Over 275,000 Hits Monthly! August 2004 Forecasting Fundamentals: The Art and Science of Predicting Call Center Workload

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1 Over 275,000 Hits Monthly! August 2004 Forecasting Fundamentals: The Art and Science of Predicting Call Center Workload Written by Penny Reynolds, Founding Partner of The Call Center School The basis of any good staffing plan is an accurate workload forecast. Without a precise forecast of the work to be expected, the most sophisticated effort to calculate staff numbers and create intricate schedule plans is wasted effort. The old adage of garbage in, garbage out is especially true when applied to call center workforce management. An accurate forecast is the most important step of the process. The purpose of the forecast is to predict workload so that we can get the right number of staff in place to handle it. And there are many different situations in the call center environment that require a forecast to be done. The most common scenario for which we forecast is simply normal, day-to-day operations. But you may also require a forecast for special situations such as planning for new call type(s), opening a new center, a merger or acquisition, or a change in operating hours. Or you may be implementing a new technology that will affect your call volume or pattern and need to determine what the resulting change means to staff workload. Whatever the reason, it s important to understand the basic principles behind workload forecasting and how to apply them to accurately plan call center resources. The forecasting process is both an art and a science. It s an art because we are, after all, predicting the future. And the accuracy of your forecast will be due in some part to your judgment and experience. But it s also a science - a step-by-step mathematical process that takes past history and uses it to predict future events. A working knowledge of these specialized statistical techniques, along with a pencil, paper, and calculator will get you through the process. And for those of you that have workforce management software in place that automates the forecasting process, don t think that you re off the hook! It s just as critical for you to understand these calculations as it is for someone that s doing them by hand. It s important you understand the numbers coming from the software tool to verify accuracy of results and perhaps more importantly, explain the numbers to management. So even if you have tools to help, learning the fundamentals of forecasting is worthwhile. Step 1: Gathering the Data The first step in the forecasting process is gathering representative historical data. We assume that past history is the best predictor of the future in most call centers, so gathering this history is the first task. The most obvious source of this information will be historical reports from the ACD specifically the number of calls offered and handle time information by half hour. If you re wondering about how far back to delve into your historical reports, we like to have two years worth of past history if it s available and if it s relevant. Less than two years worth may suffice, but won t give you the most accurate tracking of trends and monthly/seasonal patterns that 24 months will clearly show. It s important to note that we typically assume the NCO (number of calls offered) accurately portrays the workload for which we need to staff. This assumption is valid as long as all calls are getting in and that none are blocked at the network level by insufficient telephone trunks. It s always a good idea to validate this assumption by requesting periodic busy studies from your local and long distance carriers. Another critical step of the data gathering process is to eyeball your information to make sure there are no data aberrations. You ll want to look for any abnormally low or high numbers as well as missing information. When you identify something out of the ordinary, you should first determine the reason for the anomaly, and then decide if it needs to be adjusted or not. As an example, let s look at a previous year s daily call volumes for July. You ll see several aberrations in the historical information. One is related to the 4 th of July holiday weekend. Call volumes begin to drop on Thursday, are significantly lower on Friday, are zero on the actual holiday and following Sunday, as well as the Monday that follows. What should you do about the aberrations? Since the reason for the anomaly is a holiday that will repeat, we ll want to account for the holiday as we predict what volumes we ll receive next July. However, the cont on page neke@callcentertimes.com

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3 Forcasting Fundamentals cont actual day of week of July 4 th changes from year to year, so the pattern will not be exactly the same. If the 4 th shifts to a Monday, we might expect the Tuesday following the holiday to be much lower while the Thursday and Friday prior might not be significantly affected. This is where the art comes in using your intuition and judgment as part of the forecasting process. The other aberration happens on the third Wednesday of the month. You ll see that call volumes are 30% lower than the previous Wednesday. There could be several explanations for this discrepancy. It might just mean that the ACD didn t record calls that hour due to a power outage. Or perhaps there was a compelling news event that afternoon and call volume dropped significantly. In either event, you d want to normalize the data back to a realistic number before including the data in your forecasting calculations. On the other hand, there might be an event that happens the third Wednesday of each month that really does cause call volume to drop. Assume this data represented the calls to an internal help desk, and that on the third Wednesday of every month, there was a two-hour company-wide meeting. In that case the numbers on the report accurately reflect the volume that day and would also be an accurate number to use to forecast future numbers. The key in dealing with a data aberration is to first determine the reason it occurred. Then, if it s a one-time incident, or an event that might occur again but you can t predict when (like a storm), you ll want to normalize the numbers up or down to reflect realistic volumes. On the other hand, if it s a repeatable, predictable event, these numbers need to stay in the data so that the forecast reflects the event in the future. (Hint: It s important to note in the data why each aberration occurred so you ll remember it for future planning purposes!) Once you ve analyzed and adjusted the historical information, then we re ready for the next step Step 2: Predicting Monthly Calls The next step in the process takes us from raw data to a prediction of what s coming for a future month. There are several approaches to get us to this future forecast: Point Estimate. This is the simplest approach and assumes that any point in the future will match the corresponding point in the past. (i.e., the first Monday in April next year will be the same as the first Monday in August of this year). This approach has obvious shortcomings in that it does not account for any upward or downward trends in calling patterns. It s also dangerous in that the forecast can be dramatically different if the original data was atypical. Averaging Approaches. There are a variety of methods that incorporate simple mathematical averaging, ranging from a simple average of several past numbers, to a moving average where older data is dropped out when new numbers are available. The most accurate averaging approach involves weighted averaging, where more recent events are given more weight or significance than older events. So if the call volumes on the first Monday of April for the past three years have been 2400, 2500, and 2600 calls: the simple average would be 2500 calls, the moving average might be 2550 calls (dropping out the oldest data). In a weighted average approach we might assign an 80% weight to the most recent number, with only a 10% weight assigned to each of the prior years giving us a prediction of But while the weighted average approach is probably the closest to what an actual forecast would be, it still misses the upward trend in the data that simply can t be identified and incorporated by averaging together old numbers. Time Series. The recommended approach for call center forecasting involves a process called time series analysis. This approach takes historical information and allows the isolation of the effects of trend (the rate of change) as well as seasonal or monthly differences. It is the approach used in most call centers and serves as the basis for most of the automated workforce management forecasting models. The basic assumption is that call volume is influenced by a variety of factors over time and that each of the factors can be isolated and used to predict the future. The first step in a time series approach is to isolate the effect of trend. Trend is basically just the rate of change in the calls. While that trend can be upward or downward, in most call centers, trend simply means the growth rate. It is important to determine this rate as an annual trend rate as well as a month-to-month change. Once the trend rate has been determined, the next factor to isolate is the effect of seasonality or month-to-month variances. This process is fairly tricky, since you can t really determine monthly or seasonal factors just by looking at the most recent twelve months of data. In looking at the first column of monthly call volumes below, is December really a busy month compared to May, or is December s volume higher because we ve been experiencing a large upward trend and has just simply had seven more months to grow? To determine the effects of seasonality, it s important to detrend the most recent twelve months of data in other words, bring each month up to current levels by factoring in the month-bymonth trend rate. After detrending, we can do an apples to apples comparison. The months of the year can be compared against one another to determine what are actually busier than average or slower than average months. In the example above, we see that May is actually busier than December based on calling patterns, with March and April actually being our peak times of year. The trend rates and seasonal patterns identified using time series analysis are then used to pinpoint specific future monthly forecasts. The time series process is the recommended approach to forecasting future workload and if done precisely, can generally 3

