A Deadly Heresy for a Help Desk

I came across a post by an agent in a Help Desk call center, called Stupidity, The New Heresy. He had posted an image called "Happy Bunny" that I am showing here and made the following remarks:

[This picture] reminds me so much of my attitude towards the people that call me, day in and day out. If they would only grow a smidgen-size of intelligence in the wasted cavity where the normal human should show be, I would be a lot nicer to them.

I have got to tell you that this attitude is deadly and you have to change your agent's mindset. If you allow this attitude to be pervasive among your agents, you will continually encounter escalated customer complaints, loss of customers, and if you are an outsourced call center, you can jeopordize the entire account.

What is so deadly about this attitude? Consider his statement:

If they would only grow a smidgen-size of intelligence in the wasted cavity where the normal human should show be, I would be a lot nicer to them.

If they were smarter, I would be nicer to them. What a cop-out! This completely eliminates any accountablity on the part of the agent for proper customer service - "Hey, it is not my fault I was rude to them - they are stupid."

How will that customer ever grow in intelligence? It is something outside of the control of the agent or the company. The customer's intelligence is what it is and the company and the agent need to decide to provide a service that meets that intelligent level and deliver it so the customer feels valued and appreciated.

If you had to call this agent, and he responded in a manner that essentially said, "Hey, dumb ___ss, if you weren't so dumb, you wouldn't be bothering me. But since you are, let me help your sorry little self..."

Would you feel valued? Would you feel like you wanted to do business with this company again?

If you do find this attitude among some of your agents, ask them to define what they consider "dumb questions". You may find that there really are confused customers out there and maybe you as a company did something to make them confused. Did you send out poorly written instructions? Does your product really have some legitimate flaws that make a lot of people call a help desk? Is your marketing selling some feature that you really can't support?

Even if your company did do something that confused your customers, your help desk should never be allowed to foster and tolerate such a condesending attitude toward your customers. You need to either change the mindset (difficult but possible to do) or you need to filter out the promoters of this destructive attitude.

Impact of a Leader

In reference to my last post about the importance of grooming leaders within your call center, consider this post by an agent:

There is not really any clear leadership, and yelling at everyone and vague memos have to suffice for real training.

That said, I'm still here. I haven't been fired in the five plus years, I haven't been forced to sign any kind of oral or written warning, I have only had one review (I asked for more, they said they were coming). Then on the other hand, I haven't gotten any kind of raise, I haven't got one of those high performer plaques that they give out in the Friday morning sales meetings. I have had one really good ass chewing, and got yelled at across the floor a couple times, but nothing more than that.

I found that almost all agents really want to do a good job. But without appropriate leadership, they are unclear as to how to do a good job or how exactly you define what it means to do a good job. Consider the agent's comments above - only had one review in over 5 years, training comes through vague memos, correction comes by yelling across the floor. Can you find ways to enrich lives of promising agents by grooming them to be future leaders, giving them honest feedback on their strengths and weaknesses and creating appropriate motivation to improve. Five years at one place is quite remarkable in the Call Center Universe. I hope this company realizes that the value of this agent!

Thoughts on Leadership

My friend Hal makes some good points about leadership. He writes:

I think it is interesting how most of us can identify a good leader and also usually know when the opposite is true. We don’t really even try, we just seem to know when leadership is present.

Call Centers are full of areas that require leadership. You really need to grow and nuture and develop leadership within the call center. How well are you ready to have your leadership tested in a crisis?

Tip on Measuring your Inbound Call Center Agents

I came across this good tip to measure (inexpensively) your agents' performance. I liked the phrase that was quoted:

"What you don't know, you can't measure, and what you can't measure, you can't improve."

Here is the tip:

Someone calls to the call center and the IVR picks up. Based upon some calculations, it decides that this call should or shouldn't go to the IVR after the call. When it should go to the IVR after the call, this is announced to the caller, and the caller need to confirm that he will participate.

