Unlocking Value through Improved Agent Performance

Transcription

1 Unlocking Value through Improved Agent Performance

2 Companies seeking profitable growth recognize the importance of the customer service experience in driving customer retention. Accenture research 1 shows Customer Service is one of the most important factors influencing customers initial choice of providers and their remaining with those providers over time. Yet many companies are not delivering acceptable customer service and, as a result, are losing customers. According to Accenture s 2012 Global Consumer Pulse Research: Nearly two-thirds (63%) of consumers point to service as the most important factor in their choice of brand. Forty-four percent of consumers have higher customer service expectations than they had even a year ago. Sixty-three percent of consumers say it is extremely important to them to have agents who are polite and friendly; despite this wish, 65% report one of their top-two actual service frustrations is dealing with customer service agents who are unfriendly or impolite. 70% of consumers say they are likely to switch if they deal with agents who are unable to answer their questions. Sixty-two percent have actually switched companies in the past year due to poor customer service. Of those consumers who switched, 85% said the company could have prevented them from switching: the most commonly cited preventative measure was if their issue had been resolved in the first contact. As a company s face to its customers, service agents directly impact the customers experience and resulting loyalty to that company. 1. Accenture 2012 Global Consumer Pulse Research, Page 2 Unlocking Value through Improved Agent Performance

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4 Simultaneous benefits: Reduced costs and increased customer satisfaction by resolving issues on the first call. Find the sweet spot of performance management Companies have long made enormous investments in the customer service support channel, though agent performance has remained frustratingly inconsistent. Now companies are focused on reducing customer care support costs while still using the customer service agent support channel to promote the company s brand image and overall reputation. With Accenture s Agent Performance Management service, you can achieve both these goals now. A very simple illustration of this is when agents can resolve more issues on the first customer call. Eliminating the need for repeat calls reduces the company s cost to serve and helps increase customer satisfaction. Customers continue to have high service expectations. Having full visibility to each agents performance is a critical enabler to delivering on the company s service promise and providing a differentiated customer experience. Customer service expectations: three-year trend Easier/more convenient to obtain customer services Faster customer service 75% 76% 74% 71% 71% 66% Customer service representatives to be more knowledgeable 67% 67% 74% More options for obtaining service 60% 66% 64% Specialized treatment for being a good customer 39% 50% 48% Customer service representative to know more about me 19% 33% 32% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% Page 4 Unlocking Value through Improved Agent Performance

5 Drive quantifiable change To significantly improve service center performance, the manager must understand each agent s performance improvement opportunity areas and be able to coach, train, and incent individual agents to elevate their performance. Traditional performance analysis methods do not provide the visibility needed to truly assess individual agents performance. Instead, agents are assumed to have the same needs and gaps. This broad-brush approach has made it difficult to drive quantifiable improvements in an individual agent s performance. Traditional methods sample small numbers of support calls selected at random. While limited sampling is useful for uncovering support center trends, it is less useful for identifying development opportunities relevant to individual agents. Why? The confidence level for sampling results at the service center level is usually high (±1 2%) but low (less than 50%) at the individual agent level. Figure 1: Agent performance management service Accenture s solution, uniquely powered by intelligent analytics, accounts for all of an agents customer interactions. It provides a 360 view of individual agent performance, using four different performance lenses (see Figure 1): 1. Balanced scorecards with metrics that matter aligned to company and service goals. Metrics are calculated with statistically significant data sources. 2. Incentive compensation opportunity directly linked to overall balanced scorecard performance 3. Targeted performance monitoring based on analytics-driven performance insight 4. Continuous assessment of productive vs. nonproductive time Whether we like it or not, every agent metric can and will likely be gamed. This is especially common when there is a an emphasis placed on driving particular metric results. Our service provides natural guardrails to identify and control metric gaming. This is achieved by leveraging our performance analytics capability to identify underlying agent manipulation behaviors that frequently go undetected with traditional performance management approaches. It is important to balance the right metrics with the right controls to raise the performance mean. Our service provides comprehensive performance insight with these important controls. This balanced view, formed from multiple perspectives, produces detailed insights into the performance of individual agents. As a result, service center managers have the proof points and recommended actions they need to raise the performance bar and cut the costs of customer support. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, they can tailor feedback and coaching to fill specific gaps for each member of their team. I have never had this level of visibility into my vendor or captive center agent performance. Now I know how to drive our performance and exceed our customers expectations. Client executive 1. Performance Scorecards 2. Incentive Compensation Powered by Analytics 360º Performance Management 4. Agent Productivity 3. Performance Monitoring Page 5

