Verint Case Study: How the call recording option brings influential changes to Call Centres' operational effectiveness

DAS Legal

DAS Legal Expenses Insurance Company's call centre is the face of more than 3,500 business partners – partners who range from banks, lawyers and regional business associations, to insurers who require out-of-hours or emergency cover. Unsurprisingly, DAS receives 450,000 calls a year; around 80% of which are branded and answered in the name of the partner firms. The call centre is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

In October 2003, Anita Yandell-Jones joined the company as operations manager, with a specific remit to address quality and productivity within the call centre and general staff issues such as morale and sickness. As she puts it: “Staff were under pressure to deal with a high number of often tedious administrative processes which, given the call centre environment, were keeping them off the phone.”

A department audit was carried out to review staff, processes and technology, and a dedicated customer care team was set up. Comprising four staff plus a manager, this group’s principal function was to review and manage everything associated with customer care – from processes to complaints and the carrying out of customer satisfaction surveys.

The results of the audit and the first departmental staff satisfaction survey were enlightening. Yandell-Jones explains: “Staff morale was low, high sickness levels were costing the department £69,000 a year, and little was being done to maintain exceptional customer service.”

Seeking a strategy to improve morale, streamline costs and improve the call centre operation revealed a role for call recording, quality monitoring and analytics that wasn’t really working in its current guise. The call centre needed something more sophisticated – something that could play an active part in the overall quality improvement initiative and have a positive impact on staff and processes.

After Verint’s Ultra (current version, Verint Witness i360 v.11) call recording system was deployed at DAS, Yandell-Jones started noticing a difference very quickly. After just a few months, the results were impressive. Tracking down calls became simple, taking just seconds rather than days. “Calls can [now] be retrieved by any of a number of chosen indicators, from specific agent to business partner to customer number, meaning that any disputes can be looked in to and handled immediately,” she says. “We’re also using [the system] to source and store best practice calls for training purposes.”

Staff like using the system and are more motivated, helped in a large part by the coaching element of the technology, which means that staff can self-assess their performance and undergo bespoke training. This has resulted in lower staff turnover and vastly reduced absenteeism. In fact, sickness levels have gone down by about 300%.

But the biggest difference has been in quality monitoring. “Quality was on our agenda and reviewed regularly, however, this was perceived as a task and not an integral part of our culture,” says Yandell-Jones. “The reality meant that we did have some way to go before being able to claim superlative quality.”

Today, the customer care team is at the heart of the call centre, with the additional support of the call centre supervisors carrying out different sorts of monitoring on each customer call they select for review. Currently, each supervisor monitors eight calls of each type – for example, legal advice, household breakdown or claims management – per operator, per week. Given a pledge to perform 360 degree monitoring this number will, over time, increase to enable each call to have supervisor, mystery shopper and direct customer call treatment for evaluation purposes. In fact, productivity in evaluation is up by more than 70% already, meaning that more agents are evaluated far more regularly.

Consistency of customer service is vital for any organisation and DAS is no exception. As Yandell-Jones comments: “[The system] has become firmly embedded in our call centre and is an inherent part of our quality improvement programme. As time moves on, we plan more detailed analysis, using the analytical tools, to look at quality scoring techniques, and [will] use that data to ensure our agents and processes are performing as well as they could be.

“Our agents [are all] given time each week to self-evaluate a selection of calls they’ve been involved in,” she adds. “We’re finding that people are much more critical of themselves than any coach could be and this is proving very effective in helping improve overall quality of the customer experience.”

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Improving Performance Through Customer Service Metrics

Gaining the competitive edge in today’s fast-paced, constantly evolving business world means companies must escalate operating performance, reduce costs, increase reliability, improve cycle time to market, and ultimately meet and exceed customer requirements.  And oh, by the way, the call center needs to support all these corporate objectives, especially the ones about improving performance, while reducing costs and meeting service objectives.  In addition, the pressure to produce revenue through up-selling and cross-selling continues to increase.  Sound like an impossible dream…or job for a superhero?