4 Forcasting Fundamentals cont create forecasts with 95% or higher forecasting accuracy. (Note: The process of time series analysis including trend isolation, detrending analysis, and seasonal pattern identification is a fairly complicated one and the step-bystep process is beyond the scope of this article. For more information on the steps, contact The Call Center School at ) Step 3: Creating Daily and Half- Hourly Forecasts Once monthly forecasts are in place, the next step involves breaking down the monthly forecast into a daily prediction, then further down into an hourly or half-hourly numbers. To predict daily workload, you must first calculate day-of-week factors. Most call centers have a busier day on Monday than other days of week and it s important to know what percentage of the week s workload this day and others represent. The good news is that it s not necessary to go back and analyze two years worth of information to determine these factors. Typically evaluating the last few weeks worth of daily call volume data is sufficient to identify daily patterns. Just select several clear weeks of data (those without holidays or other major events that might skew the proportions) and see what the total Monday volume is compared to the weekly total. Then repeat for the other days of week. These percentages reflect your day-ofweek patterns. Once the daily forecast is in place, it s time to repeat the process for time-of-day patterns. It would be nice and easy to schedule staff if the calls came in evenly throughout the day, but since that s not reality, it s critical to know when the peaks, valleys, and average times are. Again, gather several clear weeks of data and evaluate the Mondays to look at how each half-hour of the day compares to the daily total to create your Monday half-hourly patterns. Then repeat for the other days of the week. The result will be 24 hourly or 48 half-hourly percentages that represent intra-day call patterns and you ll have one for each day of week. We ve now broken down our historical data and past trends to develop a monthly, then daily, then half-hourly forecast of workload. Keep in mind that this forecast must include not only call volume predictions, but should include a prediction about handle time as well. To calculate workload and predict staffing and schedule requirements later, we want the total picture of workload, which is number of calls multiplied by average handle time. Make sure your handle time predictions accurately reflect the time of year, day of week, and time of day since call length may vary for a number of reasons having to do business variations as well as caller behavior. Step 4: Adjusting for Other Business Influences The final step in the forecasting process is an important one. There are many factors that influence the call center s workload and the smart workforce planner will have a process in place that considers all the these factors in the forecasting process. Think about all the different areas of your organization that influence the calls you receive. The most obvious one is the marketing department who has tremendous impact of your work based on the sales and marketing promotions they do. Hopefully you have a formal communications process in place to hear about marketing plans well ahead of the actual event so they can be built into the forecasting assumptions. Make sure you consider all the other pertinent areas as well. Will the billing department s new invoice format cause a flood of calls? How about sales forecasts from the Sales VP that can help you plan staff based on the new customer account base a year from now? Is the fulfillment area changing the way they package and ship products that may cause an increase (or decrease!) in your call volume? It s critical that you communicate regularly with all these influencers of call center workload as you prepare and finetune the forecast. Once the forecast is in place, then you re ready for the next step calculating staff requirements to meet service goals. Stay tuned for the detailed steps in our next article: The Math of Contact Center Staffing: How to Calculate Staff Numbers for Incoming Calls and Multi-Media Contacts. The Math of Call Center Staffing Calculating Resource Requirements and Understanding Staff and Service Tradeoffs Sharpen your pencils. Dust off the calculator. It s time for a math lesson. Running a successful call center operation means managing by the numbers. And the most important number of all is the number of bodies in seats each hour to respond to customer contacts. Since over two-thirds of call center operating costs are related to personnel, getting the just right number of staff in place is critical in terms of both service and cost. This article outlines the step-bystep process to calculate call center resource requirements and evaluate the most important service and cost tradeoffs. Calculating Workload In the previous article on Forecasting Fundamentals, we explained the process of forecasting calls taking historical data and analyzing trends and seasonal patterns to arrive at monthly estimates, then using dayof-week and time-of-day patterns to break down the numbers into hourly or half-hourly forecasts. With these call volume forecasts and some assumptions about average handle time (AHT), we re ready to perform a simple calculation to arrive at staff workload. It s simply the number of forecast calls for an hour multiplied by the average handle time of a call. The average handle time (AHT) is made up of two components: actual conversation or talk time plus any after call wrap-up time associated with the call. The wrap up time can include almost anything filling out a form, updating the customer database, etc. 4