Then the call is sent to the agent (who does not know whether the caller will be queried lateron) and when the agent clicks on hangup, the call is not hung up, but blind transferred to the IVR with the questionnaire.

The IVR asks its questions (how was the service, was the agent nice, etc.) and this data is lateron merged with the data from the call center. Which agent, what time, type of question, etc..

Now you know how your clients are thinking about you. And once you know - you can measure it - and improve it. Why not start off with sending me an e-mail to start a discussion about it?

Empowering Agents?

So, as a manager, how do you prevent situations like this that was reported recently in the Chicago Tribune?

6 months of free cable TV won't erase insult's sting

By Scott Goldstein
Tribune staff reporter
Published September 1, 2005


Although she doesn't mind talking about the problems that made her a poster child for poor customer relations, LaChania Govan admits the media attention has come with a price.

The 25-year-old mother of two from Elgin went public last month when she received a Comcast cable bill addressed to "Bitch Dog" after she had complained for weeks about service problems.

Since then, she has appeared on MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann." Her story has been told in newspapers around the country, and legions of Internet message boards and blogs have taken up her cause.

A consumer group plans to give her an award next month in Washington.

One person even saw a business opportunity and is selling a T-shirt online that reads: "Be a . . . Comcast Bitch Dog . . . Get Dish!"

Govan said she is torn by all the attention. As a customer-service representative for a credit-card company, she said it's important to speak out about the issue with the hope that service in general might improve.

But she also said she doesn't like being linked to such an unpleasant name. She can't hide from it, she said--not even at her church, her son's elementary school or her workplace.

"It's not so much the issue, it's the name associated with it," Govan said. "There has not been one day since that happened that somebody has not addressed me" in the same way her bill was addressed.

Initially, Comcast offered Govan four months of free service to make amends, an offer it has since increased to six months, she said.

That came last week when Govan said she spoke with Mark Coffman, Comcast Chicago region vice president for customer care. He left her a voicemail message shortly after the Tribune first reported her story Aug. 17.

Six months of free cable doesn't cut it, Govan said.

"This is something that is going to follow me for the rest of my life," she said.

Still, she says it has generated goodwill and some odd perks. Her local gas station, for example, gave her a free fill-up.

Comcast spokeswoman Angie Amores restated the company's apology: "We've expressed our sincerest apologies to Miss Govan, and we continue to be appalled by the way she was treated."

The company fired two customer-service employees the day the story was published. At the call center where the offense occurred, only supervisors or higher-ranking employees are now allowed to change customer names on bills, Amores said.

Consumers for Cable Choice, an Indianapolis group that advocates competition in the cable market, plans to fly Govan to Washington in September for a previously scheduled conference, where they will honor her.

"We believe that her story is symptomatic of the environment, and the environment is one in which without competition . . . customer service generally fails," said spokeswoman Cheryl Reed. "She will be given an award, sort of a consolation for her pain and suffering."

Meanwhile, those familiar with the customer-service profession say it is not surprising Govan's story resonated with so many people.

"There is a coarsening of society in general," said Timothy Keiningham, a customer-loyalty consultant and author of several books on the topic. "She's probably gotten a lot of people to go, `I've experienced this or something similar.' And she just symbolizes the standard-bearer. And the fact that she didn't just roll over."

Current and former customer-service representatives said altering a customer's real name on a bill to something vulgar is inexcusable. But they said it also points to the often overlooked pressures of dealing with irate customers, particularly those emboldened by the impersonal exchange of a telephone conversation.

"You pretty much name it, and we have to deal with it," said Chris Munson, who works in customer service for Adelphia Cable in Burlington, Vt.

Munson, who has worked in customer service for about six years, said the venomous environment seeps into his and his colleagues' personal lives.

"When we come home, unfortunately our spouses have to deal with us," Munson said. "When we get home, we can't even speak. . . . My wife is at the point where she will only deal with really important things by e-mail so I won't flip out. And that's the way that a lot of people are right now."

