Call Center Comics-Winner
At the end of 2007 and
into 2008 we ran a contest for people to submit their
call center cartoon ideas. We have chosen the top two
winners. The first winner is featured this issue and
next issue will show the other top winner. Ozzie drew
the cartoons from the inspiration of the submissions.
Each winner has received a big box of goodies from the
NACC for being a top winner. Thank you to all that
submitted ideas.
This cartoon winner was submitted by Shelly from
Wisconsin at the Northwestern Mutual Life call center.
Great job Shelly.

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.
Call Center "Hidden Factories"
Alan Madison, Vice-President, Customer Care, H&R Block,
alan.madison@hrblock.com.
A hidden factory is a
group of people that are fixing a problem that didn’t
get done right the first time. An even less flattering
term is “scraping burnt toast.” Whether you call them
hidden factories or toast scraping operations or one of
the seven forms of muda (waste) in the Toyota Production
System framework, they are part of the huge, often
invisible, costs of poor quality and they are everywhere
in companies today.
Call centers know the hidden factory problem all too
well. In many cases large parts of a call center are
not-so-hidden-factories themselves. For example, centers
that provide product service and support are especially
vulnerable to design and manufacturing problems and
receive a huge spike in calls because of product flaws.
But call centers also create hidden factories inside
their own walls and in other parts of the company by
doing work incorrectly. The most common hidden factory
call centers create is call backs about an improperly
handled issue.
Another example of a call center hidden factory comes
from a colleague running another call center. His tech
support agents are frequently misdiagnosing the problem
or failing to check warranty terms and incorrectly
authorizing a product return. The result is a mountain
of unnecessary cost to process this wrongly returned
merchandise.
Finally, in my own center, we were mapping a very
complex call type as part of a larger effort to
standardize the agent call handling process. I said to
my team, “How on earth are we teaching this complex,
conditional process to our largely seasonal agents?” My
team said, “In the classroom and via web based training,
but they don’t always get it right so we just go in and
clean it up afterwards.” Because we were not able to
ensure the agents were following the correct process, we
created a hidden factory of people to go in and clean it
up.
In H&R Block’s call centers, we are determined to stop
creating these hidden factories. The first step is to
define, in detail, how we want each call type to go.
Using a recently acquired agent desktop tool we then
attach prerecorded audio files to the defined call flow,
which the agents can control with a simple desktop
interface. Using this agent-assisted voice solution,
every one of my agents began following the process we
engineered and defined for them on every call. The early
returns from this approach are showing higher First Call
Resolution, lower handle time, fewer customer
escalations and dramatically higher adherence to
internal system processes.
Call center leaders need to reflect on the hidden
factories their own agents are creating. What are the
agents doing on all those calls? Are they really
following the correct procedure every time? Does
monitoring really have any chance of detecting each
agent as they make the mistakes that are creating hidden
factories? Is coaching going to fix this problem at all,
let alone fast enough? The answers are “We don’t know,”
“Not always,” “No,” and “No way.”
In my view, these should no longer be acceptable
answers. Hoping for quality by improving agent-level
scripts, side-by-side coaching, remote monitoring and
chair drops won’t change the outcomes in a fast-paced
call center. It’s time for call center leaders to change
the game.
Here are three key steps to start eliminating hidden
factories in your organization:
1. Find out where your biggest hidden factories are. Is
it escalations/call backs? Reworking something the
agents have done?
2. Define the exact call handling process you want
agents to follow. Get training, QA, Team Leads and the
best agents in the room to do this. I will bet you a
paycheck that they initially do not all agree on what
the process should be.
3. Do not try to fix the agents one at a time. Find ways
to standardize what all agents do and say on the call
using desktop consolidation and agent-assisted voice
solutions.
The Human Factor
in Customer Service
By Paul Stockford, NACC
Advisory Board Member
Back in 2005 a
Boston-based consumer advocate named Paul English
launched a web site designed to help the average
consumer navigate through automated telephone
interactive voice response (IVR) systems in order to
reach a human customer service representative. The web
site (www.gethuman.com) obviously touched a nerve in the
general population as there was a groundswell of
interest and support with press coverage ranging from
the Wall Street Journal to People Magazine and from CNN
to ABC, NBC and Fox News programs. The web site’s
directory of companies with accompanying instructions on
how to bypass their automated telephone answering system
grew to about 650 by early 2008.
