Hi all.

I work in a centralised Call Centre with about 150 staff. Recently I've been playing with the idea of having a call management guide for staff.

At the moment, we train staff as to what phone codes to push for certain activities in addition to the normal product training. Oh, and also how to greet customers and end a call. But there is no mention as to how they should manage the call in detail i.e. how long should you have a customer on hold, do you enter notes into the system after a call to reduce talk time, etc.

Currently staff are managing calls as they see fit. Problem is, as after-call work (ACW) is a recorded stat, some staff keep customers on the line forever just to reduce their ACW. This means keeping customers on hold for extended periods.

If possible, lend me your ideas as to what you believe are good call management techniques for staff. If you already have one in place at your workplace, I'd like to know how what it is and how it is working.

Thanks and regards.

I think most call centres have something akin to a Call Management Guide, often in guise of a Call Quality form or something else.

It really is a fairly specific piece of literature, while you could take inspiration from some out there you need to sit down and really think what works best for your people, your customers and your business and come to a compromise between them.

Many business's can invest a lot of time and effort into creating call management guides, not sure how many people you will see sending you whatever they use.

Eddie,

You are in the classic position of thinking this: "How do I get them to do it?" You are looking at the behaviour of the agents, for example I quote:

Currently staff are managing calls as they see fit. Problem is, as after-call work (ACW) is a recorded stat, some staff keep customers on the line forever just to reduce their ACW. This means keeping customers on hold for extended periods.

and trying to think of ways to get them to behave differently. I presume you want agents to put the phone down and do the After Call Work, after the call and not keep customers on hold unnecessarily.

"How do I get them to do it?" is the wrong question and asking the wrong question leads you to an incorrect answer, in this case, "Let's write a manual."


"Why do they do that?" is a better question. The behaviour above is caused by the measure of ACW. Stop measuring ACW and agents won't keep customers on the line after they need to. The wrong behaviour is caused by the measures, not by the lack of a manual or 'Call Management Guide'.

The best question of all is, "How can we provide the best value to the customer?" That is a much more fundamental question that will unearth much more far reaching problems and solutions than small troubles with agents keeping customers on hold too long.

While I agree with Rob that removing ACW as a measure will help in reducing customer hold time, it is not always an option. ACW is open to abuse.

We have an ACW target. ACW is measured and recorded. We have implemented a 10 minute ACW time as worthy of recording as a breach (there are no penalties to CSRs - classification of this as a breach is purely for measuring purposes). We have had CSRs exhibiting 60 - 70 instances of breach in a month.

What we notice now is that hold times have increased while acw time has decreased. Hold time can be measured and repeated instances of abuse can be identified from call recordings etc.

It is really a catch 22 situation. You focus on one aspect, the other one blows out. I personally believe that by taking a heavy handed approach, a balance will never be ahchieved.

The vital peace of this puzzle that can bring some resemblence of sanity to this is the team leaders/managers. A good manager is worth their weight in gold. We at WFM can spit out all the reports and measure all the stats but unless it is acted upon, it is pointless.

I guess the moral of my long winded post is to say that the only way to solve your dilema is to actively work with the managers to find the balance.