Learn about Call Center

What is a call center

2011-06-06T19:43:00.000-07:00

Call center is also referred to as 'Contact Center' in current days. The name had been changed due to the stigma attached to the word 'call center'. Until few years back, call center was referred to place where only the people with no skill go to work. All you needed was English speaking skill and the rest would be taught to you in training. Not anymore, contact centers has developed into a industry which now even contributes to the GDP of a many country especially countries like India and China. Besides creating jobs for million of people across the globe. Professional like MBA, Computer engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers are also opting for this profession. In fact it is said that every individual should work in a call center for at least 1 year of their life. This will teach you things that are never taught in school and universities. Things like handling people, how to talk and convince people, handling difficult situations, sympathizing with people, understanding people. These are all the qualities that are needed in our daily life, do you agree?

The first thing that comes to the mind when we talk about call center is a place where hundreds of people are seated in a room with telephones in their hand and chatting away with their customers. Well, it's true. But this is not the only thing that is done here. Let me explain. I would define call center as a place where customers interact with company representative. This can be in various ways i.e either the customer calls the company or the company calls the customer. The purpose may differ. Example, a company representative calls a customer to inform him that he has missed payment on his credit card bill. A customer may approach a call center to find out why the item ordered by him has not yet arrived.

The different ways in which a call center communicated with its customer are:-

1. Inbound call center (ACD)

This is a type of call center where the customer dials in to find out something. Example, John is a customer of xyz credit card company. He has not received the bill for the current month. He is calling in to find out the total amount he owes the company. The representative who pickup Johns call, informs him of his balance, apologizes for the delay in sending him his credit card bill and promises send the bill immediately. Here John is the customer who has called a toll free number of customer care and is transferred to the next available agent, who services his request. This type of call center is also referred to as ACD (Automatic call distribution). How does this works. When a customer dials the toll free number, the call is sent to telephony provider (AT&T, MCI, Reliance, TATA). The telephony provider sends the call to a equipment called 'ACD', which is situated in the companies premises. This is an intelligent device. The first thing this device does is plays an automated greeting message "Thank you for calling xyz company, your call is important to us, please stay on the line and a representative will be with you shortly". The equipment puts your call on hold (at this time you will hear music), now the equipment starts to look out for available agent. If there is an available agent, the call is send to him. If not, the call is placed in queue waiting for any agent to be available. This process is called 'Queuing'. While in the queue you may hear another message, which will sound something like this "your call is important to us, please do not hang-up, we will be with you as soon as possible". After the agent is completes the call, the call is hung-up either by the customer or the agent. This completes one cycle for single call and now the can make himself available to take the next call. On an average an agent take about 100 calls in a day.

2. Outbound call center (AOD)

This is a type of call center where the company dials its customer or a prospective customer. Example Company xyz has lauched a special promotion where its offering 50% discount on purchase of any of its electronic items for a limited day. The company would like to inform all its existing customers of this offer. The company has around 200,000 customers. The company has now given this job to its call center. The call center assign 100 agents for this job. The agent start dialing all the customers informing this of this great offer. After 1 week of dialing all the customers have been contacted and following is the result.

10% of the customers came to the showroom and purchased the product.
60% of the customer showed no interest in the offer.
10% of the customer did not pick up the phone.
10% of the customer numbers were bad numbers.
10% of the customer asked to put their number of the 'Do not call list' and not to call again.

In this example you have seen that 20% of the customer got converted to a sale and that was what the company was targeting.

Typically there are 2 types of calling that is done here.

a) Sales calling – Almost everyone in this world have been receiving calls from company where representatives try to convince you to buy their product. These calls are made from sales call center. As I have shown in the example above, here the law of average is at work. If you dial 100 people, you will be able to speak to only 40, out of this 20 will be interested and only 10 people will actually buy you goods or services. And this is actually what the companies are targeting for. They are not expecting all the dials made to be converted to sale. Only small percentage converted over a large volume of people is also profitable to them. As you seen in the above case. 200,000 people were contacted and only 20,000 customers (20%) actually purchased the product. Now what do you think, was the company foolish or smart in making those calls? Of course they were smart and this has made them big money. They will continue to run such campaigns. So now when you get a sales call and you say 'no' for the offer, remember someone will say 'yes' however foolish the offers sounds. LAW of AVERAGE always works, weather you are selling mud or Mercedes.
b) Collections – It's not very uncommon to see that people do not make their payments in time. There may be many reasons for this. May be genuinely forgot, no money in bank to make payment, did not receive bill, out of town etc. Whatever be the reason, the fact is that the company has not received its money. This may be for a credit card, Home loan, Personal loan, car loan etc. This money needs to be recovered by the company, in order that their business functions smoothly. In this type of contact center, the company pulls out the list of all the customers who have defaulted on their payment and starts dialing them. The reason for default is noted and customer is asked to make the payment. Some companies would want that their customer would default on the payment, so that they can add penalties to the existing outstanding. This ultimately adds to the income of the company. So remember to pay your bills on time and avoid additional charges to your bill.

