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Atricle Dump - Call Center Killers and How To Prevent Them
As a manager many years ago when faced with my first challenge of selecting an external consultant, I found myself all at sea. Fortunately for me, I intuitively hit two of the three selection targets. The project was to produce a communication video, so it was relatively easy to see and compare what each consultant had previously produced. I had a number of consultants to choose from, but finally chose the one that I felt most comfortable with and whose work impressed me most. The project was succesful and in the process, I learned a lot.Since that time, I have had to employ a number of consultants, I have been a consultant myself for almost 20 years, and I have worked with many other consultancies both large and small.
The following are some techniques and skills that are most likely to allow you to be successful:
According to Dan Coen in his book, Building Call Center Culture, "the communication presented to call center in the first thirty minutes of their day will set the stage for the rest of the day.
Greeting your agent with enthusiasm is the single most important point to positively impact their day when they arrive. Imagine walking into work on a Monday morning (you don't want to be there) but your boss greets you with all the enthusiasm in the world and says to you..."Good morning how was your weekend?" I bet you will be pleasantly surprised and that positive touch will be contagious.
In Building Call Center Culture, Coen, provides 5 styles and techniques of greeting your agents.
Motivating your employees can be as easy as engaging them in the overall process of the Call Center....In laymen t
When you hear someone mention that they are in marketing, what do you think they do exactly? What does "Marketing" mean and what kind of jobs are their in the marketing field. When someone says they are in Marketing there are a number of specific jobs they could be referring to. Marketing jobs are varied in their type and structure, so if you think marketing is something you might enjoy doing, you should consider what that can encompass. Here are a few of the more common marketing jobs you may see in your job search.Some marketing jobs refer to account managers, which are sometimes called account executives. They generally are the point person for specific client accounts. As an account executive, you would be helping clien
Three Areas of Focus
1. Employee Retention (attrition)
2. Absenteeism
3. Ineffective Frontline Leadership
Can you see the relationship among all three? Clearly, ineffective frontline leadership can and does have an impact on Employee satisfaction.
This article will provide you with a brief explanation of the cost of each "Killer" and a brief overview of solutions to each of these three issues.
As you will see to truly solve these areas of opportunity you will have to approach the solutions from a Holistic methodology. I know your time is limited so
Employee Retention vs. Attrition
Simply stated....follow the golden rule and call center life will be productive. Meaning, treat people the way you want to be treated.
Looking at the importance of attrition reduction some say "so what we can hire and train for pennies on the dollar." This view is short sighted and I will explain why.
The cost of attrition needs to be calculated based on both hard and soft dollars.
Hard Dollars
Increased Training cost (Agent's hourly rate x hrs to train) Trainer cost = salary or rate of pay x hrs to train + prep time.
Soft Dollars
Lost revenue - This can be better gauged when working on the outsourcing side but the cost would;
Rate that is bill client x the hours lost due to attrition. For instance, the contract calls for $24.55 per hour. The agent usually works 37.5 hours a week then additional cost of attrition would be $920.63. This is lost revenue.
Performance Cost - What happens when you lose a veteran agent that knows and understands the performance metric criteria? Performance drops! The cost of this lost is debatable but clearly you lose in performance. This can be dramatic especially if you are bonused based on performance.
So for those that think attrition is not important, you just do not understand the true dynamics of call center management.
These costs become exponentially important on the Inbound side when you get to training times that take up to 5 or 6 weeks to prepare an agent for the phones.
Absenteeism
The cost of this "killer" is obvious. But let's apply the Hard/Soft dollars methodology again:
Hard Dollars
In all Call Centers, your Workforce Management Team schedules based on assumed absenteeism. On the outsourcing side it is generally higher (probably because pay is lower and efficiency is that much more important.)
So basically if you predict that you will have a 8% absenteeism rate on a Tuesday and normally your staffing requirements dictate that you need 100 reps throughout the day to handle the call volume. If that is the case you will need to train 108 reps.
But if you could manage your absenteeism down to 2% then you would only need to train 102 reps. This will cost you less.
Soft Dollars
Brings down morale by pushing more work onto the agents that are coming to work.
Service levels suffer as does customer service, As a result, you may lose some customers. Ouch!
Ineffective Frontline Leadership
This issue is a slippery slope. This issue affects everything in your center. Therefore, being on top of this "killer" can turn it to your centers advantage.
If you think about it, what your leadership team does with the Agent resources can have an incredible effect on:
1. Performance
2. Attrition
3. Absenteeism
Morale - This effects all of the above. And effectively managing the above determines if YOU and your center is successful.
Ok, let's learn how we can reduce these costs!
First and foremost your Leadership team determines how successful you are in reducing these cost and increasing performance and profit!
The following are some techniques and skills that are most likely to allow you to be successful:
According to Dan Coen in his book, Building Call Center Culture, "the communication presented to call center in the first thirty minutes of their day will set the stage for the rest of the day.
Greeting your agent with enthusiasm is the single most important point to positively impact their day when they arrive. Imagine walking into work on a Monday morning (you don't want to be there) but your boss greets you with all the enthusiasm in the world and says to you..."Good morning how was your weekend?" I bet you will be pleasantly surprised and that positive touch will be contagious.
