Hi folks. It’s been a while since last I wrote, due to time demands and some travelling (Peru - magical place, but I’ll put some notes on that next week). Anyway, for better or for worse, I’m back.

Today’s topic is one that I’ve suspected for some time: there are a lot of people working in customer service who really couldn’t give two hoots about customers.

At the risk of tarring everyone with the same brush, let me clarify something: there are a great deal of customer service workers who genuinely do give a damn about their jobs and the people their jobs bring them in contact with. I’ve had a little hassle with a large computer firm recently. After a month and more of getting nowhere, I finally chanced across one of these individuals, who put in a great deal of time and effort to sort out the tangled mess that other customer service personnel had left. I’d love to name him, but that wouldn’t be fair to the myriad of good, effective customer service workers out there - they all deserve credit.

However, the dark side of customer service is that, for many, it’s just a job. A way of earning a basic crust, and filling in the awkward gap between Sunday and Saturday. It doesn’t help that the job is often less than appealing; wages can be quite poor, the hours can be demanding and the public perception is of an industry that doesn’t look out for its own. Quite a number of people drift into customer service when they’re really rather be doing something else. This is the crux of my point: customer service is VERY important as it’s usually the attitude of the employee toward the customer which forms the basis of the perceived ‘friendliness’ of an organisation.

I think every organisation ought to do its best to make the job appealing, well-rewarded and with opportunity for progression. For if they don’t, you may not always attract the right kind of person.

John

OK, I get a bit silly at the end but….

From: The United States of Litigation …

“Do Not Call. Those words are music to millions of Americans who have signed up for the list so they’re not bothered by telemarketers. Not content to let things stay as they are telemarketers are now lobbying the FCC to have state laws which regulate the practice overturned. In April an ad-hoc group of firms ranging from the Direct Marketing Association to the National Children’s Cancer Society filed a joint petition asking the FCC to declare that it has ‘exclusive jurisdiction over interstate telemarketing calls.’ The issue revolves around some states whose Do Not Call laws are more strict than Federal law and which prohibit telemarketers from calling anyone on a Do Not Call, regardless of an existing business relationship.”

The above was pointed out to me at the end of last week, I have the feeling this was done to elicit the same reaction as a red rag to a bull.

Digging a bit deeper it seems this ‘Ad-hoc’ group is saying that in five states where, locally, they have tightened the law over and above the federal statutes, marketing to existing customers (which is outlawed) should be allowed.

For a full description see Here: epic.org

Ok, so what does this mean?

Well the short version is some states have completely banned cold calling, whereas the majority have gone with the federal limits on ‘Existing Relationship Contact’, the ‘We may contact you with products or services we feel may suit you’ rather than the other, ‘ We’ll pass your details onto anyone who pays us a large wodge of cash for your personal data’.

This is specific to several states where the local legislature has ruled against not only marketing to individuals who are on the DNC list but to existing customers as well. This means they can’t call to up-sell, re-sell or solicit.

Now I have had calls where they’ve marketed on the basis I’m an existing customer (Guess who?) but I’m more interested in the slightly more esoteric and mercurial status that is ‘Existing Relationship’. Who do I have an existing relationship with? Who do you?

Some of the answers may surprise you.

1) Obviously anyone you trade with, Gas, Electricity, your bank, Telecoms provider.

2) Anyone you used to trade with. So if you’ve changed suppliers for any of the above in the last 12 months they can call and try to persuade you to switch back or sell a new product

3) Now the grey area. Anyone YOU have approached for information and supplied personal contact details to. Again they have 12 months to call.

Now we all know the NIMBY effect around Contact Centre staff. Hands up who’s NOT TPS registered? So one wrong marketing survey, one missed “Can we pass on your details to our carefully selected Cash Cows”, box and the whole cycle starts again. In this case you’ve potentially actually removed yourself from the list voluntarily.

So across the pond they are campaigning to be allowed to call ‘Existing customers’

I’m about to let my imagination run riot.

How long will it be before the courts are sitting on a test case where the American company is defending their right to call and sell you insurance because you bought a can of beans in one of their stores. Therefore establishing an existing relationship.

Come to think of it we’re not that far away here, even given my comments above.
Insurance, home loans, air freshener, new car and bunch of flowers all under one roof,
or in one call? How long before the ‘Existing relationship’ renders the TPS regulations invalid just by the scope of a modern business or a well thought out ‘Strategic Partnership’ forged only to exploit the two, potentially varied, customer bases comes into being?

British Airways and Samsonite? As you use luggage you may travel, as you travel you may use luggage?

Easy Jet and Walkers, because you bought a packet of their crisps on the plane or might be interested in other places they sell their crisps.

BMW and Odeon Cinemas because you saw the Italian Job therefore like Mini’s or vice versa.

Back to the serious part though…

As with Spam and Spam blockers where there is ongoing battle to hit your ‘In-Box’ the marketing / advertising / soliciting trade (Ok ourselves) are constantly adapting to the changing market conditions. I’m deliberately not using the phrase Market forces, all too often we use a ‘Shotgun’ approach. As the legalities of the trade tighten who isn’t prepared to shamelessly exploit the loopholes left in an effort to hit the widest possible demographic?

Will we in five years time see ourselves in the same position as our colonial cousins?

From the article above it appears the US DMA is one of the bodies behind the legal challenge. Whilst here we champion ‘best practice’, we set ‘Industry guidelines’ and we try to self regulate, for which the DMA here is responsible. Will we hit a point where our DMA is forced by the industry to challenge the TPS service it itself helped champion in the first place?

And what’s more do we want to be around to see that battle?

Dave Appleby

On 13th July I told you that I’d got in contact with the Information Commissioners Office about No Agent Available Calls.

The specific question put to the ICO was a follows:

“In principle, is it legal for an organisation, which was making a marketing call, to play a called individual a recorded message which is not a marketing message?

“It is not clear from reading the regulations that this is acceptable, as the initial purpose of the telephone call was for marketing purposes even though the resultant message was not.”

The response received:

“Regulation 19 relates to automated calls, i.e where “non live” direct marketing communications are transmitted following an automatically initiated sequence of calls. The situation you describe refers to non live communications automatically transmitted, which are not direct marketing in nature. As such regulation 19 would not apply.

“I appreciate your comments that the purpose of the call would be to facilitate a live direct marketing communication (regulation 21), but as no direct marketing material is actually communicated the call would not fall under the regulations, and therefore not under the ICO’s remit.”

Therefore, as long as the message that is played is carefully worded to ensure that it contains no marketing information, organisations need not be worried about using the NAA message.

It’s now time for us all to start doing this - although I appreciate that understanding what can and can’t be done is a little daunting for many call centres. For this reason I’ve has started to put together a code of practice for removing silent calls from your organisation. This can be found here.

Please get in contact if you would like further information about using the NAA message in your call centre.

I am not a meek person.

I am demanding, exacting and have high expectations. I have a low tolerance for ineptitude and intellectual laziness.

And I’ve experienced a few customer service failures recently that have particularly frustrated me.

It’s not that I don’t accept that things can deviate from plan; I’m actually a firm believer that it is not so much what goes wrong, but more how a situation is dealt with, by organisations demonstrating positive reaction and resolution, that influences customers’ loyalty and shapes their impression of that company.

People are human, and will make mistakes, however robust your recruitment, training and ongoing development may be. And unanticipated (and unanticipatable!) things will also happen from time to time, often way outside an organisation’s sphere of control or influence, to throw things awry.

Neither of these things is the issue. It’s when things go wrong despite or particularly as a result of everything being done right that I seethe. Processes that are planned in isolation, that don’t drill down further than the most superficial of customer needs and wants, and that are even sometimes designed purely for the convenience of the organisation itself.

For example, I recently needed to request a standard form from my bank. Everyone I spoke to was polite, friendly and helpful, and would rightly have scored very highly on whatever quality metrics were applied, but yet I was not satisfied with the experience*. If I complained, I’m sure it wouldn’t be referenced as such, as nothing actually went wrong.

