So I went for it, and happily the hiring manager thought I was a good fit for it, too. It’s with the same company, actually: I’m moving from ICMI, which is a part of United Business Media (UBM), to UBM’s corporate entity, specifically in the People and Culture Group (formerly known as Human Resources, formerly known as Personnel).

So what’s the job? UBM Wiki Community Manager. We’re going to be rolling out wiki software and other collaboration tools across the entire enterprise. My job, in a nutshell, will be to make sure we get value out of this investment by encouraging and helping people to use it.

Lots of ideas are already running through my head — I can’t wait to get started. But I have lots of work still to do in transitioning my responsibilities for ICMI so everything carries on smoothly. But I sure am looking ahead with anticipation!

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

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.

read more | digg story

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.

read more | digg story

So if you’re struggling with First Call Resolution in your center — whether to implement FCR, how to implement FCR, how to make sure what you track as FCR is meaningful — then you should be interested in ICMI’s latest Member Research Report on First Contact Resolution.

It’s free for ICMI Members. Whether you are an ICMI Member or not, you can download it right now. You’ll learn what your peers (298 call center professionals surveyed in January 2008) are doing with FCR for phone calls, email and chat. But the numbers alone aren’t what you really need to improve your center’s First Contact Resolution. In addition, you’ll learn about the impact of FCR on other key metrics, as well as methods for ensuring high FCR rates.

If you’re not already an ICMI Member, consider joining and you’ll get this report and many more as part of your membership. It’s all part of our mission to help call center professionals make success happen.

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So it should not be surprising that the March 2008 issue of ICMI’s Customer Management Insight (CMI), includes two articles that address call center metrics. Cliff Hurst, of Career Impact, Inc., offers his thoughts in “Identifying the KPI’s that Matter Most” and Fred Van Bennekom, of Great Brook Consulting, provides his own explanations in “Measuring Service Effectiveness.” I know both of them, as well, since they have been speakers at ICMI’s conferences and I respect the experience and judgment that each brings to the table.

It’s interesting, though, that Fred is in his “sweet spot,” since his area of expertise truly is in measurement, particularly statistical measurement, while Cliff is probably best known for his work on quality monitoring. I think this difference shows in the two articles and the approaches each writer takes.

You’ll see in Fred’s a precise organization, where every metric or method gets defined and then has its advantages and then its shortcomings explained in order. He knows in depth what he’s talking about and so can get to the point concisely. I like the graphic he included, too, which again shows the orderly way he has addressed his subject:

The Portfolio of Customer Feedback Research Techniques

What I like about Cliff’s approach, however, is that this material does not come across as routine when he writes about it. He’s got almost an explorer’s mindset as he tackles the challenge of identifying what KPI’s call centers should use — which is the same attitude that call center managers themselves need to have.

He starts off with an analogy about dashboards related to his daughter learning to drive (which any of us with teenagers can relate to), and before he addresses any specific KPI’s at all, he lists five commandments:

1. Don’t be a copycat.
2. Don’t mistake common practices for best practices.
   
3. Find the right balance among KPIs.
4. A well-worn management aphorism goes something like this: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” (he goes on to debunk this one)
5. Remember what Peter Drucker said, “The data itself is not as important as are the trends in the data.”

Read the article to see the explanations that go along with each of those points, but just from the list alone you can see that this article is not just a list of all the KPIs one could use in a call center. In fact, I thought some of the best advice in the article was right there in that list.

Put both of these articles and these experienced professionals’ guidance together, and you’ve got some great insight into call center metrics. I recommend reading both of these articles if call center metrics have any importance to you.

ADDENDUM 3/14/2008:

I ran across another commentary on call center metrics after I originally posted this entry. ICMI’s Kelly Brickley posted “Obtaining Agent Buy-in for Metrics” in the CMI blog, From the Field with ICMI Certified Associates. As Kelly writes, it’s a common challenge for call center managers to get agents to understand why they are being measured the way that they are.

Her advice begins, sensibly, with looking at the KPIs themselves.

At ICMI, we recommend the following individual KPIs: Adherence to schedule and quality. As an agent, I can control whether I’m doing the right things at the right times, or whether I’m logged in when I’m supposed to be. In addition, I have the ability to ensure that the call which I‘m handling right now is conducted with the highest quality.

Kelly’s advice is a good reminder to look hard at the meaning of the casually-tossed-around term, KPI: KEY Performance Indicators. KPI’s are not all the useful measures, nor are they every meaningful or potentially significant measure. They are the “key,” as in “most critical” measures that indicate how well you are performing.

Despite our industry’s fondness for statistical measures of so many dizzying kinds, the idea behind KPI’s is simplicity. Narrow them down, choose them very carefully, monitor them closely, learn what changes in them really mean, and take action where indicated.
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If you’ve been around the call center industry any length of time (say, 5 minutes), you’ve heard the buzz about “agent empowerment.” It’s a hip-sounding phrase, and if you’re a call center representative it has a nice ring to it. If you’re a call center manager, however, it may sound more vague and perhaps threatening to you (“I’m supposed to be the one with the power, right?”).

Of course, if you’re a call center manager, the chances are you’re a “people person,” anyway — since that’s an essential quality for success in the people-intensive call center environment — so you may already be touchy-feely and confident enough to appreciate the idea of empowering your employees. Don’t be scared: it will be good for you!

To help everyone understand the truth behind the buzz about agent empowerment, ICMI assigned our crack research team (that would be Greg Levin) to investigate. You can read the report for free if you’re an ICMI Member, or download it for $24.95 if you’re not so privileged. Here’s what you can expect:

Just how well are contact centers today empowering and engaging their agents? ICMI sought to answer this question by conducting a survey on the topic in October 2007. In all, 350 contact center professionals—representing a diverse range of countries, industries and center sizes—responded to the survey. The results indicate that most centers are doing a good job of empowering staff to meet customer demands and expectations; fewer centers, however, are giving agents ample power to improve key processes and practices that impact the center’s overall success.

It’s essential reading for call center professionals. Specifically, here’s what is included in the report:

• Agent Empowerment during Customer Contacts: impact on agent retention and engagement, and customer satisfaction

• Agent Empowerment with Regard to Processes and Practices: impact on hiring, training, quality assurance and coaching, rewards and recognition, interdepartmental relations/communication, technology improvement, customer satisfaction improvement

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I have to admit, I had a scare at the end. When the second-to-last track of sessions ended and there was a 30-minute break, almost everyone left the classroom area . . . and for a while it appeared that few were going to come back. The lure of flights home or hitting the beach in this lovely, sunny weather seemed to have overcome their need for vital learning about call center management. And, honestly, after two solid days, or three (for those who attended the pre-conference day), I couldn’t blame them if they felt maybe their brains were going to burst from all they had learned.

But I was pleased to see so many return for the final track of sessions, and so were the speakers who drew the short straw and had those slots. In the words of one attendee, though, “you really saved the best for last for me.” Her perseverance paid off, as the final session she went to proved to be the most valuable one of all for her call center.

So many things I want to write about! Still not enough time to do so. Have to pack my conference suitcase up to be shipped home and double-check that my bag for Costa Rica has just what it needs. Then it’s time to enjoy a relaxing dinner with my colleague, Houdong, from ICMI China. And that’s another topic I’ll have to cover later: the large number of international attendees at this conference.

Until then, this conference is now history . . . which means it’s almost time to plan the next one.
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