Over half of all contact centers use some type of grading form to evaluate the call handling and customer interaction skills of agents. These evaluations (also known as agent audits or scorecards) help supervisors coach agents to perform his or her duties more efficiently and more effectively. Evaluations are normally performed monthly, based on established key performance indicators (KPIs).
The agent evaluation process, like other contact center programs, is evolving with the changing mission of the contact center. Contact centers are becoming complex micro-businesses within a business. Management expects contact centers to deliver memorable customer care while at the same time generate revenues; all the while keeping operating costs to a minimum. The intent of this paper is to explore ways to implement more effective agent audits in view of this highly fluid and dynamic environment.
There is a temptation in any occupation to continue doing things the same way because "that's how it's always been done." Contact center management is certainly no exception. Scorecards can easily become institutionalized. Monitors and agents are familiar with them and a vast data store of past evaluations provides for easy trend analysis. The first thing to consider should always be how do the things we measure contribute to achieving the broader goals of the enterprise? The goals of the organization are typically spelled out in a formal business plan. They include both quantitative and qualitative objectives. In larger companies these broad goals are translated into specific actions by each department or business unit and then filter down to operating groups like the contact center. For example, if the contact center reports directly to a marketing executive the goals will likely include sales targets, market share, gross margin, customer growth, customer retention, and customer satisfaction. If the contact center reports to an operations department, then the goals may be more focused on cost control and productivity. In any event, contact center management has the responsibility of identifying corporate and departmental goals then developing KPIs and evaluation criteria that directly support the achievement of these goals.
Four Basic Goals of the Contact Center
All contact centers have four basic goals, although the emphasis will change with the type of organization: 1. To delight customers 2. To increase revenue 3. To minimize operating costs 4. To provide valuable business insights
Customer Delight - Simply "satisfying" callers is not enough. A recent study reported that 80% of defecting customers were "satisfied." Delivering memorable service quality means exceeding expectations. Organizations that tout their service quality as a competitive advantage, or market high value products or services, require a higher satisfaction threshold. Customer delight is in the eyes of the customer. The only KPIs that have been empirically proven to correlate with customer satisfaction are first contact resolution and agent satisfaction. Satisfied agents produce satisfied customers. Call quality is also a reflection of an agent's soft skills, such as product knowledge, courtesy, professionalism, empathy, and clarity.
Ideally, customer delight should be measured from the caller's perspective, not inferred based on the agent's or the supervisor's opinions. Only the caller knows if the interaction met expectations. Contact center personnel consistently rate their call quality higher than the callers themselves. There are more options available today than ever before to incorporate a "voice of the customer" feedback program into the quality assessment program.
Contribution - Agents contribute to revenue growth by identifying sales leads in the CRM system and by probing for up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. Independent research shows that it costs five to ten times as much to replace a customer than prevent their defection, often by empowering agents to take actions to retain a customer like granting free minutes or waiving late fees. Customer lifetime value (CLV) is a new concept that recognizes the aggregate contribution of a consumer over the period of time they remain customers. As the first line of defense, agents can have a significant impact on customer loyalty and consequently CLV.
Performance - Performance metrics are the typical KPIs generated by the ACD and work-force management system intended to minimize operating costs. In developing the agent scorecard it is very important to choose only metrics that the agent can realistically control.
