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Survey Results-Who's Using What?
by By Paul Stockford, NACC
Advisory Board Member
In
February we asked the readers of this newsletter to
participate in a short survey that would give us a broad
idea of current attitudes toward the economy, hiring,
evaluating and acquiring technology and what contact
center solutions were currently in use. Previous issues
of this newsletter have provided an overview of the
demographics of the 125 survey respondents. In this
issue, we look at who is using what applications and
solutions so those of you who are interested can compare
your operation to those of your peers.
One of the most startling results of this survey was the
number of respondents who are currently using Voice over
Internet Protocol (VoIP) infrastructure. We were
surprised to learn that 40.5% of respondents have VoIP
technology in their contact center. If the number in our
survey is fairly representative of the population as a
whole, the number of VoIP users in the contact center is
much higher than I had thought.
Of the remaining survey respondents; i.e., those not
currently using VoIP, 22.4 percent planned to evaluate
VoIP for purchase in 2008 while the remainder simply had
no interest in VoIP at present.
The survey results indicate that VoIP has become a
mainstream contact center technology. No longer
restricted to the largest contact centers with the
correspondingly large budgets, VoIP has become an
affordable and practical solution for the mass market.
This belief was further validated by our survey results
in that the market segment with the greatest interest in
evaluating and acquiring VoIP this year is the small
contact center. Of all respondents who indicated an
interest in acquiring VoIP technology, 46 percent were
in contact centers with 75 or fewer seats.
On the other end of the scale, larger contact centers
with more than 400 seats represented only ten percent of
those indicating an interest in acquiring VoIP. This is
probably not a result of a low level of interest in VoIP
but rather an indicator that VoIP is already prevalent
in this market segment.
Speech analytics is one of the new contact center
technologies that has received heaps of hype over the
past couple of years. I thought this would be a
technology solution that would be of high interest to
the survey respondents, but just the opposite was true.
More than 70 percent of respondents reported no interest
in looking at speech analytics for their contact center.
Of the 22 percent of respondents who did indicate an
interest in speech analytics, 58 percent are in contact
centers with 75 or more agent seats.
One of the most surprising survey results, at least to
me, was the poor showing of e-learning in the hearts and
minds of the respondents. I consider e-learning to be a
highly useful, almost necessary, contact center tool.
Our survey respondents, however, seem to take a slightly
different point of view. Only about a quarter of all
survey respondents are currently using e-learning in
their contact center with another quarter of respondents
showing interest in evaluating e-learning in 2008. Half
of the respondents indicated no interest in e-learning
at all.
I wonder if the lack of interest in e-learning, which
turned in the highest incident of disinterest in our
survey results, is somehow linked to the high turnover
rates experienced by so many contact centers. Without
training to improve performance, compensation and
promotion potential, I can see how some agents may see a
bleak future and seek employment elsewhere. My NACC blog
posting of May 5th, found at
http://nationalcallcenters.typepad.com/nacc_blog/,
addresses the human resources conundrum in the contact
center, and your comments are always welcome.
More of who’s using what in my next essay. We will also
begin discussing some of the factors that are
influencing the acquisition of new contact center
technologies in 2008.
Recruiting and Remunerating Spanish-Speakers
by Astrid Rial, President
& Founder
Arial International,
astrid@arialinternational.com
Call
Centers who recruit bilingual talent to service
Spanish-speaking customers seek associates who can
effectively communicate in both English and Spanish. In
the last two years we have observed that many more
companies are providing additional compensation in the
form of a bilingual premium or differential to bilingual
call center associates. The Stanton Group 2008 Customer
Service and Call Center Survey results showed that 38.5%
of organizations pay a premium (other than overtime) for
multilingual skills. Of those organizations 60.0%
reported to pay an hourly premium for Spanish-language
skills with an average hourly premium of $0.83 per hour
(Increase of 10% from 2007).
Many
Spanish speakers in the US speak colloquial or familiar
Spanish, so the challenge for recruiters is objectively
verifying that bilingual job candidates are able to
competently communicate in professional and appropriate
Spanish for business situations. Unless an interviewer
is fully fluent in both languages, it is difficult, if
not impossible, to distinguish between casual and
business Spanish.
Let’s
evaluate the following requirements commonly used in
bilingual (Spanish/English) recruitment ads:
1. Bilingual abilities are a plus;
2. Bilingual preferred;
3. Bilingual preferred; at a minimum, the ability to
understand and to make one’s self understood to all
Spanish speaking individuals;
4. Excellent verbal and written communications skills
required in both English and Spanish ;
5. Bilingual and able to read, write and speak Spanish
proficiently;
6. Must speak and write Spanish fluently.
In this sample, there are six different descriptions of
sought-after job applicant skill sets, but each one
requires a different level of Spanish communication
expertise. In the first two examples where bilingual
skills are “a plus” or “preferred”, a recruiter may
decide to “take the candidate’s word” that he can speak
Spanish. However in the last four examples, the company
is seeking specific bilingual abilities. In these
situations, an objective language proficiency assessment
is highly recommended as in-house appraisals tend to be
subjective.
