Office Gurus A Few Things to Consider When Choosing a Call Center

1. Don't make call center outsourcing a commodity game.

The most common mistake that companies make when outsourcing call center services is establishing cost reduction as the primary objective. The most important consideration should be value.

There are many considerations of "Value" such as:

• Customer Satisfaction or Call-Center Effectiveness

  • First Call Resolution
  • Customer Satisfaction
  • Conversion
  • Customer Experience
• Reduction of Call Center Infrastruction Cost
• Reduction of Telecom Resources Required
• Administrative Cost of Call Center Operations (reduction or elimination)
• Agent Cost
• The Hidden Cost of Call Center Attrition
  • Hiring and Recruiting
  • Training
  • Payroll Taxes (administration & unemployment)
  • Human Resources
  • Data Strategist or Scheduling
• Ongoing cost of call center management.  Oversight.

Consider why you have a call center in the first place.  You have a need to communicate effectively with your customers or prespective customers.

When contemplating outsourcing of your call center you should establish key criteria that you expect to achieve.  Focus on important factors to your success. The Value Factors.

2. How strong is your call center provider? Can you trust they will always be there and live up to their promises?

Telecommunications is critical to the success of your organization.  There are many horror stories regarding call centers that simply close their doors overnight or don't live up to their promises?  Make sure you know who you're doing business with, how long they've been in business and the integrity of their business practices.  This is common sense that is sometimes overlooked when selecting business partners.

3. Size does matter — is the call center too big or too small?

The critical question — is your program important to the call center?  Match the size of your program to the size of the call center operation.

If you have a need for 500 seats or more, a large call center may be for you.  If you have a need for 25 to 250 seats, you should focus on midsize to smaller call centers.  Small programs simply are not important to large call centers.

Additionally, you should consider your requirements for call handling.  Do you require bilingual agents?  If so, can the call center effectively provide this capability?

4. Dedicated or Exclusive Agents vs. Shared Agents.

Dedicated agents work exclusively on your program or campaign.  They are trained specifically for your program and in many cases, no other programs.

From a quality perspective, dedicated agents should always be preferable to shared agents.  Stop and think about it; a dedicated or exclusive agent becomes an expert in your products or service.

Depending on your objectives and criteria, a Dedicated Agent program may create the most value.

Shared agents work on several programs during the day.  The concept of a shared agent is to increase agent utilization and therefore lower the cost per call handled.  In general, shared agents are not appropriate for sales, troubleshooting or programs that require intimate knowledge of your products or procedures.  Shared agents work well for answering service, general information or frequently asked questions where the agent reads from a script.

Shared agents may work on multiple programs.  If your objective is to simply gather information or provide simple information this type of service may work for you.  Keep in mind what you're paying the call center to do.  If you're paying on a per minute basis for a shared agent pool, you are paying the call center to answer the phone and have agent utilization as high as possible.  Service levels and quality of the call may be secondary.

From a pure cost perspective, Shared Agents will generally be less expensive on a per call basis.

Suggestion:Make sure you align your objectives with the structure of your arrangement with the call center.

5. Information Technology capabilities of the call center company.

Does the call center have multiple locations?  If so, are the systems integrated or stand-alone?  Some call center systems are stand-alone for each facility.  If there is a need to overflow calls from one facility to another, this could impact your service levels.

Reporting is very important.  This is the area that many companies who outsource call center operations conplain about in regard to call centers.  You must have good measurements to evaluate call center operations.

• Reporting should include origination phone numbers.
• You should periodically make test calls to ascertain that all calls are being reported correctly.
• The call center should be able to supply metrics reporting such as — average speed of answer (ASA), service levels (such as percent of calls answered within a designated time frame, for 20 seconds), call resolution, average talk time (ATT), abandonment rate, etc.
• At a minimum, information should be available on an hourly basis.
• Additionally, the information should be available the same day, not the next day.

Automated Call Distribution (ACD) — understand the capabilities of your call center relating to call distribution among agents.  Will your program or campaign have multiple skill sets?

• Does the ACD hae expansion capability? For example, after a certain period of time in the hold queue does the ACD have expansion capability to allow calls to go to another skill set?

Can your call center splash (or transfer) calls back to you for handling?  This might be important if you wish to have calls escalated for handling, such as level 2 or more complicated calls.

Do the call center agents have access to the Internet?  Do you need or require agents to utilize your website as an interface when speaking with callers?

Will you need the call center to interface with your systems other than via the Internet?

Are all calls recorded and available to you?  Can you listen to them via the Internet?  If the call center does not record all calls, consider their dedication to quality.

6. Service Levels — understand what you need.

80% of calls answered in 30 seconds or less; abandonment rate of less than 5%, etc.  These are some common service levels utilized in the call center industry.  The question:  What should your service levels be?