Also by 2008, there was a marked difference in the
momentum behind the gethuman movement. It seemed that
media attention had waned along with the attention of
the consumer population and, apparently, the movement’s
founder. The latest posting in the NACC blog reviews the
gethuman movement from its meteoric rise to changes in
the works that you should be aware of. If your contact
center hasn’t gotten human yet, follow the link below:
http://nationalcallcenters.typepad.com/nacc_blog/
60 Ideas in 60 Minutes Round IX
For an introduction to the "60 Ideas in 60 Minutes" essays, or to read
previously published rounds, please visit our archives
and start with
Volume 2, Issue 22 of In Queue.
David L. Butler-Let
me bring up Jeff Bezos again. I guess he should have
been invited to this panel since we are talking about
him so much. And as a disclaimer, I am an Amazon.com
shareholder, but you cannot find their 800 number on
their website, even if you try. I spent years trying to
find it. They have it hidden so deeply. They are trying
to force you to a web-based system which brings me to my
next point. Instead of trying to go multi-channel, go
single-channel, go uni-channel. Most customers they just
want to sit down and pick up the phone number. They
don’t want your IVR; they just want to get an agent and
get the answer handled and get off the phone. That is
what they want. So instead of to actually handle
multiple channels, especially if you don’t have the
capability or people and thus do each channel partially,
go single channel, do it with the phones. Simplify your
IVR, keep it simple for everybody, that is when
customers get satisfied and that is when they start
repurchasing.
William (Bill) Durr-A
real simple idea I saw at a contact center some time
ago. At the end of each agent’s shift they had the IT
department build a little applet that put up a dialogue
box for the agent just before they logged off. And in
the dialog box was a question: “what single things
frustrated you the most today?” Or “What policy could
you not defend?” Lots of times the agents did not have a
lot to put in, but every once in a while they do and it
is a nugget.
Penny Reynolds-Many
of you probably have new supervisors out there wondering
what they are suppose to say in a coaching session. I am
a big fan of doing a walk-by or fly-by coaching. You
know, stop by three or four minutes as opposed to
scheduling one hour two weeks from now. But there is a
real technique to delivering that on-the-spot coaching
and most supervisors make the mistake of what we call a
love sandwich. And that is starting out with something
nice and then we give them the critique and then we have
to say something nice at the end. We have to sandwich
the bad thing with two nice things on the end. That is
actually a mistake. Some people hear
both the good and the bad, they process both. Some hear
just the negative things you said and miss the positive.
Some people are just hearing only how great they did but
they miss the point of what you are trying to fix. So
separate the two. We can still end on an up note when
you are delivering a critique.
Garry Schultz-Do
get involved with marketing, do get involved with the PM
team as well as project marketing and project team
manger. In fact, we go proactive with it so they do not
come to us looking for data. We are trying to get it to them
before they ask us for it. Who know most about the
attach rate and what is going to attach well? The 600
people who you have on the floor taking telephone calls.
Who knows what resonates with the customer best? Who
knows the five closers on a product? Your agents do.
Collect that data proactively and get that to the
marketing people before they ask for it. Up-sell and
cross-sell. Once again your agents are going to have that
data. You just need the conduit to collect that data and
get it to the marketing and product people
Chris Crosby-Whatever
you do, do not go single channel. I understand David’s
point, but I think we are throwing the baby out with the
bathwater. Solve what the real issues are; put the toll
free number where people can get it. Make it easy for
customers to do business with you in a way that is
comfortable for them. I am a web guy. I would much
rather get on the web site and solve the problem myself.
Whether that’s in a users group, or sending an email, or
logging on to get my account balance versus calling an
agent. We cannot make the assumption that everybody is
like me and we cannot make the assumption that everyone
wants to pick-up the phone and call a toll free number
either. So back to my point early about caller types,
take a dive in and understand how it is comfortable for
your customers to interact with you and then take those
channels and make it easy.
Kevin Hegebarth-Measure
what matters. I don’t have quite an endearing a story as
Bill had with the King and the price, but I did run a
call center for a major Southeastern telecommunications
company for a while and our standard AHT was 120
seconds. We killed forest with reports of 120 seconds
AHT reports. I had a call center rep working for me
whose AHT way of the charts, I mean, way, way, way on
the left side of the bell curve. He never achieved his
AHT goal. And I continued to coach him on it, because
that was my job- that is what I was told to do. We had
to manage based on AHT so I did what I was told. I sat
and listened to his contacts one day and I found why his
AHT was closer to 5 and 6 minutes was that he was
developing a rapport with the customer and ended up
selling them more than any other sales person I had on
my staff. Measure what matters.
To view past issues of
In Queue, please
click here.
If you would like to contribute to
In Queue, please reply to this email with "Contribute" in the subject
line.
Copyright 2008 National Association of Call Centers
|