Best Practice “Tips”
How do recruiters assess a candidate’s communication and
comprehension skills? Many companies require candidates
to complete verbal and/or written language proficiency
assessments: objective, scientifically designed
evaluations of the candidate’s communication skills.
Effective assessments are fact-based, consistent and
unbiased, simulate the skill sets required of the
associates and use a proven testing and scoring
methodology.
Assessment services that require no advance appointment
are the most flexible for recruiters since no planning
is required and an eligible candidate may be assessed at
the time of the interview. Some companies prefer to
assess candidates for bilingual positions at the first
stage in the interview process so that they only spend
their internal resources on qualified candidates while
other companies assess Spanish proficiency in the final
steps of the process, after the candidate has fulfilled
other hiring requirements.
Call Centers are able to recruit the most qualified
candidates when the job description specifies the
language requirements. Advising potential candidates in
advance that their language skills will be tested can
help weed out unqualified candidates from applying. This
is a time-saver for recruiters as only those candidates
who are confident in their bilingual communication
skills will apply for a position if they know in advance
they will be tested.
Benefits and Cost-Savings
Once assessed, call centers can assign associates to the
business process they are most qualified to fill,
thereby improving employee retention, reducing turnover
and, ultimately, delivering the highest level of
customer service. Other benefits and cost-savings
companies experience by conducting language proficiency
assessments include:
• increase the probability of hiring the right
candidate;
• reduce training time for new recruits;
• provide objective data to justify paying a bilingual
differential;
• reduce costs of discharging an employee due to
inadequate skills; and
• deliver consistent, excellent, high quality service to
your customers.
Many companies conduct personality tests, clerical and
computation skills assessments and drug and alcohol
checks to screen job applicants. These employers know
the benefits of pre-employment testing. Now companies
who serve multi-lingual customers have an additional
resource available: language proficiency assessments to
objectively test communication and comprehension skills
of bilingual job candidates.
A New Approach to Cost Structures for Today's Contact
Centers (Part 3 of 3)
Lori Bocklund, President
and Brian Hinton, Sr. Consultant - Strategic Contact,
Inc.,
lori@strategiccontact.com and
brian@strategiccontact.com
This essay is the last in
a series of three that discusses a new approach to
modeling cost structures and distribution in the contact
center. The first in the series focused on the modeling
approach we used to show how costs are distributed in
today’s contact center. The second focused on the
results of this approach. This, our final essay,
addresses how to apply the results to your environment.
Figure 1 shows the cost distribution results of our
analysis. While we hope it’s valuable for people to
understand the raw results of this analysis, we also
want to take a step back and ask, “What do these results
tell centers about where to invest, the changes they are
considering, and ways to improve their operations?”

Combining the analysis results with what we see
companies struggle with routinely, we have found:
• Focusing on front-line labor productivity is in fact
the right thing to do; it is 90% of the contact center
labor budget, and two-thirds to three-fourths of the
overall operating budget. Finding ways to get more bang
for your labor buck just makes sense.
• Technology costs, while they may seem large when faced
with a vendor quote, are a relatively small slice of the
pie (2.6-5.9%). Investing in technology to make the
workforce more efficient can have a profound and lasting
impact. As a relatively small part of the overall
operating budget, technology can have a big impact on
the expensive labor part.
• Consider a long-term view, not just the short-term,
tactical view. Too often, we see centers making
short-term decisions to meet a budget goal that
compromise the desired long-term benefit.
• Centers considering virtualization have a compelling
cost opportunity if it takes them from several small or
medium centers to one larger virtual center – a 20-50%
reduction in cost per contact in our analysis.
• The range of the labor cost is not as varied as
perhaps we previously thought, but regardless, it is a
big percent. As you make changes, keep in mind this is a
big ship that will take time to turn. Strategic
decisions, changes, and investments have to be given
time to make their impact.
• It is important to recognize the difference between
total cost and limited costs such as non-loaded labor
and other corporate costs (technology, facilities, etc.)
not being allocated to the center. While the call center
may focus on its budget (generally labor), considering
overall costs can lead to the best decisions for the
corporation.
• When analyzing alternatives such as outsourcing or
hosted solutions, companies should consider the total
costs, as this analysis does. While a labor cost
reduction can have an impact, you must consider the
impact on other areas such as fixed labor,
telecommunications, technology, and training when
considering alternative sourcing options.
Armed with more knowledge about the distribution of
these costs and what contributes to overall cost per
contact, we hope that centers can make the best
decisions to optimize their operations.
To download the full
report highlighted in the past three essays, click on
the link below.
http://www.strategiccontact.com/pdf/CC_Cost_WP.pdf
Call Center Comics

If you like this comic
and would like to see more write Ozzie at
callcentercomics@yahoo.com and visit his website at
http://callcentercomics.com/cartoon_categories.htm
or just click on the comic to take you to his page. The
NACC appreciates Ozzie letting us use some of his comics
in our newsletter.
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In Queue, please
click here.
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In Queue, please reply to this email with "Contribute" in the subject
line.
Copyright 2008 National Association of Call Centers
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