Isn’t there a case for organisations examining these non-compliant complaints further as indicators for process or procedural conflict? The assumption that all customer service failures are as a result of people or circumstances would be staggering organisational arrogance. Progressive organisations listen to customers, speak to staff and adapt and grow.

This isn’t to say that everything customers want will ever be deliverable, and there is perhaps a case that customers are becoming more difficult to satisfy; what delights them today, they expect as standard tomorrow. We just need to ensure we are looking in the right places for problems.

Zoe

*I called the number listed against my branch in the phone book and was told I had come through to the national call centre, I needed to call my branch on the number they would give me as they were unable to send out the form. But because it was (just) after 4.30pm on Friday they would not be available until 10am Monday. On Monday I called and my branch staff were unavailable, so I was routed to the cluster support team, who were also unable to send me the form, but took my details to pass a message to the branch to put one in the post. 10 days later, the form arrived. Grrrrrrrrrrr. And don’t get me started on everything else!

It’s been a little while since my last article here - I’ve been pretty busy with a new venture, trying to get it up and running and at the same time taking a little bit of a break from call centre matters. However, in my absence something really pressing has come up that I couldn’t resist basing this article upon.

This pressing something is the rise of call centre fraud, which has become particularly evident where offshore call centres have been involved. I’ve taken a little flak in my time from some people who seem to think that I’m anti-outsourcing. This isn’t true, though I do feel that outsourcing is often used too readily in the call centre when a more considered approach might be wise. However, I digress. Fraud in the call centre.

Yahoo News reports that outsourced, offshore call centre employees at Mphasis BPO have allegedly stolen �200,000 from the accounts of their customers, predominantly US-based. They have allegedly used the personal details of select customers to orchestrate the theft, and to-date despite the best efforts of the East Indian police, the vast majority of the money has not been recovered.

Earlier this year, another call centre in India suffered a similar outbreak of employee fraud, and several arrests were made.

Security is an ever-increasing concern for all companies making use of outsource call centres. It is those same companies responsibility to ensure that the outsource call centres are reputable and secure. However, it’s becoming clear that mismatches in regulation, business procedure and management are exposing customers’ personal information to the risks of misuse.

In the UK, much is made of information regulation. The Data Protection Act requires companies dealing with personal data to maintain certain standards and shoulder certain responsibilities over the way they treat personal and financial information. However, it would appear that there are (from the UK perspective, but probably more widespread) loopholes and regulatory failings which fail to cover these overseas outsourced contact centres.

Prevention is better than cure

It’s all very well talking about the effectiveness of monitoring and policing within outsource call centres, but it is up to us to ensure that whichever outsource call centres we use adhere to the very highest levels of security. If an offshore call centre cannot meet the most stringent security measures, then we should move to one that can. Price should take second place to security where personal and financial information is to be outsourced.

It saddens me that the sterling work of the great many outsource call centres is tarnished by the actions of a few ruthless and dishonest individuals whose actions create customer distrust and resistance.

John

Some people are lucky; they sail through life with a ‘devil may care’ attitude and don’t seem to be susceptible to the ill-effects of the modern workplace. For the rest of us, though, we’ve got to watch out as there is a very real and ever-present danger in every workplace, be it small or large.

That danger is stress.

Sometimes stress isn’t taken seriously enough, yet it is one of the most commonly cited reasons for employee absence. Unlike most ailments, however, stress can take more than a few days tucked up in bed to cure. For many people stress is debilitating, impacting in all areas of their lives. Relationships suffer, tensions rise, friendships wane. It’s a bad thing.

In the call centre, it’s quite common for agents and management alike to be placed under ever-increasing pressure to meet often arbitrary performance targets. Quite often these targets are based on bad management information and as a consequence unattainable. However, senior management isn’t always the most rational of beasts, and so no quarter is given to those who speak out. As a result, we are bound by unrealistic targets and this places enormous - often insurmountable - pressure onto us.

This causes stress!

Some ideas to mull over

The question is: are call centres particularly conducive to employee stress? I’d like to suggest that they are, and that we can do something about it.

Modern contact centres are all about efficiency and lowered costs. Sure, many will argue otherwise, but when push comes to shove, it’s about getting the most out of a workforce for the lowest overall cost. It should therefore come as no surprise that the workforce get stressed when every last detail is analysed using spurious and unreliable analyses. The average senior manager cares not for statistics. They care not that the mathematical basis for their pie-charts is based on incomplete or incorrectly interpreted data. They just want to ensure that the little graph of costs keeps heading down whilst its sister graph of profits heads up.

The pressure to perform is all around us.

We can, however, do something about all of this. We need to ensure that senior management is educated to the knock-on effects of nebulous and unrealistic target setting. Tell the Pointy Haired Bosses that their targets need to be realistic - and ensure that we exercise our right to full disclosure on the measures that such bosses use to define performance, targets and so on. Emphasise the point that the continual tightening of the target thumb-screws is resulting in worker stress and hammer home the point that stress is extremely dangerous to an organisations resourcing; people quit, or end up on long-term sick-leave. Educate your colleagues - ensure that they understand that stress is not a good thing, it’s not macho and that long hours do not necessarily let you achieve more. Host a chill-out day - something fun which allows workers to leave the daft targets behind and relax. For that matter, why not offer free relaxation sessions or even massage?

There are so many ideas to combat the effects of stress, but these are reactive and the best way to deal with stress is to prevent it ever happening. As managers and strategists, we must be very careful about what we ask of our workforces, and we must ensure that our targets are not built on false assumptions and lies.

It seems that once again we’re seeing another high street retailer consolidating (aka ‘closing’) a call centre for efficiency reasons. This is management speak for ‘we’re losing hand over fist so we have to do something radical’. In this case, it’s a holiday firm whose “business has been badly affected by the increase in online holiday bookings“.

As the web becomes the ubiquitous choice for the discerning consumer, it’s clear to me that call centres run by established ‘bricks and mortar’ style retailers are going to be potentially under threat. The effect of Amazon on high street booksellers is clear to see - in my own home city of Edinburgh, I’ve seen a couple of long-established book stores change hands or go out of business.

The Amazon Effect is well known within the world of booksellers; it ripples through the working days of all those whose jobs are involved with books, such as publishers, retailers and distribution networks. By using the powerful emergent medium of the internet to great effect, Amazon created a completely new channel of direct sales to the consumer.

The Diversification Threat

As companies such as Amazon diversify into other areas (such as consumer electronics, entertainment and even film rentals), more and more established and conventional retailers are set to be hit. Many of these affected companies are large enough to have invested in call centres to support and augment their sales and customer service channels. The fact that these new, diversified web eTailers compete on price, choice and in many cases simple convenience makes their continued success inevitable. The conventional high street may well be beyond salvation, at least in the way we know it.

Consolation?

It’s not all bad news. Though many big online organisations eschew the call centre in favour of more cost-effective, streamlined and automated processes, the fact is that many will still need to provide a human voice at some point in the loop. Successful online direct sales companies such as Dell may well redress the balance; what the article doesn’t mention is the fact that Dell are opening a large call centre relatively nearby, which is likely to be larger and thus offer some consolation.

However, big fish call centre investments such as Dell leave areas with too many eggs in too few baskets. Whilst incentives are dangled like big juicy carrots to tempt and persuade these big fish to establish call centres in a given area, what we perhaps need is the complimentary big stick to ensure that they stay.

In my opinion, there has always been a touch of the ‘easy come, easy go’ attitude to call centres from many of the companies which operate them. We as an industry need to continually stress the need to deliver quality over the quest to continually trim costs. If we can do this, perhaps more customers will stick by the conventional players - for reasons of quality products and good service if nothing else.

John

Link: http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=284432005

How do you like our new home? Nice, isn’t it?

