TO REDUCE COST
THAT WILL IMPROVE
YOUR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE.
Contact centre professionals are constantly engaged in balancing
what appear to be the opposing forces of improving customer
experience whilst simultaneously reducing cost.
Traditional thinking states that improving the customer experience
requires a greater investment in time with the customer, more
training for the agent and a focus on customer satisfaction as the key
measure of success.
However the latest research suggests that the fewer barriers you
present to a customer and the more opportunities you provide to
self-serve increases satisfaction, loyalty and repurchase. The good news is,
many of these initiatives will also reduce your cost to serve.
IS IT POSSIBLE TO
HAVE YOUR CAKE
AND EAT IT TOO?
Focusing your efforts on preventing low value contacts should be a key initiative in any contact centre’s business improvement plan. Of equal consideration should be the careful handling of high value contacts such as sales opportunities and cancelations (retention).
A ‘win-win’ contact is a contact you want to receive because it creates value for your organisation and your customers, for example, “I want to upgrade my account”. Alternatively, the ‘lose lose’ contacts are the ones you should be trying to remove, as they are driven by a process weakness and provide no value for your customers or your business, for example, “Where is that thing I bought?!”.
Often this exploration will reveal ‘F-F’ contact drivers that are a part of larger problems extending beyond the contact centre and across other business units. An example of this could be a confusing bill or an order that was supposed to arrive that didn’t.
Either way you’ll need to influence stakeholders across the organisation. Prepare an internal business case which includes the cost savings (from preventing contacts) as well as the impact on the customer experience. The dollar amount serves as a universal language between departments and often helps get priority among competing initiatives.
Summary: Identify contacts by their value to both your customers and your business. Investigate the contact drivers to arrive at the root cause(s) of low value contacts and remove/mitigate the need for them to occur. Identify high value contacts and treat them in a way that nurtures the opportunities they represent.
These opposing contact types are depicted in the graph to the right. The ‘win-win’ type or ‘value value’ (VV) are contacts you should be embracing. The ‘lose lose’ or ‘failure– failure’ (F-F) type are typically driven by a process failure and where possible should be prevented at the root cause.
Start by analysing why customers are calling. Depending on your size and budget, your CRM may already have features to assist in your analysis, or you could arm a handful of agents with tick sheets. What’s important is that you identify key drivers and trace them back to arrive at the root causes.
NOT ALL CONTACTS ARE CREATED EQUAL WHEN
MEASURED BY THE VALUE THEY CREATE FOR
YOUR CUSTOMERS AND YOUR BUSINESS.
Customer
Avoids having to contact in response to error and/or chasing an outcome.
Cost
Directly preventing low value contacts.
>1
REMOVE
THE NEED
FOR CONTACT.
F-F
F-V
COMPANY VIEW
FAILURE
VALUE
CUSTOMER VIEW
FAILURE
• “I want to query my bill”
account”
• “I want to query my plan”
• “Something isn’t
working”
• “Something hasn’t
happened as promised”
• “My account has been
disconnected”
• “I got a message from
you but not sure what
it is”
There was a time when executives would convince themselves that their customers ‘wouldn’t leave’ if they implemented X technology which would remove Y cost out of the business.
Today businesses can implement technology that some customers would prefer to use, while still providing the opportunity to speak with an agent for those who would prefer a conversation.
As an example of this thinking, retailers are seeing significant benefits for both their customers and their budgets through the deployment of store locator type technologies.
This should result in providing self-service choices that a much greater number of customers will choose to take up. Forcing customers through automation as a gate keeper between them and an agent, is likely to annoy them and ultimately achieve a lower take-up rate (of automated self-service).
Summary: The right self-service technology can deliver an improved customer
experience while at the same time reducing the cost to serve. Deciding when and how to deploy self-service should be based on a customer experience centred strategy and not something that’s forced upon them.
Using Natural Language Speech Recognition (NLSR) customers can verbalise the location they are closest to (possibly while driving hands free) and receive an SMS with all the relevant details. A step-change came about for store locator technology when it was combined with speech capability for the simple fact that if you don’t know where a supermarket is, then chances are you don’t know the post code either. Being able to articulate the suburb significantly improves the customer experience and as a direct result the number of calls being automated increases, thus reducing costs.
When making the decision to create automated self-service, it’s key that your planning centres around the customer; offering the right type of self-service at the right time(s).
SELF SERVICE HAS EVOLVED TO BE AN EFFECTIVE CHANNEL
AND IS BECOMING THE PREFERRED WAY TO DO BUSINESS.
>2
PROVIDE CUSTOMER
FOCUSED SELF SERVICE.
Customer
No waiting in queue, 24/7 access to help. Often accessed by alternative channels (i.e online).
Cost
Contact volumes are reduced by providing a self-service alternative that the customer prefers to use.
When a customer is connected with an agent who cannot resolve their query, the transfer that follows is often accompanied by additional time waiting in queue, the customer having to repeat themselves and in some cases a handover between the two agents while the customer is on hold.
Viewing agent transfer rates by skill type with a large enough data sample, should show roughly the same percentage of transfers from each agent over time. However this is rarely the case. Inevitably there will be outliers; some agents with very high transfer rates and some with low rates. Often the agents with low transfer rates will also have lower average call handle times (AHT). This distinction leads to a question of agent proficiency and the need for appropriate coaching.