Network with Other Call Centers

One of the things that surprised me was how beneficial it was to get to know other call center owners or managers. I first really got to know other call center owners when our center was awarded the Top 50 award as an inbound call center and I went to the conference and we had a meeting of just the top 50 companies. We went to dinner, had a reception and got to hang out together. I made several strong contacts with Presidents of other call centers, and that led to future business, future opportunities to collaborate and future opportunities to exchange ideas.

I would highly recommend making connections with competing call centers. They might bring you work. You might work for them some day. You might merge or be bought out or buy them some day.

One place you might want to start is at the forums at TMC. You will get an idea of who is out there, what they are doing and what their challenges are.

Labor Pool

One of the challenges of a call center, especially an outbound call center is having an adequate supply of agents. Turnover is a reality for call centers and that means that you have to be able to bring in new agents to replace those that have left.

There are areas within the US were call centers have seemed congregate - Omaha, Salt Lake, Florida, etc. These areas sometimes run into this problem of not enough labor pool for qualified and quality agents. Call centers who have big turnovers and are in rural areas or small towns really face these problems.

I found this article interesting that the Philippines is encountering some of these same problems.

Shortage Hits Philippines Call Centers
Industry association takes the lead in developing manpower

Lawrence Casiraya

As the market matures, Philippines call center industry is now shifting its efforts from promoting the country to ensuring it produces enough highly-skilled agents. “The issue now is labor supply,” says Raffy David, director of Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP).

According to David, the contact center industry currently employs around 75,000 workers--up from 20,000 last year. He said the industry would need 75,000 more workers this year alone.

Aside from a lack of skilled workers, call centers also deal with a high attrition rate among agents. David noted that call centers are not losing agents to other industries; rather, agents seek new opportunities in other call centers. An agreement is being worked amongst CCAP members not to deliberately “poach” agents from each other. “From a corporate standpoint, this means a member company cannot pirate agents from other companies,” David said.

CCAP is also embarking on a nationwide skills assessment program designed to provide its members with workers that are not only English-proficient, but whose skills are appropriate for the type of accounts they can handle.“An applicant can be fluent in English but his or her skills and even personality may not be adequate for an outbound sales position,” David explains.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

This Guy is Working for You

I came across the following post from some guy who worked as an agent in some call center. My guess is that most call centers have someone like this in their center. Would you be thrilled to have this guy representing your company to your customers? The question is: How do you motivate and engage this person so they can find their job meaningful and rewarding? And if you can't, how do you screen and indentify this person and move him out of the center?

What do you think?

Here is the post:

Living in Limbo

Well, I yesterday kinda sucked at work. But it's just a call center so it doesnt matter, it just gets long sitting there for 8 hours to slide by while hundreds of people you're calling complain, hang up, ignore or act bitter to you just because you're trying to get them to pay a debt they owe for a service they used.
...
So I'm on a half hour work break from . They train you to think of it as a new type of call center but the supervisors go after you like hawks for every single minute wasted in the day and it's just another stupid call center. They want to be professional and if you punch in 1 minute late they gie you a point and then it's just stupid. Bunch of infants.

Friday is payday!

Call Centers Playing Role in Helping with Katrina

There are a number of call centers that are being organized to assist with the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. Here are some of the stories out there:

Through the National Emergency Resource Registry (NERR), the Commerce Department is mobilizing the resources and good nature of businesses across the country to help meet the needs of thousands of businesses devastated by Hurricane Katrina. This call center will take calls from affected businesses wanting to rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Katrina or businesses that want to donate supplies, funds, or other items. The call center can be reached on the Web at www.nerr.gov or toll free on 888-4USADOC.