Anyway….

I wrote here a couple of weeks ago about making your own telephone system rather than buying one. I’d like to talk today about a similar topic - using a “hosted", or “network-based” system.

For those who are not familiar with the concept: it’s a bit like renting a telephone system, except you don’t have the system on your site. It’s usually located at a datacentre which has reliable telephone and data connections. Thesedays, just about any telephone service is available as a hosted solution (inbound, outbound, IVR, call recording, speech recognition, etc.).

How does it work?
The basic idea is that each agent has a direct dial number. When the system is ready for an agent to deal with a call it will transfer it through to this number. In certain cases the telephone lines are lost competely and the voice sent via IP. Some setups are slightly more complex, with an active-x or COM component provided to install on each agent’s PC. Via the internet this lets the hosted system know what each agent is up to, and in return provides from useful CTI that’s essential for some situations like outbound calling.

What’s it cost?
Obviously price differs from supplier to supplier, but you usually have to pay for the following:

• An account setup fee
• Monthly rental per agent
• Inbound leg call costs to connect to your agent (If via PSTN)
• If applicable, outbound leg call costs to connect to the customer

Pricing will depend on the exact service - and I know of suppliers who will provide an inbound IVR service free if it’s on an 0870 number and they keep the few pence made from each call. For high-call campagins this is quite a popular model.

Why do it?
The key benefit is scalability. Within hours your supplier can double your call centre capacity. No waiting times for kit. Assuming, of course, that you’ve got the lines and agents in house.

As technology improves, your supplier should update their kit and this will be at no charge to you.

You don’t have to deal with capital expenditure for the switch, which means you can account for the switch as P&L rather than as an asset.

More reliable than a switch on site - with technical support taken care of.

Multiple sites and homeworkers are easily accomodated. In fact, physical location is completely irrelevant.

Why not do it?
It can be more expensive. Whilst it seems cheaper on a monthly basis (and this is how most suppliers will try to sell to you), it will cost more over longer periods.

Lack of control. Unless you’re a very very big customer you’re not going to be able to demand changes or improvements to the system. You can’t decide which call carrier outbound calls go through so you may not be getting the most cost effective deal.

You still need telephone lines for all your agents - unless it’s a VOIP solution.

Who does it?
iCall
Ultra
Five9

to name three….but you could also consider getting a consultant to research suppliers that are suitable for you. There are many around at the moment and not all of them provide good service - so beware.

I honestly believe that most call centres will follow this route over the next 5 years. It fits perfectly with my vision for the PSF call centre. In the future your company will need to be lightweight and turnaround jobs in hours rather than days.

On the flipside - we may see the traditional box manufacturers get cleverer with what they offer and start to provide scalability-on-demand (IBM style). Keep your eyes open for this.

Regards,
DB

An ever-increasing number of us are finding the benefits of affiliation with one of the various call centre or customer service organisations. The most obvious of these is the Call Centre Association, but there are many others.

Membership of such well known organisations can be extremely beneficial, but we’re interested in hearing about the lesser-known associations and networks. How did you find out about them? Is it helping you develop or improve your call centre, or if you are a supplier, is it generating new business.

This of course extends beyond the sphere of our own industry. Many have written of the benefits to be had from being affiliated with organisations for business networking, including Chambers of Commerce and local business development agencies. Often, these organisations can offer funding opportunities for business growth or recruitment incentives.

Again, we’d be interested in your comments about any affiliation with such organisations - is it worth it, and has your company benefitted? Would you recommend others to look into such organisations.

“Why are you asking all of this", you may wonder. Well, everyone knows that in modern business (in any discipline) it’s not so much what you do but who you know and how much you are able to work that network. Playing the networking game can be hugely beneficial in many ways.

So, let us hear your thoughts on affiliations.

I received an interesting email just the other day which alerted me about a film whose premise I found intriguing. Apart from the fact that I generally enjoy watching films (especially non-Hollywood fare - with a particular soft spot for low budget horror flicks and offbeat French worldy observations such as Amelie), this particular film was noteworthy because it is the first film to my knowledge to feature a call centre as a plot device. Hopw intriguing!

The film is called American Daylight and it’s a contemporary thriller set in today’s technology-savvy world. This is a world that we all know so well; one where the outsource call centre is king. When we dial our apparently local bank, we are routed to another continent.

In the case of American Daylight, Sujata (played by Koel Puri) is a call centre agent who, as it often the way, is trained to talk with an American accent, and to complete this illusion, she is renamed ‘Sue’. ‘Sue’ receives a call from a guy called Lawrence (played by Nick Moran), a millionaire who is concerned that his wife is about to empty their joint bank account. Now, I can sympathise with that. Happens to me all the time. Anyway, Lawrence tries to persuade ‘Sue’ to bend the rules to give him the ‘inside info’, which she does. Meanwhile, ‘Sue’s boss, Pat (Vijay Raaz), who has a thing for ‘Sue’, starts to resent the way things are starting to turn out between Lawrence and ‘Sue’. Lawrence falls for his ‘Sue’, not realising that she isn’t who she purports to be.

It’s an interesting concept, with shades of Cyrano de Bergerac and other such tales. I haven’t yet had a chance to see it, but I’m definitely going to make a point of looking out for it, as it will be fascinating to see how the director (Roger Christian) handles the topic and the complexities of what isn’t such a far fetched concept.

Keep your eyes peeled for it, should it hit a cinema near you.

We hear a lot of negative talk in the media about the way that call centre agents are generally treated. This is often blown out of all proportion, but it does highlight that we can often treat our call centre employees that little bit better: this article contains a few ’soft skills’ pointers which are worth bearing in mind:

1. Remember that agents are only human

Yes, it’s true. Whilst the managers are thinking about maximising return on investment by squeezing the last ounce of performance from the various teams, it’s all too easy to forget that call centre agents are individuals, with the needs, desires, strengths and weaknesses that we all possess. Don’t expect super-human performance: reward it when you see it, but nobody can perform at 100% for sustained periods of time - factor this in, and don’t try to fight against it.

2. Agents know about working the ‘phones better than the managers

In other words, the best people to identify any flaws in the call centre are the people who use it day-in, day-out. Don’t forget that as one gets familiar with a tool, new flaws may be revealed that were previously masked. Talk to your agents, see what they think about the systems they use.

3. Make it fun

Happy employees make for effective employees. If you can make little changes or allowances that make the agents’ jobs more enjoyable, you will find increased retention, better performing individuals, and such people present a much more professional image to the customers who they are in contact with. A future article will discuss some great ideas about introducing effective incentives into the call centre and some case studies. For now, however, just use a little lateral thinking. Think: what can I do (as a manager) to make my agents’ happier?

4. Talk, don’t preach, to your agents

Getting to know each and every agent may well be an enormous task, and not something that can be expected of every manager, but it’s at least worth making an effort to break the ice with some. After all, getting to know the agents - their concerns, ideas, issues and even finding out what is going well - all of this enriches our understanding of the true dynamics of the call centre without relying on MIS, much of which is somewhat spurious. Developing one’s soft skills provides a degree of balance which will help you make better, more informed decisions. Don’t forget to treat agents as equals - don’t preach, lecture or judge from on-high: these are your troops and they must also respect you - and the best way to do this is to get to know them and show them that you actually give a damn.

5. Exercise reason

Don’t expect the impossible - setting hurdles too high helps nobody. There is a fine line between effective versus ridiculous objective setting - and only experience, and the points above, will allow you to judge this properly.

As ever, I welcome your comments. This isn’t a definitive list by any means, and it’s all simple common-sense, which could be applied to investment bankers, tradesmen, software developers or teachers. It’s basic man-management, and it’s something we should all practise.