In Building Call Center Culture, Coen, provides 5 styles and techniques of greeting your agents.
Motivating your employees can be as easy as engaging them in the overall process of the Call Center....In laymen te
If you ask the owner of a successful re-seller or importer company to identify their biggest challenge, their common answer will be: lack of working capital. Working capital is the lifeblood of all resellers and importers, enabling them to pay suppliers and allowing them to grow their businesses. Many times, their ability to grow is directly linked to their access to working capital.So, where do re-sellers that wish to take their businesses to the next level go to get working capital? The bank? Unlikely, as banks are tough sources of business financing. To qualify for a business loan you'll usually need to provide reports showing three years worth of profitable operations - and - the owner will need to have a spotless credi
Looking at the importance of attrition reduction some say "so what we can hire and train for pennies on the dollar." This view is short sighted and I will explain why.
The cost of attrition needs to be calculated based on both hard and soft dollars.
Hard Dollars
Increased Training cost (Agent's hourly rate x hrs to train) Trainer cost = salary or rate of pay x hrs to train + prep time.
Soft Dollars
Lost revenue - This can be better gauged when working on the outsourcing side but the cost would;
Rate that is bill client x the hours lost due to attrition. For instance, the contract calls for $24.55 per hour. The agent usually works 37.5 hours a week then additional cost of attrition would be $920.63. This is lost revenue.
Performance Cost - What happens when you lose a veteran agent that knows and understands the performance metric criteria? Performance drops! The cost of this lost is debatable but clearly you lose in performance. This can be dramatic especially if you are bonused based on performance.
So for those that think attrition is not important, you just do not understand the true dynamics of call center management.
These costs become exponentially important on the Inbound side when you get to training times that take up to 5 or 6 weeks to prepare an agent for the phones.
Absenteeism
The cost of this "killer" is obvious. But let's apply the Hard/Soft dollars methodology again:
Hard Dollars
In all Call Centers, your Workforce Management Team schedules based on assumed absenteeism. On the outsourcing side it is generally higher (probably because pay is lower and efficiency is that much more important.)
So basically if you predict that you will have a 8% absenteeism rate on a Tuesday and normally your staffing requirements dictate that you need 100 reps throughout the day to handle the call volume. If that is the case you will need to train 108 reps.
But if you could manage your absenteeism down to 2% then you would only need to train 102 reps. This will cost you less.
Soft Dollars
Brings down morale by pushing more work onto the agents that are coming to work.
Service levels suffer as does customer service, As a result, you may lose some customers. Ouch!
Ineffective Frontline Leadership
This issue is a slippery slope. This issue affects everything in your center. Therefore, being on top of this "killer" can turn it to your centers advantage.
If you think about it, what your leadership team does with the Agent resources can have an incredible effect on:
1. Performance
2. Attrition
3. Absenteeism
Morale - This effects all of the above. And effectively managing the above determines if YOU and your center is successful.
Ok, let's learn how we can reduce these costs!
First and foremost your Leadership team determines how successful you are in reducing these cost and increasing performance and profit!
The following are some techniques and skills that are most likely to allow you to be successful:
According to Dan Coen in his book, Building Call Center Culture, "the communication presented to call center in the first thirty minutes of their day will set the stage for the rest of the day.
Greeting your agent with enthusiasm is the single most important point to positively impact their day when they arrive. Imagine walking into work on a Monday morning (you don't want to be there) but your boss greets you with all the enthusiasm in the world and says to you..."Good morning how was your weekend?" I bet you will be pleasantly surprised and that positive touch will be contagious.
In Building Call Center Culture, Coen, provides 5 styles and techniques of greeting your agents.
Motivating your employees can be as easy as engaging them in the overall process of the Call Center....In laymen t
The search engine marketing industry has developed into a billion dollar industry and clients expect their agencies to get them involved. Ad agencies are now chasing the increased revenue generated by search engines.In the past advertising agencies tended to ignore organic SEO as it was seen as a complicated system with results that were difficult to measure as part of an overall media campaign. This changed when they realized the potential of Pay per Click (PPC). This made sense to the agencies because its results were easily measurable and the results were impressive.Ad agencies need to track and manage advertising results for their clients and there is a constant need to measure value and ROI. Thus the lack of
So for those that think attrition is not important, you just do not understand the true dynamics of call center management.
These costs become exponentially important on the Inbound side when you get to training times that take up to 5 or 6 weeks to prepare an agent for the phones.
Absenteeism
The cost of this "killer" is obvious. But let's apply the Hard/Soft dollars methodology again:
Hard Dollars
In all Call Centers, your Workforce Management Team schedules based on assumed absenteeism. On the outsourcing side it is generally higher (probably because pay is lower and efficiency is that much more important.)
So basically if you predict that you will have a 8% absenteeism rate on a Tuesday and normally your staffing requirements dictate that you need 100 reps throughout the day to handle the call volume. If that is the case you will need to train 108 reps.
But if you could manage your absenteeism down to 2% then you would only need to train 102 reps. This will cost you less.
