UC and the Contact Center: The Real Approach to Success

Unified Communication (UC), as both concept and product, has been around for over 10 years. In fact, I remember working on my first UC client 15 years ago. So why has it taken so long for the idea to really take hold, or has it? Better yet, what is the attraction that UC holds to the contact center that has folks looking to give every agent a UC client on their desktop? Well, that all depends upon who you consider an “agent”.

Fifteen years ago, back in the stone age, there were only a handful of ways communications happened in the business world: telephone, fax, brick-sized cell phone, pager and e-mail. Compared to today, a very simple list of methods to reach out and touch someone. A “Unified Communication” client needed only to provide a singular interface to the telephone system and e-mail system as the other communication forms were largely reachable through various e-mail gateways. The hard work was the connection to the PBX as every PBX had a unique interface.

Those that deployed these early UC clients were able to improve the speed with which users dialed the phone, created conference calls and accessed unique PBX features that were hard to use. Phone numbers on web pages were dialable through a “Swipe & Dial” capability. Caller ID became useful through the link to one’s address book. In short, the early focus of UC clients was on making it easier to utilize voice services.

Fast forward to today. Voice calls still represent a large percentage of communication activity in the business world. E-mail is now accessed through smartphones as much as it is through our desktop applications. Microsoft Office has sweetened the pot by bringing “Smart Tags” to the full suite of applications. Smart Tags allow names and phone numbers found within any Office application to be linked to one’s Outlook address book thus the name of a colleague appearing in a document will have a drop-down box available via right-click that then displays all the available means of contacting the highlighted person. Add to this convenience the “always on” nature of smartphones with Internet access, text messaging ubiquity and the rise in Social Networks and the landscape of communication choices is the broadest it has ever been. Today’s UC clients need to provide connectivity to all these forms of communication in a seamless fashion including recipient status and one’s own status. In short, the business user with a fully functional UC client has access to some very powerful technology to help them be connected and stay connected to those people who matter.

So how does this apply to the contact center? Here is where the current UC model breaks down.

Today’s Unified Communication client, while a powerful application to enhance the communication tools utilized in the business, lacks a few key features to make it suitable for the contact center.

Contact centers are all about delivering service to customers. The service delivery model commonly involves communicating with customers using a variety of media. This service delivery model, when well designed, also requires that there be continuity between prior interactions and the current interaction. Here is where the UC client falls down; continuity.

While the common UC client is very adept and consolidating the wide variety of communication forms into a single desktop application, the tools are not designed to capture the detailed account of what brought about the latest interaction, the outcome of prior interactions and the follow-up dates for future contact with the customer. In short, the UC client is not a replacement for a quality CRM application. The UC clients being sold today are ideal tools for consolidating but are lousy for tracking and sharing customer interactions. Thus we get to the core reason UC clients are not a good choice for customer service agents.

A quality CRM application provides the means for capturing all aspects of each interaction between a customer and a service delivery resource. That service delivery resource may be an agent in a contact center or may be a product specialist in the back office or perhaps someone in the warehouse. Any resource that can be involved in the service delivery process needs an access method for updating the CRM system.

Does that mean every employee needs an expensive desktop license and associated training for the CRM application? No. What it does mean is that while the UC client is a useful tool for each and every employee, those who also interact with customers need to have a means for connecting the UC tools and the CRM tools together. In other words, the UC client can serve as the software interface used by non-agents provided there is a means for capturing a summary of the interaction into the existing CRM system. Such a design delivers all the needed functionality with a minimum amount of user training.

Thus we have the designated lines of demarcation. The dedicated contact center staff need a quality CRM application with the UC connectivity embedded into the desktop application. The ROI of such an investment is easy to calculate and justify. The Unified Communication client, suitable for the balance of the employees within a business, certainly delivers benefit to the organization though the ROI is a bit softer. Where the 2 worlds overlap, the UC client needs to be connected to the CRM system resulting in the best of both worlds.

If you are in the market for a Unified Communication client and looking to deploy the client within the service delivery realm, ask the vendors how their client connects to your existing CRM system. You may be surprised at the answer and grateful that you asked.

If you would like help insuring that your Unified Communication client does what it should, I am happy to help. Please call me and I will be happy to provide assistance: 602-492-1088.

Science of Business – Made Easy! [Inertia]

The law of inertia is very simple.  It states that an object in motion will stay in motion until it is acted upon by something that changes it direction or speed of motion.  The law of inertia also states that an object at rest - motionless - will remain at rest until an external force causes motion of the object.

 

So how does the law of inertia apply to a business?

The laws of inertia apply to businesses in a wide variety of ways.  Let’s start with motion.  Within every company, the act of delivering a product or service to a customer involves motion.  More deliveries equals more motion.  Less deliveries equals less motion.   Sending out flyers to prospects equals more motion.  Asking for referrals equals more motion.  Behind each of these motions is someone putting forth effort.

Essentially, inertia is a product of effort; effort from employees and effort from customers.  Employees contribute to the inertia levels through their actions to help grow the company.  Whether it be selling, delivering, servicing or supporting those who do these things, each employee’s efforts towards making the company a success contributes to a higher level of inertia. 

Customers contribute to the inertia-building effort too.  Buying products or services are the obvious means of contribution.  Sharing their positive experience with others and making recommendations to friends and acquaintances contributes greatly to the inertia-building effort.  A new restaurant relies on customers telling their friends of “their great meal” if they hope to survive more than a month. 

As motion is equated to inertia, the more motion, the higher the level of inertia.   Inertia translates into customers buying more products without a direct selling effort.  Inertia is what keeps a company relevant in a marketplace though the newest product was announced long ago.  Inertia is the momentum that produces sales without constant promotion, incentives and discounts.  In short, inertia is what allows a company to get through the dips in the sales numbers and ride out the occasional rough spots that happen to every business.

So does every company have the same level of inertia?  No.  Inertia is not just a function of effort.  It is also a function of velocity and size.  Let’s start with velocity.

Velocity refers to the speed at which an object is moving.  The same object traveling at half the speed will have half the inertia.  The company whose “speed of business” is half that of its same-sized competitors will have half the inertia.  Its ability to weather the downtimes will be less than its competitors as it has less inertia.  Velocity is evidenced by the speed of order delivery, the number of sales calls made per day versus the nearest competitor and the speed of service delivered to customers.  Want more velocity?  Do these things faster and without errors and you will have more velocity.  Faster but with lots of mistakes will reduce velocity and inertia. 

Size or mass is the other factor influencing inertia.

If you roll a billiard ball and a bowling ball down a sidewalk at the same speed, which is harder to stop?  Exactly, the bowling ball.  Its mass is so much greater than that of the billiard ball, it has more inertia.  It is much the same situation in business.

 

The large, multi-national companies we read about every day have a tremendous amount of inertia.  Years in the making, these companies have many thousands of employees and customers helping to create more inertia every day.  For them, economic downturns are unpleasant but rarely fatal.  The inertia they have built up over many years of growing to become a large company gives them the inertia needed to get through the rough spots.

