Call Center 2.0

Call Center Gurus Author Productivity Plus Blog

Knowlagent recently launched a new Productivity Plus blog where experts within the call center industry can collaborate and opine upon the customer experience, agent productivity and the call center culture … topics that matter. 

Productivity Plus is a type of short-hand that epitomizes the balancing act you have to do on a regular basis. Call center people I talk to spend a lot of time optimizing productivity and efficiency, but it’s the “plus” that gets them excited.

Maybe you’re trying to figure out:

• What you can do to focus more on the customer experience, including first call resolution and quality monitoring?
• How you can create a positive work environment that can improve customer retention and increase revenues?
• How you can better communicate with agents, deliver one-on-one coaching and recognize achievements?
• What tactics successful companies have implemented to improve customer satisfaction?
• How your company can better measure return on investments?

I’ve asked industry experts – Jeanne Bliss, David Butler, and Greg Levin – to join me in helping answer these and a host of other questions that will help you create a great customer experience and great agents.

All of us will focus on five topics that matter most to you: corporate culture, customer centricity, technology, agent success factors and best practices. We’ll provide you with case studies and real-world tips from companies that have mastered these areas so you can too.

I hope the information presented in each blog post gets you energized about ways to improve your call center operations. I encourage you to contribute your ideas as well through the “comments” section on each post. We’d love to hear your thoughts, stories and successes. I also encourage you to spread the word and share this information with other executives and managers in your company.

We’ll be posting a few blogs a week on these varying topics, so please visit the blog often! And, enjoy.

Visit Productivity Plus blog

New Terminology in the Call Center

The contact center landscape is changing. Today’s agents not only provide customer service, they cross-sell, up-sell, resolve complex issues, represent the brand – the list goes on.

And they don’t just use the phone to do their jobs – they respond to emails and virtual inquiries via social media channels. They’re in and out of different systems or applications to process orders, review their knowledge base, read emails or complete training courses. Many of these off-phone activities are normally classified as shrinkage and considered a necessary evil.

Along with new roles, environments and technology comes new terminology for discussing your contact center operations. Knowlagent recently compiled a list of term that can help familiarize call center professionals.  Check out the Call Center Agent Productivity Glossary to review terms such as:

• Active Wait Time
• Activity Queue
• Shrinkage
• Avoidable Shrinkage
• Secondary Loss

In addition to learning this new terminology, find out how to put them into action by reading about functionality such as the Activity Queue at work!

 

Helping Companies Serve People

Personal service means valuing customer needs before the bottom line and making the effort to ensure customers are satisfied not only with the current transaction, but also the company as a whole. These companies want to improve not only their Average Handle Time and their First Call Resolution, but also their Customer Satisfaction and their Customer Experience. Knowlagent’s mission is to make it easy for businesses to personally serve their customers and their communities.

When companies can find more time to improve agent performance via small pockets of training and coaching time, they are better able to serve their customers. Also, customers who experience personalized, high-quality service are more likely to be loyal to the company.

Service is precisely why Knowlagent shifted its model from premise to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Rather than burden customers with hefty up-front costs and the responsibility for long-term maintenance, SaaS provides customers more flexibility. Knowlagent hosts the software and can more easily assist with upgrades throughout the customer's lifetime.

Knowlagent employees also participate in service to the community with MUST Ministries and other local organizations.  Monthly drives and quarterly service days give employees the opportunity to serve alongside their colleagues and build up interdepartmental camaraderie.

For more information on service, check out Knowlagent's updated community service page or learn more about Software-as-a-Service.

 

Photo by Wonderlane.

A To-Do List for the Call Center Agent?

Do you ever consider that your agents are the only people within your organization that function without an ongoing to‐do list?

Granted, agents need to complete specific tasks in order to close out a ticket or finish a case, but their primary responsibility is to field calls. Other activities – reading communications, training, project work – are scheduled and typically require additional headcount to ensure service levels are met. 

At first glance, providing a to‐do list for call center agents seems like a nice‐to‐have, because we want them available for fielding calls. Availability is essential to service levels, but time between calls is lost.

Nobody likes to think about agents spending time between calls reading magazines or completing a crossword puzzle to keep the day moving. At the same time, agents’ schedules are loaded with shrinkage activities.  

What if agents could use that time more wisely? A to‐do list is designed to make agent available time more productive. Rather than filling the gaps with the latest Brangelina gossip, agents can learn a new skill set, read up on new policies or complete mandatory HR assessments.

Read more about the importance of creating an activity queue or a to-do list for your call center agents. 

Active Wait?