The answer:  It depends.  For example, if your callers are seeking answers to questions, they may be willing to wait longer in the hold queue (hold queue tolerance) than if they are seeking to buy a product.  Additionally, different geographic areas of the United States have different tolerance levels for hold queues.

The tighter your service levels, the more it will cost you per call.  Why? Service levels directly relate to the hold queue or "backlog" of calls.  The larger the backlog of calls, the more efficient agents can be — less time between calls for the agents.  (Agent utilization) So, changing the service level from 80% of calls answered in 30 seconds to 80% of calls answered to 20 seconds will substantially reduce the available backlog or hold queue and therefore reduce agent utilization — increasing your cost per call handled.

Previously, we discussed the call centers ability to report information.  After a few months of processing your traffic, a call center should be able to help you determine your average caller's tolerance in the hold queue before abandonment of the call.  You should expect your call center to work with you to optimize service levels depending on your objectives.  However, when selecting a call center you should inquire about their ability to assist with this optimization of service levels.

7. Calibration / Monitoring sessions.

Good results don't just happen;  they require hard work and your involvement.  You must have an attitude of partnership with your call center.  It is critical that you jointly monitor calls with your call center account service representatives and have a clear understanding of how calls should be handled.

Early in the program, it is suggested that monitoring sessions be performed weekly (perhaps daily). As the program matures, you may choose to relax the velocity of monitoring.  However, the duration between monitoring calibration should not exceed 30 days.

Things that should be evaluated and calibrated during monitoring:

• Listen to calls handled by various agents during the timeframe.
• You should have an established checklist of how the call should be handled — this should be part of the training program for the agents.
• Did the agent listen?
• Did the agent talk over the callers?
• Was the agent courteous and polite?
• Did the agent communicate with the caller?
• Was the problem resolved or the objective achieved in the call?
• Did the agent ask permission to put the caller on hold (if necessary)?
• Call metrics should be reviewed with your account service representative.
• You should review post call surveys to listen to "The Voice of the Customer".
• Discuss how calls could be handled more effectively.  You should expect to receive advice from your call center account services representative as well as provide your own input.
• Form an action plan to make changes.

8. Availability of Call Recordings

To achieve constant improvement and quality call handling, it is very important that calls are recorded.  This is important for the training of the agents as well as your ability to listen and provide input to call center for improvement during monitoring sessions.

You should insist that all calls are recorded.  Furthermore, there should be no additional charge for this service.  If you're dealing with a quality call center, the calls are recorded.

From a practical standpoint, you should also expect the recordings to be available via the Internet.

9. Where is the Call Center located that will be handling your calls?

There are two primary considerations regarding the location of call centers.

First, is it important that the agent understand the culture of the callers?  If you're utilizing an offshore or near shore call center, is it important that agents understand the culture of U.S.-based callers?

Second, you should visit the call center to evaluate the quality of agents and supervisors that will be handling your calls.

Suggestion:  You should visit the call center at least annually, as agents and supervisors will change over time.

10. Agent Attrition.

All call centers experience attrition.  This may be one of the reasons that you wish to outsource your call center operations.

There are many factors that cause attrition in a call center, such as the work environment in the call center, unemployment rate in the area, the nature of programs that agents work on, forced attrition due to attendance or performance, etc.  You would like to see annual attrition rates of less than 100%.  This means that agents are employed at the call center for at least one year on average.

When evaluating an outsource call center, you should understand the attrition rate of the call center that will be handling your calls.  Why?  Quality.  If agents only work on your program for three months and then leave organization, you will continually have new agents on your program.  The more complicated the program, the more important agent attrition becomes.

11. Agent Incentive systems.

You should ask if the call center provides incentive systems for the agents that work on your program.  Most call centers will establish a program base line over perhaps two or three months and then establish a program-base incentives for agents.

Consider identifying the key metrics for your program or campaign and work with the call center to establish incentive programs applicable to these metrics.

12. The training program is critical.

The effectiveness of your program will be directly related to the effectiveness of the training program employed by the call center.  There are several components to training such as:

Industry practice is that you will be responsible for the initial training cost of agents on your program and any incremental increases in headcount.

The call center should be responsible for ongoing training of agents.  This is important since the biggest cost of ongoing training relates to agent attrition, which requires hiring and training of new agents. You have little control over agent attrition, therefore this risk should belong to the call center.

• The initial training curriculum.
• Classroom training of agents.
• Supervisor to agent ratio — the higher the ratio the less time the supervisor has to develop agents.
  • Acceptable ratios will vary from program to program.  However, as a guideline you should expect a ratio of 15 to 1 or less.
• Quality assurance monitoring.  The call center should have a QA (Quality Assurance) department that monitors calls and rates agents.  Agents should receive feedback and coaching relating to these monitored calls.
• Training never ends.