5 Forcasting Fundamentals cont This handle time will likely vary by time of day as well as by day of week. For example, you may find that AHT is higher during the evening shift since you may have newer staff working the undesirable hours, or simply have callers that like to talk a little longer during the wee hours of the morning! Most call centers simply use an average number for handle time across the board, which may be a dangerous assumption if there s significant variance. Imprecise numbers can contribute to the understaffing or overstaffing, so it s best to use numbers that actually reflect timeof-day or day-of-week patterns. The workload number is then used to determine how many base staff are needed to handle the calls. The part that makes staffing for a call center different than any other kind of staffing situation is that this workload doesn t represent typical work patterns. Let s compare an incoming call center to a group of clerical workers processing mail in the same company. Between 8:00 and 9:00am, the clerical staff has 400 pieces of mail to process and each piece takes 3 minutes to handle. That s 1200 minutes or 20 hours of workload. How many people need to be working to accomplish all the work by 9:00? Ok, this isn t the tough math part yet. To process 20 hours of workload, 20 staff would be needed. The reason for the 1:1 ratio is that the mail tasks represent sequential workload. In other words, the staff can process the work as back-to-back tasks and each person can accomplish one hour of work in an hour timeframe. Determining Call Center Staff Requirements Now it s time to staff for the call center. These employees are getting 400 calls and each one takes an average of three minutes to handle 2 minutes of conversation and another minute of after-call work. Again, we have 1200 minutes or 20 hours of workload. How many people are needed? Unfortunately, we can t handle the calls with only 20 people. At 8:05, there may be 22 calls arriving, meaning all 20 agents are busy, with another 2 calls in queue. Then at 8:15, there may only be 16 calls in progress, meaning 4 of our staff are idle. Those 4 people won t be able to accomplish a full hour s work, simply because of the way the calls have arrived. In an incoming call center, the work doesn t arrive in a back-to-back fashion. Rather, the work arrives whenever our customers decide to place calls. So we have random workload instead of sequential work. This brings us to the first math rule of call center staffing: You must have more staff hours in place than hours of actual work to do. So how many extra do we need? For 20 hours of workload, will we need 21 staff? 24? 30? The number of staff needed depends on the level of service we wish to deliver. Obviously, the more staff we have, the shorter the delay. The fewer the staff, the longer the caller will wait. Determining what happens with a given number of resources in place to accomplish a defined amount of workload requires a mathematical model that replicates the situation at hand. There are several telephone traffic engineering models available and one of these in particular is wellsuited to the world of incoming call centers. We use a model called Erlang C that takes into account the randomness of the arriving workload as well as the queuing behavior (holding for the first available rep) of the calls. An Example of Erlang C Let s take a look at Erlang C predictions based on the 20 hours of workload we defined earlier. The table below shows what would happen with anywhere from 21 to 28 staff (Column 1) in place to handle the 20 hours of incoming call workload. Let s take a look at each of the columns and measures of service. The second column shows the portion of calls that would find no agent available and go into queue and the third column shows how long those delayed callers would wait on average. So, with 24 staff in place, the Erlang C model predicts that 30% of callers would be delayed and that they would wait an average of 45 seconds in queue. The third column represents the average delay of all calls, including the ones that are answered immediately. So, with 24 staff in place, 30 % of calls would go to the queue and wait there 45 seconds, while the other 70% would be answered immediately. The average delay, or average speed of answer (ASA) is the weighted average of both these groups [ (45 x.30) + (0 x.70)] = 13 seconds. It s important to understand that this ASA number is not the average queue experience for the callers. Either they wait (and do so for an average of 45 seconds), or they don t wait at all. The ASA isn t a real life number it s a statistic to represent the average of the two other numbers. The fourth column represents service level. Service level represents X% of callers that are handled in a specified Y seconds of delay time. This table shows the percentage that are handled within a specified 20 seconds of wait time. A common call center service goal is 80% of the calls handled in 20 seconds or less. To meet this goal, we d need 24 staff in place, yielding a service level of 81% in 20 seconds. Staffing to Service Goals So what should your service goal be? While there are some common goals seen often in call centers, there s really no such thing as an industry standard for what a service goal should be. Setting a speed of answer goal depends upon many different factors. Call centers need to consider enterprise goals and marketing strategies, competitor standards, and most importantly the expectations of customers. We often find that call center management marches toward the same service goal year after year without ever considering if the goal should be higher or lower based on the business environment or customer 5

6 Forcasting Fundamentals cont demands. Customer expectations have certainly risen when it comes to speed of answer expectations. More and more callers are basing their expectations and judging your service on their last, best service experience. Taking a look at your call center s ACD reports and looking at when callers begin to abandon calls will give you some idea about a worst case delay scenario. But setting the best case goal should involve getting feedback from senior management, customers, competitors, and other centers and then evaluating cost and service trade-offs to determine the impact on cost and on service of raising or lowering the goal. Relationship of Staffing and Service Let s take one more look at our staffing table and review the impact on service as staff numbers change. Obviously, delay times increase as agents are subtracted, and service improves as staff are added. But service is not affected to the same degree each way, and this is a terribly important phenomenon to understand about call center staffing. Let s say we ve decided we need to have 24 staff in place to handle the 20 hours of telephone workload in order to meet an 80% in 20 seconds service level goal. If we adjust the staff numbers up or down, there are two very different impacts. First, if we add a person or two, the average speed of answer (ASA) improves from 13 seconds to 8 seconds with 25 staff, and then to 4 seconds with 26 staff. The first person added yielded a 5-second improvement, with the next person gaining us only a 4-second improvement, and a third person would result in an ASA of 2 seconds, a 2-second improvement. Adding staff results in diminishing returns, with less and less impact as the staff numbers get higher. Now let s look at the effect of subtracting staff from our 24 person requirement. When we subtract one, two, and three persons our ASA increases to 25 seconds, 51 seconds, and 137 seconds respectively. The first person out resulted in an increase of 12 seconds, the second in another 26- second decline, and the third in a jump another 86 seconds! By taking staff away, service worsens and it does so dramatically at some point. There are especially big jumps as our staff number gets closer and closer to the hours of workload. You can view this as both good news and bad news. The good news is that if you re delivering poor service in your call center, you can improve it dramatically by adding just one more person. On the other hand, when service levels are mediocre to bad, one more person dropping out can send service into such a downhill slide that it s nearly impossible to recover. Calculating Shrinkage and Schedule Requirements The numbers we ve discussed so far are purely bodies in chairs numbers. These numbers assume that all agents are always available to handle call workload. But we all know that agents aren t available much of the time. And we have to factor in this unavailability into our schedule requirements so we end up with enough staff to man the phones. In calculating staff requirements, a final adjustment needs to be made to factor in all the activities and situations that make staff unproductive. We refer to this unproductive time as staff shrinkage and define it as any time for which staff are being paid but not available to handle calls. We include such activities as breaks, meetings, training sessions, off-phone work, and general unproductive or where the heck are they? time. In most centers, staff shrinkage ranges from 20 35%. We account for this shrinkage factor in our staff requirement by dividing the Erlang staff requirement by the productive staff percentage (or 1 minus the shrinkage percentage). In our example, if 24 staff are needed and our shrinkage factor is 30%, then 24/.7 yields a requirement of 34 schedules. Next Steps In the next article in this series, we ll help you understand a few more of the numbers associated with call center staffing including the effect of arrival rate, calculations of staff occupancy, and impact of size on call center efficiencies. We ll also discuss how workload calculations and staffing models are different when planning resources for handling other channels of communications such as outbound calls or s. Evaluating Staff, Cost, and Service Tradeoffs Running a successful call center operation means managing by the numbers. And the most important number of all is the magical quantity of staff that matches the workforce as closely as possible to the call center workload. In the previous article on Calculating Call Center Staff, we outlined the basic steps of calculating staff requirements calculating workload, defining speed of answer goals, and applying a staffing model to determine the just right number of staff to meet service goals. This article takes a closer look at staffing requirements and the many factors that influence the staffing levels in your call center. In this article we ll address the following common staffing questions: 1. How will arrival rate affect my staffing requirement? 2. How does size impact staffing numbers and efficiencies? 3. How much of a person s time should actually be spent in active versus available state each hour? 4. How will reducing the number of staff affect overall call center costs? Call Arrival Rate As discussed in the previous article, calls generally arrive at call centers in a random fashion no particular pattern within the hour or half-hour. And because of this random pattern, a call center will always need more staff hours in place than the actual workload hours to be accomplished. 6

