Staying Afloat in a Sinking Economy
A Call Center Manager's Survival Guide
by Wendy Hubbard, Executive Vice President, Inova Solutions
As the United States faces its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the effect is being felt around the world. Many companies are looking for programs and projects to cut. The call center, though rising in perceived value to senior management, is often viewed as a “cost center,” and an easy place to trim the fat. Call center managers must justify the center’s contribution to the company’s bottom line, and offer a solid plan for doing “more with less.” This requires resourcefulness and a willingness to make sacrifices until the storm passes. But it can be done.
To do more with less, work from the inside out. Start with the foundation of the center – the processes and technology that keep you up and running. Once internal operations are streamlined, call center managers must look to their workforce to capitalize on the power of information and resources. And finally, attention should turn to the customer, whose changed perspectives merit a renewed approach to customer service. Call centers that meticulously dedicate themselves to these three principles can successfully weather the economic storm.
Step 1: Improve Operational Efficiency
Put Real-time Data in Context
During economic downturns, executive management often looks to the call center’s operational budget for cuts. Call center managers must differentiate between “nice to have” and “must have” areas of the center. Since operating expenses often amount to 55 to 65 percent of the total call center budget, this is a good area to comb for potential efficiency gaps. The first step in doing so is to carefully measure your center’s real-time and historical performance as they relate to forecasting data and goals. Only when you have an accurate picture of all four indicators can you truly measure performance and identify areas ripe for improvement.
The first indicator of operational efficiency, real-time performance, functions as the “ounce of prevention that produces a pound of cure.” Real-time data, when instantly documented and conveyed to agents and supervisors, allows your team to identify potential problems before they turn into costly mistakes. For example, if you know that customers are currently dealing with excessively long wait times, you can take a number of corrective actions, such as assigning more agents to that queue or instructing agents to apologize to the customer.
If real-time data shows excessive agent idle time at certain parts of the day, you can make appropriate staffing changes or reassignments to improve efficiency. When you are aware of the real-time experiences of your customers and agents, you can make adjustments now rather than later when the damage is already done.
Real-time data is best utilized when set against the backdrop of historical performance, forecasting data and business goals. Putting your actual performance in context of where you’ve been and where you hope to be offers invaluable insight. Use historical data to identify trends in caller activity and agent performance, and keep an eye throughout the day on real-time metrics that do not meet goals or forecasts.
Gathering this data is no easy task. By the time call center managers dig through reports in search of relevant real-time information, that data is no longer timely or useful. This hurdle can easily be overcome, as there are several quality software products on the market that integrate with your ACD, workforce management systems, and even internal databases, to give you a complete picture of real-time, historical, and goal data in one snapshot. Such tools achieve two important ends – arming you with the information you need to make informed operational decisions, and freeing up your time so you can get back to more strategic tasks.
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