Here is a post from BrewBlog about helping with fundraising

My company had the opportunity to help with the Shelter From the Storm national telethon last week because of the large call-center capability we have. Allison and I volunteered by taking calls on behalf of the Red Cross and the Salvation Army. Our job was to collect donations from folks calling in to support the Katrina disaster relief effort. Overall, the effort within our campus collected over $400,000 in donations from 4,600 callers. Props go out to our company for helping.

Credit card issuers are also doing their part to help those affected by Hurricane Katrina. Not only are most major companies donating money to the American Red Cross and other organizations designated to assist in this catastrophe, they are also giving some much needed assistance directly to cardholders.

1500 Capital One® associate volunteers provided call center support to help raise $4.25 million of the $17 million raised through NBC’s “A Concert for Hurricane Relief.

Digital Call Recording

Back in the old days, we had a simple tape recorder hooked up to every phone and a piece of paper in front of every agent. When they began the call, the agent was to start recording the call. When the call ended, the agent stopped the recorder and wrote the customer ID number down on the piece of paper. At the end of the shift, the agent would wrap the paper around the cassette tape and give it to the supervisor. The supervisor would keep a master log of each cassette. These could be then used for training, for quality assurance, or for verification.

If the client wanted to hear a specific call, it was quite a chore to find the right day, find the right shift, and then find the right agent's cassette and then find the right spot on the cassette to play that call. Some clients then wanted all the cassettes shipped to them.

Today, this whole process is so much simplier. It can also be much more expensive. Today, digital call recording allows each call to be recorded either automatically or through a simple click of a mouse. Those files are stored as .wav files and can be easily accessed, emailed, or listened to. Quality assurance monitoring becomes very easy with digital recorded calls. We set up a process where a certain percentage of calls were randomly monitored as well as ensuring that we monitored every agent over some defined time period.

One provider of digital call recording is Data Collection Resources (DCR), who is a provider of affordable call center quality monitoring and recording.

Do Not Call Compliance Issues

This is from a series of Q&As from the FTC about the Do Not Call law. This part is about compliance. The FTC is serious about this law and have been handing out large penalties ($11k PER violation). Call 100 people illegally and you can add up a big bill quickly. Why waste your time calling someone who doesn't want to talk to you and put your company at such great risk?

Compliance

28. What happens to companies that don’t pay for access to the registry?

A company that is a seller or telemarketer could be liable for placing any telemarketing calls (even to numbers NOT on the registry) unless the seller has accessed the registry and paid the fee, if required. Violators may be subject to fines of up to $11,000 per violation. Each call may be considered a separate violation.

29. What if I call a number that’s not on the registry without checking the registry first?

It’s against the law to call (or cause a telemarketer to call) any number on the registry (unless the seller has an established business relationship with the consumer whose number is being called, or the consumer has given written agreement to be called). But it’s also against the law for a seller to call (or cause a telemarketer to call) any person whose number is within a given area code unless the seller first has subscribed to and accessed the portion of the registry that includes numbers within that area code, and paid the annual fee, if required.

In addition, it’s against the law for a telemarketer, calling on behalf of a seller, to call any person whose number is within a given area code unless the seller has first subscribed to and accessed the portion of the registry that includes numbers within that area code, and paid the annual fee, if required. Telemarketers must make sure that their seller-clients have paid for access to the registry before placing any telemarketing calls on their behalf.

30. What’s my liability if my company inadvertently calls a number on the registry?

The TSR has a “safe harbor” for inadvertent mistakes. If a seller or telemarketer can show that, as part of its routine business practice, it meets all the requirements of the safe harbor, it will not be subject to civil penalties or sanctions for mistakenly calling a consumer who has asked for no more calls, or for calling a person on the registry. To meet the safe harbor requirements, the seller or telemarketer must demonstrate that:

it has written procedures to comply with the do not call requirements
it trains its personnel in those procedures
it monitors and enforces compliance with these procedures
it maintains a company-specific list of telephone numbers that it may not call
it accesses the national registry no more than 31 days (starting January 1, 2005) before calling any consumer, and maintains records documenting this process
any call made in violation of the do not call rules was the result of an error.