7 Forcasting Fundamentals cont On the other hand, if calls arrive in a smoother pattern (closer to a task after task paperwork environment), then the number of staff needed would be close to the workload hours. What contact center scenarios would represent this type of back-toback work? We might expect to see outbound calling follow this pattern, especially if an automated dialer is in use. The workload (outbound calling) occurs in a back-to-back sequential pattern rather than a random one. Likewise, responding to s typically represents sequential workload as well, assuming that personnel respond to these contacts one right behind the other. In both these cases, the number of staff required is equivalent to workload hours. On the other hand, what if the workload arrives in a peaked pattern rather than a smooth one? Let s consider the call center that is responding to calls based on television advertising. There may be no calls arriving at 11:05, but a flood of calls arrives at 11:09 after an advertisement 11:08. And then the calls drop again at 11:15 but peak again at 11:25. This all or nothing pattern requires enough staff to be in place to handle peaks of calls when they arrive, meaning more staff would be required than a typical random pattern. If your traffic patterns resemble either of the extremes above, then the erlang traffic models typically used to calculate staff will either overstate or understate the staff needed. A model called Erlang-Engset is recommended for smooth workload situations, while an Equivalent Random Theory model is used for peaked arrival patterns. Agent Group Size Another factor that has a major impact on staffing is the size of the center or the agent group. Centers handling larger volumes of calls will naturally be more efficient than smaller groups. This is due to the economies of scale of large groups. As seen in the example below, doubling the call volume does not require two times the number of staff to meet the same service goal of 80% in 20 seconds. And when call volume increases eightfold, only about six times the number of staff are needed. As the volume grows, the staff to workload ratio gets smaller and smaller. The reason for these increased efficiencies and the lower staff to workload ratio is simply that with a higher volume of calls, there s a greater likelihood that when an agent is finished with a call, there s another one coming in right behind it for that person to handle. With a bigger volume, each person has the opportunity to process more calls each hour. Each person spends less time in available state waiting on a call to arrive and with each person handling more calls, we don t need as many staff. Staff Occupancy So if a higher volume of calls means that each person is busier, then you might assume that bigger is always better, right? After all, these folks are being paid to sit and handle calls, so don t we want them busy all the time doing just that? The answer is yes and no. While we want staff to be busy processing calls, having them too busy (in other words, no available time or breather between calls) isn t such a good idea either. The measure of how busy agents are is called agent occupancy. It s the percentage of logged in time that an agent is actually busy in talk or wrap-up time. It s calculated by dividing the amount of workload by the staff hours in place. In the previous table, with 12 staff handling 8.33 hours of workload, agent occupancy is only 69%. At double the call volume with 21 staff in place, twice the workload is being handled without doubling the workforce, so each person is busier. In this case occupancy has increased to 79%. As the volume of calls grows, increased efficiencies and economies of scale come into effect, meaning occupancy goes higher and higher. And while we want our staff to be productive and busy, asking staff to stay occupied at a 94% rate is not realistic. Most call centers aim for the 85 90% range since occupancy rates higher than that lead to all kinds of undesirable call handling behaviors as well as a high turnover rate. Cost and Service Concerns A final staffing trade-off has to do with the relationship of staff to service and cost. All call centers these days are being asked to cut costs and to do more with fewer resources. Since 65 to 70% of a total call center s operating costs are related to staffing, that is generally the first place we look to reduce costs. It is all too common to think of layoffs and reduction in staff as a way to respond to the call from senior management to tighten belts. But before you write up the pink slips, make sure you understand the implications of staff reductions. Let s assume that you re a fairly small call center with fewer than 50 agent seats. (If you re a larger center, you can view these numbers as representative of a specialized agent group within the bigger call center structure.) Most days you re meeting your service goal of 70% in 30 seconds. The snapshot below indicates the staffing picture with varying numbers of staff during a half-hour in which you re getting 175 calls. As you can see, staffing with 33 bodies in chairs would enable you to meet service level fairly consistently. But the loss of one person would worsen service level from 74% to 62% (or average speed of answer from 30 seconds to 54 seconds). Eliminating another person would drop service level to 46%, and the average delay would double to 107 seconds! And reducing staffing levels by three would horribly deteriorate service level to only 24%, resulting in an average delay of 298 seconds! So those callers accustomed to waiting for only half a minute in queue would now be 7

8 Forcasting Fundamentals cont waiting nearly 5 minutes! And service isn t the only thing that suffers. With 33 staff in place to handle the call workload, agent occupancy (the measure of how busy staff are during the period of time they re logged in and available) is in a good range at 88%. Taking one body away raises occupancy levels to 91%; taking two away results in 94% occupancy; and taking three away means staff would be busy 97% of the time during the hour. In other words, there would be only 3% (108 seconds) of breathing room between calls. Such a high level of occupancy can t be maintained for long. The likely result will be longer handle times, longer periods spent in after-call work to catch their breath, burnout, and turnover. And there s another point to consider. The reduction in staff might be outweighed by the increased telephone costs associated with the longer delay times. In this example, with 33 staff in place the average delay is 30 seconds per call. Multiply that by 350 calls per hour and that s 10,500 seconds (or 175 minutes) of delay. If we apply a fully loaded telephone cost per minute to that usage of $.06 per minute, that s $10.50 for the queue time. If we try and staff with 30 staff, remember our average delay increases to 298 seconds of delay. Multiply that by 350 calls and that s 1738 minutes of delay, priced at $.06 for a total of $ for the queue time that hour. In other words, by eliminating three staff to save money, we ve just increased our telephone bill by $ for that hour! And this doesn t even take into account the likelihood of a longer call given the poorer than expected service levels. Telephone charges would likely increase even further. This situation is even more dangerous in a revenueproducing center. If the value of a contact is $50, and agent salaries are $20 per hour, it is easy to see that putting another agent on the phone will pay for itself even if the agent only answers one call per hour that would otherwise have abandoned from the queue. But even if the value of the call is only $5, there is clearly a trade-off in determining the staffing level that will produce the highest net bottom line. The return on appropriate staffing must be argued against budget constraints. So, from three different perspectives, you can see that a simple staff reduction may not save you any money. In fact, it may cost you more in terms of poor service, excessive occupancy levels, as well as increased telephone costs. Next Steps Now that we ve discussed most of the factors that affect the number of staff needed to handle the contacts half-hour by half hour, the next step is figuring out how to schedule in order to get the right number of people in place at the right times. In the next article in this series, we ll discuss the basic steps of scheduling contact center staff in order to maximize service, minimize cost, and account for staff preferences. About the Author. Penny Reynolds is a Founding Partner of The Call Center School, a Nashville, Tennessee based consulting and education company. The company provides a wide range of educational offerings for call center professionals, including traditional classroom courses, web-based seminars, and self-paced e- learning programs at the manager, supervisor, and front-line staff level. For more information, see or call

9 CALL CENTER TIMES tin# P. O. Box , Carrollton, TX Bus Fax Date: Invoice #: / 05 Call Center Rate Guide Sign Up Form/Invoice Job Postings on our Website & Newsletter : (through 12/05) Corporate Logo Promotion (Website & Monthly Newsletter) : (through 12/05) Monthly Newsletter Classifieds Advertisement: (through 12/05) Website Classifieds Advertisement: (through 12/05) Total Amount Due Through August 15, $1, Return by fax to (972) Please note that all transactions are final. There will be no refunds. COMPANY NAME/ Contact/Address/Telephone/Fax/ For your convenience, we accept MasterCard, Visa and American Express credit cards. Please indicate your method of payment: MasterCard Visa American Express Company Check Credit Card Number Expiration Date Name as appears on Credit Card (Print Please) Remit To: Call Center Times Authorized Signature P.O. Box Carrollton, TX Fax (972)