6 Innovate with metrics that matter Accenture has developed an innovative and effective approach to managing and driving agent performance. We have 25 years of experience helping our clients design, build and implement agent metricdriven approaches that deliver results. Accenture has developed more than 90 unique performance correlations leveraging our robust analytics capability. This helps provide a level of visibility into agent performance that companies previously have not had and helps them make significant improvements to impact the bottom line. Our client-tested solution can help you to: Target areas of the service experience that matter most to customers, as validated by our industry research. Define and implement a balanced set of individual performance metrics aligned with the company s vision, strategy and goals. Provide actionable opportunities to drive efficiency and productivity for individuals. Leverage the service channel to drive an improved customer service experience, customer retention and loyalty. Incorporate insight gained through scorecard results and targeted monitoring to enable performance-based routing, customer segmentation and differentiated treatment models. Why a managed service? While Accenture offers a range of ways to improve agent performance, implementing this solution as a managed service is a compelling option. We can set up and execute the service often more quickly than most companies can develop the capability themselves and at a competitive price point. By subscribing to this service, a company can benefit from our many years of investment in improving agent performance through service channels. Our speed to market correlates to speed to value. There is a direct connection between relying on a proven solution and driving quantifiable value faster. Additionally, companies have found leveraging a third party service can provide a legal advantage when addressing and taking action on fraudulent agent behavior identified through the service. Beyond that, our third-party objectivity helps prevent internal politics and bias from influencing the results. Maintain improvements over time Companies typically have difficulty maintaining performance improvements over time. After initial gains are made, momentum often slows, thus minimizing future benefits. Accenture s Agent Performance Management service serves as a control. The service provides continuous and systematic measurement, monitoring and tracking agent performance results. This new level of visibility and actionable insight enables companies to maintain value created while continuing to drive performance improvements. Its systematic approach, driven by metrics that matter, supports ongoing review of individual agent performance (see Figure 2). And this new level of visibility helps companies to continue to drive performance upward and to maintain the value they have created. Figure 2: New levels of visibility enable significant performance improvement results Anaytics Powered Opportunity Identification Drive Performance Improvement Page 6 Unlocking Value through Improved Agent Performance

7 Agent Performance Management Service One-time service activation fee Monthly base service fee and per-agent tiered pricing Four components (bundled or purchased separately) Typical contract: 1-3 years Solution improves cost to serve by 25-30%, customer satisfaction by 15-20%. Page 7

8 Contact Us To learn more about Accenture s Agent Performance Management services, visit Accenture.com or contact one of our managing directors: Erika Simpson erika.j.simpson@accenture.com Dawn Palmer dawn.e.palmer@accenture.com About Sales & Customer Services Sales & Customer Services helps companies acquire, develop and retain more profitable customer relationships. We offer a broad range of innovative capabilities that address every aspect of the customer experience, including pricing strategy and profitability assessment, customer analytics, direct and indirect sales force execution, customer service, field support, customer contact operations, and retail/branch operations. We use these combinations of skills to help our clients accelerate growth, improve sales productivity and reduce customer-care costs helping increase the value of their customer relationships and enhancing the economic value of their brands. About Accenture Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 259,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$27.9 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, Its home page is Copyright 2013 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture. mc289