Customer Service King

Ken Carlon of Optima explains how increasing occupancy in a call center can be a key to increasing income.

What are some of the neglected or misunderstood ways to make a call center more profitable?

For outsourcers it's generally utilization in terms of occupancy.  There is a false economy that can be created around profitability by client where an outsourcer may generally feel, in order to be profitable, they need to charge a certain amount per hour.  This measure of profitability per client can be true when a center is running at 85%+ capacity, but when they are not, this model goes out the window.  The first priority should be to maximize their capacity utilization. Once a center is built and staffed, management, executive, IT, facility and equipment costs are in place and ongoing.  As long as a client is paying a rate greater than the variable cost (agent, supervisor, telephone company, etc.) associated with a given piece of business, the excess contributes to the overhead and thus the profitability of other pieces of business or the business as a whole (depending on how you look at it).  The key is any empty seat is more expensive than one occupied at a low or undesirable rate.

This week, we'll be talking with Ken Carlon,  Chief Executive Officer of Optima, the contact center and telemarketing unit of Omnicom's Star Marketing Group. His company manages call centers and telemarketing centers for other companies - he's an expert in outsourcing call centers. 

What are some of the easiest or simplest ways to make a call center more profitable?

Carlon: For insourcers it's almost certainly effective utilization.  Time and again when we're asked to review inhouse operations the amount of efficiency we see lost to ineffective utilization is the number one cost driver.  One of the ways outsourcers are able to consistently offer lower costs than inhouse operations is their focus on productivity.  The amount of unproductive agent time we generally see at inhouse vs. outsourcers centers can be as much as 200%.  While things such as corporate culture and policies have to be taken into consideration, staffing and agent utilization are usually where the greatest impacts can be made.

For the past several days, we've been asking questions of Eyal Rudnik from NICE Systems, the maker
of the NICE SmartCenter, but we haven't talked about what the NICE SmartCenter is.

How does NICE SmartCenter work? When the phone rings, what happens then? How does the information get stored and communicated with management?

SmartCenter is working even before the phone rings. With NICE SmartCenter, contact center management has the ability to ensure that the right number of agents with the right skills set will be available to take calls and be able to answer any questions that a customer may have. What makes SmartCenter a powerful tool is that fact that it can be adjusted to support any business needs and accordingly there will be a different productivity flow. For example, with today’s business dynamic, competition is an even bigger challenge than in the past. New campaigns and offerings are changing on a daily basis.

What are the limits of call center performance monitoring software? Will it make agents more nervous or less nervous? We asked Eyal Rudnik from NICE Systems.

Does call center monitoring software replace live supervision?

Rudnik: In many cases the answer is yes, mainly because having a person near you will have a certain affect on the agent. If the supervisor provides positive reinforcement, the agent will try harder to better perform, and if it’s negative the presence may put unnecessary pressure on the agent. Regardless of whether this is a positive influence or not, we can’t have live supervision all the time.  This is why quality monitoring software is more popular than in the past. One of things that NICE SmartCenter allows is real time monitoring and coaching, eliminating the need for live supervision altogether.

Further reading:  Buyer Beware! QA Software Considerations

We're continuing our conversation with Eyal Rudnik from NICE Systems, who uses software to measure each agent based on key standards and supply feedback based on each agent's skill level.

Do monitoring and management systems work better for email and chat than for voice calls?

Rudnik: I really see no big difference in terms of the process. One thing I do foresee is the ability to connect between different types of multimedia communication. This provides the ability to really understand an entire interaction through a chat conversation which can easily be evolved to a VoIP conversation, and an email can follow that. NICE SmartCenter allows our customers to monitor and analyze different touch points regardless of underlying communication technology (i.e. Voice, email, chat).

Further reading: Call Center Perpectives and Sharon Drew Morgen’s Customer Service tips

Many call center reps work from home, but how do their managers supervise and evaluate them? Here are some more ideas from Eyal Rudnik of NICE Systems, the maker of NICE Perform software, which can be especially helpful for monitoring call center workers who telecommute from home.

 
What are the challenges of monitoring call center workers who telecommute from home?