Active wait time is not one of the most popular metrics measured in call centers today.  But maybe it should be.  As Greg Levin recently tweeted, "Make room for another key #cctr acronym: AWT -- Active Wait Time." The video below gives you a humorous view of how active wait time works.

Every day, 11% of your agents' time is wasted waiting.  What if you could use some of that time to complete activities such as training, coaching, and communications effectively creating active wait time?

Activities that normally need to be scheduled and take agents off the phone can be completed during agents’ idle time. 

So, not only are agents able to be more productive between calls, but your WFM team doesn't even have to schedule that time.  The time can be found for you.  Agents are prompted to complete the tasks on their to-do list – without affecting your service levels.

You can set the system to deliver the highest priority tasks during unforecasted drops in call volume. Plus, if an agent is engaged in Active Wait Time activities and call volume increases, you can automatically prompt agents to return to call handling.

Check out more details on how to increase agent productivity and reduce shrinkage by reading the newly revamped solutions section of our website.

Spreading the Word on Shrinkage Reduction

We've been hard at work sharing the exciting findings of shrinkage and potential increased agent productivity.  Check out some of our guest posts over at one of our partners' blog.  CRMxchange also asked about Knowlagent's new capabilities in an executive interview with Matt McConnell.

Turning Downtime & Shrinkage into Increased Productivity
Active Wait could be one of the few big productivity gains left in the call center. This is a huge opportunity for improvement in our industry that uses time otherwise wasted.  Join in on an exercise to experience idle time first hand.

Successful Adoption of eLearning in the Call Center
eLearning in theory is an incredible tool for businesses and especially the call center.  But as you know, tools are only as useful as you make them.  We’ve spoken to customers and prospects and come up with 6 keys to successful adoption of eLearning and Coaching in the call center.

Tips on At-Home Agents
The concept of at-home agents continues to drive attention in the contact center market, to the point where we no longer need to be sold on the validity of the model. The trick now is figuring out how to build an at-home program.

Executive Interview with CRMxchange
The technology was designed specifically to take activities normally categorized as secondary loss and shift these activities to be delivered during idle time. The reduction in shrinkage grows with each new activity that is delivered during active wait time instead of being scheduled for the agent. The number of hours delivered to each agent per month has a direct cost saving.

For more Knowlagent happenings, check out our latest news stories.

Contact Center Shrinkage Survey

Knowlagent recently conducted a survey with over 100 respondents to answer some important questions about shrinkage. Our intent was to determine how much time is spent in shrinkage across different types of centers and to understand what activities make up shrinkage.

We also wanted to understand the impact the expanding role of the agent might be having on shrinkage, as well as differences among organizations of different industries and sizes.

Defining Shrinkage

There are two categories of shrinkage: Primary, which includes absenteeism, vacation, paid holidays, tardiness, breaks and lunch, and Secondary, which includes activities such as training, team meetings, coaching, paperwork, call research, knowledge base, e-mail and call backs.

Primary shrinkage makes up around 54% of overall shrinkage and is largely outside of the call center’s control. Activities in the secondary category – the remaining 46% - are more easily controlled through efficiency. Because these activities are not typically required to occur during specific times, they can take place during downtimes in call volume while agents sit idle, waiting for the next call.

How much time do agents spend in shrinkage?

Across all respondents, the average response was that 24% of an agent’s time is spent in shrinkage. The most frequent response was between 26-30%.

While there was no significant difference in overall shrinkage percentage for those supporting newer channels such as text, chat and social media, there were differences when respondents were filtered by industry, size and contacts handled.

Collections has the highest percentage of shrinkage at 26%, while technical support and outsourcers have the lowest at 21% and 20%. The survey average was 24%. According to those surveyed, the smallest and the largest centers have the lowest percentages of shrinkage time.

What constitutes meaningful improvement?

When asked what they would consider a meaningful improvement in shrinkage, those with collections and tech support functions are looking for more improvement in shrinkage. Some 22% of collections respondents selected a 10 or more percent improvement as meaningful and 15% of tech support. In contrast, sales functions are more likely to look for improvement in the 1-5% range, with 54% selecting this, as compared to customer service at 45%.

Click here to download the entire survey results.

How Coca-Cola Drives Supervisor Adoption

As part of our recent Customer Advisory Council, Tina Bjork, customer care e-Learning manager for Coca-Cola Refreshments, shared some of her team’s best practices for driving supervisor adoption of the Knowlagent platform, as well as driving overall business results.

Our team at Coca-Cola is responsible for creating engaging learning experiences – including Questions of the Day, tips and courses in Knowlagent – delivering them to our associates in the U.S. and Canada, and then tracking the results of all of these activities.