Today’s call center manager is certainly expected to perform extraordinary feats.  But rather than calling upon superhuman powers, the best way to accomplish the above is with a well-designed performance measurement and management system and an understanding of what you should measure, when you should measure, and how you should report the information.

A finely tuned system of performance measures helps you plan for the future, manage call volumes, determine training and staffing needs, identify revenue potential, determine a program’s effectiveness, and evaluate the quality of service your customers deserve and demand.

This article takes a look at a three-step process for creating and implementing a performance measurement and management system that will provide the information required to continuously improve your call center’s policies, procedures, processes, and systems to positively impact customer satisfaction, loyalty and the company’s profitability.

Step 1 – Strategy

A performance measurement and management system (PMMS) is a powerful methodology that allows management to plan, monitor, and manage the business.  A PMMS must be built around a framework for understanding the customer experience.  No single event is responsible for customer satisfaction or loyalty.  To respond to changing business demands, managers must be flexible and quick to respond to the situation at hand.  To adapt effectively, managers need to have access to:

• Timely and relevant information
• Insight into root cause and solutions
• The ability to communicate results

A successful PMMS must also be built around an interrelated set of financial and non-financial metrics designed to provide managers with vital information about the current state of their center and its future opportunities.

Every PMMS should support the enterprise’s strategic plan.  First, you need to understand the enterprise’s business strategy and objectives.  The next step is to create department objectives linked to that enterprise strategy.  Once objectives are identified, you can then identify specific performance measures.  As you strive to align your call center objectives with those of the enterprise, keep in mind that you should continuously analyze how the center’s performance impacts the company and your customers.  It’s critical to your career to hold yourself accountable for center objectives that maximize contribution to the company’s overall objectives.

The Balanced Scorecard Strategy

It’s vitally important to have a template that helps you organize your thoughts, determine what, when, and how you will measure your call center’s performance. If you haven’t looked at the framework of your PMMS in a while, we suggest reviewing your current structure to ensure that you:

1)   Measure the critical aspects of performance,

2)   Link measures to corporate strategy, and

3)   Communicate to employees a balanced view of what is important in the organization.

Harvard Business School Professor Robert Kaplan and Renaissance Solutions President David Norton recommend a framework called the “balanced scorecard.”  The balanced scorecard incorporates both financial and non-financial factors. Their model:

• Helps align key performance measures with strategy at all levels of an organization
• Provides management with a comprehensive picture of business operations
• Facilitates communication and understanding of business goals and strategies at all levels of an organization
• Provides strategic feedback and learning

Take a minute and reflect on your call center measures in each of these four areas:

Customer Measures

Financial Measures

Process Measures

Learning and Innovation Measures

What does your center measure in each of the four areas?  If you are struggling to list even one goal in each of the areas, perhaps you need to realign your goals to achieve a balance across your organization.

Step 2 – Measures

Developing an integrated set of measures that correlate with each other is at the heart of designing a measurement system.  Once you have determined your PMMS strategy, you then need to identify the specifics of what you should measure.  And it’s important to keep in mind that just because you can “count” it, doesn’t mean it’s a measure that counts!  And the measures that really count in affect service and profitability may not be easily counted.

One way to think about key performance metrics is to think about the three groups of “call center stakeholders.”  Who are these stakeholders?  Just think about the three groups of people you as a call center manager have to keep happy every single day  –  customers, senior management, and frontline staff.

Now think about what each group cares about.  What do you need to measure for each of these stakeholders?  Customers care about service, senior management cares about efficiency and revenue, and agents care about their workload, career path and their schedule.  What then, are possible metrics to keep you on track in each of these areas?  Below are some of the most common measures associated with these stakeholder concerns:

Service

• Availability (Are we there when they want to contact us?)
  • Hours and days of operations
  • Line blockage/busy signals
  • Self-service option availability and capabilities to satisfy customer needs
• Speed of answer (How fast?)
  • Service level (x% in y seconds)
  • Average speed of answer (ASA)
  • Longest delay in queue
  • Abandoned calls
  • Response time on emails
• Quality (How well?)
  • Monitoring scores (from an internal perspective)
  • Customer surveys (from an external perspective)
  • “One-and-done” or first contact resolution