Rudnik: From a quality monitoring process standpoint there is really no difference between monitoring an agent who telecommutes from home and one that works at the contact center, granted you have the appropriate solution deployed as the challenges are more technical than process-related.

At the core of NICE SmartCenter there is the ability to capture Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) communication. VoIP is probably the biggest enabler for agents at home. On top of that, there is the ability to schedule the shifts of an agent regardless of his/her physical location. NICE’s SmartCenter Web portal enables ubiquitous connection, thus allowing supervisors to monitor and evaluate interaction regardless of the agent’s location.

Additionally, the supervisor can send specific coaching packages to agents while allowing the agents to bid for shifts, review evaluations, provide their comments and have direct access to customer feedback. With NICE SmartCenter both agents and supervisors have personalized dashboards that indicate how they are performing in real time against their goals. In summary, if the right solution is deployed, physical boundaries simply disappear and contact center operations can be extended to agents working from home.

Further reading:  QA for Home Based Agents

Though many people choose to use the Web to do their business (saves waiting on hold), many contact centers are not equipped to handle anything but phone calls. We spoke with Eyal Rudnik from NICE Systems about that.

Why are so many contact centers nothing more than call centers?

I strongly believe, and this was proven many times in the past, that the interactions that go on at a contact center hold invaluable information regarding a company’s service and product ideas for improvement. I see the contact center as a goldmine, and with the proper solution, such as NICE SmartCenter, an organization can tap into the insight that lies within the interactions.

Do you think that email and chat will continue to become more important in contact centers, or will voice calls still be the customer's preferred way to communicate?

I foresee more and more electronic communication, predominantly due to convenience. That said, I don’t see voice communication disappearing because of the converged nature of communication. IM interaction can very quickly switch from plain chat to voice communication with the click of a mouse and perhaps even more importantly, people like to speak with people.

 Further reading: How to Staff for Text Chat

We're always asking call center owners and managers what makes them decide who to hire and who not to hire. Here are three responses:

Ken Carlon, CEO of Optima, which manages outsourced and telemarketing contact centers:

"...I believe that good agents aren't hired they're taught. Training can be more important than hiring practice and this has little to do with the formal classroom training that occurs, but rather the ongoing coaching and feedback received from the floor supervisors that allows agents to develop in to a given company's ideal."

Ken Wisnefski, president of VendorSeek:

"Other than traditional methods of resume scanning and interviews, the hiring process should be contingent on a trial period. The first month or so should be a time for candidates to supplement training with call experience. This 'trial' will illuminate which workers will be the best fit for the job. Even with experience and an excellent looking resume, it is not enough to assess how well an individual will fit in with your particular company; every experience is different."

Michael Steelman, Senior Vice President of Support and Integration for PropertyInfo Corporation, First Data Systems Division:

"[I look for] customer service skills, more so than technical abilities. Technical abilities are nice, but I can teach people that. I can't 'teach' them customer service skills. Anyone I hire needs to be able communicate verbally as well as writing."

Photo: Thiago Felipe Festa

When it comes to being interviewed many people spend countless hours preparing their answers.  Candidates want to be polished and sincere in their delivery.  After all…their future job depends on it.  However, not everyone puts as much effort into practicing the questions they should ask their prospective employer.   People often forget that the interview goes both ways.

Employers spend lots of time and money into getting the best employees possible (For the money the employer is willing to pay).  There is no reason for candidates not to approach the interview with a similar goal in mind…to get into the best company possible (for the money the employee is willing to accept).  Remember to ask solid questions about the company’s goals, career possibilities, biggest challenges, success stories, etc. 

Cartoon from http://www.callcentercomics.com

This week, we're speaking with Eyal Rudnik from NICE Systems, one of the largest manufacturers of performance analytics software, including systems that work with customer service email and chat.

What prevents contact centers from using email and chat more often?

If there is a barrier for adding new communication channels to a contact center, it is probably related to an investment which was made on legacy infrastructure and the cost associated with making the transition. Consumers are accustomed to making more electronic transactions these days.  For example, most people manage most of their business via the Web. I believe it’s just a matter of time until new electronic channels will be more commonly used. Interestingly enough, there has been serious progress on allowing video chatting as a means of communication.