Here are some of the best practices we’ve developed to keep supervisors engaged with Knowlagent and actively using the system:

BP #1: Get them using it from Day One.

Agents use Knowlagent and C.O.L.A. (our internal information repository) from Day One in the new hire class. It is integrated into our culture from the very beginning, which helps increase adoption when they are actually performing the job.

The same foundational training is also provided to supervisors with additional time spent on the coach console, reporting and some agent adoption techniques. We also engage them with an e-Learning Overview, which helps them to get to know our team.
Many times, we don’t have time as the e-Learning group to interact with all of the leaders across the enterprise. Spending time initially to introduce our team and build that relationship has definitely helped drive adoption. From the beginning, we establish with our leaders what they can expect from our team and what we can expect back from them.

BP#2: Make them a part of the content creation process.

We believe that success begins with our leaders. Getting them to use the system and buy-in to how it can benefit their teams is how we have created a culture of supervisor-empowered adoption.

Involving supervisors in the content creation process drives adoption. Our supervisors are the subject matter experts, so we encourage them to contribute content in the system. For example, we created a “build it yourself” Jeopardy game that makes it easy for supervisors and other leaders in the organization to input their own content.

They can then play this game, which launches out of Knowlagent, in team meetings or one on one during their individual Learning Breaks. Giving supervisors ownership over the content helps drive adoption within their groups.

BP#3: Follow-up.

While it is important to get supervisor buy-in early and get them excited about using the system, if you never follow-up and let them know how they are doing, you can’t expect positive results.

We meet with supervisors on a bi-weekly basis in a formal meeting where we share Knowlagent stats, Questions of the Day and course completion rates, as well as open the floor for supervisors to express their suggestions and new ideas.
Additionally, we incent supervisors of top performing teams with rewards points based on how their team participated in different activities such as Question of the Day. It starts to get really competitive, which also drives engagement.

Read more about how Tina and her team are able to keep supervisors engaged and on-board with more Best Practices for Supervisor Adoption.

16 Things We're Thankful for at Knowlagent

As we prepare to share a Thanksgiving feast here at the Knowlagent offices, we want to pause and reflect on that for which we are grateful.  In no particular order, we are thankful for:

1. Active Wait time in the call center where agents are productive in between calls.
   
2. The recent influx of Knowlagent Babies!
3. Sprint and their improved customer experience.
4. The handful of former employees that have brought their experience back to work at Knowlagent including our current COO, John Wolf.
5. Our partner, inContact who has helped increase revenue and visibility of Knowlagent's solutions.
6. Convergys who was instrumental to the release of Knowlagent 8.5 to help increase agent productivity and performance.
7. The disciplines of execution that Covey 4-D taught our employees to make Knowlagent continually successful. 
8. Involvement in High Tech Ministries that connects Atlanta executives in the technology industry.
9. Our IT partner ITneer who have provided many man-hours in support and development of our solutions.
10. Great employees like Kerry Engle with a heart of service.
11. 25¢ soft drinks that Knowlagent employees enjoy at the office.  We are running on plenty of sugar & caffeine!
12. Our patented RightTime™ technology that finds the right time to deliver content to the agent without affecting service levels. 
13. Employee commitment to service at MUST Ministries.
14. All the SaaS talent that our Procuri alumni bring to the business.
15. Excellent uptime from our hosting provider, NeoSpire.
16. Knowlagent's previous CEO, Rusty Gordon, who was a great example of servant leadership.

It's Not Just For Call Center Training Anymore

In the world of call centers, a certain amount of shrinkage is expected. 

In every center, there will be some time each week when agents will sit idle and off the phones due to research, training, coaching, meetings or call reviews. It’s just the cost of doing business. 

Knowlagent users already minimize idle time by sending training and coaching to agents during unscheduled downtimes in call volume, but what if you could find even more time? What if you could move more of these shrinkage activities to times when agents are sitting idle, anyway? 

Now you can.

Knowlagent is the best in the world at finding time for agents to complete off-phone work while they sit idle, waiting for the next call. Now, with our newest software release – Knowlagent v8.5 – we make it even easier for you to find more time to deliver critical information to your agents both inside, and outside of the Knowlagent system. 

Activities in any system can now be pushed to agents during downtimes in call volume through Knowlagent’s RightTime™ engine. When a pocket of time is identified, a session prompt is sent, directing agents to the corresponding system to complete the assigned task. 

Activities can include anything from completing training or coaching sessions in Knowlagent to conducting call research, reviewing Knowledge Base articles, completing call reviews, attending classroom training, or even reviewing current performance against metrics. There is virtually no limit to what agents can be asked to complete during this wait time between calls.

For more insight on shrinkage in the call center, review these recent survey results.