Measuring agent productivity

�Calls per Hour, Talk Time, Idle, and Wrap (ACW) are nonsensical targets in the majority of contact centre environments, yet they remain the number 1 key performance indicators for contact centre agents around the world!�

In the perfectly managed contact centre, it may be possible to guarantee a consistent flow of calls to all agents, however this requires impressive resource and workflow management. It is feasible that with a limited product and service range a genuine optimum �talk time� and �ACW� target can be applied to all calls. But do any of us work in such a simplistic and idealistic environment? (If so I have a CV ready to forward to you!)

So if we take away these foundations of our performance management culture what do we use to measure the productivity and efficiency of our contact centre agents? And who is responsible for ensuring team productivity and efficiency remains high?

Let us start by examining the traditional targets�

Calls per Hour
This is dictated by numerous factors controlled not by the agent but by the operation�s managers; therefore it is the managers who must be targeted on their teams� efficiency (occupancy and utilisation)
? The resource levels of the team determine the �available� time in the team. �Available� time can be directly influenced through utilisation management, but not by the agents.
? The call traffic volumes dictate the frequency of calls hitting the queue. Only the customers can decide to call in.
? The length of calls and associated �Wrap� (ACW) determines the availability of agents to take calls.

Wrap (ACW)
Wrap time will vary depending on the nature and complexity of the call, as well as being influenced by the skills of the agent. However, poor Wrap is more likely to be caused by quality issues than productivity issues. If Wrap is a productivity issue then this will come out through the productivity measure of Occupancy.

Average Call Length
This is the same as targeting Wrap � the nature & complexity of the call (and of the callers) decide the length of call required.

Idle
�Idle� is signed on time where the agent is not involved in calls. Other than personal (comfort) breaks �Idle� must be planned, or where reactive must be tracked and recorded. As �Idle� usage is planned and therefore beyond the control of the agent, it cannot be targeted for the agent performance; to do so results in agents penalised for training, etc. A typical �Idle� breakdown for an inbound contact centre profiles as:

? Breaks 7.25 % (30 minutes per day)
? Personal breaks 2% (Average 8.5 minutes per day)
? Training / coaching 5% (Average 1 hr 45 minutes per week)
? Query for use by lower benchmark agents only against individual targets
? Meetings 2% (Average 3 hr per month)
? Idle �Admin� only to be used for accountable time, such as being taken off the phones to support administration
? Idle �None� must not occur for any reason.
? Idle �Training� must be accountable by either the training team or the Team Leader. Any ad hoc coaching should be recorded against �Training�.
? Idle �Query� must only be used by agents in the lower benchmark as agents� queries must be answered during the call by either an assist or handoff, or during the wrap part of the call (recorded as �Wrap� or �ACW�). If calls are being handed off due to a skills or knowledge gap then this must be picked up as coaching or training, to be delivered when call flow allows. Daily �buzz sessions� and ad hoc meetings such as daily target setting must be recorded against �Meeting�
? Agents must sign off the phones for lunch, as this is unpaid time. Remaining signed on distorts the true occupancy and shrinkage figures.

So if we are asked to manage performance without these cornerstones, what targets are left that can give us a useful measure of productivity in the contact centre? �.

Occupancy & Efficiency
? �Talk� time - Targeted against individual performance
? �Wrap� time - Targeted against individual performance
? �Available� time
? �Occupancy� = �Talk� + �Wrap� + �Available� / �Talk� + �Wrap�

? Talk time is only partially under the control of agents. The requirement in most businesses is dependant on the nature of the individual call. Excessive talk time, when caused by lack of call control or knowledge, is a measure of quality issues not productivity, and should be addressed as such.
? Wrap time (ACW) is the only state an effectively managed agent can place themselves in to avoid taking further calls. However the length of wrap required will be determined by the nature of each call. It is therefore the correlation between Talk + Wrap that needs to be managed.
? Talk time vs. Wrap time provides an accurate measure of agent efficiency. As an agent�s knowledge, experience, and technical proficiency increases the % of talk time must increase and the % wrap time decrease.
? Talk time & wrap together provide the �occupancy� measure. Efficient occupancy is usually considered to be around 80-85%; the maximum occupancy before agents start displaying defensive and negative behaviours is 88% plus. The occupancy measurement is a % of time signed into �Talk�, �Wrap�, or �Available�. E.g. 65% �Talk� + 12% �Wrap� + 23% �Available� = 77% �Occupancy�

Quality
As well as the use of specific QMS procedures, quality can be highlighted through some of the traditional productivity KPI used in contact centres

? Talk time � Excessive talk time may indicate poor call control or lack of knowledge, very low talk time may be indicative of not fully servicing the client, or rushed work.
? Wrap � if wrap is disproportionate to talk time, then there is likely to be a knowledge issue.

Managing the business imperatives
While this form of targeting is fair & effective on agents, it does not necessarily address the business targets for your contact centre. This is where traditional targeting works far better.

Team Calls Per Hour
The CPH performance of your team is dictated by the resource profile against call arrival. A high CPH with poor SLA means understaffing, a low CPH is indicative of over resource. Where CPH is low against a high SLA managers should look to utilise their resource more effectively, such as training sessions, or supporting other functions. If CPH is consistently low and SLA are achieved then the centre is over resourced and redundancy or redeployment should be considered

Team Idle
As, in this model, all Idle is planned, excessive Idle in a team means poor resource planning and management. Idle is managed through scheduling of non-phone activity, and is supported by conventions such as �no more than X people out per shift�. Training, meetings, etc must be planned in line with resource profile vs. call arrival.

Sickness
Sickness is either genuine, or a conduct issue. Genuine sickness must be supportively managed, but can legitimately lead to dismissal if handled correctly, and when it is determined that an individual is not fit to work in their role. Setting a target for sickness at agent level penalises genuine sickness and sanctions limited �sickies�

Ok… so if you have made it this far then maybe you see some value in what I am proposing? I hope so! In which case get out into your business and canvas agents views to see if this could be applied in your contact centre… you may find (as I did) that your overall performance improves, agents feel they own their performance, managers manage; and who knows what additional benefits a happy & productive well managed environment may bring.

Does outsourcing customer service represent an admission by a company that customer service is simply not a priority? That’s the question that raises its head today.

The case against the outsourced customer service department:

Delegating the customer/company relationship to an external firm is viewed by many as shirking the responsibility for good customer service. Cultural and language differences mean that customers find it more difficult - indeed, frustrating - to communicate their issues to the third party. Customers find it frustrating to have to repeat themselves, or find it often impossible to communicate a particular query or concept to someone who really doesn’t know or understand the nature of the business. Outsourced agents frequently have no real understanding of the products or services of their partners’ businesses. The very fact that the person on the other end of the telephone might well be relying completely on an inflexible script, with inadequate training and infrastructure to really deal with the needs of the caller. Not good.

The case for:

This seems to boil down solely to one of money. Outsourcing can be both less expensive to an organisation, and more tax efficient.

Customer Service - if you can call it that…

Outsourcing is a difficult call, particularly in customer service. Creating a seamless transition between an organisation and it’s outsourced partners is a non-trivial matter, and one which frequently does not meet expectations. Whilst I accept that financial concerns are a very real part of organisation planning, and a compelling reason to take the outsourcing route, I am seeing an ever-increasing negative reaction from the customers of those organisations.

Heck, I’m in that boat myself: though I know better, I often feel my heart sink when I find myself speaking to someone in a different continent, who struggles to understand my Fife twang; quite often, my query is of a technical nature and the script that the agent is using is neither flexible nor detailed enough to help me; invariably, I find that it’s the communication aspect that lets the whole process down. I feel deflated, saddened. No closer to a resolution of my plight, and the cost of a phone call (of probably twenty minutes or more) poorer…

I thus get the impression that the company doesn’t really care too much about me or my plight. If they did, I think, they’d have someone efficient, well-trained and a real member of their organisation at the other end of the phone. Someone who speaks my language well, understands the context and the level of my query, and has enough knowledge of their company to be able to find an answer even if a script is found wanting.

