Refine The Source Of Truth In Your Contact Center To Drive Better Performance

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1 Refine The Source Of Truth In Your Contact Center To Drive Better Performance by Art Schoeller Why Read This Report To quote Yogi Berra, If you don t know where you are going, you ll end up someplace else. Contact centers aren t lacking in performance data, especially now that many capture extensive customer feedback. Advances in speech and text analytics add more rich data about agent interactions, but it can become another island of information. This report describes how application development and delivery (AD&D) pros supporting contact centers can best use this data, turn it into actionable information, and drive continuous improvement, resulting in better customer service. This is an update of a previously published report. Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy; we revised this edition to factor in new data and customer examples. Key Takeaways Contact Centers Increasingly Capture Direct Customer Feedback Data With many consumers using web and mobile applications to self-serve first, agents are getting the tougher calls. Agent interactions provide an opportunity to drive increased customer satisfaction but require more customer feedback to tune performance. Contact Centers Need Better Data Support The contact center business analysis role needs to have detailed knowledge of what data is available, where it is drawn from, and the tools required to build new reports and interpret results. There is often a gap between tech support and the contact center business analyst due to a lack of clarity of roles and service levels. Data Governance Can Ensure Good-Quality Data And Alignment On Metrics Deciding what metrics are key to driving performance must be a joint process involving all levels of contact center management. Differences in reporting systems and sources of data can sap resources that could be better applied to continual people, process, and technology improvements. forrester.com

2 Refine The Source Of Truth In Your Contact Center To Drive Better Performance by Art Schoeller with Christopher Andrews, Kate Leggett, Chad Rafferty, and Peter Harrison Capturing The Voice Of The Customer (VoC) Is Not Enough Combining customer feedback with other data sources such as contact outcomes and operational data provides a more complete picture of contact center performance. The firms of 68% of global telecommunications technology decision-makers who are involved with contact centers (20+ employees and 50+ seats) have already implemented consumer surveys; however, many are at a loss for how to analyze this data across organizational boundaries. 1 What is preventing AD&D professionals from supporting strategies to win, serve, and retain customers? 2 The problem is the increased complexity of integrating customer interaction and feedback data from diverse systems. Contact Center Metrics Evolve As Customer Interaction Complexity Increases There are four phases of metrics that contact centers measure (see Figure 1): Efficiency. Average speed of answer, average handle time, service level, and other efficiencybased metrics help contact centers calculate the right level of staffing. 3 As other channels that require agent intervention such as web chat, , and social have emerged, metrics have evolved. For example, average speed of answer, which is voice-centric, has evolved to average speed of response for web chats, s, and social interactions. Vendors that support this phase include Avaya, which launched its call management system in the mid- 80s, and thousands of contact centers use it to this day. Contact center manager familiarity with this product as well as the fact that the data comes right from the switch engender a high level of trust in the reports. All automatic call distributor (ACD) vendors including Aspect, Cisco, Genesys, and Interactive Intelligence as well as cloud-based providers like Five9, incontact, and LiveOps have comprehensive reporting packages. Quality of agent. The advent of quality monitoring (QM) in the mid- 90s allowed managers to listen to calls in a more structured manner than live monitoring, applying associated feedback with the actual call recording. Larger contact centers put QA teams in place to conduct these reviews and establish Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge, MA USA Fax: forrester.com 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester, Technographics, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law.

3 standard metrics to assess agent performance. The limitation of traditional quality monitoring is the reliance on a sample of calls due to the labor required to listen to and score them. Speech analytics now enables QA teams to sort through calls and identify a better sample for review. Dominant vendors in this mature space include NICE and Verint Systems, but a number of second-tier players like AC2 (acquired by incontact), Autonomy (owned by HP), Calabrio, and Mitel Networks provide good systems as well. Quality monitoring is part of a larger suite called workforce optimization (WFO), which incorporates workforce management (WFM) and performance management. 4 Customer satisfaction. In the past five years, a large majority of contact centers have added postcontact survey capabilities to assess the quality of experience. These include customer satisfaction (quality of experience), Net Promoter Score (willingness to recommend a company to peers), and first-contact resolution (FCR) (whether the customer got what they needed during the initial interaction). 5 The best practice for FCR is to compute it off of internal operational systems, as well as ask consumers, and compare the two data sets. Forrester s research on the voice-of-the-customer market identified no less than 34 vendors in this space. 6 Some are more adept at integrating VoC data with contact center operational metrics than others. WFO vendors have now started to expand into this area; for example, Verint Systems acquired Vovici. Customer effort. Consumers increasingly demand quicker and easier access to accurate information and empathetic agents. If their first point of contact is web-based, they expect agents to understand their experience in that channel. This has led a number of leading contact centers to capture interaction data to measure customer effort. It s not easy to derive from operational systems, but you can supplement it with an effort question on surveys. 7 VoC vendors can readily add customer effort questions to their surveys for one perspective on effort. A sample customer effort question is, How much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request? Getting customers internal assessments is harder, but many firms are looking at integrating information from operational systems, CRM, and systems of record to derive them. One example of effort measurement is tracking how many times a call was placed on hold and correlating that to the external survey feedback. You can use the number of cross-channel hops to derive a cross-channel customer effort score. 2