10 CALL CENTER TIMES tin# P. O. Box , Carrollton, TX Bus Fax Date: Invoice #: / 05 Rate Guide Sign Up Form/Invoice Call Center Book of Lists Directory : (through 12/05) Resource Directory/Call Center s Buyer s Guide : (through 12/05) Corporate Logo Promotion (Website & Monthly Newsletter) : (through 12/05) Monthly Newsletter Classifieds Advertisement : (through 12/05) Website Classifieds Advertisement: (through 12/05) Total Amount Due Through August 15, $1, Return by fax to (972) Please note that all transactions are final. There will be no refunds. COMPANY NAME/ Contact/Address/Telephone/Fax/ For your convenience, we accept MasterCard, Visa and American Express credit cards. Please indicate your method of payment: MasterCard Visa American Express Company Check Credit Card Number Expiration Date Name as appears on Credit Card (Print Please) Remit To: Call Center Times Authorized Signature P.O. Box Carrollton, TX Fax (972)

11 ESSAY Call Centers: A Secret Weapon Surfaces By Vin Cipolla,Veritude President & CEO Call centers have changed so much over the past few years that they even sport a new name: contact centers. While that name reflects the varied way customers chose to contact a company e- mail, instant messaging, the Web, snail mail and, yes, the phone however contact is made and whatever the point of contact is called, familiar problems remain. At the top of just about everybody s list: the cyclical highs and lows of customer demand and ongoing challenge, like high employee turnover and inevitable budget constraints. People, Process and Technology Concerns Abound. Beyond these pressures, both external and internal, lie still more, new demands: New technology opens a Pandora s Box of issues. Internet access and browserbased, thin-client tools allow service reps to work securely from remote locations. Deciding how to decentralize to offshore, outsource, or, as JetBlue refers to its work-at-home reps, homesource requires a comprehensive workforce assessment that reviews a mix of considerations ranging from the financial and legal to the political. Complicating an already complex situation is the need at diverse, even untraditional, locations for ongoing training about hardware roll-outs and software upgrades. New language needs require staffing changes. About 33 million people in the United States were born abroad half in Latin America and one-quarter in Asia. With Asian-American buying power alone estimated to top $345 billion by 2006, having bi-lingual CSRs is not a nice-to-have but a must-have. Sourcing candidates who have the right industry expertise, who won t increase your churn rate and who speak Mandarin and Korean takes time and frequently requires specialized training programs in their native languages. All that can quickly translate to higher recruiting as well as payroll costs. New customer demands require a higher level of service. The Internet, with endless pieces of information just clicks away, has turned customers into instant experts on everything or so they think and has helped fuel an expectation of an instant response. The number of people looking for financial information online, for example, jumped 32 percent between 2000 and 2002, according to the Pew Internet & American Life project. Offering self-service tools, shorter wait times, and more informed reps are just part of what it now takes to satisfy customers and remain competitive. The Good News: New Opportunities As daunting as today s call, or contact, center challenges are, the news really isn t all bad. Along with the challenges come tremendous opportunities if customer service executives and the HR professionals who work with them change the way they think about, build, and manage call centers. For starters, consider them: Revenue generators, not cost centers. Among the opportunities that the introduction of new technologies enables is the possibility of turning an inquiry into a sale. Responding to a customer query via , for example, makes it easy to pitch a cross-sell or up-sell by embedding a link to a service that may be of interest based on that customer s purchase history or investing profile. It s nonintrusive, informative and relevant and utilizes marketing to chip away at what was once exclusively service, or overhead. Works in progress, not one-size-fits-all departments. To ensure that you have the right staff at the right time, your hiring practices must be flexible enough to accommodate shifting business needs. Substantial improvements, for example, often can be made with creative recruiting strategies and by revamping staff schedules and rebalancing your mix of contingent and permanent employees. Integral business elements, not organizational islands. To provide a higher caliber customer service, leverage the results of customer contacts to enhance and grow the business overall. Royal Bank of Canada is highlighted among financial services companies for organizing around customer segments for giving customer segment managers the broadest P&L responsibility companywide and boosting profitability. The good news and the bad news, then, is that call centers call them what you want are not just call centers anymore. They re increasingly complex business entities that require a heightened level of organizational and technical sophistication to will enhance your investment. About the author. Vin Cipolla is president and CEO of Veritude, a workforce solutions company. He has been an innovator, entrepreneur, and advisor to companies and business leaders in the financial services, telecommunications, consumer goods, and media industries. In addition to being founder and CEO of three successful businesses, Vin served as executive vice president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the country s largest historic preservation organization. He is currently the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Institute of Art, Boston. 11

12 FEATURE Sustaining Exceptional Service: Competencies and Commitment By Jean Marie Johnson VP, Communico Ltd. Westport, CT Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of a great service provider? We did. In fact, a few years ago, we at Communico became fascinated with this question. Certainly, we knew that developing the skill base of front-line, customerfacing associates was key. But we knew that something extraordinary was going on in those organizations that sustained great service over time. So we asked ourselves, What is it that makes it possible for some organizations to deliver consistently exceptional service? Having the privilege of working with so many clients in a variety of industries, we had observed, first-hand, the inspirational influence of culture. In some workplaces, you could actually feel the energy and enthusiasm in the expressions of people, in the way they collaborated with one another, and in their utter commitment to serving each and every customer. And so we set out to study them. Was this a fluke phenomenon? Well, hardly. Because what we found suggested that every organization has the potential to be a great service provider. With the help of an independent research firm, we identified five core organizational competencies that these stellar service providers had in common. Within the five, we further identified the best practices of each competency. Taken together, these competencies and their related practices form the basis for Communico s MAGIC Service Culture Model. Let s take a look. Shared Vision and Values Organizations that sustain the delivery of exceptional service have captured their commitment in a clear (and usually concise) expression of what a great experience looks and feels like for both the customer and the employee. This vision is supported by a small cluster of core values that inspire the behaviors and actions that result in great service. In one financial services company, the executive team developed a service vision for the whole organization. Once the overarching direction and commitment were stated, the energy accelerated as each department engaged in a team dialogue to explore, What does this mean to us? The answer to that question was captured in a rainbow of departmental vision statements, all generated from the inspiration of the core vision. Ask any employee, in any department about the vision for service? They will tell you. Service-Focused Leaders A recent study by an international consulting firm identified one of the four key drivers of organizational change as the presence of respected men and women who model what is asked of others. Simply put, leaders walk the talk. And do they ever in those organizations that create a great experience for both customers and employees! These leaders model a service mindset, value the contribution of every employee, and focus on constantly improving the service experience. The impact is astounding. After practicing his greeting in a MAGIC executive overview session, The President of a west-coast based firm stated that he was signing on for the two-day MAGIC program. The impact of that action said everything about this leader s impassioned commitment to service. Consistent Service Delivery and Measurement Organizations that excel at service do a great job of translating their service intention into service delivery standards that are clear, consistent and integrated. They establish measures for face-to-face, phone and e-interactions. And they do one more thing: they apply these standards to every interaction with every employee and customer. One of the nation s largest home builders, which also provides an array of loan products, strives to provide a seamless service experience to all customers whether in sales, construction, mortgage or over the web. To ensure a consistently superior customer experience, they have measures for all types of interactions. And, it s working courtesy and customer satisfaction scores are up, and their market share is on the rise. Developmental Training and Coaching The approach to training and coaching is a key differentiator amongst organizations that consistently deliver exceptional service. First, these organizations know that quick-fix, silver bullet methods achieve short term results, at best. They also understand that behavior follows mindset and attitude. And so, training and development address how employees think about service and their role as service providers. There is yet another important distinction: coaching is the accompaniment to training. Here too, individualized attention is paid to what and how employees are contributing to service, as well as on how they are honing their skills and abilities. An information management software and services company implemented an integrated training and development process to raise the skill level of their associates. But, they didn t just do training; they ensured that there was continuous monitoring and coaching linked with the training. Now, they get letters on daily basis thanking them for the level of service we provide. Constant Systemic Improvement and Reinforcement The best of the best service organizations are nimble. They 12