Sadly, this is not the norm. I won’t name names, but we’ve all encountered the kind of organisations I’m talking about: quick to take your money, reluctant to provide you with the necessary level of customer service. Quite often it appears that they just don’t care, and outsourcing is the cheapest option for them.

More and more, I forsee customers rejecting such organisations in favour of the kinds of companies whose approach is much more tuned to the needs of their customers. I know I am increasingly feeling this way, and if it’s true of me it will be true of many people.

There are lots of things in your call centre that you may put together yourself rather than buying in software or hardware: reports, scripting software, intranet sites and work force management to name but a few.

Often the choice to do this depends on the size of the centre. For example, It’s far more common to see centres with less than 100 seats using Excel for workforce management.

In fact, up until recently there was only one piece of kit that you couldn’t put together yourself: the telephone system.

The DIY Switch

Amazingly, you can now build a telephone system yourself from separate components. Granted, it’s still not cheap - but you can save money. I could reel off a list of advantages and disadvantages as long as my arm - but I charge good money for that - so I’ll just say that the important considerations are stability and supportability, both of which could be better or worse with a DIY system instead of something off the shelf.

Assuming that DIY would be suitable for your company, how would you go about the task?

Hardware

First, you’ll need a server.

You can skip this next bit if you’re not techie inclined…

Telephony components are available in two main flavours nowadays, known as H.100 and H.110. H.100 are PCI boards, which mean they’ll fit in any old bog standard server. Because the PCI bus doesn’t provide everything a telephony connection needs all H.100 boards must be interlinked within the server by a ribbon cable. The new H.110 standard is requires a specialist server as the cards are the new cPCI format - but there’s no need to interlink and the hardware is far more robust.

…now pay attention again!

The server in theory could be any old desktop PC, but you may want to consider how stable and reliable this would be. Purchasing a high-end server such as a Westek will give you a passive backplane, multiple power supplies and better electro-magnetic shielding. All these things are going to give you a more solid platform.

To complete the hardware you simply need to install PCI or cPCI cards to provide telephony connections. You’ll need an E1 card (Available single or dual, for 30 or 60 lines) to connect to the ISDN lines. You’ll need station cards to provide a physical connection to your telephones (Usually available with 4,8 or 16 ports) and resource cards to provide signal processing (for tones and such, 1 port for each station port). Complicated as it may sound, this is no different from specifying hardware for a proprietary telephone system.

These cards are now manufactured by many people, but the two big names are Intel (previously Dialogic) and Pika.

Software

You can purchase software to run on this platform, or you could get something bespoke written.

If you chose to purchase software then be sure that it’s S.100 compliant. This means that it’ll work with the H.1*0 hardware you’ve got, and will also behave properly with other S.100 compliant software running on the same system. This means it’s possible to be running a call queuing package from one supplier and an IVR system from another on the same server. Now that does sound like fun…

Writing the software bespoke could be a massive task, especially if you want to write an inbound call handling package with IVR and call recording. But if all you want to do is launch outbound calls then there’s not so much work to do and it’s a lot more achievable. The work involved is further reduced if you use some kind of SDK such as those supplied by card manfacturers. These also give you an element of hardware abstraction - which means that if you change the cards within the system it won’t get so confused. There are higher level SDK’s available to give very quick programming and complete hardware abstraction, but these are quite pricey and it’s questionable whether this would give you any savings on purchasing the software.

The future
This is a very interesting part of the telephony market and I believe we’ll see it expand over the next few years. System manufacturers will see the benefits of using standard hardware, and less and less companies will be interested in creating their own. I think this will happen in the same way that the advent of the IBM PC resulted in nearly every computer being a clone of this model.

In the long term this means better and cheaper systems as energy will be focussed on innovation rather than re-inventing the wheel.

If you’re going to give it a try…
…then think about getting someone in to help you:

Regards,
DB

I read today about the findings of a report concerning people’s reaction to call centres. It seems that a backlash against call centres has begun with a growing number of people abandoning calls before they are even answered, according to the Dimension Data survey. Customers are hanging up in frustration after realising that they have been diverted to India or some ‘non UK’ destination, or when they find out that they’ve been placed in a long queue.

Quelle surprise…

In fact, many have become so irritated by customer services that they are prepared to wait little more than a minute - with the surveyed customers now only prepared to wait 65 seconds compared with 71 seconds in 2003.

Does this mean that the cards are on the wall for outsourcing? In the wake of many UK companies’ decision to outsource call centres overseas, are we about to see the man-in-the-street making a stand - which will (perhaps justly) hurt the very companies who outsourced overseas?

Personally, I find outsourced call centres to be a very mixed bag: some are effective, but others fail due to things like cultural and language incompatibilities and also the time delay. In fact, just last night my wife had an ‘Outsourced Agent From Hell’ (OAFH) who was determined to sell her some unnecessary cover for her credit cards. Mrs. C., being normally very polite - well, okay, having the capability to be polite - tried to explain but due to language difficulties, the time-delay and other factors, she couldn’t get a word in edgeways.

To turn it around…

If call centres are ever to move on from their ‘disliked’ status within the public at large, it’s going to be as a result of organisations pulling out of these often derided overseas outsource centres and re-establishing themselves within their own country. It’s going to be as a result of better resourcing, so that queues are minimised, and a result of IVR systems being more effectively designed.

These are things that might just give this industry a chance of turning the general public perception of this industry around for the better. However, most companies seem to be moving in quite the opposite direction.

John

Recruitment always seems to be a popular subject in the discussion pages.

It’s always difficult to find the right person for any given role, and it should come as no surprise that the customer service and call centre recruitment industry is buoyant. With an ever-increasing proportion of the workforce being connected in some way with call centres, there is potentially a lot of movement and as a result there are many firms mining the recruitment seam with success.

Many recruitment firms frankly charge far too much for what they offer. One (unnamed) UK recruiter charges upwards of one hundred pounds per position for a listing on their website. This seems somewhat extortionate. What is surprising is the number of companies that appear to be prepared to pay this premium.

If you’ve been following the main discussions, you’ll probably know that we’re planning on introducing a sensibly priced, dedicated job mart for advertising call centre positions. Initially this will be UK only, but we’ll introduce it on a more worldwide basis shortly after launch.

However, this is only half the battle. Organisational and departmental politics can shape the particular recruitment strategies that are followed, and quite often it’s a case of plumping for preferred suppliers or ‘the first ad that looked good in the trade magazine’. Often at great expense.

We want to tell you all that there’s absolutely no need to go to all of that expense. CallCentreJobs.net, our forthcoming sister site, will offer all that the established online recruitment sites offer, but at a fraction of the price. We’ll cover our costs, naturally, but above and beyond that there’s no need to ‘fleece’ employers.

We see it as taking a high quality, high value-for-money approach to the whole messy business of finding the right people. With a high standard of readership and an excellent established brand, we hope that you’ll choose us to help you fill those posts, and bring down the costs of finding the best people.

We’re aiming to launch in early March, so there is much to be done. We’re terribly keen to hear your ideas and suggestions, so please talk to us and we’ll build you the recruitment site you really want.

John

I am always interested in observing and learning from the great leaders of our time. In some fields it is obvious who the leaders and the pioneers are: in technology there are both the big businessmen - for example, Bill Gates - and the visionaries - for example, Steve Jobs. However, in the call centre industry we don’t appear to have any major personalities - or do we?

Perhaps you can all help me out here. What I’d like to know is exactly who is pushing the boundaries of our industry - not organisations, but the individuals behind those organisations. The real gurus, if you will.

Also, what about the rising-stars; the up-and-coming people behind the best new ideas in our industry.

Please feel free to offer serious suggestions and your reasons why you think they should be recognised as driving forces for the call centre industry.

John

In the early days of CallCentreVoice, back when there were only a few hundred members, Vedula Srinivas, one of the most respected members posed an interesting question which I think is one topic well worth re-visiting.