3. Email call center

These types of call center are both for receiving and sending emails. You would have seen email address of customer care or sale department published on websites, brochures, advertisements etc. A customer would send a email to this email address (example – info@xyz.com). This email is received by one of the agent in the email contact center. This agent reviews the information and replies back to the customer. Here the agent is not directly interacting with the customer and there is a delay in response, hence is not a preferred way of communication. The advantage is that here everything is in black and white and minute details like account number, customer ID, account balance etc can be communicated back and forth in an accurate way. The expected reply time you can expect in this communication mode is usually 2 working days.

4. Chat call center

This type of call center is similar to a voice call center. The only difference is that in a voice call center, the communication is verbal over the phone, where as in a Chat call center the communication is in text. In both the cases the communication is instant. When you browse the internet, you would have notices that some websites have icons that says something like this "Chat now with our sale representative" When you click on this icon you are connected to a person on the other side that is chatting with you in text. This type of call centers are becoming more common as it gives the customer the flexibility to contact the company from with the website, without having to make a phone call.

5. Self Service (IVR) call center

Interactive voice response is a service where in you are greeted and responded by an automated system (without human person). You may have noticed when you dial your bank, you are asked various options. For example for English press '1' for Spanish press '2'. After selecting the option the automated system ask you for your account Id and pass code. Once you have successfully got authenticated, it stats giving you information as requested by you, for example last 5 transaction details. The IVR will guide you through the various menu options, using the keypad on your phone. Now days, the automatic system can recognize voice and you can speak into your phone for selecting options instead of pushing buttons on the keypad. This technology is called TTS (text to speech) or voice recognition.

6. Blend call center
As the name suggests, in these types of call centers the agents are expected to be doing multitasking. This means that a single agent will be doing more than one activity. Example – John is an agent and he takes both inbound and outbound calls. At the same time his is also expected to respond to customer emails as they come. Along with John other agents in his group are also expected to do the same task. John and his team are working in a call center in Blend mode.