 

The small business does not enjoy the same inertia without having a much higher velocity level; higher velocity making up for the lack of mass.  The small business needs to be much more diligent about inertia-directed efforts every business day.  The small business needs to make sure every customer is an advocate and every employee determined to make the company a success.  There is no “down-time” for the small business as its inertia can quickly slip away.

Back to the rolling balls.  How much more effort does it take to keep the billiard ball rolling down the sidewalk as compared to the bowling ball?  A lot more!  The billiard ball has a lot less inertia to keep it rolling without a constant push.  That’s the same in business.  The benefit of the billiard ball is that it takes a lot less effort to impart a greater level of velocity than the bowling ball.  In a large business, it takes a lot more people exerting effort to enjoy the velocity that fewer people can produce within the small business.   

We’ve covered the differences between the small business and the large company from the standpoint of existing operations, but what about starting a new business?  How does a business get inertia when it is just starting?  Good question.

Our 2 balls are now sitting side by side.  Per the definition of inertia, both balls have inertia, the amount of which is tied to their respective masses.  Which is easier to start rolling?  That’s right.  The billiard ball is much easier to start rolling than the bowling ball.  Less mass means less effort to get started.  Again, the same rule applies to the world of business.

The small business, like the billiard ball, takes less “effort” to get rolling.  The financial resources required to start a small business are generally less than that of a large company, the number of employees needed is smaller and the timeframe to go from idea to door-opening is generally much shorter.  The large business is on the other end of the scale.  Starting a large company takes much more start-up capital, more employees and often much longer to organize.  As you might imagine, very few companies start out as large companies.

In fact, most large companies of today were small companies when they started.  Southwest Airlines started with 3 planes.  McDonald’s was a single restaurant.   General Electric started with a single light bulb.

Just in case you get the idea that the singular objective of every business ought to be maximum size, let’s put that notion to rest.  While it would be silly to suggest that keeping a company small by inhibiting its growth is a sound business strategy, I would suggest that growing the company at all costs may also not be the ideal objective.  As I have pointed out, there are certain advantages to large companies that small companies do not enjoy.  Inertia is one of those distinct advantages.  Inertia does come with a downside however.  Nimbleness.

Let’s go back one more time to the rolling balls.  Assuming they are both rolling at the same speed, which ball is easier to divert or change the direction of its motion?  That’s right.  The billiard ball.  Its smaller mass and smaller inertia make the billiard ball much easier to divert than the bowling ball.

Again, the same holds true in business.  A change of business direction is much easier to accomplish in a small company than a large company.  There are less employees to recruit to the new idea.  There are less customers to notify.  There are fewer barriers in the way.  In business, any major change of direction produces an upset of routine that needs to be addressed throughout the organization.  Everyone needs to understand what is happening, why it is happening and how they will be effected.  In a company of 100 employees, that is much easier to manage than a company with 10,000 employees.   Remember that every employee is contributing their part to the company’s inertia.  To get everyone to change the focus of their inertia-generating efforts is no small task.  It takes a lot more than a few memos and phone calls to get all the employees in a large company to be fully productive after a major operational change. 

Mergers of large companies are great examples of this.  When Nations Bank bought Bank of America – and kept the Bank of America name – it took over 4 years to bring the 2 organizations into a single entity.  Changing the names on the branches and buildings alone took over a year.   America West Airlines and US Air have taken over 2 years to merge and there is still no singular name in place.  We’ll see if United Airlines and Continental Airlines can merge any faster.

The fact is that really large companies find it very difficult to change directions because of the large amount of inertia they have developed.  It is much easier for a large company to acquire a small company who leads in a market where the large company wants to enter than it is to try to take existing resources and have them start a new company in the same market.  It is this nimbleness that makes small companies the pioneers behind so many new technologies and new markets.

 

The final item to point out in this discussion of inertia has to do with the inertia of a conglomerate.  Today, there are only a handful of conglomerate companies left in the world.  Conglomerates are companies that own businesses in a wide variety of unrelated markets.   Berkshire Hathaway is a well known conglomerate owning an insurance company, railroad, bakery and many other companies.  What makes a conglomerate different from a singular company of equivalent size has to do with how the individual businesses behind the conglomerate are operated.  The wise leader allows each individual business to operate independent of the other entities.  In this way, each operating business is able to build and manage its own inertia without the distractions of the other businesses.  The inertia of such a conglomerate is the sum total of the inertia of the individual companies.

 

The poorly run conglomerate attempts to create “efficiencies” by collapsing common business services into a single entity while the individual companies try to remain independent.  Sadly, the benefit brought about by the cost savings is far less than the loss of productivity as layers of bureaucracy within the common services effort slow down even the most simple of business tasks.  The net result is that the “efficient” conglomerate resembles a handful of billiard balls held together by duct tape trying to roll down the sidewalk.

The lesson here is to realize that inertia is a result of efforts acting on the mass of the business to produce velocity.  It is a result of efforts by employees and customers to create forward motion within the business.  The small business can enjoy great levels of inertia from a handful of focused and motivated employees because its mass is small.  The large company requires similar efforts from its employees but the impact of any one person’s efforts are much harder to measure due to the difference in the mass of the business.

Regardless of whether you business is small, large or something in between, inertia is something every business owner needs to understand.  It is a law of the physical universe and it is a law of the business world and it impacts your business every day.

If you would like help understanding what is creating and what is hindering inertia in your company, please call me regarding available consulting services:  602-492-1088

Science of Business – Made Easy! [Friction]

Friction is one of the more useful terms in business for which the origins are clearly in the field of science. Friction, by definition, is the rubbing together of 2 or more surfaces. That rubbing produces heat, wear and eventual failure of components. Friction is why cars have radiators and door hinges need oil. Friction is present in almost all mechanical processes and something to be mitigated as it cannot be eliminated.

In business, friction is equally ever-present.

In business, there are common phrases heard around the office such as “rubbing someone the wrong way” or “I am getting heat because I disagree with the plan.” Each of these phrases draws on the science behind friction. In these cases however, the rubbing is not physical but emotional. When 2 people disagree, their personalities and viewpoints clash and “rub” against one another because they are not going in the same direction. That rubbing produces friction and just as in the science world, the result is “heat”. Just as in science, the harder the rubbing action, the more heat that is produced.

When a manager announces a change of direction or policy, those who find themselves at odds with the change can be expected to produce friction as the direction they desire to go is not the direction of the business. Until such time as their agreement on the change is secured, it would be expected to hear “squeaking”, “groaning” and other audible indications of friction. This is just a simple rule of science.

Friction occurs in a great many other parts of the business world. In fact, whenever 2 or more people come together, there is always a possibility of friction. Sometimes the friction happens quickly and then dissipates such as a small misunderstanding and sometimes the friction can last a very long time with its continuous production of heat. You’ve heard of employees needing to “vent” their frustrations. Yes, that’s heat coming from some source of friction in the business.