In brief, Vedula opened a proverbial can of worms when he asked of customer satisfaction, “can it be measured at all and if it is measurable does that mean all human feelings can be measured on a standard scale?“

The topic veered back and forth, arguing the point that if we are trying to measure ‘feelings’ then we are purely in the world of subjective, rather than objective, observation. Who is to say that my perception of the colour yellow is the same as yours? We have no easy way to assess these things.

However, though that question remains (in my mind) unresolved, it does make me wonder whether we’re all missing the point slightly. After all, is meeting some arbitrary satisfaction measurement enough of a goal?

It’s a People Thing

We are all products of our own environment, our own experiences and observations. What one individual sees as satisfaction cannot necessarily be said to be the case for another. It all depends on what we bring into the equation. For instance, we are not static - our moods change regularly, and this can influence how receptive we are to our environments. If we’re having a Bad Day it’s quite possible that we will perceive a less than perfect interaction as unsatisfactory, even if it would on any other day be perceived as more than satisfactory.

Sometimes we’re never going to be pleased!

Much of the customer service industry is driven toward meeting certain goals: resolution of complaints for example. Again my old nemesis MI springs to the fore. As I see it, so long as we strive to meet nebulous, possibly meaningless goals, we will never really keep the customer satisfied. Assume however that somehow the MI fell magically into place, and was an accurate metric on which to assess customer satisfaction, and then assume that everybody was working at utmost efficiency to meet the targets set within the MI. Is that really enough?

Consider the numbers. If we’re aiming for (say) a target of 95% issues resolved within a particular time period, then the mind-set is going to always be aiming for the 95%. It would certainly be possible to over-achieve, but the priority would be that 95% and the motivation to go further is lost once the target has been met. Say we have to respond to 1000 customers over this period - that makes a notional target of 950 with up to 50 customers potentially left in limbo. 50 customers, some of whom might well find this deeply unacceptable and tell their friends. People are, after all, far more likely to talk of bad experiences than good.

The key flaw in the percentage threshold model is that the really tricky issues, the ‘higher cost’ customers (for instance), may forever be stuck in that last 5%. The customers in question get fed up, complain or go elsewhere. They spread a negative impression amongst their friends, and perhaps become very vocal indeed. In fact, with today’s easy global communication via discussion boards, email, blogs and so on, one highly vocal customer can spread negativity like wildfire, and this is obviously Bad News. But it does go on.

The goal of perfection in my mind is unattainable, but as an objective I think reducing customer service to a series of hurdles that one must cross in order to achieve the management ‘pat on the head’ is highly risky, and something that I believe must change. So, aiming for the best we can do - regardless of whatever nebulous rules are put in place by an uncaring, uninformed management - is surely the way forward.

Perhaps customer service desks the world over should be asking themselves: “Let’s not aim for satisfying a majority - let’s see how we can keep everyone happy“

What do you think?

One of the challenges of running a successful discussion community is in accommodating the various flavours of people that form it. We all come with differing objectives, and site administrators and moderators strive to find a happy balance, an equilibrium in which the community can thrive.

Occasionally, however, that equilibrium becomes unbalanced. In a community such as this is, it can take the form of a mass shift in mood or objectives within the membership, or a lone voice. It can be a splinter group or a clumping of cliques. It is the job of a moderator to steer the community in such a way as to prevent fragmentation of the membership as much as is possible. However, as a community grows, its exposure to such unrest increases and splits occur.

We all must think of a community in the same kind of way that we think of any group of people. In my own case, I liken the growth of a community to that of a small hamlet as it progresses, over time, via village and then town, toward city. At each stage, there are different sets of issues and priorities which need to be understood and handled. If this doesn’t happen, the community either stalls or disintegrates. Much as can happen to a village when external and internal influences change its composition.

Singing from the same hymn sheet

At the root of community is purpose. In my mind, one of the things that marks a community from a random gathering is a sense of purpose or shared objectives. Without such a thing in place, whether it be to live in a pleasant location by a handy natural harbour, or to network amongst call centre decision makers worldwide, the need for purpose holds fast. We all need to be “Singing from the same hymn sheet“.

Taking CallCentreVoice as an example, we know that it was established with the objective of changing the industry for the better from within, by sharing knowledge and experience without commercial motivation. This hasn’t changed. Though that ‘village’ has progressed to ‘large town’, and its infrastructure has grown to cope, we can see that it’s vital to maintain focus on this same objective.

It is fair to say that a community is also a little like a sailing ship, insofar as it needs to be navigated and sailed with respect to its environment. Sea, wind, industry, technology - it’s all really the same thing at a grass-roots level: external influence. A community needs to be guided to ensure that it keeps ’sailing’ in the right direction, even if at times it is necessary to make adjustments to the course to take into account those external factors. It is not always an easy job, but it is always easier when the crew and passengers agree on the destination.

One of the great things about successful communities is the give and take; sharing some knowledge around is good for the industry at large, and furthers our stated aims. As it turns out with most communities, there are always those who are more vocal, those who are prolific, the sage-like personalities, the pranksters and the lurkers (amongst others). One of the most satisfying things I find is reading the many fine contributions from some extremely knowledgable and helpful people. To those people I am, as ever, extremely grateful as they do more than their fair share of making the community work. And, if those individuals ever find that it’s a largely one-way street, not to be disheartened. Take heart from the fact that you might well have made that vital difference to someone else; take heart from being able to share an idea, a concept, a method or even a vision; take heart from the feeling of giving.

We sail on, for our destination is good and just; we sail on, amidst the good and the bad weather; we sail on, for that is what we do.

Chins up, people!

A while ago, I posted some thoughts on a problem which I see throughout the industry (and elsewhere). Management Information (MI) is, in effect, a broad church of statistical inference from which management make decisions. That’s pretty much it.

In the previous article, I looked at some of the logical flaws which can really screw up that decision-making process. My main point was that most management don’t have the necessary training nor the motivation to really dig beneath the surface to understand the calculations and whether they actually have any valid meaning whatsoever.

This article follows on somewhat from the original. If you haven’t already done so, I’d recommend you read it to get an idea of where I’m coming from. Done that? Okay, I’ll begin.

A Complete Tool

Once upon a time, around eight years back, I was a technical consultant working on a consultancy tool for a major accountancy firm. Much effort had been expended in creating an application which would allow HR departments to assess role profiles and utilisation. However, this application was founded on some very ropey logic. You see, there are skills that people have and others that people don’t have. Most people don’t understand statistics, yet our lives are governed by the use and interpretation of statistical data. The problem is that (in my opinion) the very people who have the strongest grasp of statistical validity and ‘appropriateness’ are the very people whose opinions are ignored by the often rather clueless middle management (also known in many larger firms by the collective, shady notion of “The Business“) and as a consequence nothing useful can be derived from the MI.

As an aside, this application was subsequently used widely, and the initial marketing proposal for said system had the slogan: “XX XXXXXXXX - A Complete Tool” - which, where I come from, means something entirely different, but somehow it was quite apt!

No Time Like The Present

As a techie-by-trade, I’m often asked to help sort out fiddly little problems. I was approached recently by a friend whose role is basically MI. He was performing an audit of a contact centre KPI MI tool, which was basically a commercial application which had been hacked as if it were attacking one’s family. There was a calculation determining working time periods from logs. Like a crucial cog in a complex machine, this calculation was critical to many other calculations, which assumed that the values returned would be meaningful. However, it contained a Severely Erroneous Assumption.

The objective was to aggregate employees’ shift times, but took into account the fact that in any given shift, there was an automatic 1/4 hour break. The calculation went something like this:

NetShiftPeriod = (EndTime-StartTime)+0.25

…and this figure was summed for each individual for each day or somesuch.

However, the Severely Erroneous Assumption was assuming that 0.25 represented a quarter hour. It did not.