Soft Dollars
Brings down morale by pushing more work onto the agents that are coming to work.
Service levels suffer as does customer service, As a result, you may lose some customers. Ouch!
Ineffective Frontline Leadership
This issue is a slippery slope. This issue affects everything in your center. Therefore, being on top of this "killer" can turn it to your centers advantage.
If you think about it, what your leadership team does with the Agent resources can have an incredible effect on:
1. Performance
2. Attrition
3. Absenteeism
Morale - This effects all of the above. And effectively managing the above determines if YOU and your center is successful.
Ok, let's learn how we can reduce these costs!
First and foremost your Leadership team determines how successful you are in reducing these cost and increasing performance and profit!
The following are some techniques and skills that are most likely to allow you to be successful:
According to Dan Coen in his book, Building Call Center Culture, "the communication presented to call center in the first thirty minutes of their day will set the stage for the rest of the day.
Greeting your agent with enthusiasm is the single most important point to positively impact their day when they arrive. Imagine walking into work on a Monday morning (you don't want to be there) but your boss greets you with all the enthusiasm in the world and says to you..."Good morning how was your weekend?" I bet you will be pleasantly surprised and that positive touch will be contagious.
In Building Call Center Culture, Coen, provides 5 styles and techniques of greeting your agents.
Motivating your employees can be as easy as engaging them in the overall process of the Call Center....In laymen t
Do you have more purchase orders than what you can handle? Is lack of financing preventing you from fulfilling those orders? One of the most frustrating things that can happen to a business owner is to turn orders away – good orders – because you don’t have the financial capacity to fulfill them.Of course, you can try to get a business loan. However, business loans have their limitations as business financing tools. They are hard to get and have arbitrary limits, so they don’t grow with your business.Wouldn’t it be great to have a business financing tool that could handle all your supplier payments – provided you had purchase orders from good customers? How many orders could you close then?That tool exists and
But if you could manage your absenteeism down to 2% then you would only need to train 102 reps. This will cost you less.
Soft Dollars
Brings down morale by pushing more work onto the agents that are coming to work.
Service levels suffer as does customer service, As a result, you may lose some customers. Ouch!
Ineffective Frontline Leadership
This issue is a slippery slope. This issue affects everything in your center. Therefore, being on top of this "killer" can turn it to your centers advantage.
If you think about it, what your leadership team does with the Agent resources can have an incredible effect on:
1. Performance
2. Attrition
3. Absenteeism
Morale - This effects all of the above. And effectively managing the above determines if YOU and your center is successful.
Ok, let's learn how we can reduce these costs!
First and foremost your Leadership team determines how successful you are in reducing these cost and increasing performance and profit!
The following are some techniques and skills that are most likely to allow you to be successful:
According to Dan Coen in his book, Building Call Center Culture, "the communication presented to call center in the first thirty minutes of their day will set the stage for the rest of the day.
Greeting your agent with enthusiasm is the single most important point to positively impact their day when they arrive. Imagine walking into work on a Monday morning (you don't want to be there) but your boss greets you with all the enthusiasm in the world and says to you..."Good morning how was your weekend?" I bet you will be pleasantly surprised and that positive touch will be contagious.
In Building Call Center Culture, Coen, provides 5 styles and techniques of greeting your agents.
Motivating your employees can be as easy as engaging them in the overall process of the Call Center....In laymen t
Have you ever seen an orchestra producing some truly amazing and inspiring music. I remember seeing an orchestra playing at the Sydney Opera House (and for all the overseas people it is something you must do whilst in Australia). I was so impressed with the way all the different instrumental groups blended together to make this magical sound.The conductor’s role was very important in keeping all the sections on task and in time. However, all the groups must be able to work together (compliment each other) to produce beautiful harmonics. In a good orchestra, the wind instruments are not in conflict with the brass or percussion instruments. They all have a job to do, and they must be able to complete their task as well as sup
The following are some techniques and skills that are most likely to allow you to be successful:
According to Dan Coen in his book, Building Call Center Culture, "the communication presented to call center in the first thirty minutes of their day will set the stage for the rest of the day.
Greeting your agent with enthusiasm is the single most important point to positively impact their day when they arrive. Imagine walking into work on a Monday morning (you don't want to be there) but your boss greets you with all the enthusiasm in the world and says to you..."Good morning how was your weekend?" I bet you will be pleasantly surprised and that positive touch will be contagious.
In Building Call Center Culture, Coen, provides 5 styles and techniques of greeting your agents.
Motivating your employees can be as easy as engaging them in the overall process of the Call Center....In laymen terms include them in the decision making process.
Some critics say that this will only slow down our ability to move forward. This is nonsense!
Yes, decisions need to be made on the fly but if you do a good job planning you can incorporate this engagement as an ongoing process, which WILL NOT interfere with moment to moment decision.
There is a great book out that very few leaders know about. If they did then we would have a whole lot more success in business. The name of the book is titled..."Enlightened Leadership, getting to the heart of change, written by Ed Oakley, Doug Krug.
In this book it provides a clear path to increasing performance and morale in your center through agent involvement.
The amount to gain from having the philosophy of engaging in your workforce capital is extraordinary!
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