4 FIGURE 1 Contact Center Metrics Evolve To Capture More Customer Feedback Efficiency AHT ASA Contact rate Occupancy Agent-facing QM scores Transfers Adherence Test scores Turnover Customer satisfaction NPS CSAT Emotion Verbatim Renewals/ sales FCR Customer effort Timeliness Repetition Channel shifting People Process Technology Deeper customer insight AHT, average handle time; ASA, average speed of answer; CSAT, customer satisfaction; FCR, first-contact resolution; NPS, Net Promoter Score; QM, quality monitoring Net Promoter and NPS are registered service marks, and Net Promoter Score is a service mark, of Bain & Company, Satmetrix Systems, and Fred Reichheld. Bridging Contact Center Data Is Key To Optimizing Performance Forrester s research indicates that only 15% of global data and analytics decision-makers view data governance as a business-led activity. 8 Alignment between business technology groups and all of the business stakeholders is critical to driving the performance of agents who hold the key to ensuring satisfied customers. 9 This alignment involves close collaboration between technology management resources familiar with all of the source systems and the entire management chain of customer-facing channels. Contact center performance data is invaluable for feedback on website performance and other portions of the customer service ecosystem such as field service and manufacturing. Many contact centers need to resolve a gap between these two disciplines to provide the right set of reports that everyone involved can have a high degree of confidence in. 10 It s important to map the data sources to the individual needs of each customer service role (see Figure 2). To develop a clear picture of data consumers and providers, companies should: Engage all contact center stakeholders to develop their data needs. Each level in a contact center needs to hit the Goldilocks point for the data it receives: not too much, not too little just the right amount of information to do the job. Supervisors will need a lot of data to manage day-today volumes and service levels, senior executives will only need a few strategic key performance 3

5 indicators (KPIs), and agents will need real-time feedback to adjust their work based on queue status. Companies must design scorecards and dashboards to align performance and behavior with the overall service strategy. Charge technology management with providing contact center data management. Historically, contact centers relied on telephone-based systems (ACDs) rather than technology management to provide them with operational reports. But a more diverse set of inputs requires more sophisticated technology resources to integrate all relevant data into a performance management data warehouse. Technology management plays a critical role in evaluating vendor performance management software to see what out-of-the-box integrations are available and what customization is necessary. 11 Have contact center business analysts play a special role in managing performance. Standard dashboards, scorecards, and reports are important for managing contact centers on an ongoing basis. Often, though, questions arise that require manipulation of performance data to drive root-cause analysis and improvements. Companies must staff business analysis roles and support them with tools to probe into the performance management data. Business analysts need a detailed understanding of how all the data sources are mapped in the performance management data warehouse to provide accurate analysis. 4

6 FIGURE 2 Integrate Contact Center Performance Data To Serve Multiple Roles Operational data Contact center interaction management Network Contact center senior executive Contact outcomes CRM Systems of record Customer feedback Voice of the customer Surveys Social listening Performance management data warehouse Operational manager Business analyst Quality and workforce Schedule adherence Interaction analytics Quality assurance Training Agent Supervisor Recommendations Start At The Top To Drive Better Performance Contact centers are living, breathing knowledge factories that, when well-tuned, contribute significantly to positive customer experiences and bottom-line company performance. The volume of data available is daunting, diverse, and difficult to navigate. To better harness this data and improve performance, AD&D pros supporting contact centers should: 5

7 Lobby executives for tools and governance budget. Customer service executives need to endorse and budget for contact center data governance and tools. Revisit the KPIs you use to drive contact center performance on an annual basis, and ensure their linkage to the enterprise customer service strategy. Establish a measure of trust in the performance data. Firms should subject the performance system itself to testing and feedback to ensure users are able to easily use the data, trust it, and take the appropriate actions at their levels. For example, supervisors must be able to easily drill down from their group-level report into agent performance stats and tie them to training outcomes. Senior-level executives reviewing monthly KPIs must have the ability to view weekly trends so they can understand events that require their intervention with other organizations such as field service. Remember that contact center data governance is a team effort. All stakeholders up and down the contact center management chain must be involved on an ongoing basis to determine which metrics are key to managing performance. They all need to contribute to how the organization captures, computes, and presents to each role in the contact center chain of command. Ensure that data management support roles have sufficient capacity. If you use a business intelligence center of excellence to develop performance management software, it must have sufficient knowledge and staffing to support the contact center. A clear responsible, accountable, consulted, informed (RACI) matrix with service levels can help determine what portion of a given resource resides in a contact center business analyst role versus central technology management. The service levels need to include intraday issue analysis query support, data warehouse maintenance, software upgrade planning, and report development timelines. 6

