On February 26th my wife Tania & I will be flying out to Sri Lanka, with Global Crossroads, to participate in the reconstruction of Galle in Sri Lanka, following the devastation cause by the tsunami. My company, through their charity services arm - Zurich FS Cares - have generously donated an additional 2 weeks of my time to allow me to extend my involvement to 4 weeks.

During the week following the devastating tsunami disaster, the Sri Lanka government officially confirmed 29,729 dead with another 5,240 reported missing. In addition, 16,665 are confirmed injured and 805,978 people are displaced. The tsunami destroyed 91,059 homes with another 24,942 reportedly damaged.

Global Crossroad’s Tsunami Reconstruction volunteer Project allows volunteers to support the reconstruction efforts of grassroots organizations in Sri Lanka. Volunteers will work with Global Crossroad’s staff and villagers in specially designed reconstruction projects ranging from work in orphanages, hospitals, and community centres to rebuilding schools. In particular, efforts will focus on rebuilding the school and 79 homes destroyed in the village of Galle. We are also helping to provide relief & assistance to children who have lost their parents, through the local orphanages.

Please take the time to look up the site - globalcrossroad.com - there are many opportunities all around the world to get involved in projects from reconstruction to teaching to animal rescue. This may not be a traditional way to spend your holidays, but can you really think of a better one?

There are 3 important messages I would like to get across here…

1) 2 months passing is not long… the relief effort and rebuilding in areas such as Sri Lanka will take many years, and even more for the economies to restabalise - DO NOT STOP GIVING. DO NOT STOP MAKING A DIFFERENCE

2) There are more ways to give than just money. We are donating our time, and our friendship; people from both our companies have donated so many presents & clothes for children that we have had to arrange a cargo freight to take over 25 large bags - the people doing the freight also donated their time & effort as well as the cost; our companies have donated our time, to help us maximise this opportunity. WHOEVER YOU ARE & WHAT EVER YOU DO THERE IS A WAY FOR YOU TO HELP

3) (Especially) GLOBAL COMPANIES HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO BE GOOD WORLD CITIZENS. It costs very little to give 2 weeks paid leave, but the difference those 2 weeks can make is significant. If companies not only support this, but make an effort to raise awareness, then a small contribution can spiral into a big happening as more people will find ways to get involved.

Dylan and Dave left two fantastic posts yesterday. So fantastic that I’m not going to bother writing anything. I think there’s enough for everyone to digest, and I don’t think I could compete with them anyway!

As far as I’m aware, they didn’t plan to both write articles about changing the way you do things - it was just a happy co-incidence.

I’ll leave you with a well known story that I think is rather relevant.

Company policy
Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water.

After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result; all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm!

Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth.

Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana.

Why not?

Because as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been done around here.
And that, my friends, is how a company policy begins.

Regards,
DB

In the UK Emirates Airlines are using the tag line “When was the last time you did something for the first time”, on their TV adverts at the moment.

It’s a good question, a good tag line and a something we all ought to think about.

When was the last time you were challenged to do something out of your normal day to day workload? [1] When was the last time YOU thought, “Is this right? Can we do it differently? Can we do it better?”

One of the trends I’ve noticed over the last few years is the tendency for the industry as a whole to say, “This is the way to do it.” Unfortunately dogma rears its ugly head and the cries of heresy can drum innovation down.

I like to think I know my way round forecasting, I know the myth that is a marketing forecasts, I know Erlang (well not personally as he’s dead), I know my teams, I know that for us WFM is not applicable, I know our forcasts are good. What I don’t know is if we are doing it the right way rather thanjust the standard way.

There is a lot of work being done by people who are a lot cleverer than me at MIT and the University of Huazhong that I think will revolutionise the way we forecast in the next 10 years.

Hands up who has heard of FPP or Fractal Point Processes? I’m about to use lots of buzzwords now, Fractal, Chaos, Self-Similar, Stochastic, Poisson, Superposition, Queuing theory, FMPPP (Fractal-Modulated Poisson Point Process), FBNDP (Fractal-Binomial Noise Driven Process) and traffic engineering. Whoever is playing office bingo may shout house now.

Ok, buzz words out of the way. Nothing is new in the basic structure of how a queue works. The research at the moment is looking at the huge amounts of traffic across international switches and doesn’t apply; yet, to the smaller volumes we get in our centres however it is something to be watched. The theory is that unlike a traditional Erlang model, which applies a steady state transformation to the data, a much more robust fractal model can be applies CONSTANTLY remodelling, intraday becomes automatic, and ‘smarter’. [4]

Now I know and can understand the math behind the Erlang calcs. I’m even working on a way to break it down to ‘Math for Managers’. [5] I know Mandelbrot, Julia and Lorentz’s work, hell I even understand about 40% of it, but now we all need to start looking to the next new thing. In our case it WILL be VOIP, we don’t have any chance, copper to glass, analogue to digital. We WILL be going there. The infrastructure is already in place in what is the biggest network in the world, why will telecoms companies continue to install and upgrade voice networks when they can bang the call across the spare bandwidth they already have on their shiney new data network. The first stages will be transparent with the voice end still being a standard phone but the transmission over IP. Moving later to IP Phones and IP only call centres. This isn’t a warning more of a heads up that these things are changing.