Just as in the mechanical world, friction is the enemy of the production system. When the factory machines start to squeak, maintenance personnel need to be quick to locate the source of the noise and get things back to operating quietly. Left unattended, every shop foreman knows that a squeak is a warning sign of something much worse to come if left unattended. In the business world, this same rule applies.

If an employee starts to “squeak”, immediate attention is needed to uncover the true source of the squeak and return the employee to being a productive contributor. Left unattended, the squeaking can get louder, can start “sympathetic squeaks” elsewhere in the company and even lead to a breakdown in the production in the business. As in many machines, the squeak may be a bit hard to detect at first but like a good shop foreman, a good manager who has been around his employees for years can detect a squeak long before it is detectable to the average employee. Sometimes the only manifestation of friction is heat. If you have worked in an office for any length of time, you can tell when a cloud of friction has settled in versus when the business is firing on all cylinders. The key is to be sufficiently alert and observant to recognize the signs of friction.

Friction exists in the world of science and the world of business. No way to escape the fact that every business will experience friction at one time or another just as every machine needs a bit of maintenance now and again.

In the world of machines, friction is often overcome with various forms of oil. It may be grease, liquid oil or water but unless the parts creating the friction were never designed to meet – in which case you fix the broken parts - the solution is to add a lubricant. In cars engines, motor oil provides a thin layer of lubricating material so that parts that appear to be rubbing are not actually touching one another. Door hinges get a bit of grease to stop hinges that are making noise. In many cases, the oil also helps to keep the rubbing parts cooler.

In the business world, the “oil” comes in the form of communication. In fact, communication is the only solvent that addresses business friction. Communication removes the friction that comes from misunderstandings and confusions. Communication, like oil, may be needed in varying quantities depending upon the circumstances.

A brand new car motor needs 4-5 quarts of new oil and the oil needs changing more frequently in the early life of the motor. In a new business or when a major restructuring occurs in an existing business, there is a similar need for large quantities of “business oil” until the new motor is running smoothly. Call it a “break-in period” if you like. The fact is that any sort of dramatic change or continuous series of frequent changes in business direction needs to be accompanied but large quantities of communication if there is a desire to hold down the level of squeaking. Failure to do this produces disastrous results.

So how do you “change the oil” in your business? Periodic meetings with the employees. Regular messages from all the levels of management in the company. In organizations that recognize the importance of constant communication with the employees, they are consistently the smoothest running companies you will find. Squeaking is a rare event and easily addressed as there are few other noises to drown out even the smallest of squeaks.

The fact of the matter is that today, a great many companies are running so lean that the time needed to communicate to the company’s “engines” is often pushed down the list of priorities. The oil is left in an extra 5000 miles and the filter is not changed. Little squeaks develop and are ignored as there are tasks considered more important. Suddenly a major breakdown occurs and management has a terrible look of surprise on their faces. Shame on them. They have no reason to be surprised. They failed to maintain the company in good working order and it broke down. The problem and its solution are now more costly and will waste more time and energy than if the simple maintenance process of communicating with the employees had been left atop the priority list.

Communication is truly the lubricant that solves the friction that happens between people. In life inside and outside of the office, this fact holds true. The next time you start feeling heat in the office or start to hear a “squeak”, find the source and talk with them. Listen to what they have to say. Understand their viewpoint. You may not agree with the viewpoint but you must understand it. Do this and watch the squeak go away. Watch the heat disappear. Watch the working harmony return to the business.

If you would like help implementing a communication system designed to keep the wheels of commerce lubricated, please call me regarding available consulting services: 602-492-1088

Do You Have the Skills?

All of us have a unique blend of talents, abilities, experiences and interests. It is those things that make each one of us unique. It is those differences that ought to be the cornerstone of every contact center but sadly are not.

Historically, call centers have operated on a nearly-binary evaluation of the agent population. The call center manager had a list of basic “skills” and perhaps a low, medium and high ranking system associated with each skill. Each agent was given a ranking for every one of the basic skills and the process of “skill mapping” was considered complete. Thus we had the basis for queuing calls; there were “electronic” buckets of calls for each category of transaction and each corresponding skill level.

As you can imagine, the idea that something as simple as low, medium and high working as a way to segment agents and customers was deemed useless some time ago. In fact, virtually every vendor selling software into the business world today in which the software is designed to assist in the servicing of customers has some form of rule system for segmenting both agents and customers. How well they work and how useful the rule engine is as compared to the basic 3-bucket system is a matter of opinion but one thing is very certain; without a comprehensive assessment of attributes for every service person who comes in contact with customers, any rule engine is crippled.

This may come as a shock to you but very few companies make the effort to really understand the unique characteristics of every employee. Sure there are efforts within the call center to assess the skills of agents according to a short list of criteria, but what happens to that list when new forms of interaction media are introduced. The call-oriented lists quickly lose their usefulness when non-voice interactions arrive on the scene to say nothing of the massive number of back-office staff for whom even less is known.

Any business looking to truly optimize a customer service function needs to have a system in place that allows for the ongoing assessment of each customer service resource. A system that provides a means for organizing the needed training to enhance the existing skills of the staff. A system that allows for a “career path” to be set in motion whereby the appropriate training modules are delivered, knowledge verified and results recorded. A system in which all of this can be accomplished with a minimum of user intervention.

Do such tools exist today? Absolutely.

Today, it is possible to not only know about all the unique characteristics of each customer service employee, but it is possible to automatically update the employee information to reflect each completed proficiency exam or each completed training course. If the interaction routing system uses this type of information to determine where to deliver a given interaction, the automated updating of the employee’s attributes means the delivery system is also updated – no human intervention necessary.

Imagine being able to include a complete staff training program as a part of a new product rollout and have that staff training program designed so as to have no impact on the current service delivery model. Imagine being able to quickly recognize who among the staff meets specific criteria to undertake supporting a new interaction media type. Imagine each employee having a customized career path that includes training modules and proficiency exams that assure them of new responsibilities and promotions yet without impacting their current work schedule. This is just some of the value an intelligent resource management application will deliver. Some of you would call it “skills management” and you would be correct. Sadly the term “skill” has many different meanings in the call center world so I have chosen to avoid that term and its inherent confusions.

Companies such as Silver Lining have developed tools that address the business challenge brought about by efforts to optimize the service delivery model yet are hindered by a lack of sufficient knowledge about the talents and knowledge of each customer service resource.

As in most business problems, the biggest hurdles are often tied to people. Skills Management software like that from Silver Lining can bring down that barrier so that the business can move forward towards its optimization targets.

If you would like help designing a skills management system into your Customer Service Delivery System, please call me regarding available consulting services: 602-492-1088.

Science of Business – Made Easy! [Gravity]

Gravity is all around us. It is part of everything we do every day. So what exactly is this thing called Gravity.

Let’s start with the definition. Gravity, according to the Collins Junior Dictionary, is “the force that makes things fall when you drop them.” Now that’s pretty simple. It doesn’t take being Isaac Newton to realize that apples will always be falling from trees.

