Top 35 Reasons You Need Contact Center Performance Management

Transcription

1 Top 35 Reasons You Need Contact Center Performance Management February 2014 Sponsored by: DMG Consulting LLC

2 Table of Contents Introduction... 1 Real-Time and Historical CCPM... 1 Top Reasons to Invest in CCPM... 3 Building a Business Case to Acquire a CCPM Solution... 5 Final Thoughts... 6 About VPI... 7 About DMG Consulting i - DMG Consulting LLC

3 Introduction Most contact centers do not yet use a performance management application, even though they would be much better able to meet their department and enterprise goals if they did. Contact center performance management (CCPM) is a mindset, process and application. At a strategic level, CCPM provides a framework for aligning the goals of the contact center with those of the corporation. At a tactical level, the performance management process uses goals, key performance indicators (KPIs), metrics, data sources and balanced scorecards to capture, analyze and report how well the contact center delivers to its objectives, in order to identify the actions necessary to address areas of weakness or strength. At a practical level, it streamlines and simplifies contact center reporting, enabling managers to use a carefully selected set of KPIs, metrics, dashboards, scorecards and reports to manage their operation, instead of the numerous reports and hundreds of measures previously required. What this means is that CCPM solutions provide accurate and actionable dashboards and reports that give agents, supervisors and managers information to motivate them to do a better job of meeting their goals improving productivity, generating revenue (sales or collections), reducing costs, and improving the customer experience. Real-Time and Historical CCPM There are two primary types of contact center performance management: historical and real-time. Each mode has a distinct purpose, and provides actionable output based on the time frame of the information that it accesses and analyzes. CCPM solutions should deliver both real-time and historical data. Real-time performance management empowers line managers, supervisors and agents to make immediate tactical adjustments and improvements to achieve departmental and enterprise goals. It allows the staff to keep their finger on the pulse of contact center, providing insight into activity as it is occurring. Common outputs are alerts and broadcast messages or tickers that are updated every 15 seconds or less, and dashboards that show agents and supervisors how well they are meeting their goals throughout the day. Real-time CCPM solutions enable agents and supervisors to immediately modify their behavior and alter the outcome of interactions as they are happening. Showing an agent that they are not meeting their sales or collections goals while others on the team are, is likely to motivate them to alter their approach in order to improve their performance. A service representative who sees that they are out of schedule adherence and their talk time is too long will likely adapt their behavior to meet their goals. And if a supervisor finds out that their team is the DMG Consulting LLC

4 worst-performing in the contact center, odds are that they ll make the necessary changes to identify the problems that are holding them back. There is power in real-time information, particularly when it is supported by the right processes. With real-time CCPM, agents and supervisors have an opportunity to alter their performance and see the impact immediately. It is highly rewarding. Historical CCPM provides a different perspective on performance; it concentrates on finding long-term patterns and trends that are either detracting from or driving the performance of agents, teams, sites, and the overall department. It is used to make strategic decisions. A major benefit of historical CCPM is that it provides a consolidated and accurate view of what is happening in a contact center, in reports and dashboards that are easy to create and comprehend. This allows managers to surface agent, department and enterprise issues that need to be corrected or encouraged. CCPM solutions combine real-time and historical information and provide quantifiable insights to drive change. Both types of output can impact the bottom line of the contact center and the enterprise. See Figure 1. Figure 1: Real-Time vs. Historical CCPM Source, DMG Consulting LLC, February DMG Consulting LLC

5 Top Reasons to Invest in CCPM Every contact center should use CCPM to obtain the objective data and measurements needed to measure, improve, optimize and manage their organization. The power of CCPM is that it identifies when an agent, team or the entire department is out of compliance and not meeting their goals, and identifies the steps required to correct the situation. Most people want to do a good job, and are simply unaware when they are not meeting their goals. Once notified of a problem and how to fix it, they will take the necessary steps to alter their performance. This is why CCPM is so powerful. Figure 2 is a list of 35 common issues that CCPM solutions address. We suggest going through this list and selecting all of the items that apply to your contact center. If at least 15 items apply to your contact center, a CCPM solution will greatly benefit your organization. If more than 20 of them apply, it s clear that you should prioritize the acquisition of a CCPM application, as it will make a major impact on almost all aspects of your contact center. Figure 2: Top 35 Reasons for Investing in a CCPM Application Inaccurate Reports / Bad Data Poor Reporting Technology 1 Reports from siloed servicing systems, automatic call distributor (ACD), dialer, interactive voice response (IVR) and other applications are inconsistent. 2 Reports are not credible or trusted. 3 Reports do not provide timely data. 4 The contact center lacks the ability to produce consolidated performance reporting and dashboards one view of the truth. 5 Managers cannot see the data in the way that they want. 6 Reports must be produced manually. 7 Spreadsheets are used to produce reports. 8 Reports are tabular and hard to read, with limited graphics. 9 Systems do not provide OLAP functionality, and there is no way to analyze the data to identify trends and opportunities. 10 Reporting environments are hard to use and do not support drilldown. 11 There is limited custom/ad hoc reporting functionality DMG Consulting LLC