In Oracle, the particular field-type expresses times as their fractional part of a full day. Thus, one hour would be 1/24. or ~0.042 days. A quarter hour would be one quarter of this amount, i.e. around 0.01.

A typical shift being 8 hours, or 0.33 days, what was happening was that the calculation effectively skewing the results so that dependent calculations (e.g. agent bonus, KPI etc.) were way out. And they’d been using this as the basis of performance related pay, bonuses, promotions and so on, for at least eighteen months.

Scary biscuits, as they say…

Breeding Like Bunnies in Excel Hell

These days, the corporate world is run on a flimsy, fragile infrastructure of ill-defined, bug-ridden Excel spreadsheets. These nasty creations breed like rabbits, quickly undermining any real MI strategy. They are normally cobbled together in lunch-hours, with untested logic, false assumptions and are normally of extremely dubious design. However, although often Evil Incarnate, they are sadly unavoidable and another item of evidence supporting the MI Lie.

I recently had occasion to help a small team out on a staff movement audit tracker spreadsheet. Written, of course, in Microsoft Excel, and underpinned with its partner-in-crime, Microsoft Access. Originally written by Blind Io on stone tablets, this spreadsheet had the feel of a holy relic. It was revered and respected, but also feared. It had been around since day dot, and had stopped working. I’ll spare you the details (lest you go blind like dear Io) but in a nutshell it was the usual story:

• Junior Staff Member (JSM) tasked with creation of spreadsheet;
• JSM starts spreadsheet, but does not complete;
• JSM leaves for other role;
• Other Staff Members hack it about a bit depending on the whim of the day (repeat, rinse);
• Spreadsheet is a mess, but is Depended Upon, management in a pickle because it ‘disnae work nae more’;
• Someone like me gets called in to fix it, end up in therapy for months as a result.

Yes, that’s what I call Excel Hell. It’s a dark place. Avoid!

Summing Up

The MI Lie is a worrying conclusion to an inevitable trend. Too many chiefs, not enough injuns; but what can we do?

Sadly, there is no answer; as a wiser man than me once wrote, “There are no silver bullets“. We must tackle each and every battle in turn. Management, and the nebulous Business, need to be informed that the utmost care must be taken, and educated in the flaws that will result otherwise.

As I may have said before, I’m self employed. I wanted to say a few things about making that decision.

The usual response I get from people when I tell them what I do is “You lucky b*****d, I’d love to be self employed". I then spend the next hour telling them that they can - as long as they get off their backsides and do it.

I’m one of those people who believes that nothing comes to those who wait (although I am rather partial to a pint of Guinness), and if you want things you need to ask for them. No-one’s going to give you a call and ask if you want to be self-employed - you need to take the initiative.

I’d been thinking for a couple of years that I wanted to start my own company. I know that the method of thinking I bring to the table is rather unique - and that most people liked it. So I knew that I could sell it. We all have skills that are sellable (after all, your employers are buying you now) - it just takes a bit of work to get it packaged for the PSF economy - and I’m going to talk about PSF another day.

Anyway, I worked at it and started Darryl Beckford Limited - and that’s where I am today. Working hard, but happy.

So am I trying to say that gaining independence is easy? Probably. But maintaining independence is the problem.

You see I’ve discovered that when you’re a consultant everybody wants to be your friend. I get phone calls night and day from people who are interested in a “partner” agreement. This means I go along and pretend to be a consultant, and when I’ve got the trust of the customer I sell them the product. The bonus for me is that I get paid by both sides. But I see it as a lose-lose situation.

I’m an independent consultant, and I don’t want to be tied to a particular product. Even if I believed that the product was the best on the market I still wouldn’t do it. What’s best for Peter is not usually best for Paul - every call centre is different with it’s own complex business plan.

90% of consultants I speak to are not independent - and the situation makes me think of financial advisors. Perhaps one day we’ll have consultants who work on “Fees” or “Commission” basis, but until then ensure you know who you’re paying to help you.

Regards,
DB

I discussed a while ago the need for us all to be responsible in the way we use outbound calling as a marketing tool. It holds a lot of potential but must be used responsibly or we might have this privilege taken away from us. The industry is divided on the best course of action, but the one thing that everybody is worried about is regulation.

The most irritating thing? Legislation already exists that could cut the bad guys down a peg or two, but OFCOM seems worried about enforcing it.

A year on, OFCOM have opened another investigation re: MKD holdings, also known as Kitchens Direct. See here: Ofcom Website investigation about MKD Holdings Ltd regarding silent calls

The numbers bought into the open by the original OFCOM investigation were conclusive - MKD were misusing the telecommunications network. There can be no defence against such a high number of silent calls. OFCOM’s solution was astoundingly not a fine but this:
“OFCOM obtained written commitments from MKD Holdings which included a commitment that the daily number of silent calls for each phone number used by MKD Holdings would not exceed 5% of the total number of daily live calls” (Source: OFCOM website)

Radical thought: Perhaps if some proper action was actually taken then we’d see the number of silent calls drop?

Regards,
DB

As everyone will be well aware, it’s almost impossible to live and work in a location which is immune to the often grim consequences of natural disasters and extreme weather.

In the last year, we’ve seen much of the south-eastern US and Caribbean plagued by tropical storms; we’ve seen increased flooding in the UK and of course nobody can nor should forget the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster. As experts keep telling us, some of this is unavoidable (Tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes fall into this category) and we’re seeing more and more extreme weather which as a consequence of global warming caused by increased emissions. I wanted to have a brief look at the measures we can take to safeguard our call centre operations against the unseen dangers which can strike at any point. These may be on a macro scale, such as earthquakes, or on a localised scale, such as fires or water damage. This article doesn’t take into account malicious or terrorist acts, but the same rules apply.

Fundamentals

Planning is everything. The overall aim of Disaster Recovery is to have a response to the range of ‘disaster eventualities’. We can think of this as our Emergency Plan.

Such a plan should firstly establish a set of clear objectives. These objectives should be prioritised, and fairly broad in scope. A simple example might include the following (not an exhaustive list):

• Safety of employees;
• Security of physical assets (for example, buildings);
• Protection of non-tangible assets (for example, data);
• Restoration of services
• Restoration of core business functions;

Any incident can be considered as having a timeline, ranging from before the incident (in the case of advance warnings), to the time of the incident itself, and through the minutes, hours and days that follow. A successful recovery plan should cater for effective responses to any advance warnings that might be received. In this period, evacuation may be required, and if possible full backups of mission critical data and operations information should be taken. The priority must always be individual safety above all other concerns, and this priority must outrank any business imperative. However, if immediate danger is not posed it may be prudent to take steps to limit the exposure of services and equipment to the risk.

By their very nature, disasters are serious and should be considered life-threatening unless known to be benign.

However, nature has a habit of catching us by surprise, and what might seem non-threatening can escalate very quickly into something far more serious. This is where careful planning comes into its own. We need to identify the different categories of disaster risk and their nominal timelines, so as to be able to respond effectively and meet the objectives of our plan. Of course, this is no trivial matter, and I’ll save that one for a future article.

Attitude

Rather than go into depth, I’ll put planning to one side and attempt to tackle an altogether less defined beast.

Regardless of how many plans and procedures that an organisation has in place, without the correct attitude toward them, disaster anticipation and recovery will be marginalised and often ignored. Do this at thy peril!

It’s important that everyone understands just how important things like evacuation-drills, backups and building inspections can be. For instance, if the security guard locks the fire exits, no amount of planning is going to help. Sound crazy? Perhaps, but obstructed escape exits is a major problem which should be identified and dealt with promptly. Ensure staff understand what they are to do in the event of a bomb-threat, an earthquake, a fire or a flood. Test those alarms regularly!

Visibility

No plan is of any use if nobody knows about it. It has to be visible to everyone involved. Accessible. Not locked away in a cupboard, or attached at the bottom of a long-forgotten intranet page. The message must be hammered home; take it seriously: it could save your life. Publish these plans publicly, and often. Ensure new-starts are made aware not just of the existence of said plans, but what lies within.