So what does falling apples have to do with business? Glad you asked.

Think of your business as a very large apple. That apple is resting in your hand. Lift up that apple until your arm cannot go any higher. OK. What are you now doing to that apple?

I imagine everyone is thinking “holding up the apple”. You are correct but what are you actually doing to keep that apple up in the air? Would you believe you are actively pushing the apple upwards?
Yes, that’s right. The effort you are expending to hold the apple in the air, assuming the apple is motionless, is just enough effort to counter the force gravity is applying to the apple to make it fall to the ground. You are literally pushing the apple up continuously in order to keep it from falling.

Your business operates according to the “Laws of Gravity”. Regardless of whether your business is large or small, it is subject to the same laws of gravity as the apple.

In business, there are only 2 directions allowed: up and down. The apple is either lifted in an upward direction or it falls to the ground. Your business is either being “lifted” up by the efforts of the employees or it is “falling” to the ground. Nature does not allow for a business to operate at an equilibrium state for any length of time. In other words, you cannot have sales or production at a flat level for any length of time. In business, there are no exceptions.

So what does it mean to “lift” your business? Active engagement in the growth of the business “lifts” the business up and keeps it growing. Look at your sales figures. Are they going up or going down? How about your revenue numbers? In fact, if you look at all the various statistics used to measure the success of your business, there are only 2 directions you will see in anything but a shuttered company: up and down.

The more active the employees are at “lifting” the company, the higher the sales figures and more likely the company becomes successful. The importance of contributions from every employee are not to be overlooked. All of us have probably known of employees who loafed about on the job and really did not put forth a great deal of effort in doing the best job they could. These types of employees effectively add to the overall weight that the balance of the employees must overcome in order to keep the company going up. Get too many employees riding on the shoulders of others and soon the “shouldered” employees start to get dropped; figuratively and literally. When a business suffers drops in its sales numbers over a sufficiently long period, staff reductions are inevitable. Thus, the dropping of employees comes to pass in the form of layoffs; there are not enough “lifters” to compensate for the loafers.

As a business owner, if you drop a lifter from the company, you have made the problem worse. It is vital that every business recognize who are the lifters and who are not. Who are the really heavy lifters and who are the lightweight lifters? Should it become necessary to reduce the number of employees, it is critical to the business to start with the loafers, then the lightweight lifters and then the heavy lifters. Look at the statistics for each employee to determine where each employee fits on the scale of “lifters”.

So what in the business world constitutes gravity? What is it that all the lifters are lifting against?

In simple terms, competition and noise.

Every business has competitors. These competitors are actively seeking customers just like your business. How much effort you must expend in order to counteract their sales efforts depends upon the overall market size and your company’s size relative to your competitors. The more competition you face, the more gravity is present working against your lifting efforts. If the overall market is large and you face a lot of similarly-sized competitors, your lifting efforts will not need to be as large as that of a small business competing against very large competitors. The key is to recognize what market you can successfully play in given your lifting power and the gravity imposed by your competition.

Look at what happens when a Wal-Mart, Home Depot or Barnes & Nobel moves into town? These behemoths can present formidable competition yet the nimble businesses in town - recognizing the “gravity” they present - looks for ways to shrink the target market to a size where their lifting capacity is greater than that of their competition. Specialty retailers are often unfazed by the introduction of a “big box” retailer. The really clever retailer takes advantage of the situation and promotes his unique products as “special” and “personalized”. In other words, the smart business reduces the size of the target market they are trying to “lift” to something of a size that allows their current lifters to continue to overcome competitive gravity.

Along with competition, the other component of gravity is noise.

Noise is the cumulative distractions that all of us encounter in our daily lives. The deluge of advertising, radios, televisions, ringing phones and the general status of the economy all contribute to the overall noise level through which a company’s messages must emerge. How does the right message get to the right person at the right time in order to bring about a realization that whatever you are selling is something needed? If your prospect is looking for a solution, the task is easier. If the problem you are trying to solve is not yet known, the task is much harder.

It used to be that what are considered noises today were once considered sources of valuable information. TV ads were informative. Now we TiVo our way through them. Radio shows were sponsored by a single vendor whom everyone knew. Now we have subscription radio so we can avoid the ads. Newspapers were the primary source of news about the world around us and now the Internet allows for easy access to more news than any of us are prepared to digest.

So how do you combat the noise factor. Networks. Social networks, referral networks and business networks. When ads are generally distrusted, consumers turn to friends and colleagues for insights. They look to someone they trust to give them guidance. The Internet provides instant access to thousands of viewpoints about almost everything that is for sale. Consumer Reports has been replaced by social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and YouTube. Clever usage of these tools can result in customers becoming advocates and helping in the lifting efforts. Does that mean traditional advertising does not work? No. It means that you need to be asking your customers how they found out about you (survey) and track any changes in behavior. You may be surprised to find out that a great many of your customers included on-line research in their buying decision process. If you are not building your “network”, you may be missing a lot of opportunities to secure customers.

Thus we have the 2 sides in the battle for business success; the lifters and gravity. The simple fact is that as long as the capacity of the lifters is greater than the forces combining to create gravity, the business will be successful. Allow gravity to get the better of your company and without immediate action, the business will fold under the weight.

Do you know who are the lifters in your company?

As always, if you would like help implementing these ideas in your business, please call me regarding available consulting services: 602-492-1088

Capturing the Mobile Consumer One Phone at a Time

What if you could provide a simple way for customers who view a print ad to get connected to your web site for more information or to make a purchase? What if you could give someone your business card and they could add you to their address book without typing a single letter? What if you wanted to add your event to someone’s electronic calendar while they viewed your promotional poster? Today, all this is possible and so much more.

The technology to make all this happen is QR Codes; a 2-dimensional barcode standard that started in Japan and has now reached every corner of the world. QR Codes are an easy way to encode lots of information into a barcode that can be scanned by most of the today’s camera phones.

So what can the barcode contain? Let’s look at the standard content that can be encoded:

• Contact information – All the basic contact info that one would enter into an Outlook or Google address book can be encoded. Scan the code with your smartphone and instantly the information is ready for saving into your mobile address book. Even the capability to include a short memo about the contact info can be encoded. Why isn’t this on the back of everyone’s business card?
  
  
• Calendar event – Event title (include the venue), start date and time and end data and time can all be embedded. How many event posters line the construction barriers within our major cities. Unless stamped “Post No Bills”, the wooden barriers become billboards for all the local nightlife in a matter of 24 hours. Every event poster ought to have a QR Code printed on the poster. What better way to remind someone about the event than to have the event pop up in their personal calendar?
  
  
• E-mail address – Yes, this one is as simple as it sounds. Encoding any e-mail address (think unique address for tracking purposes) produces a pre-addressed e-mail screen pop-up when the barcode is scanned. Want to hear from your customers, put the barcode in the owners’ manual and encourage your customers to contact you via e-mail. Put the barcode on promotional materials and capture the e-mail address of the sender – a prospect looking for more info about your product or service.
  