Which leads me back to the point above.

In a VOIP environment an Erlang forecast won’t work, callflow across a network is chaotic, network loading needs to be balanced to allow agents to take audible clear calls not just calls. Traffic engineering will be the new callflow planning, FMPPP and FBNDP will replace Erlang B and C as the accepted methods for forecasting. Staff planning will move from agent Vs call planning to Bandwidth Vs Agent planning.

We are fortunate at this point to be in at the start of something new and possibly the biggest revolution in communications since the rotary switch, the drawback is for all of us it’s back to school.

The two articles below give an insight and the third I can’t find a weblink to at the moment.

1) Fractal Point Process and Queuing Theory and Application to Communication Networks

Gregory Wornell MIT

2) A Case For Fractal Traffic Modelling

Ashok Erramilli, Walter Willinger MIT

3) Performance Analysis of a queue under FPP Self-Similar Traffic

Chen Chun Han, Cao Mingcui, Liu Erwu, Li Feng and Luo Zhixiang.
Huazhong University

And as an introduction to fractal modelling.

A leap of faith with Fractal Analysis by John Conover

Have fun, time to hit the books

DaveA

[1] For me it was Sunday. I’ve been asked for permission to publish an article I wrote.
No problem as far as I’m concerned however can I supply a short bio? Now looking at this it looks easy. Just come up with 2 short paragraphs about myself, some contact details and Bob’s your mums brother. In true panto fashion. “Oh no it isn’t”. I had THE greatest attack of writers block I’ve ever had in my life. The first 3 attempts ended up sounding more boring than a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of The Grey Party.

Do I not have a life? Have I not done many varied and fun things? Did I not get slung out of a Greek nightclub for an incident with a goat, a plate of olives, the barmaid and a bottle of Tequila. [2][3]

So it shouldn’t be that hard should it? Ha. So my thanks to Iain Hardy for acting as editor on that one.

[2] One of these is a lie

[3] Best guesses on a postcard to…

[4] Trust me I’m going somewhere with this

[5] Watch this space, but don’t hold your breath.

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.

The PSF Economy
There’s this idea (which isn’t mine - I’ve been sold it by a fella called Tom Peters) which suggests that in 5-15 years time none of us will be working for the companies that we do at the moment. We’re all likely to be working either for ourselves, or for a much smaller organisation that provide professional services.

I bought into this idea so heavily it’s landed me where I am at the moment: as a consultant. I’m trying to get a headstart on the rest of the world.

Why should this happen? Because it’s now understood that lightweight companies are good. They can react to changes in markets quickly and are easier to account for. The suggestion is that everytime a company wants to execute a project it’ll bring in a series of contractors who will work together to complete the project. The key point is that these people are unlikely to be strangers. They would have worked together on different projects for different companies.

Just do something
It may sound silly, but it happens at the moment. Consider an international sportswear manufacturer. They don’t really do anything but own the brand. They contract designers, factories and advertising agencies. Hardly any of the work that gets the product made, on the shelves and selling is done by the core company.

How does this apply to call centres? Surely this is what we see already? Many of you will be working in outsourced (and possibly offshored) call centres.

The changes you’ll see
There’ll be more rented labour. Many more CSR’s will work through agencies, although these agencies will have to modify their pricing models to make this viable. Organisations will re-use CSR’s that have reputations for being good call handlers, or are known for picking up training easily.

As well as seeing more rented labour, you’re going to see more rented assets. I’m talking buildings, desks, computers, telephones. More on this another day…but this is key to making the PSF economy scaleable.

Management of telephony and IT systems will change. It may be that responsibility for all systems are outsourced to one PSF. Or it may be that your company decides to employ young, keen and cheap contractors on a full time basis to be managed by somone with more experience who operates on a part time basis.

What does this mean?
The important thing about the PSF economy is that we’ll see companies open up. People will be used to working for more than one organisation (possibly at the same time), and management will learn that this is a good thing and be able to deal with it.

Management will also learn that keeping employees loyal to your company will be about making them want to work there. It won’t be about making them feel like they’ve got no other option. The PSF economy will make recruitment quicker and easier - meaning people will more happily leave jobs that are no fun. If your call centre has a problem with staff turnover at the moment then brace yourself - it’s likely to get worse.

So what can you do to get yourself ready for this change? I’ll think I’ll save that for another day!

Regards,
DB

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

You might not know this, but we recently introduced a recommended links page for those websites that we reckon are well worth visiting. We’ve even added a special contact page so people can recommend links.

So, where are the recommendations, people? I mean, go on, let us know what other sites we ought to have. They must be useful, not overtly commercial, and interesting. We’d prefer sites which will reciprocally link back to us, but if they’re genuinely useful that shouldn’t be a requirement.

Also, we’re looking for interesting web logs (blogs) which are in a similar vein to our own - we’ll happily create a list of quick links from here - we just need to know what’s popular and worthwhile…

So, let us know (via the link above) if you can help…

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.