Call Centres and Customer Service Managers Take performance to the next level with Call Recording Technology

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2 Call Centres and Customer Service Managers Take performance to the next level with Call Recording Technology Overview This report has been written for those responsible for improving the performance of a call centre or customer service team and who have an interest in how call recording technology can help. It is especially useful for those looking for potential reasons for low performance. For instance customers who are complaining or staff that are either unhappy or not very helpful to customers. We will walk through the key areas of contact centre performance, what affects them and what can be done to improve staff and customer satisfaction; increase revenue and decrease operational costs. This report was written by Cackle Telecommunications, who have been actively supporting many of New Zealand s top contact centres for the last seven years. What if you are responsible for performance? Being responsible for the performance of a contact centre or customer service team is not an easy job. At times you will experience: many customer complaints; staff leaving too soon after you have trained them; a shortage of time to train staff; difficulty in keeping staff engaged and motivated; a lack of funds to improve performance; and No clear way to measure staff performance. All of these problems just make your life unnecessarily difficult. They can reflect badly on you and your team; and more often than not your success will rely on implementing changes based on gut feel and instinct rather than fact. Let s explore some of these problems and possible solutions. These challenges are interrelated. Below they are discussed in common themes.

3 Customer complaints A certain level of customer complaints is healthy for any company. We all need someone to tell us sometimes when we haven t got things quite right. However, TOO MANY are not good for anyone. It can lead to unhappy customers and staff, damaged company reputation and loss of profits. Customer complaint levels need to be measured and managed. Call recording can help you measure and manage staff complaints by giving you a baseline and exposing areas for improvement. Staff leaving too soon; lack of engagement and motivation and not enough time to train them Staff will leave a contact centre or customer service team if their job is unpleasant. Low staff morale can disengage or de-motivate them. If your staff can t help customers because they haven t had sufficient training; don t have access to the right people or information; or they experience unnecessary and large time delays to offer customer solutions; they will become frustrated and could leave. This costs a lot. Investing in staff training and inductions goes a long way to improve staff retention and engagement. Good training will: Improve quality and productivity levels Improve motivation - through staff empowerment Give you more flexibility with better skills Less supervision is required which decreases costs Better recruitment and employee retention leads to cost savings Good training is NOT sitting down and watching or reading out-of-date videos or manuals. That is boring, cumbersome and ineffective. Throwing staff in the deep end and expecting a good outcome doesn t work either. So what is good training? Good training is: Organising a staff induction to meet relevant people; Having those people explain how their role affects customer service; and Real product and service demonstrations.

4 However, the BEST training for customer service and contact centre staff is listening to excellent and not so good examples of real customer queries and how they are dealt with. It is one of the fastest and most useful training techniques. Call recording helps you do this. According to Gartner Group, 68% of customers initial contact with you will be by telephone. Recording and monitoring calls is the best way to train and coach staff how to handle calls effectively. It beats sitting by one-on-one looking through tedious manuals. After nine months of monitoring calls and improvements you will see: Increased sales through telephone transactions and improved sales techniques Increased first call resolution due to improved customer service skills Lower call handling times because staff can offer solutions faster Efficiency increases because less staff will be handling more calls in the same amount of time Reviewing calls provides concrete evidence of the areas that need improvement Company liability can be protected by providing recordings for dispute resolution First call resolution (FCR) is the best metric for a call centre to focus on because it gives you the most bang for your buck and has the largest positive impact in your business in many ways. When it is trending up you can guarantee that staff are happier and more motivated, customers are definitely happier and your team s operation costs should be lower. Let s look at this a little deeper. Be WARNED! It is not a simple fix. Adjustments might be required at all levels of the business. BUT it is achievable.

5 There are four variables, staff, managers, information and communication channels, and they all need to be working together effectively to improve FCR (Remember it stands for first call resolution or just think of it as very satisfied customers). Staff You need to hire excellent people. A good customer service person needs to: have above average listening and communication skills be able to move on after a difficult customer be able to follow procedures understand your products in depth be able to troubleshoot e.g. know what information to give to whom to solve problems and know when to escalate a query enjoy learning new things be able to contribute to the product/service information be able to tweak their own performance for small improvements Managers It is the manager s role to empower their staff to great performance levels. They need to: Support and train their staff Analyse staff performance Empower their staff with the ability to DO (solve customer queries) Encourage and reward Ensure the correct information is at their staff s fingertips Keep staff turnover to less than 5% Information In most organisations, small and large, information lies around on individual PCs or hidden deep in folders that are difficult to find. A high level of FCR needs to be backed up by a central knowledge base which is at customer services finger tips. They need to be able to access it and contribute to it. This knowledge base should: Be a centralised database Support different types of media files such as PDF, video, and audio

6 Have one owner accountable for its organisation and logic Be obvious, logical and fast to find what you need Communication Channels Communication channels are important because if customers can engage with you using their communication channel of choice, they will feel more comfortable. We all know how frustrating it is dealing with a company which ONLY uses . Sometimes talking to someone just gets a faster result. This is not to say that selfservice options, social media and don t have their place. The important factors for a strong performing communication channel are: Customers must be able to rely on the stated frequency and speed of the response Customers should be able to select their preferred response channel If you use telephone only, there must be an informed and helpful person to answer It must be supported and reviewed for effectiveness and operational efficiency All of the points above are integral components of offering great customer service. Staff, managers, information and communication channels must work seamlessly. It is not an easy task to obtain 90% and above customer satisfaction rates. It might seem like common sense, however if you start digging in your organisation you might be surprised what you will find. Call recording and quality monitoring will show you which areas are top priorities. No clear way to measure staff performance Many firms don t hesitate to pour budgets into sales and marketing, yet staff training and monitoring performance are some of the last areas to be granted funds to improve business performance. Laurie Smith, Director of CRM Consulting, spends a lot of time bench marking New Zealand contact centres and evaluating their effectiveness. She suggests that call recording is essentially cost-prohibitive for New Zealand call centres. We totally agree with Laurie, that affordability is the biggest challenge. However, if you can prove that it will pay for itself by reducing costs and increasing revenue then you are half way there to getting it for you team.