  
• GEO location – Google is using this capability to help drive use of Google maps. Tagging vendor locations with a barcode window sticker allows customers to know where they are. Geocaching participants really appreciate this kind of marking when trying to find a hidden stash.
  
  
• Phone number – Want an ad viewer to be able to easily call you if they want to purchase a product or have a question answered? A phone number QR Code will put the number in the phone’s dialer window once scanned. All the consumer needs to do is press “Send” and the call is initiated. Once again, if you want to make it easy for prospects and customers to reach you, why not help them dial the phone.
  
  
• SMS – How about helping the ad viewer to send a text message that is a query for more info? Perhaps the text message is a contest entry based on the sender’s mobile phone number. Perhaps the contest is to scan all the ads posted throughout a city. Each ad would have a different scan code reflecting the location. Track the received text messages and award a prize to the lucky person who completed the task. Lots of possibilities here only limited by your imagination.
  
  
• Text – Straight text. Pure and simple. Could be the ad copy in a different language. Could be the hours of operation. Any textual data you want to communicate could be encoded in a QR Code.
  
  
• URL – Launch a browser and go to a specific URL. That’s what can be done with an encoded URL. No one really likes entering letters from a 10-digit keypad. Why not use a barcode to embed the mobile-browser version of a site so that the mobile phone user does not need to key in the address. Once visited, the URL can be saved to the phone so it’s forever easy to reach the site. Perhaps there are special landing pages for specific promotions. The possibilities are endless.

So how do you go about creating a QR Code? Easy. I have included 3 sites which have FREE QR Code generators. The resulting bar code can be saved to a variety of formats for inclusion in a various graphic and word processing applications:

http://zxing.appspot.com/generator/
http://www.beetagg.com/beetaggsystem/qrcode.aspx
http://www.i-nigma.com/i-nigmahp.html

All of this wonderful barcode magic happens when consumers install a QR Code reader on their phone. The good news here is that the readers are FREE. Nokia has gone so far as to include QR Code readers on some of their phones as an include application. If you need a reader for your camera phone, here are a couple of sites which will direct you to FREE readers:

http://www.mobile-barcodes.com/qr-code-software/
http://www.qrme.co.uk/qr-code-resources/qr-code-readers.html

So how does all this apply to the customer service world?

Easy. It’s all about capturing the consumer and making the process to gaining information as easy as possible. Whether you want them to call, text or visit a web site, there’s a barcode that can be built for that. Want to make it easy for your contact info to go into someone’s address book? There’s a barcode that can be built for that. Want to use intelligent contact routing systems to identify who has scanned a QR Code to send an SMS or make a call, there’s a barcode that can be built for that.

Maybe the ideal usage is to capture the interest in an item via SMS scan code which, upon receipt in the contact center, is analyzed to determine the identity of the sender. Knowing who scanned the code, business rules are applied and an appropriate URL is sent via SMS back to the customer directing them to a specific URL. High value customers go to a different page and view different content than low value customers. Leveraging the existing customer segmentation model that is in place is very easy with QR Codes.

The bottom line is that consumers are relying on their mobile phone more and more. Why not take advantage of that and help put the mobile phone to use to capture interested consumers.

Imagine the buzz you could create by creatively using QR Codes within a promotion campaign. Wouldn’t it be great to have a QR Code refrigerator magnet that when scanned, ordered my favorite pizza to be delivered. I know a barcode can be made for that. I just wonder who will be the first pizza shop to send me the magnet.

If you want to send me an e-mail to chat about creative ideas you have for using QR Codes, here’s my e-mail address:





If you would like help designing QR Codes into your Customer Service Delivery System, please call me regarding available consulting services: 602-492-1088

eServices: A New Version of Some Very Old Ideas

As an active participant in the high tech industry for many years, I have seen more than my share of innovation. I am certain that there is no end to the well from which creative ideas spring forth. I am also certain that a great many of the ideas many consider to be revolutionary are really old ideas adapted to embrace the innovation happening all around us today.

The whole market for products now marketed under the banner of “eServices” is the most recent example of what was old is now new again. Currently included under the eServices umbrella for most vendors are e-mail, chat, co-browse, SMS, Social Networking and Knowledge Management.

E-mail has been around a very long time. When first introduced, there was a flurry of activity to embrace e-mail as the next big thing that for the upcoming generation, would replace the phone as a preferred means of communication. Large e-mail work silos were erected to support the expected flood of traffic. The good news is that the flood did happen though a bit slower than forecasted. The bad news is that the e-mail silo rarely had any connection to the voice side of the customer service equation leaving voice agents unable to respond to questions originally posed in an e-mail. Storage of these messages within some type of “contact record” was also missing. In short, the media chosen by the customer had the effect of dictating future contact methods as continuity was broken as soon as the media channel changed.

Text chat had a similar introduction into the customer service arena. Big push, high expectations and silos built to support the coming flood. Unlike e-mail however, chat has only recently seen serious attention as the addition of “pop-up” offers based on web site activity have helped coax customers to accept the offer to connect to an agent via chat.

SMS is seemingly unique in the customer service arena. Clearly, the use of the actual SMS interface for the sending and receiving of information is indeed new, but for years, the idea of reaching a customer service resource via text pager was offered as a connection channel. Some of you may not remember text paging but it was the forerunner to today’s SMS. In fact, I helped design a working prototype e-mail server that sent e-mail via the paging network to paging cards installed in laptops. At that time, cell phones were bulky and mostly bolted down in the trunk of one’s car. 3G referred to a clothing size. Pagers were the electronic leash of the day. SMS moved the text paging to the cell phone and provided a reply function few pagers offered. As much as SMS is an improvement, message size limitations still exist within the world of SMS.

Knowledge management is also a new version of an old model. Compuserve forums were one of the more common methods for customers to seek answers from a vendor without direct contact. This was before the Web and high-speed access were available. Vendors would have staff monitoring and responding to questions on various forums and doing their best to answer customer questions. Customers were often encouraged to provide answers as well with various incentive programs rewarding those that really contributed to the effort. Today’s knowledge management is a vast improvement on the old tools. The web has provided graphics and hyperlinks. High-speed access means downloading files is easy. Sophisticated indexing routines means finding answers is easier than ever. In short, the knowledge management tools of today are not new but are certainly a vast improvement over the support forum model of years past. Oh, and lest I forget, the new generation of knowledge management systems is able to be integrated into the existing customer service delivery system unlike the earlier incarnations.

Knowing the history of these media forms is useful only if there are lessons to be learned. There are.

Integration is lesson 1. The initial forms of all things called eServices were originally deployed as stand-alone customer contact channels. This produced different desktop applications for each new media type, different service delivery models with prioritization and segmentation as unique as the media themselves and different infrastructure making shared resources an impossibility. Today’s eServices products are designed to be integrated into existing customer service delivery systems. Avoid the mistakes of the past and take the integration step. Contact media silos have no place in the modern world.