13 have honed their ability to course correct in the interest of their service vision. These organizations continuously consider how their systems and processes are contributing to the service experience and how they are reinforcing the service vision. Then they go to work behind the scenes to address obstacles that may exist in human resource practices, work flow, IT and so on. They leave no stone unturned. Consider a cross-functional team in Los Angeles who used their newly-crafted service vision as their reference point for reviewing every work hand-off in light of its impact on the customer. Now picture that same cross-functional team creating a visual photographic journey of their work together. That s commitment! There you have it. The ability to create and sustain an exceptional service experience is possible by honing the five organizational competencies that create a service culture. Communico is honored to partner with so many organizations on this worthy journey. TID-BIT Lowes Scores #1 for Call Center Service Top Retailers unable to keep up with Financial Services (Boston, MA.) DALBAR, Inc., HAS released its first annual consumer ranking of major retail call centers a study that set out to measure how well the most prominent US retailers do by their customers. Key Findings of The Retail Call Center Ratings Report: Only 5% of retail company representatives were friendly and welcoming to customers compared to 65% in financial service firms. Only 5% of retail companies went the extra mile to provide all relevant information in order to help customers and/or to suggest additional products or services, compared to 69% of financial service firms. Only 28% of retail company representatives adequately handle call interruptions (excessive periods of silence, holds and/or transfers). These not only unnecessarily lengthen customer calls but more importantly they cost corporations inordinate amounts of money each year, directly affecting their bottom line. The full analysis is available by contacting Andrea Curewitz or Brooke Gullicksen at DALBAR, Inc order directly by visiting NEWS NTERACTIVE INTELLIGENCE NAMES NEW EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF WORLDWIDE SALES INDIANAPOLIS - Interactive Intelligence Inc. (Nasdaq: ININ), a global developer of business communications software, named Gary R. Blough its new executive vice president of worldwide sales. Blough replaces Jeremiah J. Fleming, who was named president of Vonexus Inc., a wholly-owned Interactive Intelligence subsidiary formed earlier this month to distribute the company s IP PBX software. As executive vice president of worldwide sales, Blough will be responsible for the company s 37 directly employed sales representatives, and will also help manage a global channel composed of approximately 140 value-added resellers located in more than 30 countries. RightNow Taps 22-Year Contact Center Industry Veteran to Spearhead Channel Partnership Initiatives On Demand CRM Leader Signs New Outsourced Contact Center Partners Sento and Concentrix to Expand Market Coverage BOZEMAN, MONT. - RightNow(r) Technologies, the leading on demand CRM company focused on customer service, has announced the promotion of Dean Brown to Vice President of Channel Partners to spearhead the company s channel partnership initiativesinitially focusing on outsourced contact centers, contact center infrastructure technology providers and contact center consultants. contact center outsourcing market leaders, including Convergys Corporation and ICT Group. WillowCSN Branches out with epath Learning for Virtual Agents Virtual Training Program Goes the Distance MIRAMAR, Florida - Willow CSN Incorporated, the leading provider of virtual contact center solutions, has announced that it is extending its relationship with epath Learning, Inc., an e- learning solutions provider, to include the development of online, self-paced learning courses. The addition of epath is a further enhancement to WillowCSN s long-established Willow Integrated Learning System (WILS), and its commitment to continually improve the virtual experience for agents and companies everywhere. Willow s goal is to make the where? question virtually disappear. Our expanded partnership with epath Learning lets us do that better both for our clients, and for the agents, said Basil E. Bennett, president and chief executive officer of Willow CSN Incorporated. epath Learning s ability to develop sophisticated training programs that can be delivered anywhere, at any time, allows us to serve new markets and train qualified 13

14 individuals faster than ever before. DICTAPHONE ANNOUNCES JOINT MARKETING AGREEMENT WITH LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES Prominent Client Already Secured As A Result of New Relationship STRATFORD, CT, - Dictaphone Corporation_s Communications Recording Systems (CRS_) Group announced that it has signed a joint marketing agreement with Lucent Technologies. The objective of this agreement is to drive new business opportunities through joint marketing activities of Lucent_s ClientCare contact center solution and Dictaphone_s Freedom family of recording systems and applications throughout North America. Lucent and Dictaphone representatives will work together to identify, pursue and capture sales opportunities in the contact center market. The agreement with Lucent has already resulted in a sale to an industry-leading contact center client in the defense and aviation industry. _With its ability to support a distributed contact center through centralized administration and management, Dictaphone_s Freedom recording system compliments the ClientCare Contact Center solution. ClientCare offers value to the contact center market in the form of new efficiencies in routing and increased agent productivity with minimal support requirements,_ said A.V. Nunziato, product management vice president in Lucent Technologies Convergence Solutions Group. _Combining these two solutions gives contact centers a full compliment of sophisticated applications while reducing their overall operational expenses. The strong business synergy between Lucent_s contact management systems and Dictaphone_s solutions has already proven to be effective in the marketplace,_ said Dictaphone_s Vice President of Global Marketing, John Kaiser. _We_re confident that this alliance will continue to provide significant benefits for all parties involved. By leveraging the strength of the Dictaphone and Lucent product lines and brand names, we can provide more value to contact center customers, and enhance business opportunities for both companies,_ added Nunziato. CIAC Announces Contact Center Leadership Development Program The CIAC Leadership Team Development Program is designed to help customer care and support centers managers and executives develop the business acumen and leadership skills needed to increase organizational efficiency and profitability in today complex center environment. This innovative program provides highly insightful and useful information in the form of individualized professional development roadmaps that enable the center s leadership team to improve performance in the mission-critical areas that most impact bottom line results. The CIAC Leadership Team Development Program consists of three components: 1) Evaluations, Reports, and Consultation. Each member of the center s leadership team receives powerful insights and must know information by completing the CIAC Mastery Inventory and a 360 Review. Both evaluations are easy to complete and CIAC handles all the administration details. The CIAC Mastery Inventory is an in-depth, self-evaluation of knowledge and skill in the four primary areas of center management 1) leadership and business; 2) people; 3) operations and 4) customer relationships. A gap analysis is provided that highlights development opportunities for each member of the leadership team based on current industry standards for the specific job role. The CIAC 360 Review is a customer care and support center specific tool that measures each leadership team member s perception of her or his own performance, as well as the perceptions of other managers, direct reports, and peers with whom she or he works. The 360 Review examines seven key characteristics, representing the abilities and behaviors identified as most important to center leadership and managerial effectiveness. CIAC provides a series of reports based on the information gained through the evaluations. The Composite Mastery Inventory Report provides useful behavioral and knowledge gap analyses that details the overall leadership team s strengths and opportunities for professional development. A detailed 360 Review Feedback Report is prepared for each leadership team member. This report provides meaningful insights into performance behaviors and capabilities as seen through each team member s own eyes and the eyes of the people with whom she or he works. This perspective helps the leadership team make more intelligent and effective business decisions and with greater confidence and better results. In addition to the recommendations provided in the reports, CIAC facilitates a session with the leadership team s senior executive to debrief the Composite Mastery Inventory Report outcome and provide additional observations and recommendations to help fill any knowledge gaps indicated from the evaluations. The consultation is provided by teleconference with a CIAC Advisor, a seasoned center executive with special expertise in developing customer care and support center leadership teams. For additional information on the CIAC Leadership Team Development Program, contact CIAC at