Do Not Call Requirements

If you are going to run an outbound telemarketing campaign, you need to register with the FTC for the Do Not Call list.

I have used DNC Solutions for several years. Don Holbrook and his team are great to work with. I give them my highest recommendation. They are fast, their processes are simple and their knowledge is extensive. They stay on top of every law, whether state or federal. I wouldn't run an outbound campaign without them.

There may be other quality firms providing these services. I just haven't used them. You can find DNC Solutions online.

Tell Don that you were sent by Tim Stay and FreeCallCenterQuotes.com!

Teleplaza

Part of the challenge of running a call center is trying to find continual work to keep your ops running at some stable level. I mentioned brokers in a previous post as one source to find new work. Another method that we successfully employed is being listed in every directory that related to call centers. There were a number out there and most you can create a basic listing for free. Some would allow you a more extensive listing for a fee.

While we used a lot of different listings, we got the most traffic from TelePlaza. We listed in the Inbound and Outbound sections and got some great leads and closed some good business from this source. I would recommend listing here.Teleplaza Directory Call Center Software Services: Contact Center Customer Service software, call center outsourcing, contact technology, consultants, call management solutions for International centers.

ICMI - The Best Training Seminar I Ever Went To

Brad Cleveland, CEO of ICMI

When I first started my call center back in 92, I knew very little about the specifics of what it took to run an inbound call center. One of the philosophies I have tried to follow in the various businesses I have run and started is that I try to become as knowledgable about the fundamentals of my industry as possible.

I had heard good things about ICMI and our inbound business was really growing. I really felt that a small improvement in our efficiency would easily pay for the cost of the training session. The major costs in an inbound call center are labor and phone expenses. If we could take more calls with the same number of people, then that just adds to the bottom line. But, on the other hand, if you commit to a service level that is too aggressive, you need a grundle of people sitting idle to hit those service levels and that kills your labor costs.

So anyway, I went to the ICMI seminar. Brad Cleveland was the instructor (Brad is now the President and CEO of ICMI - way to climb the corporate ladder Brad!). There were call center managers from around the country there and we were all given a big manual.

The instruction was clear and very practible. Brad was a dynamic and extremely knowledgable instructor. They gave us a bunch of tools that we could take back home and use. They broke down the math and explained such things as Erlang C and how to calculate staffing needs at a half-hour basis based upon call volume and length of call (talk time). We learned how to configure our ACD, how to properly schedule, how to forecast, how to communicate with others about call center realities and limitations, and a myriad of other useful items.

Besides training, ICMI also has an extensive library for call center managers as well as conferences and forums.

I have been to dozens of trainings for various things, but at the top of my list was the training I got from ICMI. They knew their topic and they knew what was important to us and they knew how to teach. I know I saved tens of thousands of dollars from being a more efficient manager scheduling my agents better because the training I got from ICMI. I got a return many time what the seminar cost me.

If you are a inbound call center manager, you are being neglegent in your progression if you don't attend one of these seminars. I guarentee you that you will find it valuable!

ICMI - Call Center Glossary

ICMI - Call Center Glossary

Just like any industry, the call center industry has plenty of acronyms and unique phrases. What does CTI, DNIS, ANI, or T1 mean? To an outsider trying to work with the industry, it can be difficult to understand everything.

The ICMI, the Incomoming Calls Management Institute has published a glossary of common terms used in call centers (specifically related to inbound call centers.)

Here are a few common terms that you may want to be familiar with in relation to an inbound call center:

Abandoned Call. Also called a Lost Call. The caller hangs up before reaching an agent.

Automatic Call Distributor (ACD). The specialized telephone system used in incoming call centers. It is a programmable device that automatically answers calls, queues calls, distributes calls to agents, plays delay announcements to callers and provides real-time and historical reports on these activities. May be a stand-alone system, or ACD capability built into a CO, network or PBX.