6 Figure 2: Top 35 Reasons for Investing in a CCPM Application Reports Do Not Provide Useful Information Data Is Not Actionable Cannot Provide Timely Feedback to Agents Lack of Reports for Senior Management 12 It is too time consuming to produce reports. 13 It is too costly to produce custom reports need to pay the vendor to accomplish this. 14 There are dozens of reports from various servicing systems, but no useful information. 15 Reports provide limited visibility into what is happening in the department and how it relates to goals. 16 Reports capture the wrong data. 17 The department lacks quantifiable data upon which to base decisions. 18 The contact center lacks accurate metrics/kpis to track department performance. 19 Need to be able to quickly and cost effectively modify metrics/kpis as activities change. 20 Reports do not deliver actionable data. 21 Reports do not identify high-priority problems, or indicate how to fix them. 22 Reports are too high-level and not broken down by agent, queue, skill, etc. 23 Reports do not show agents and supervisors if they are meeting their productivity, average handle time, adherence, revenue or collections goals. 24 The contact center cannot produce balanced scorecards that measure quality, productivity, revenue and customer satisfaction for agents, teams, sites and the department. 25 Reports are not used on a consistent basis. 26 The contact center does not have the tools to drive a culture of change. 27 Agents complain that they are not receiving timely feedback about their performance. 28 The contact center cannot deliver real-time data (KPIs, coaching, etc.) to agents and supervisors. 29 The contact center cannot show its value to the enterprise because its data is not aligned with corporate goals. 30 The contact center is unable to provide appropriate data to feed DMG Consulting LLC

7 Figure 2: Top 35 Reasons for Investing in a CCPM Application Reporting Resources the enterprise performance management solution. 31 The contact center cannot measure customer satisfaction. 32 The contact center cannot track the revenue generated by each agent, team, site, and the department overall. 33 The contact center does not have quantifiable data to report to senior managers to show how well they are doing in supporting strategic initiatives. 34 The contact center does not have business analysts to manage the various system reports. 35 Vendor professional services fees to create reports are too expensive. Source, DMG Consulting LLC, February 2014 Building a Business Case to Acquire a CCPM Solution Establishing a formal process and mechanism to systematically capture, aggregate and present agent, team, department and overall contact center performance allows managers to institutionalize a continuous improvement process. The most effective way to justify investing in a new system is to build a business case. This document should include the following sections: Description of the problems or issues that need to be addressed managers interested in a CCPM solution should select five or six items from the list above that cause the most problems for their department and prevent them from meeting their goals. Explanation of what has been tried in the past and why it did not work it will take time, but it s important to explain what s been tried and why the proposed CCPM solution will be able to do it right when other applications did not. List of quantifiable benefits that are expected to be derived from the implementation, and the time frames managers need to estimate the benefits that they expect to derive from a CCPM application. Select the top five or six benefits and describe the anticipated impact. CCPM solutions generally help to increase revenue and collections, improve agent adherence and availability, reduce transfers and handle time, DMG Consulting LLC

8 increase first contact resolution, and improve both agent and customer satisfaction. Be sure to reflect the time frame for realizing the benefits, and show that they will continue to grow in the long term. The cost of the application show that you ve done your homework and know how much it will cost to purchase, implement and maintain the application. A return on investment (ROI) model that identifies the payback, internal rate of return (IRR) and net present value (NPV) expected from this investment use the costs and quantified benefits to calculate a financial model that shows the contributions of the CCPM solution for the organization. Be sure to come up with enough benefits that will allow the application to realize a payback in 9 months or less. Summary case studies where these benefits have been realized get examples, including 3 or 4 organizations that are similar to yours and have realized the expected benefits. Final Thoughts Every contact center will benefit from a CCPM solution. Whether a contact center has 20 or 20,000 agents, it s essential to have one system of record that collects, consolidates, standardizes, analyzes and presents timely and actionable findings and recommendations to agents, supervisors and managers. CCPM solutions should deliver outstanding tabular and graphical reports and dashboards that are easy for business users to customize and analyze. They should deliver both realtime and historical information that gives contact center agents, supervisors and managers tactical data to change their course of action immediately and identify more strategic and long-term opportunities. It s time to stop struggling with the outdated and ineffective reporting environments that come with so many of the legacy contact center servicing systems, and migrate to the newer generation of CCPM solutions that are designed for one purpose to provide a consolidated view of the operating data needed to improve the performance of the contact center, meet departmental goals, and show the contact center s contribution to the company s bottom line DMG Consulting LLC

9 About VPI Founded in 1994, VPI is the world's leading provider of contact center quality and performance optimization software and services. VPI s award-winning VPI EMPOWER, a powerful Web-based workforce optimization software suite, integrates call recording, quality assurance, speech analytics, performance management, E-learning and intelligent virtual call agents. Every module within the VPI EMPOWER suite leverages advanced analytics, workflow automation and an open, Web 2.0 architecture to help evolving organizations more easily and rapidly identify and solve their critical business and customer experience issues. VPI s approach has been disruptive to legacy approaches because its software is easy to deploy, easy to use, and extremely cost effective resulting in a significant return on investment. VPI has more than 1,000 satisfied customers in 50 countries worldwide using its software solutions. For more information, call or visit About DMG Consulting DMG Consulting LLC is an independent research, advisory and consulting firm that provides strategic and tactical advice to enterprise and contact center managers, vendors and the financial community. Our mission is to help clients build world-class contact center and back-office environments by leveraging technology, processes and people. We provide insight and guidance to assist management in optimizing performance by increasing operational efficiency, providing an outstanding customer experience, enhancing loyalty, and increasing sales and profits. DMG devotes more than 10,000 hours annually to researching various segments of the contact center, analytics and back-office markets, including vendors, technologies, best practices, solutions and their benefits and ROI. For more information, visit DMG Consulting LLC

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