Survey your customers is lesson 2. What do they want to use? Do they seek answers on Facebook or would they prefer to reach an agent on the phone? Are they willing to share their experiences with others or do they just want answers? Is text messaging a way to initiate a phone call or is it really a desired form of having an extended conversation? Respond to your customers’ opinions and you may find they reward you with greater loyalty. Who knows but you may find that customer’s opinions may also save you some money that would have otherwise been wasted on unwanted technology.

Reporting, reporting, reporting is lesson number 3. Often the most overlooked part of any new media, reporting is essential for determining the return on the investment. Too often, reporting is limited to activity counts and stopwatch metrics which, while necessary, do little to determine the impact of the introduction of a new media. Are activity volumes elsewhere being affected by the new media? Are the customers who are using the new media changing their buying patterns in any way? Is there a growth in the overall number of customers that can be attributed to the introduction of the new media? Are the reports integrated to the existing reporting systems thus it is possible to track activity by customer as well as by media channel? These types of reporting metrics are vital for determining the actual impact being generated by the new media. Don’t let the sparkle of a new channel blind you to the need for comprehensive reporting.

The bottom line is that the new world of eServices is a wonderful opportunity to apply new technology to old service models and to do so in a way that avoid the mistakes made in years past. Those who learn from the past will be richly rewarded.

If you would like help designing eServices into your Customer Service Delivery System, please call me regarding available consulting services: 602-492-1088

A Market Reveals Itself

What is this market many of us today refer to as the “Contact Center” market?

If you are in the call center business, you have probably lived through the marketplace name change from “Call Center” to “Contact Center”. Seems a bit of new technology forced the name change as E-mail and Chat really were not “call” oriented though many a vendor fashioned ways for the voice infrastructure to be used to process this “new” form of interaction. Sadly, the call center vendor community did not have a well conceived response to these new media forms resulting in e-mail and chat interactions being serviced in silos away from the call center. Lots of money was spent and is still being spent in an effort to respond to these non-voice interactions initiated by the customer. Some vendors went so far as to incorporate these non-voice channels into their outbound contact efforts. Sadly, even these enlightened few did not grasp the larger picture. The market revealed a bit of what it really was and so few noticed.

The “Contact Center” became the standard name when referring to the place where interactions between consumers and vendors occur. Sadly, the majority of vendors still operate with E-Mail and Chat as silos with voice, both inbound and outbound varieties, still king. Recognition of the value of integrating all media into a single interaction model has largely escaped the contact center community. I suggest this was due to a lack of market leadership; no vendor, spokesperson or other visionary person having the vision and visibility to marshal the technology players and their customers in the direction the market was going.

Along comes the Internet startup world bringing to life services like Twitter and Facebook. What a revolution! Not! Twitter and Facebook are new generations of some very old models. Compuserve was probably the most commonly known “forum” model which allowed any customer to share their thoughts at any time as long as they had a modem connection. Today, the Web, internet-enabled phones and a desire to share everything about ourselves with anyone who is interested has created a new generation of “Compuserve”.

These new technologies have given consumers a big platform to voice their opinions on a global scale. This change has not gone unnoticed by the vendor community who are scrambling to capture the thoughts of their customers. Want to be famous overnight? Create a clever video highlighting your complaint, upload it to YouTube, e-mail all your friends to watch it and wait for world to catch on. (As a side note, I suggest that had the customer’s initial complaint been resolved when first voiced, the viral rant would never be created.) Vendors are acutely aware that a lot of “good will” can be lost very quickly when a customer’s complaint goes viral. Thus, from a vendor’s point of view, angry customers are to be soothed and happy customers are to be held up as examples. In simple terms, there is an advertising component and a service component to this new social media world.

Again, the market revealed a bit more of itself and still no one noticed. The lack of market leadership and vision grew more obvious yet the vacuum remained.

Now we hear of great strides being made in the “back office” arena in which many of the tools used to streamline the “front office” are being re-purposed to provide value to the work being done behind the scenes. Customer segmentation, prioritization and performance tracking are being introduced to the back office lexicon. In the same way that the first screen pop produced an amazing Eureka! moment for the front office, the application of intelligent automation to the back office is producing a similar result. Around the globe, companies are awakening to the realization that there are flexible tools that can increase efficiency and effectiveness throughout the organization.

Will this be another silo in the making or will the front office and back office realize they are both part of the same effort and find ways to join together? Again, where’s the leadership as the market yet again reveals a bit more of itself.

So what exactly is this market that I have been suggesting is slowly being revealed. I call it the Customer Service Delivery System market. This market recognizes that any activity within a vendor that involves a customer is part of the Customer Service Delivery System.

Front office, back office, side office or remote office. All are part of the Customer Service Delivery System if the work performed involves a customer. Every option given to a customer on a web site, a discussion forum, opt-in message stream or retail outlet is part of the System. In this System, customers are not just points of origination and receipt; they are integral to the process and need to be given every opportunity to participate in the design of the process. “Customer-crafted” experiences should be the goal of every vendor.

Today there is a great deal of lip service being paid to the idea that companies are putting the customer first. Bunk. As a consumer, when I am given the tools that give me the option to design what I hear when I call, when I am given the option to select who helps me if I need a resource, when I am given the option to decide what method is to be used to reach me for various types of information, when I can monitor the status to my requests without 3rd party assistance, then I will agree that the customer is front and center in the mind of the business.

The vision of Customer Service Delivery System recognized that the customer can be trusted to look in the windows of the business and watch the service process unfold. Many factories do this as a PR move. Why not do the same for the service delivery process. Electronically allow the customer to view the service delivery process, as it applies to them, at any time. A well constructed Customer Service Delivery System is something to show off rather than something to hide.

The Customer Service Delivery System knows about all past interactions and connects past interactions with current activity. A single process that crosses media boundaries is not an issue but an opportunity to highlight that focus remains on the customer. Connecting the multiple interaction events that comprise a single issue is an expected part of the service process. Intelligent systems use the interaction history to determine the best course of action or perhaps the various service options to be provided to the customer. It is also important to keep in mind that every interaction may have multiple branches thus it cannot be assumed that the current call is related only to the most recent web activity.

The Customer Service Delivery System is certainly not static relative to deployment or design. New media forms representing new ways to connect with customers will continue to be developed. A well designed system will embrace the new media with the best method for integration the new media as the real decision point. The overall goals and objectives of the system remain unchanged.

Today, the customer service is the market into which billions are being invested. Incremental steps involving large sums of money in order to accomplish what? Is there a plan in place? Is there a larger goal in mind? Do your own research. Look at the vendor’s messaging. Read the annual reports of the customers cited as examples of leading their markets.

Every company in the world is made up of one or more products, a Customer Service Delivery System and else.

It is time to recognize that the market has revealed itself and to embrace it. It is time to craft the plan to bring life to the Customer Service Delivery System and allow every customer to “craft” the system to suit their preferences. It is time to stop thinking in silos and reacting with surprise to each new interaction technology that arrives on the scene.