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9 Endnotes 1 Source: Forrester s Global Business Technographics Networks And Telecommunications Survey, For more information, see the Forrester report The State Of Customer Experience Management, Read this report to understand how the age of the customer requires tech management to transform into a customerfacing function in specific ways. Business technology brings together technology and traditionally customer-facing roles like marketing, sales, service, brand/product management, and fulfillment for the purpose of deploying systems of engagement that provide differential customer experience. Firms must build these systems of engagement from the outside in, according to how customers move in market spaces. The rules for planning, building, and running systems of engagement are not the same as for previous generations of tech management because customers are not employees. The increasingly crucial role that digital technologies play in customer engagement elevates the CIO role in business if CIOs can move beyond the traditional IT focus on technology assets and adopt an expanded view that centers on customer experience and choice. See the Forrester report The CIO Mandate: Engaging Customers With Business Technology. 3 In the early years of the industry, these metrics were the first to be available directly from automatic call distributors and geared to real-time voice interactions. They were the key component of many contact center managers performance compensation and outsourcing contracts. The industry through benchmarking and other analysis did what it could to tie these metrics to customer satisfaction, but the data was largely not available to make a strong correlation between the two. 4 Workforce optimization incorporates many individual products that are now more tightly integrated into a software suite. QM records customer interactions and ties evaluations to those contacts. WFM provides the ability to forecast and schedule agents. Performance management software provides integrations with numerous sources of contact center performance in a common data warehouse and out-of-the-box dashboards, scorecards, and reports. WFO has also started to integrate speech and text analytics, automated surveys, and voice-of-the-customer capabilities. AD&D professionals supporting contact centers, in a race to develop applications in the age of the customer, view social customer service warily. On the one hand, they recognize that younger customers want service via social channels. On the other hand, they fear that social upends all their well-developed workforce optimization tools and processes for customer service. This report details the metrics, forecasting, and quality monitoring processes and tools that AD&D pros will need to adapt for social customer care. See the Forrester report Brief: Adapt Don t Scrap Your Workforce Optimization Tools To Support Social Customer Service. 5 Net Promoter and NPS are registered service marks, and Net Promoter Score is a service mark, of Bain & Company, Satmetrix Systems, and Fred Reichheld. 6 Companies use VoC programs to collect and analyze customer feedback, inform customer experience improvements, and track the results of those improvements. See the Forrester report Voice Of The Customer Vendor Landscape, Contact center agents can have a huge impact on customer experience. Unhappy contact center agents equal unhappy customers. It s that simple. What is less straightforward is how AD&D professionals can determine how happy and engaged the agents actually feel. If they can successfully uncover what sort of experiences agents have, AD&D pros must then create technology scenarios that help improve those experiences. This report provides contact center pros with methods for measuring the agent experience by asking the right questions and points to technologies that help improve that experience. See the Forrester report How To Measure And Improve The Contact Center Agent Experience. 8 We asked survey respondents which organizational unit currently has primary ownership of data governance/ stewardship at their organizations. Business-led was counted as sales/marketing or other client-facing department. Source: Forrester s Global Business Technographics Data And Analytics Survey,

10 9 High-quality data, when used effectively, can provide that elusive single view of a customer a fundamental element to enable customer service reps to offer personalized, value-added service. IT must partner with business process pros supporting customer service operations and change the conversation to focus on the quantifiable business impacts of poor data quality such as increased operational costs and lower customer satisfaction scores to craft a solid business case to drive data improvements. See the Forrester report The Secret To Better Customer Service: High Data Quality. 10 Many enterprises have a gap between IT and contact center operations. Sufficient resources are not available to administer contact center software for optimal operation and ensure high-quality data to guide the business. See the Forrester report Mind The Gap When Organizing To Support Contact Center Applications. 11 Contact center performance management applications are available from a number of WFO vendors, ACD vendors, and individual specialists. Key attributes of these packages are out-of-the-box integrations with leading data sources such as ACDs, WFM, and CRM along with a set of standardized, but readily customizable, reports, scorecards, and dashboards. All WFO companies, such as Aspect, Calabrio, NICE, and Verint Systems, offer performance management software. Exony provides integration with Cisco ACD systems, and Genesys Info Mart can be used as well. Many companies choose to develop their own performance management system using general-purpose business intelligence tools. When companies choose to do their own, they need to make sure there is sufficient support from technology management to maintain the integrations and provide additional report development. 9

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