, help you to understand the causes behind your performance and give you a balanced view of all of your competing metrics - all live, all automatically, right throughout the day.? Armed with insightful information at your fingertips, your business can make better informed, agile decisions, designed to provide your customers, your colleagues and your business with the best experiences and outcomes possible.

So, please drop me a line - [email protected] - and let's talk about how QStory can transform your business.