It is time for the market leaders to lead. It is time for the consumers to demand they be integral to the Service Delivery System.

It has always been time but now we all know the “for what”.

If you would like help designing an optimal Customer Service Delivery System, please call me regarding available consulting services: 602-492-1088

Wanted: A New Means for Comparing Numbers

How is it that we get all excited when a market is expected to grow by 20% and not get excited when a market is expected to grow by 5%? Now that you have stopped laughing, you are saying to yourself, “Because 20 is bigger than 5. Duh!”

That’s exactly the point, is 20 actually bigger than 5? If the total revenue for a market is currently $50 million and is expected to grow 5% ($2.5M) , isn’t that much better than a $5M market growing 20%. ($1M).

In the customer service business, it’s always nice to hear about companies who have improved their “customer satisfaction” numbers. I like knowing there are businesses who are really making an effort to do better. But how much better are they really doing. If my company has a customer satisfaction rating of 40% and it improves to 50%, do I tout the 25% increase or say it went up 10%? What if my competitor started at 80% and went to 90%. What should they report? More importantly, how do I compare these 2 companies.

What is needed is a new way to reports growth rates. A new mathematical model that allows for a real apples to apples comparison. A model that takes into account the starting point and ending point and recognizes that it’s important to know how far the needle moved as well as where it started.

Does that mean we start using logarithmic values? Perhaps some new “growth factor” can be formulated to indicate the true distance covered when reporting sales growth and revenue growth numbers. Perhaps some PhD will use this idea for a thesis and solve the problem for all of us…..assuming the analysts pick up the idea and run with it.

The bottom line is this. Without a means of comparing apples to apples, it is almost impossible to evaluate the financial strength of one company over another or the size of one market over another. Multiple points of measure need to be computed and evaluated in order to grasp the significance of any one number.

Will it happen soon? I hope so though I recognize that numbers are wedded to obfuscation.

What do you think? Would a “growth factor” make your life easier?

The Real Meaning of CRM

CRM is a great business term. Its use evokes thoughts of intricate systems that contain mountains of information about customers; information ready for anyone to use in order to sell more widgets. Three simple letters whose meaning changes greatly depending upon the speaker.

An entire software genre has been spawned around the variety of ideas about what constitutes CRM. Seems that each interpretation results in a new software product competing in an already crowded market.

To really understand CRM involves looking at each letter in the acronym and defining the word behind the letter.

The letter “C” represents Customer; the most vital of all assets a company can possess. Customers are a unique kind of asset; they have free will. The customer decides when to part with their money and to whom shall the money be given. Customers decide the worth of everything they purchase. When the value of the goods or services received are of equal or greater value than the cost, exchange happens. Lower that value and free will appears; the customer finds another source or a substitute product. Too often businesses forget that the customer always has a choice – always. Not to belabor the simple rules of business but if you want your customers to bring you more customers, always provide more value than you charge. Make sure customers are telling their friends about their “great find” not their latest “horror story”. Yes, “C” is what everyone thinks it is but how many businesses really focus attention on the true value of the Customer?

The letter “R” is the word Relationship. How many businesses really have a relationship with their customers? A relationship is stronger than a friendship. Friends send cards on birthdays and holidays. Relationships involve frequent communication. Friendships are the occasional shared meal or phone call. Relationships are built on a deep concern for the other person. Unfortunately, many businesses today operate in a strictly reactive mode. When the customer appears, the business jumps to attention and tries to build a relationship. Friendships may work that way. Relationships do not.

When relationships involve customers, the rules of relationships still apply. Communication must be bi-directional. Concern about the outcome of business transactions must be sincere. Relationships reflect the depth of knowledge each party has for the other. A strong customer relationship is reflected in the nature of the pro-active communication provided to the customers. The information delivered in known to be that which is desired. The method of delivery is that which the customer has chosen. It’s not enough to be responsive when problems arise. In a customer relationship, the responsiveness occurs before the customer is aware of the problem. That’s the sign of a true relationship.

So we have covered the Customer and the associated Relationship all businesses desire to have with their customers. All that’s left is the “M”.

Finally we get to the letter “M”. Most have heard that “M” stands for Management. Do customers want to be managed? Been in a department store lately? How enjoyable is it to have a sales clerk hovering around constantly asking if any help is needed? Repeated responses of “No thanks” does nothing to send the clerk off to help other shoppers. What that clerk was trying to do was manage the shopping experience.

Have a spouse of significant other? Do they want to have their relationship managed? Sure, a relationship is a continual work in progress affair, but who wants to feel managed in a relationship.

Clearly, when looking at customer relationships, management is not something that should be applied to the relationship.

The real meaning of “M” in CRM is the word Model. The term Model implies a logical process or design for something. A model relative to a customer relationship defines how the customer will be treated, the level of service they will receive and how the customer’s value will be acknowledged. The model outlines the steps that will be taken to build, reinforce and grow the relationship a vendor has with each and every customer.

Models are not about a specific interaction media, not about a specific customer segment nor are they about a specific geography. A true Customer Relationship Model encompasses all this and much more.

Such a model does not happen in a vacuum nor does it happen automatically. As such, every model needs to include methodologies for managing the implementation of the model. Thus it is not the relationship that is managed but the model itself that is managed. Managers charged with seeing the model implemented utilize management practices to insure that the full and complete relationship model is a reality.

As with all management efforts, measuring results is vital to understanding the progress being made towards achieving a goal. In CRM, this is also true. Through measurement, the effectiveness of management towards implementing the desired model comes about. What is measured and how it is measured is a function of the model and the management overseeing the model.

Thus the “M” is not representative of a single term but actually a series of 3 terms: Model, Management and Measure.

Relationships with customers are growing in importance as market geographies shrink, competitive differentiators disappear and distribution channels consolidate.

Software that promises to deliver CRM is mislabeled as it is part of the overall model but clearly not the model itself. CRM is much larger than any single piece of software.

The next time you hear someone talk about a “CRM Solution”, ask them to define the meaning of CRM. Their answer will highlight how much they have thought about 3 very important words: Customer, Relationship and Model.

If you would like help designing an optimal Customer Relationship Model, please call me regarding available consulting services: 602-492-1088

SIP: The Telephony Community Hits an Inflection Point

Session Initiation Protocol or SIP is an exciting technology that promises to revolutionize the telephony industry as we know it. SIP is an industry standard for the connecting of IP endpoints. In plain English, this means SIP is a standardized method of connecting phones together, connecting phones to IVR ports, connecting phones to voice mail systems and connecting wired and wireless devices together. In short, SIP is the beginning of the end of limitations imposed by proprietary PBXs and their expensive support contracts.

In their place, SIP offers a business model of replaceable parts in which customers can choose their vendors based on service, competitive pricing and capacities without a concern for being locked into a single vendor solution.

