Let’s say the person in charge of your retail operations does the following every single day:

• Puts up a sign indicating which of five doors customers should use.
• Locks that door.
• Randomly unlocks another door.
• When someone figures out which door to use, he runs out and kicks them in the groin, then locks the door.

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Well, now I am! I loved this two-part series Jay did so much that I asked him to do a presentation on this topic at ICMI’s Dallas Call Center Demo and Conference last week. I think the live session was even better than the articles, because of the audience participation and the dialogue that took place, and just because Jay’s a fun and professional speaker.

These articles make an excellent companion to Jodie Monger’s article that I just wrote about, Are You Guilty of Survey Malpractice? She delves into the details of survey practices and Jay uncovers a whole lot of other factors that you’ve likely never considered.

Surveys alone do not reflect true customer satisfaction levels. Behavioral metrics hold the key to managing dissatisfaction.

I love the way Jay pussy-foots around touchy issues so delicately, as he does here:

There are three main reasons why the information you get from these surveys is only vaguely reflective of true satisfaction levels:

1. The view of what constitutes a cus­tomer is much too narrow;

2. Evaluations are heavily slanted toward input rather than behavior; and

3. Some of you are manipulating the hell out of the data.

He should have been a diplomat instead of a call center consultant

Both articles are essential reading if you really want to understand the gap between all the glowing internal customer satisfaction reports and the constant complaints reported about widespread customer dissatisfaction. You can stick your head in the sand or you can learn the truth.

Measurement programs must meet certain scientific criteria to be statistically valid with an acceptable confidence level and level of precision or tolerated error. Without these considerations, you are guilty of Survey Malpractice. To defend your program with “it has always been this way” or “we were told to do a survey” is not sufficient. Research laws adhered to in academia apply to the business world. A deficient survey yields inaccurate data and results in invalid conclusions no matter who conducts it.

How hard is it to come up with a bunch of questions and create a survey? That’s what most of us think, and if you just want some quick and informal feedback, that’s fine. But your customer satisfaction measurements are another story altogether. Jodie explains seven warning signs of “survey malpractice”:

1. Measuring too many things
2. Not measuring enough things
3. Measuring questions with an unreliable scale
4. Measuring the wrong things or the right things the wrong way
5. Asking for an evaluation after memory has degraded
6. Accuracy and credibility of service providers and product vendors
7. Wiggle room via correction factors

(See the article for the explanation associated with each.)

Few performance metrics are as critical to contact center success as first-contact resolution (FCR); unfortunately, few performance metrics are also as misunderstood.

As I’ve already written (First Call Resolution: Great Principle, Hard to Apply), FCR is simple to grasp but far from simple to put into place in a meaningful way. As Greg put it:

According to the recently published ICMI Member Report on First-Contact Resolution, 79.2 percent of contact centers consider FCR to be either “critical/indispensable” or “very important.” The trouble is, many centers have implemented FCR initiatives too hastily, without taking time to fully understand the intricacies of the metric — i.e., what it actually means and how best to measure it, as well as what processes and tools the center should have in place to achieve a high FCR rate.

Check it out!

first call resolution call center metricscall center management

The bottom line, as I have said many times before (see, for example, Just Answer the Phone Quicker!) and will say many times again, is that those of us in the call center industry have the power to change the negative perception the public has of us. It’s going to take resolve and determination, and recognition that customer service is important enough to do right that spending money on it is a wise investment.

Successful recruiting programs prioritize the quality of recruits over the sheer speed or numbers of applicants. Practices such as rebranding your agents’ job and using employee referrals are proven methods for attracting quality applicants.

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To bring quality candidates to your door, you have to have them at “hello.” Positive branding — attaching your call center’s name to a reputation for quality benefits for both customers and agents — can increase your desirability in applicants’ eyes.

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In this excerpt from their best-selling book, How to Build a Speech Recognition Application, EIG’s Bruce Balentine and David Morgan touch on the unique application design issues surrounding speech-enabled IVR systems.

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Making a successful service-to-sales transition requires cultural and process changes — from hiring the right agents to providing effective training and offering motivating rewards.

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Facing a tightening economy, nearly all business operations — including call centers — are looking for ways to cut costs. Companies that are working new assessment tools into their hiring strategies are seeing a significant dent in the cost associated with agent turnover, as well as improved quality and performance.

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