Simple language changes like ‘billing’ instead of ‘account’ can help customers select the right option and steer them towards an appropriately skilled agent. Sub categories within your IVR may also be positioned under the wrong higher level category.
Summary: Analysing, understanding and acting upon agent behaviour as well as your IVR can help greatly reduce transferred calls. Understand outliers and peel them back to their root cause.
Before the call even reaches the agent, you may not be setting them up for success. Touchtone IVRs (“For billing push 1, for sales push 2” etc) by nature force customers into categories that may not be appropriate for the reason they’re calling. This is due to the number of reasons a customer may call (often 1,000s) vs. the number of options within the first tier of a touchtone IVR (typically 3 or 4). This is not surprising given that IVR s are often designed around the business structure and not the customer needs.
This problem can be mitigated by matching your IVR reporting up with your transfer report and analysing the call flow. IVR options that result in high transfer rates should be investigated. Focus on both the structure of your IVR as well as the wording.
CALL TRANSFERS ARE OFTEN OVERLOOKED BUT CRITICALLY
IMPORTANT WHEN IT COMES TO IMPROVING YOUR CUSTOMER
EXPERIENCE AND REDUCING YOUR COST TO SERVE.
>
3
REDUCE
TRANSFERRED CALLS.
Customer
Having your call resolved on the first contact. Directly improving first call resolution.
Cost
Whether it is the handover from a warm transfer or the need for the customer to re-explain on the back of a cold transfer, reducing transfers reduces labour.
Attempting to balance the management of one of your largest cost factors against the often opposing considerations of staff engagement and first call resolution, can go horribly wrong if you lean too far to either side.
Where many contact centres come unstuck is how they arrive at their AHT target(s) in the first place. Often the AHT target is part of a legacy, or has been arrived at as a result of a cost exercise. Neither is a true reflection of how long an average call should actually take. A target that’s too low drives an increase in repeat calls, agent attrition and absenteeism. If your target is too high, you’re carrying additional and unnecessary cost.
Using a simple time and motion study coupled with some historical data should help you arrive at an appropriate target(s).
If the operational requirement does not align with your budget, consider exiting cost through other means, in particular, reducing how long a call takes through process improvement. Reducing the target to make it fit your budget will cost you more money indirectly.
At this point, instead of simply providing the business level AHT target to your staff as their target, you might like to consider creating bands like ‘meeting target’, ‘nearly meeting’, ‘exceeding’ and so on as agent KPI’s.
Coaching agents from one band to the other provides hope (and thus engagement) and reduces the overall centre level AHT more effectively.
Summary: Ensure that your AHT target is created with a science that stems from knowing how long a value based discussion should take and not reverse engineered from your budget. This approach will ultimately save on the cost to serve in the long run.
MANAGING AVERAGE HANDLE TIME (AHT) IS A
HOT TOPIC AMONG CONTACT CENTRE LEADERS.
Customer
An efficient call that is centred around the customer’s needs. Cost
Avoiding the indirect costs from a low target (such as attrition and absenteeism) while not being overstaffed. Striking the right balance is by far the most cost effective approach.
>
4
AHT & THE
Like a lot of people, contact centre workers can often find the commute to work prohibitive. It may be the travel time or distance between home and the office, or a lifestyle impact such as being unable to pick the kids up from school. Creating an opportunity to work from home can make a real difference in achieving work/ life balance. For some employees the engagement this creates can result in extending their tenure for months or even years.
Beyond the good deed, any endeavour that targets staff turnover can have very significant cost savings. Replacing a call centre agent in Australia or New Zealand can cost between $7,000 and $10,000 once you’ve accounted for recruitment costs, induction training and speed to competency. There are also indirect costs such as the time that needs to be invested by leaders into coaching and developing new staff.
A caveat on the retention benefit is to ensure you retain the right people. Creating an environment were working from
home needs to be earned (possibly by the attainment of relevant KPIs) is a great way to achieve this. Over time you can build a very customer centric, efficient workforce by having these as requirements to be proven before an agent can work from home.
Home agent capability can also create a degree of roster flexibility that’s otherwise unavailable within the traditional workplace model. Casual and part time staff in
particular are more inclined to work shorter shifts, and can be rostered into staffing troughs, without having to carry the overhead during the rostering peaks.
You can also roster staff during low call volume periods without having to carry the overheads; leadership presence, security staff or in some cases paying out for taxi fares to get staff home during back of clock times.
With the right technology, processes, support and leadership model in place, the home agent model carries the same risk profile as having a traditional on-site office approach. Without the appropriate governance you might be exposed in terms of health and safety, productivity and customer experience. It’s critical to take a strategic approach to a home agent solution and not simply “test the water”.
Summary: A home agent solution can bring down the cost to serve through reduced attrition, improved rostering flexibility and by avoiding real-estate expansion. Retaining well trained customer centric staff is great for your customers too.
>
5
@
HOME AGENTS
TYPICALLY THE BUSINESS CASE FOR INTRODUCING HOME AGENTS IS
DERIVED FROM A REAL ESTATE ISSUE; WITH THE NEED TO TAKE UP
LESS SPACE OR AVOID THE COST OF ACQUIRING MORE SPACE.
Customer
Customers are dealing with staff who have been retained for their service focus.
Cost
Reduces staff turnover, creates rostering efficiency and can remove the need for premise expansion.