The SIP model is producing an inflection point that parallels that which occurred in the Local Area Network (LAN) marketplace 20 years ago with the development of a single-chip Ethernet controller. This development drove the price of network adapters down to less than $100. Almost overnight, the data world lost interest in any connectivity standard other than Ethernet. Even token ring technology quickly became viewed as proprietary rather than an industry standard. The cost-to-performance ratio of Ethernet commoditized data connections and rendered almost a dozen other “standards” obsolete. SIP is the “Ethernet chipset” of the telephony world.

As with all inflection points, new and exciting business opportunities are a primary byproduct. In the telephony industry, the focus of consumers and technology provides will shift to applications and away from proprietary hardware.

Applications like the intelligent routing of all forms of communication will quickly become a necessity. As computers and phones overlap further and further, tools will be needed to allow phone users to filter, control and re-route incoming and outgoing communication to suit their immediate circumstances.

Spreading the cost of applications such as intelligent routing and silicon assistants across the hundreds or thousands of users in an enterprise means everyone can regain control of their lives without having to shut down the very devices that keep them connected; all at a cost that makes the ROI very reasonable.

These types of applications will provide a “communication umbrella” which will oversee the flow of all forms of communication; applying personal “interruption rules” to each device. Today, the only real way to filter incoming interruptions is a binary method; turn the device on for interruptions an off for peace and quiet. Tomorrow, consumers will have tools available to them which put them in complete control of who reaches them when and where without having to resort to turning the devices off.

Communication umbrellas are an ideal software subscription business for the carrier market looking to boost revenue through add-on products and services. Homeowners, small business owners and enterprise users looking to try out new technology before committing to a large scale deployment are all potential customers. Imagine controlling who goes straight to voice mail, who gets forwarded to your mobile phone and whose call launches a series of calls in order to find you wherever you are. This same technology also provides voice-controlled changes to the rules, is tied in with your calendar, can place calls on your behalf through voice commands, can conference callers based on voice commands and can read your e-mail to you. When all the communicating devices are easily connected, applications such as this are no longer a pipedream as the inhibiting integration nightmare is no longer part of the equation.

SIP is the long awaited catalyst that is unleashing the application community to revolutionize the methods by which we communicate with one another. Its impact is that basic and that profound.

If you would like help understanding the impact SIP could have on your business, please call me regarding available consulting services: 602-492-1088

The Business of Call Center Reporting

The results of a recent call center survey, “Merchants Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report 2005“ proves what many have suspected for years; our patience is wearing thin. Dimension Data’s recent report clearly highlights that more and more of us are choosing to hang up rather than wait for an agent to take our calls. For the third year in a row, the rate of abandoned calls has reached a new high: 13.3% of all calls placed never reach an agent. Appears agents are not being added to keep up with the increasing volume of calls.

Not surprising when you consider that at the same time, almost half of the call centers surveyed report that cost savings is a major focus of management. Seems that in the battle for cost savings versus service quality, cost savings is winning. Perhaps this singular focus on cost savings within the call center is simply a logical outcome of the data provided to the managers upon which decision are based.

Take a look at the content in the ACD reports supplied to the managers of a call center. In them will be found numbers indicating peaks, valleys, totals and averages for things like speed of answer, call arrival rates, talk times, abandon rates and hours worked; all valuable data that illustrates how efficient the call center staff is at taking and completing calls. Also included in these reports are figures indicating the cost of the staffing the call center for the reporting period.

While these reports are great for the managers overseeing the work of the agents, from a business perspective, these reports provide a very myopic view of the outcome of the work performed. An ACD report in the hands of a P & L owner represents a guide to where a lot of money is being spent. In other words, the call center represents a very big “L”. When a P & L owner is being asked to find ways of reducing costs and the ACD report appears, is it any wonder that reducing the number of agents appears to be a great way to achieve the goal with a minimum of impact. When you realize that 60-70% of the cost of operating a call center is personnel related, reducing staff is an easy solution. It’s also the worst when made based on ACD data alone.

The better decision starts with the call center implementing reporting tools that capture effectiveness data alongside the efficiency data. Effectiveness data measures the outcome of each call; was anything sold, how much, to whom, based on what incentive, is the problem resolved. These types of data points mapped against the individual agents can provide terrific insights into the customer base as well as the real agent skills. Effectiveness data allows the business to measure the impact of changes in service against changes in customer behavior.

Effectiveness reporting requires a system through which the raw data can be captured, stored and indexed as well as a system through which the data can be analyzed. Unfortunately, current ACD systems are not equipped to capture the necessary data elements much less analyze the captured data.

Not to worry. Today, there are software solutions from a handful of vendors that can provide true effectiveness reporting. These solutions capture the necessary data to highlight relationships between service delivery changes and customer behavior changes.

The results of implementing effectiveness reporting can be profound. Which customers are receptive to up-sell and cross-sell offerings? Which customers will increase their purchase if the agent spends a couple of extra minutes describing add-on extras? Which agents are better able to sell to which segment of the customer base? Which customers are willing to accept help from an agent when having trouble with a self-service system like an IVR or web site?

When effectiveness reporting is combined with traditional efficiency reporting, the business then has the information it needs to make truly intelligent business decisions.

The Meaning of Optimization

Great word to use in business: Optimization. It conjures up all kinds of thoughts about high performance, streamlined methods and maximum ROI. Yet, what is so great about this word optimization is also what makes it so hard to use in a business setting. Exactly what does optimization mean?

The dictionary definition of optimization is “the procedure or procedures used to make a system or design as effective or functional as possible”. While this definition is acceptable to most people, it does not provide a picture of what optimization looks like. How does one know when something has been optimized? What measure or set of measures properly reflects the changes indicating that optimization is occurring? I suggest that such a picture cannot come from a definition of the word as the very subject is fraught with a wide variety of viewpoints.

In the call center, what one constituency sees as the most “effective” system may be quite the opposite from what another group sees as the most “effective”.

A call center supervisor whose income is tied directly to the volume of calls the agents are able to handle during a given time period views “optimal” as having enough agents to never have a caller abandon and for callers to never hear an expected wait time message.

This is in stark contrast to the call center business analyst whose focus is on minimizing the number of agents per shift while maintaining a competitive stance from a service level standpoint.

Let’s not leave out the VP Sales who sees the responsive, knowledgeable call center agent as a great source of product differentiation and thus, optimization means continual efforts to maintain if not grow this point of differentiation.

Each of these 3 views is valid yet in conflict with the other 2. “Optimizing” the call center for any 1 of these views will negatively impact the other 2. So how do you optimize a call center?

The starting point is an agreement on the overall goals of the optimization effort. Goals that take into account the needs of all effected parties. Goals that take into account the larger enterprise-level goals. Goals that have specific measures of success and for which there are systems in place to provide ongoing status reports.

Every organization should be engaged in an ongoing optimization effort. The worst thing such an effort can produce is a better understanding of the conflicting goals found in most organizations. The best outcome is a highly focused organization that knows the goals they are striving to achieve, knows why the goals are important and is able to continually measure their progress towards achieving those goals.

Take a look at your own company. Can you find your optimization initiatives?