Automatic Number Identification (ANI). A telephone network feature that passes the number of the phone the caller is using to the call center, real-time. ANI may arrive over the D channel of an ISDN PRI circuit (out of band signaling), or before the first ring on a single line (inband signaling). ANI is delivered from long distance companies. Caller ID is the local phone company version of ANI, and is delivered inband. ANI is a North American term, and Calling Line Identification (CLI) is an alternative term used elsewhere.

Average Speed of Answer (ASA). Also called Average Delay. The average delay of all calls. It is total Delay divided by total number of calls. See Average Delay of Delayed Calls.

Calls In Queue. A real-time report that refers to the number of calls received by the ACD system but not yet connected to an agent.

Computer Telephony Integration (CTI). The software, hardware and programming necessary to integrate computers and telephones so they can work together seamlessly and intelligently.

Dialed Number Identification Service (DNIS). A string of digits that the telephone network passes to the ACD, VRU or other devise, to indicate which number the caller dialed. The ACD can then process and report on that type of call according to user-defined criteria. One trunk group can have many DNIS numbers.

Erlang C. Calculates predicted waiting times (delay) based on three things: the number of servers (reps); the number of people waiting to be served (callers); and the average amount of time it takes to serve each person. It can also predict the resources required to keep waiting times within targeted limits. Erlang C assumes no lost calls or busy signals, so it has a tendency to overestimate staff required.

Handled Calls. The number of calls received and handled by agents or peripheral equipment. Handled calls does not include calls that abandon or receive busy signals.

Longest Available Agent. A method of distributing calls to the agent who has been sitting idle the longest. With a queue, Longest Available Agent becomes ñNext Available Agent.î

Longest Delay (Oldest Call). The longest time a caller has waited in queue, before abandoning or reaching an agent.

Predictive Dialing. A system that automatically places outbound calls and delivers answered calls to agents. When the dialer detects busy signals, answering machines or ring no answer, it puts the number back in queue.

Private Branch Exchange (PBX). A telephone system located at a customer's site that handles incoming and outgoing calls. ACD software can provide PBXs with ACD functionality. Also called private automatic branch exchange (PABX).

Queue. Holds callers until an agent becomes available. Queue can also refer to a line or list of items in a system waiting to be processed (e.g., e-mail messages).

Screen Pop. A CTI capability. Callers' records are automatically retrieved (based on ANI or digits entered into the VRU) and delivered to agents, along with the calls.

Service Level. Also called Telephone Service Factor, or TSF. The percentage of incoming calls that are answered within a specified threshold: "X% of calls answered in Y seconds." See Response Time.

Skill-Based Routing. An ACD capability that matches a caller's specific needs with an agent that has the skills to handle that call, on a real-time basis.

T1 Circuit. A high speed digital circuit used for voice, data or video, with a bandwidth of 1.544 megabits per second. T1 circuits offer the equivalent of twenty-four (24) analog voice trunks.

Talk Time. The time an agent spends with a caller during a transaction. Includes everything from "hello" to "goodbye."

Toll-Free Service. Enables callers to reach a call center out of the local calling area without incurring charges. 800 and 888 service is toll-free. In some countries, there are also other variations of toll-free service. For example, with 0345 or 0645 services in the United Kingdom, callers are charged local rates and the call center pays for the long distance charges.

Voice Response Unit (VRU). Also called Interactive Voice Response Unit (IVR) or Audio Response Unit (ARU). A VRU responds to caller entered digits or speech recognition in much the same way that a conventional computer responds to keystrokes or clicks of a mouse. When the VRU is integrated with database computers, callers can interact with databases to check current information (e.g., account balances) and complete transactions (e.g. make transfers between accounts).

Workforce Management Software. Software systems that, depending on available modules, forecast call load, calculate staff requirements, organize schedules and track real-time performance of individuals and groups.