Efficiency

• Staff utilization (Do we match workforce to workload?)
  • Agent occupancy
  • Shrinkage
  • Schedule efficiency
  • Self-service utilization
  • Employee retention rate
• Contact handling (How long does it take?)
  • Average handle time (AHT)
  • After call work (ACW)
  • On-hold time
  • Transfer rates
  • System speed and availability

Revenue & Costs

• Impact of negative references
• Conversion rate (Are we selling?)
• Up-sell and cross-sell rate (Are we generating additional business?)
• Customer retention
• Impact of lost opportunities
• Cost per contact
• Sales per signed on minute
• Schedule efficiency (match of staff to demand)

Learning & Innovation

• Voice of the customer initiatives (Are we really listening to customers?)
• Value of information provided to other departments
• Career growth of personnel in the center

Frontline Staff Satisfaction:

• Schedule (work/life balance)
• Fair workload
• Career development opportunities
• Absentee rate
• Turnover rate

Call Center Top Twenty

We’ve frequently been asked to pick the top twenty measures that are most often used in the best-of-class call centers.  Our standard consultant’s answer is “It depends…”  Every business and every call center is unique and therefore no two call centers should have the exact same set of metrics.  Essentially, all of these measures can be contained in management’s three-legged stool of customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and company profitability.  However, there are some commonly occurring measures that appear on nearly everyone’s list, and the most frequently used ones are listed below:

Call blockage	Error/rework percentage
Abandon rate	Hold time
Service level or ASA	First call resolution (one and done)
Schedule adherence	Successful sales percentage
Agent occupancy	Successful up-sell percentage
Scheduled to actual staff	Quality monitoring scores
Self-service percentage	Employee retention
Average Handle Time (AHT)	Customer retention
Transfer percentage	Employee satisfaction
Cost per call	Customer satisfaction

Our hesitancy to pick the “Top 20” is perhaps best illustrated by taking a look at two different centers and seeing how each varies from the Top 20 measures listed above.  Let’s compare the measures for the customer service area of a local cable company with those of an inbound call center that’s handling catalog orders.  In reviewing this list, think how measures might be different still for a technical help desk or an airlines reservation center.  Then think about how your own list of metrics would be different and why.

Customer Service

Self-service percentage	Service level or ASA
First call resolution	Agent occupancy
Error/rework percentage	Employee retention
Transfer percentage	Quality monitoring scores
Cost per call	Customer satisfaction

Catalog Sales

Revenue per call	Customer satisfaction
Sales per agent	Customer retention
Successful sales percentage	Hold time
Successful up-sell percentage	Abandon rate
Quality monitoring scores	AHT

There are several measures that are similar between the customer service and sales centers above.  This example is one where the center cares about service, but has a strong focus on increasing operating performance and reducing cost.  The catalog sales center on the other hand has a primary focus on making the most of revenue opportunities. What is your organization’s primary focus and how do your call center measures reflect that?

As another example, let’s take a look at a company who has been losing customers to the competition over the last two years.  One of this company’s primary business goals for the year is to “Retain Customers.”  How would this translate into call center objectives, and more specifically, into a system of performance measures?  Here are some possible examples of performance measures that would link into the bigger corporate goal:

• Abandonment rate
• Customer satisfaction score
• Speed of answer
• First call resolution or ”one-and-done”
• Escalated calls
• Customer comments captured and passed to appropriate departments

Each of the above is a critical factor that impacts customer satisfaction and retention.  Now take a closer look at just one of these factors – escalated calls.  How could we develop a call center objective based on this factor?  First, we need to know what our current performance is for escalated calls.  Let’s assume that in our call center, escalated calls represent 30% of a supervisor’s workload last month, and each call also indicates a customer who was not completely satisfied by the interaction with the agent.  The call center objective could be to reduce the number of escalated calls by 3% within the next 6 months.