Recovery

The recovery phase must always follow once the primary concerns of individual safety have effectively addressed. A disaster recovery plan should include things like an audit of the current office, systems, people, processes and dependencies. It should include details of assets, and suppliers of those assets. It should anticipate major disasters by establishing a suitable offsite, secure backup plan of business data - and this should be followed strictly. Recovery plans should also aim to facilitate ‘dry-runs’ - important to assess how suitably equipped an organisation is to recover from a major incident.

I hope this has been useful. Most of it is common sense, and of course a quick internet search will doubtless reveal more information which might help in the construction of a suitable plan. It bears repeating that having an effective plan in place is vitally important, so if you don’t have one, create one; if you do have one, revise it.

John

Good morning to you all.

These days, too many of us really put in long hours due to the various pressures of the modern workplace. We’re often there from dusk to dawn, sacrificing our breaks to appear eager, willing and able.

It’s a trap that a great many of us fall into. Which is why I was interested to chance across a reprint of an article by a fellow called Gerald Weinberg. Mr Weinberg maintains that the key to happiness at work is to maintain a positive and balanced personal chemistry. This is an intriguing idea and I reckon there’s a lot to be said for it. Whilst the occasional ‘all-guns-blazing’ burst of effort is often required (such as before a major deadline), the proposition is that such effort becomes the norm and (in a sense) habit-forming.

I urge you all to have a read of the article - it’s mainly common sense, but as many of you will be in a position to set the targets of your workers, I think it’s well worth digesting. After all, we’re all human - only human, that is - and sustained super-human effort is not physiologically beneficial.

John

Happy New Year! I know, I know, it’s a little bit late, but then, I’ve been busy updating the site - and hopefully giving it more appeal to a wider audience.

Now that we’re into another year, I thought it would be interesting to find out whether any of you have made any plans or resolutions which might affect the way that you run your call centre. Have you, for instance, decided to go with a particular technology, or try new agent incentives? Perhaps you’ve decided to reorganise or even expand your existing call centre.

On the other hand, is your department facing tough decisions? How are you coping?

On a personal level, have you decided to get fit, or give something up? Perhaps you fancy picking up a new language (I do; to my embarrasment I am a one language kind of guy, and I’d love to be able to pick up a foreign language and use it). Maybe you want to switch jobs, change career or even do voluntary work. If so, I want to hear about it!

Myself? Well, apart from aiming to pickup Italian, do more running and less drinking (to help me shift a stone or so) and complete my move to Apple, I’ve nothing radical planned. My wife wants a holiday to Maccu Picchu in Peru, so that’s the big goal for the year, though I’d be happy with just shifting that gut!

Anyway, over to you guys and gals… please, talk to me! [Note: due to comment spam, we have switched on the ‘moderator approval’ facility, which means it may be a short while before we get round to checking that your comment isn’t spam. We had a bit of this just before Christmas - and annoying it was too.]

John

Greetings once again. I am now back from my little trip to Prague and have much to tell. However, I’ll split it up over a few days for everyone’s sake, and once I get some of the photos back.

Where did I put my Scrooge hat?

Now that we’re well into the festive season, it’s nice to see the efforts that people make in offices around the land. Often sober, drab places spring into life with a definite mood swing, a bit of colour and that certain something which typifies Christmas.

People who barely acknowledge one another throughout the rest of the year seem to start talking, and the banter increases. It’s a pity in some ways that people can’t keep this mood going throughout the full year but if doing so would mean having to hear another minute of piped Christmas music then I for one would be happy to doff the Scrooge hat and say “Humbug!".

You see, that’s one of my pet hates: Christmas songs. Not carols, which although I’m not a religious person, I can associate with the true meaning of Christmas. No, I mean the inane rubbish that crops up all over the place. At first I am oblivious to it - even if it does start to appear in late October - but after a while, like a chilling damp, it’s difficult to ignore.

A trip to the local supermarket can become torturous; the tinny screeching of Christmas hits of yesteryear played on an endless purgatorial loop. I pity the poor staff who have to put up with this each and every day during the festive period. It’s meant to be heavenly and uplifting music, but for those poor souls it must be hell!

Of course, there exists that rarest of things: a good Christmas song. Some are pretty decent, catchy tunes; others have commendable charitable intent. Nevertheless, I just have to ask myself “How do they cope?” when thinking about the folks subjected to the musical equivalent of Chinese water torture.

Secret Santa

Apart from the music, however, I’m generally pretty much in favour of Christmas in the workplace. I really like the way that teams pull together and do ‘inclusive’ things, such as the ‘Secret Santa‘. For those of you who haven’t heard of this, it’s a kind of arrangement whereby everyone puts their name into a hat, the names are mixed up and then everyone pulls a name out, the idea being that the name that the ‘drawer’ buys a Christmas present up to a certain value for the ‘drawee’. It can be humourous, useful, alcoholic, and hopefully all of the above. Apart from the fact that there’s usually someone who breaks the rules and overspends, it’s a great thing to encourage a bit of team-bonding.

Writing articles like this can feel a bit like ‘rant rant rant’ (and frequently is), but at times I like to hear what you lot have to say. So, I invite you all to tell me what festive fun is taking place in your call centre or office, or join me in the debate over Christmas music.

Look forward to it!

John

This is my last serious entry before I head off for my week in Prague, so I thought I’d touch on something of which I have direct experience and which I believe can be extremely unfair to those who fall under its gaze.

That topic is Management Information (MI). When applied to the contact centre, we’re talking fine-grained, fairly complex statistical analysis of Key Performance Indicators and an often obsessive worship of numbers.

The problem, I believe, is that quite often the kinds of people setting up these measurement systems are not always the sorts of people who understand statistics or workflow. For instance, once upon a time I worked with a manager who was in charge of identifying skills utilisation. She firmly believed that one could add fractions by adding the numerators together, the denominators together, and dividing the two. In other words:

Her Logic: 1/2 + 1/4 == (1+1)/(2+4) == 2/6 == 1/3
Correctly: 1/2 + 1/4 == 2/4 + 1/4 == (2+1)/4 == 3/4

You can see where this is leading. This otherwise seemingly intelligent individual was in charge of defining MI for the competency analysis wing of a large accountancy. Peoples jobs, their futures, would be subject to the relentless implications of a single person’s lack of understanding.

Of course, being the smart-arse that I was (young geek punk, heh heh) I spotted the flaw immediately. Being a contract developer at the time, my (justified) criticism was constructive and relayed in a friendly and helpful fashion. You know what? She didn’t listen. Despite protestations, said package was completed, and launched to an innocent world.

To date, I reckon this flawed logic has probably jiggered the performance and competency assessments of tens of thousands of people. All because of a rather blinkered and mathematically challenged manager who knew best.

You might think that this is a fairly exceptional case, but believe me, it isn’t. Most medium-to-large call centres use some kind of performance measurements as a basis to set targets, measure effectiveness and ultimately in many cases set bonuses for the ordinary men and women.

Yet, looking underneath the bonnet of many MI systems, statistical irrelevance, broken logic and data vagrancy* is rife. There are two many people working in such systems who have sort of ‘fallen into it’ in some way. Marketing types who don’t know what a standard deviation is, far less how to code one into a spreadsheet; fast-track types whose rapid ascendance belies no great competence at anything, you get the picture.

The basic problem is that so much of performance measurement has not been rigorously thought out. Not enough is done to ensure that the numbers are meaningful. Often, a small mathematical error may have enormous repercussions.

In short, it’s scary!

Nevertheless, companies treat the numbers as gospel. They don’t really want to go to the effort of really talking to their staff, seeing the real performance. Numbers are easy; they fit into corporate spreadsheets which make shiny pie-charts. They look complex enough to