7 Affordability and Business Improvement with Call Recording in Call Centres Understand how to get ROI on call recording, provide a solid business case, then you will get management buy-in. With management 'buy-in' and belief in business improvement for profitability, service and quality - resources should be made available When resources are available you have a real chance of obtaining the full benefit of call recording and improving your business Visible business improvements will change the view of the affordability of voice recording LOOK! You can have call recording and get a return on your investment. Here s how to go about getting financial approval and management buy-in. There are three steps: 1. Understand how you will use it an what it can do for your company 2. Know your numbers 3. Let the numbers talk - $$$ talk about the bottom line and service levels How are you going to use call recording?

8 Here are some statistics from the UK (2008, The UK Contact Centre Operational Review 6th Edition Contact Babel) - a review of various industries revealed some averages about call recording usage. Reasons to Use Call Recorders Industries researched: To comply with legislation Random quality assurance Training purposes Playback to senior management 61% 60% 86% 85% Finance IT Outsourcing Public Sector Retail & Distribution Services Telecoms Transport Travel Training purposes and random quality assurance are by far the most common reasons. Companies which provide quality induction and ongoing training have better staff engagement and retention levels. Think of your worst job, where there was little training. You sat there uncomfortably, not knowing how to bring up the lack of company specific training and didn t really know where to start or what was expected. It wasn t a good start. In call centres, call recording is a positive step towards better training and quality control. What would you use your voice recorder for? Order taking e.g. a method of recording order details when the customer service representative may have forgotten. Reduce expensive data entry errors. Marketing information learn what concerns prevent customers buying products or services? This leads to raising sales levels. Quality and training purposes create realistic customer service training and involve agents in their own call evaluations. Continual improvement leads to better service. Record phone conferences and the recording for those who couldn t make it. Customer dispute or compliance reasons vital liability protection and security.

9 Know your numbers. Once you know what you would use your voice recorder for, you need to work out how much money you can save the company by introducing it. You would need to estimate a dollar value on areas of potential savings. Here are some examples - returns due to incorrect data entry, unproductive training sessions, or lengthy non-random quality reviews. Let s explore returns due to incorrect order details for this example we ll assume that the CSR, warehouse and accounts are being paid an hourly rate of $22 per hour. Identify the Task Involved Variable Variable Calculation Variable Cost Phone call about returning goods due to over supply 5 minutes CSR time on telephone and checking original order details =5/60 x $22.00 per hour $ minutes organise return of goods =10/60 x $22.00 per hour $3.60 Cost of return courier Local courier $ mins CSR phone call to customer to offer solution Cost of Telephone Call 5 min CSR discussing raising credit with accounts Accounts 3 mins to raise credit Warehouse to receipt stock 10 mins =3/60 x $22.00 per hour =5/60 x $22.00 per hour =3/60 x $22.00 per hour =10/60 x $22.00 per hour $1.10 $0.20 $1.83 $1.10 $3.60

10 This is a total of $19.26 for the extra work to correct an order data-entry error. Work out how many returns per year and then you will have the total cost of returns and data entry errors. How much money could the company save by CSR s double checking data entry by listening to necessary phone calls, e.g. a complex order? Most staff would know when they are not quite sure of details. Listening to a call would take about 3 minutes - $1.10 compared to $19.26 for a data entry error. When you have all this information you can calculate how long it would take for the call recorder to pay for itself. With the example above, a simple voice recording system could pay for itself by preventing twenty serven customer returns. (Pay back equals the cost of voice recorder/ (Cost of return cost of listening to call) 27 returns = $493 / ($ $1.10) This is just the returns cost, now consider quality, training and security, voice recording quickly looks much more affordable. All of these calculations will be specific to your company. Let the numbers talk. Once you know your numbers and how it will affect the company cash flow or at a minimum how call recording can save money and improve customer service levels and streamline company procedures, you need to present this to your managers. The numbers should talk for themselves. Cackle Telecommunications are NZ s call recording experts. We ve been instrumental in the success of New Zealand contact centres and customer service teams for the last seven years, with over twenty five years of combined industry experience. We ve helped over 120 customers with their call recording requirements. Whether you have only a handful of staff or a building full, we can tailor a solution for you. If you would like to know more, take up our offer of a free consultation about your call recording needs and how you could use it.

11 Free Call Ask for Brent Mitchell or Mark Cooper or P.S We ve given you an added bonus.

12 What you should ask your supplier about call recorders for your business? If you are looking at call recording for your business then you might find the following questions useful. 1. How quickly can I find and play back calls? 2. Can I listen to calls from another site? 3. How can my trainers use call recording? 4. What costs are involved? 5. What if I only want to record a specific team or staff member? 6. What happens if we employ more people or downsize? 7. Will the system meet compliance and regulations in New Zealand? 8. What operational support can I get immediately? 9. How long should the system last? 10. What reporting and information will the call recorder provide? 11. How long does it take to install? 12. What business disruption takes place during installation? 13. Will call recording work with our existing equipment and if we change telephone systems in the future? 14. If one part of the call recording fails, does that mean all of it does? 15. Is the system secure? Does it prevent information theft? 16. Can we tailor reports if needed? 17. Where is the data stored? 18. Is the information backed up and is long-term archiving available? 19. What are the options for disaster recovery?