15 Maximizing Call Center Efficiency with Document Libraries: A Case Study of INSCI The bar of excellence for most call centers is fast, total problem resolution on the first call. To deliver such world-class customer service, customer service representatives (CSRs) need immediate access to all customer-related information including statements, service contracts, invoices, proposals, and correspondence. But searching for this documentation is often a hinderance to quality service. CSRs must painstakingly search through legacy systems and multiple repositories (sometimes filing cabinets). Once found, archived documents are usually in a format very different from the customer s print version. Further, mainframe-generated documents are very difficult to reproduce should the customer require a reprint. These time-consuming processes can take a toll on customer support operations with valuable time wasted, customer inconvenience, multiple phone calls, long wait times, and high overhead. Overcoming Barriers for World- Class Support CSRs can greatly benefit from a 360-degree view of their customer s documentation. Armed with instant access to an electronic original of the customer s document, CSRs can troubleshoot a customer inquiry more efficiently and resolve questions quickly contributing significantly to improved customer communications. This same technology can empower customers by giving them access to their documents via a secure Web portal, opening the door to better customer relations, and giving companies a competitive advantage. More important, selfservice eliminates calls that can be resolved without CSR involvement, reducing or eliminating wait times for callers who need CSR assistance. Making Critical Information More Readily Available While CRM systems address many call center issues, they do not provide access to all customer-related documents. Document libraries complement a CRM. Effective content management systems centrally archive both paper-based and electronic content from varying sources. Systems with performance search and retrieval provide fast access to a single document among millions. And if the system is designed with an open architecture, seamless integration with Web portals enable customer self-service to statements, invoices, and other documents. A Case in Point When a major health insurance plan needed to improve the management of high volume Explanation of Benefits (EOB) statements, they turned to INSCI, a leading provider of enterprise content management solutions. With over 35,000 EOBs and customer correspondence printed and mailed daily, the company needed to transition from costly paper-based processes to digital. Once mailed, the complexity of EOB medical billing information would create an onslaught of inbound calls to the company call center, staffed with 700 CSRs. Most caller questions are specific to the information on the document, so CSRs need to view a copy. The company s legacy COLD archiving system was very slow, did not have robust search and retrieval capability, and did not display documents in a useable viewing format. The mainframegenerated EOBs also could not easily be reprinted, and print locations were limited. With the INSCI call center solution, CSRs now have instant access to an electronic original of the EOB mailed to the plan subscriber. Robust search capability retrieves the right document quickly so CSRs can view the same document as the customer s paper-based version for dramatic customer care improvements. Reprint requests are quickly fulfilled via fax, or print, directly from the CSR desktop. And changes of address are easily updated through an address confirmation screen, which is pre-populated with address information extracted from the document. Change-ofaddress entries automatically update the contact database through seamless integration with a CRM system. The document then goes to a print queue with a coversheet containing the new address. Through IVR integration, phonebased reprint fulfillment has been achieved. A customer s menu selections automatically retrieve EOBs from the INSCI system and route them for mailing. This selfservice automation has reduced call volume and wait times, freeing CSRs for the callers needing personal attention the most. Self-service flexibility is further expanded through Web portal integration. Plan subscribers and physician practices can securely log on to an extranet to view, download, and print EOBs and other correspondence as necessary. The access-tracking feature of the INSCI system provides log reports of access in support of HIPAA requirements. Resulting benefits are tremendous. They include dramatic operational cost reductions, shorter wait times, reduced call volume, shorter wait times, and customer satisfaction improvements. The Company Behind the Solution INSCI s call center solution gives CSRs and agents around the world fast access to missioncritical business documents and customer correspondence helping to reduce call time, improve first call problem resolution, enhance customer care, and enable online customer self-service. For more information contact INSCI at