Now that we have finalized the objective, how do we communicate it to the center?  We need to let supervisors and front-line staff know what the objective is and why.  For example, inform your staff that by reducing the number of escalated calls to the supervisor, they are helping the supervisor become more available to assist frontline staff.  If supervisors are not spending as much time on escalated calls, then they can provide coaching opportunities to the frontline staff, which should improve the service they provide customers, thus increasing our customer retention rate.  We may also need to find a way for agents to be able to satisfy more callers themselves by giving them more authority or access to information.

As you evaluate what to measure, consider the relevance of the goals you set.  Take for example a speed of answer goal of 30 seconds.  Do customers care that the average was 30 seconds or that the period in which they called was 30 seconds?  Would customers care if ASA was 10 seconds longer/shorter?  What about 30 seconds longer/shorter?  Would the tradeoff be worth the savings or expense?  Business objectives for the enterprise change.  Shouldn’t call center goals be changed to match?

The call center acts as a central repository of data.  Don’t be data rich and insight poor!  Are there things in our call center that you can measure that might enable you to strengthen your relationship with other departments, such as marketing or product development?  What about things you can measure that might enable you to be proactive and initiate action, such as helping measure the success of various marketing programs or identifying reasons customers are calling to alert the production area of needed changes?  As you select the metrics for your call center, keep in mind that your ability to demonstrate value to the enterprise will assist you in getting the resources you need to do your job.

When to Measure

In deciding when to measure, keep in mind the two distinct time periods of real-time versus historical measurement.  Real-time data provides specifics for the “right now”.  Historical data provides statistics over time such as weekly, monthly, or quarterly and provide cumulative results.  Cumulative data helps to identify trends and/or fluctuation in performance.

Is Your Call Center a Strategic Asset or a Victim?

When call centers first began to emerge, the roles were fairly simple. Take care of the customer complaint calls so that they wouldn’t end up in the executive office, provide basic services to customers, and take orders from prospective customers. With the advent of toll-free services in the 1970s, there was a whole new way for customers to reach us and we had to manage that influx of calling. The emphasis in the early call centers was efficiency. Get the calls handled as inexpensively as possible while still meeting customer needs. Most of us set a fairly arbitrary speed of answer goal that was designed to balance service with cost, and we’ve been fighting the battle to get enough staff every since.

I’d like to suggest that we need to change the position of the call center in our organizations. It is fair to say that most call center agents talk to more customers in a day than many other employees talk to in a year. This is where customer relationships are made or broken and we need to put the emphasis on maximizing the value of the call center’s contribution to the company’s future.

So as a call center manager, look at the enterprise as a whole and determine how the call center can be best positioned to produce the strategic results needed. Don’t think of Marketing as the enemy because they embark on campaigns that increase call center workload without warning. Instead, embrace Marketing as an important function that the call center must join with to exploit  opportunities to grow the business. That will maximize the call center’s ability to handle the calls and the effective utilization of marketing dollars. Help the Product Development teams to figure out ways to improve the offerings so that customers don’t find that they need to call as often. Work with
Billing to identify ways to make the invoices more easily understood by tracking the most frequently asked questions and discussing them in regular meeting. In other words, become part of the solution, rather than a victim.

When was the last time you analyzed your staffing needs based on the marginal cost of additional resources versus the added revenue or value that might be attributed to the added calls that would be handled? Many centers know their cost per call, but few that don’t do direct sales have any real idea of the value of a handled call. Surely every call has some value or you wouldn’t be answering any of them, so get consensus on a value range and take a look at the tradeoffs of various staffing levels on that value.

You might find that your speed of answer goal is not the one that would provide the greatest
profitability and selling management on more staff to increase profitability is sure a lot easier than based on an arbitrary speed of answer goal. Unless your business is unusual, approximately 80% of profits come from less than 20% of the customer base, but many companies don’t know which customers are the profitable ones. The call center can identify those customers who call frequently (and why) so that (Strategic Asset) the company can figure out ways to serve them more profitably.

Perhaps these customers need to be up-sold to a more profitable product/service, charged differently for services, offered only self-help options, or even encouraged to take their unprofitable business to a competitor.
Get a place on the planning committees and show that the call center is the “voice of the customer” and a strategic asset to the company. It will improve your life and your agent’s lives. People will aspire to work in the call center and view your team with the respect they so richly deserve.