One Small Change Part 1
By Dave Appleby
An Introduction to ACD Transition and Implementation
Ok so the time has come and business is good. Your existing team is doing OK but a few customers are getting missed. Calls are abandoning, customers are beginning to mutter. Staff are getting flustered.
What's changed? The product is still good. Sales are still high but people are beginning to ask if your customer service is all it could (or has) been.
At the risk of getting into a Grandmother and Eggs situation now is the time to look at how the existing operation works. It's a what, why, where and when issue.
- What are the existing procedures?
- Why are we losing calls?
- Where in the process are we losing calls?
- When is the problem occurring?
It seems at first impressions these are simple questions to answer but the interaction between the various questions can lead to complex issues and problems that may not have been foreseen. Wood for the trees (I'm trying for a record number of metaphors here!) may be the main problem in this instance. Calls come in, people rush to answer, more calls come in, everyone's exhausted and by the end of the day no one can remember why the rush happened. Customers were queuing, angry at the wait. Staff are shattered and know that tomorrow's going to be the same. Staff absence and attrition rise. Things start to slide and before long it's become the norm not the exception.
At this point (or preferably before). Stop, Think, Act.
The Colours of a Contact Centre
Unfortunately one of them is Rose tinted (It'll all get better). The two you need to worry about are blue and brown. Everyone in the trade at this point will scream Consultancy at you, (So will I in a couple of years when I get around to it). There's a BUT coming. But, who's better to look at your processes than yourselves? Who's in the best position to look at the situation?
In the first instance the people on the sharp end are the ones who know most about the problem, provided of course you can get them away from the problem for long enough to actually look at it!
Brown papering is one way of analyzing the issues affecting service and can lead to some surprisingly easy solutions. A project tem set up with a senior manager and one or two agent level staff with a brief to look 'bottom up' at the way your service works. Start with the calls coming in and track their progress through your system.
Points to work on.
- When are calls arriving? It may seem like a simple question but are you getting peaks and troughs? Is an initial surge causing a 'knock on' effect through the rest of the day?
- How does the existing process work? By empowering the agents with the ability to do ONE thing is there a way to reduce call length or reduce the number of repeat calls / callbacks required.
- Does the process 'bog down' at any point? Is something acting as a speed ramp?
- What are the main causes of abandonment? Long wait, Complicated call type or is there some other reason?
- How is existing technology being used?
I don't intend to go into the full brown paper process here as there are plenty of resources on the market and internet that provide guidelines for how to do it. I will however make one proviso.
Let your existing staff know what's happening and that it's being done for their benefit I know from experience that the first thing that goes through an agents head is "What am I doing wrong", they know that there are problems from the nature of the work discussed above and the presence of what can look like a Witch hunting team can drop morale even more. The second thing to go through an agents mind will be "My jobs on the line." Closely followed by "They're going to make us work harder". Let them know that it's for their benefit, solicit their feedback and above all else be as minimally intrusive as possible.
Just to keep you on your toes. Looking at the points above and taking them in a totally different order from the way they are presented.
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