16 WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT Contact Center Optimization: Pulling it All Together By Rick Glew There s been a lot of buzz in the industry about optimization technologies that hold the promise of bringing a higher level of efficiency to the contact center. Since labor is generally the contact center s biggest expense, optimization is often viewed purely from the perspective of workforce productivity. As such, some combination of workforce management (WFM), quality monitoring, elearning and analytics technology are key to an effective workforce optimization strategy. Focusing solely on the workforce, however, may be distracting the contact center from realizing a larger vision - contact center optimization. While improving agent performance is key to improving overall operational efficiency, managers must look beyond the workforce. True optimization occurs when technologies in the contact center work together to influence human behavior and drive performance across all systems and processes in the organization. Contact Center Optimization solutions may be grouped into three broad categories: 1. Contact Routing Optimization - to help ensure that the right contacts get to the right place at the right time, so that agent or self-service resources are used most efficiently. 2. Human Resource Optimization - to help improve agent performance for more efficient and effective service delivery. 3. Business Process Optimization - for long term planning, and to enable contact centers to function better financially and as a strategic unit of the overall organization. Workforce management systems impact all of these areas and can be one of the contact center s greatest assets for achieving contact center optimization. Having the right number of appropriately skilled staff available at the right time to respond to customer contacts is mission-critical and touches each of these optimization categories. A sophisticated WFM system can effectively consolidate disparate information and technologies for one unified solution to optimize people, processes and technology across all elements of the contact center. Contact Routing Optimization Let s face it; if the right agent with the right skill isn t on the other end of the line when a customer calls, the best routing plan is useless. WFM systems help avoid routing mishaps by employing sophisticated multiskill, multisite and multichannel planning, management and analysis applications. These applications work in conjunction with contact routing scripts to ensure agent resources are used efficiently. Human Resource Optimization Having the right number of staff, doing the right things, is critical to an effective operation. HR optimization systems are designed to help improve agent performance for more efficient and effective customer service. WFM systems take the guesswork out of contact center operations and agent performance. This enables contact center managers to make smart decisions. They can drive workforce optimization with agent scorecards that yield performance statistics and standardize interfaces for quality monitoring and elearning systems. Leading WFM systems have webbased desktop access where agents are empowered with ready access to information about their own performance and how it relates to their peer group. Webbrowser access for agents also enables task automation with the ability to easily view their own schedules, submit preferences and initiate schedule trades and changes. Keeping agents at their desks, with easy access to the information they need, improves productivity. Business Process Optimization Streamlining business processes enables contact centers to function better. WFM systems enable managers to efficiently manage their staff for the best possible service levels on a dayto-day basis. These tools can boost today s service levels and help plan for the future based on the center s anticipated needs and available staff. Through this process, WFM users that leverage the full analytical, data management, simulation and planning power of the system will begin to see and correct areas of sub-optimization early in the process. WFM technology can also streamline processes with single data entry and integration with IVR, HR and payroll systems. Workforce management systems, such as TotalView, can serve as a strong backbone for value-added optimization applications. Seamless integration and data exchange can be achieved between TotalView and a wide range of contact center operations and optimization systems via IEX SmartSync technology. This functionality enables IEX to partner with key, complementary technology providers and allow contact center managers to pick and choose the applications they need to realize their optimization vision. The company s recently announced partnerships in the areas of performance management and strategic planning are just two examples of how IEX is delivering on that promise. Performance Management IEX and Merced Systems Inc. have partnered to deliver a performance management system that enables data-driven management practices throughout the entire enterprise. The application helps managers personalize metrics and information for all roles and levels in the organization. Managers can ensure agents and their supervisors take appropriate action using automated alerts, forms, messages and tasking. Strategic Planning The IEX and Bay Bridge Decision Support Technologies Inc. partnership offers managers an advanced strategic planning capability. Using this system, managers can automatically develop budgets, build staff plans and service quality forecasts as well as build variance and risk assessment reports. Through this alliance, managers have tools at 16

17 their disposal to discern the impact of business changes on staff and infrastructure. They will also be able to easily identify optimal service levels to maximize profit. These and other partnerships build on TotalView s core competencies to deliver contact centers a best in class, fully integrated optimization package. About the Author Rick Glew, Director of Marketing, IEX Rick Glew is responsible for marketing and external communications initiatives at IEX. Prior to joining IEX, Rick was the senior director of marketing at Spatial Wireless, a next generation switching startup, and before that worked with Nortel Networks in a variety of senior positions in product management, marketing, engineering and sales. Rick holds a bachelor s degree in engineering from the University of Western Ontario and an MBA from the University of Toronto. TIPS Twelve Steps to Great Leadership By Anne Nickerson, Call Center Coach Bookstores are full of books on the topic of leadership. Every day you can find a seminar or two devoted to the topic. Is being a great leader really all that important? YES! Supervision and leadership are among the most important roles in the call center environment. Think about a recent magazine advertisement tag line: Agents don t leave their job, they leave their supervisors. Doing the job well impacts morale, customer service, costs, workflow, retention, and the break room gossip! Here are twelve steps to help you and your fellow leaders do the job well. 1. Listen to your associates. Be available and accessible. Make time to hear what they have on their minds without interrupting. Ask questions. Ask more questions. Listen to the answers. 2. Show your appreciation. Even if you re not the warm and fuzzy type, there are a variety of ways to let your associates know you re glad they re around. Ask their opinions. Acknowledge the little things. Treat them like real and valued contributors. 3. Spend time out of your office. Make a commitment to be out of your office 50% of your time in the workplace, walking the floor. Listen to the trials of calls, and the frustrations caused from workflow kinks. Let your associates know you re there for them. And do something about what you see and hear! 4. Lead by example. The do as I say, not as I do approach never really works. How you speak with your associates is how they ll speak with your customers. Take every opportunity to position information positively with a can do attitude. 5. It s okay to make mistakes. Associates will make mistakes, and so will you. When you mess up, say so. And say you re sorry if you ve personally made a mistake. Allow associates to find ways to do better next time. 6. You re not perfect either. Admit it! Associates need to know that you ve dealt with situations like theirs, and even made wrong choices. Share the lesson learned to spare the pain. 7. Set limits. Then stick to them. Set clear limits. Make sure associates understand the rules and the consequences if they don t follow them. And follow through! 8. Avoid blame or dredging up the past. Concentrate on what do to 17

18 here and now to fix a problem, and how to do it better tomorrow. The past is history. 9. Be sincere and clear when providing feedback. Discounting associates verbally, especially in front of others, will cause them to fear and disrespect you. When offering constructive feedback, make sure you are in a semi-private area, and that your feedback includes ways to change the behavior positively. 10. Discuss problems. Don t deny them. Don t kid yourself into thinking a problem doesn t exist or will go away by itself. It won t. You have to face facts, talk through impact of the issues, and work together to find solutions. 11. Say please and thankyou. These two simple words show associates that you respect them. Respect is something we must give in order to get. 12. Keep trying. Don t give up. Begin each day by renewing your commitment to serve your associates and help them grow in their own right. One day you ll realize you ve created leaders to follow in your footsteps, and you ll be glad you did. Did these leadership lessons resonate for you? There are many more best practices in the new book, Not By the Seat of My Pants: Leadership Lessons for Call Center Supervisors by Anne Nickerson. It is a compelling, real-world story of the trials, transitions and leadership lessons of the call center supervisor. It provides leaders, managers and supervisors an inside look at the interplay of roles, goals and changing expectations that can thwart the efforts of even the most qualified candidates. CLASSIFIEDS ORDER NOW! DALBAR s CALL CENTER BENCHMARK STUDIES Gain insight into the delivery of service across industries Ratings of Over 20 Top Retailers - Available Now! Trends & Best Practices - Coming in August! ORDER YOUR REPORTS TODAY! CLICK HERE An Offer from CRMXchange CRMXchange is a premier web site dedicated to providing information in an innovative and interactive environment for CRM/Contact Center professionals. The site offers live instructor led training, white papers, case studies, newsroom, monthly columns, and a showcase for products and services for the industry. The site hosts free monthly live webcasts and debates on a variety of CRM and Contact Center issues. Check our schedule _for.html#sessions for this month s list of timely events. An Offer from Incoming Calls Management Institute Incoming Calls Management Institute (ICMI) offers the very best in leading edge, highquality public and Web training seminars for call center management professionals (contact center, interaction center, help desk). We help individuals and organizations understand the dynamics of today s customer contact environment to improve performance and achieve superior business results. Visit us at: nars.aspx?selectednode=semi nars 18

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20 Not your Predictable Predictive Dialer