Acronyms and Abbreviations

2011-05-20T02:40:00.000-07:00

ACD - Automatic Call Distribution

AOD - Automatic Outbound Dialing

ACS - Automatic Call Sequencer

ACW - After Call Work

AHT - Average Handling Time

ANI - Automatic Number Identification

ARS - Automatic Route Selection

ARU - Audio Response Unit

ASA - Average Speed of Answer

ASP -Application Service Provider

ASR - Automatic Speech Recognition

ATA - Average Time to Abandonment

ATB - All Trunks Busy

AWT - Average Work Time

BOC - Bell Operating Company

BRI - Basic Rate Interface

CBT - Computer Based training

CCR - Customer Controlled Routing

CCS - Centum Call Seconds

CED - Caller Entered Digits

CIM - Customer Interaction Management

CIO - Chief Information Officer

CIS - Customer Information System

CMS - Call Management System

CO - Central office

CPE - Customer Premises Equipment

CRM - Customer Relationship management

CSR - Customer Service Representative

CTD - Cumulative Trauma Disorder

CTI - Computer Telephony Integration

DDD - Direct Distance Dialing

DID - Direct Inward Dialing

DN - Dialed Number

DNIS - Dialed Number Identification Service

DSL - Digital Subscriber Line

DTMF - Dual Tome Multi frequency

ERMS - Email Response Management System

ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning

EWT - Expected Wait Time

FCC - Federal Communication Commission

FCR - First Call Resolution

FTE - Full Time Equivalent

FX - Foreign Exchange Line

GOS - Grade of Service

GUI - Graphical User Interface

HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language

HTTP - Hyper Text Transport Protocol

ILEC - Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier

IM - Instant Messaging

IP - Internet Protocol

IRR - Internal Rate of Return

IS - Information Systems

ISDN - Integrated Service Digital Network

ISP - Internet Service Provider

IT - Information Technology

IVR - Interactive Voice Response

IWR - Interactive Web Response

IXC - Inter Exchange Carrier

KB - Knowledge Base

KPI - Key Performance Indicator

LAN - Local Area Network

LCD - Liquid Crystal Display

LEC - Local Exchange Carrier

LED - Light Emitting Diode

LWOP - Leave Without Pay

MAC - Moves, Adds and Changes

MIS - Management Information System

MTBF - Mean time Between Failure

NCC - Network Control Center

NIC - Network Interface Card

NPA - Numbering Plan Area

NPV - Net Present Value

OCR - Optical Character Recognition

OJT - On the Job Training

PABX - Private Automatic Branch Exchange

PBX - Private Branch Exchange

PC - Personal Computer

PCP - Post Call Processing

PDA - Personal Digital Assistance

PRI - Primary Rate Interface

PSN - Public Switched Network

PUC - Public Utility Commission

RAN - Recorded Announcement

RBOC - Regional Bell Operating Company

RFI - Request for Information

RFP - Request for Proposal

RFQ - Request for Quote

ROA -Return on Assets

ROI - Return on Investment

ROS - Return on Sales

RSF - Rostered Staff Factor

SBR - Skills Based Routing

SLA - Service Level Agreement

SS7 - Signaling System 7

TBT - Technology Based Training

TCPIP - Transmission Control Protocol Internet Protocol

TSF - Telephone Service Factor

TSR - Telephone Sales or Service Representative

TTS - Text to Speech

UCD - Uniform Call Distribution

URL - Uniform Resource Locator

VDT - Video Display Terminal

VOIP - Voice over Internet Protocol

VPN - Virtual Private Network

VRU - Voice Response Unit

VXML - Voice Extensible Markup Language

WAN - Wide Area Network

WAP - Wireless Application Protocol

WATS - Wide Area Telecommunication Service

WFMS - Workforce Management System

WWW - World Wide Web

XML - Extensible Markup Language

Banking

2011-04-15T23:37:00.000-07:00

Call Center for a Bank is an very integral point of contact for a customer. With the advancement of banking industry, customer satisfaction is no longer a factor that helps banks get more customer or retain existing customer. There are many factors other than customer satisfaction that needs to be in place for customer to continue to do business with a bank. There is a wide choice of bank for a consumer. What is it that makes customer want to select a particular bank is a debate that is currently on in the Banking domain. Basically there are 2 factors that Banks concertrate on to increase their business.

How to retain existing customer ? - Statistics show that customer will not be loyal to a bank for ever. They will change their bank for reasons as mentioned below. How to retain the existing customer base at the same time adding new customer is a challenge banks need to keep dealing with.
How to get new customers ? - Getting new customer is equally important from retaining new customers. This is the only way balance can be achieved. It is very difficult to get new customer as there is a wide choice of banks available today.

Ways for retaining & adding new customers.

Provide new offers and attractive schemes.
Provide personalised service to customers.
Penetrate deeper in the market both Rural and Urban.
Opening new branches.

Today customer satisfaction is also known as customer delight. Whatever may be the name, the fact is, customer expect this to be basic requirement to bank with a particular bank. Customers are now looking for not just customer satisfaction, but also for personalised touch. Gone are the days, where you would stand in the queue for depositing a cheque or withdrawing cash. Now automated service like an ATM can do this. Although the innovation of ATM has revolutionized the way you deposit or withdraw money, it has one negative impact. It has cause the banker to loose personalised touch with the customer.

Now banks are working on a concept called 'HNI' (High network individual) or 'RM' (Relationship manager). Its intention is to pick and choose all the customers who are doing good business for the bank and providing them with personalised touch. So now a customer feels important because he has a name of an individual (RM) who will service his specific needs. He does not need to call an automated system (IVR) and get to a customer service representative who will help him. He can directly call his RM and get his issue resolved. An RM will also proactively call the customer to inform him of any issue with his account. This makes the customer feel important and wants to continue to stay with the bank.

Why do customers decide to discontinue doing business with Bank.

No personalised touch.
Calling into the call center is frustrating as the IVR (Interactive voice responses) is very confusing & time consuming.
No one was able to resolve his issue as there is no single point of ownership for him.
Very difficult to reach a call center Representative and have to wait for long time in queue.
Dispute on extra charges levied by bank.
Repeated interaction with bank, but NO resolution.

Call Center Jobs

2010-05-01T11:42:00.000-07:00

Call center is a booming industry especially in countries like India, Philippines, China etc. Millions of people are being employed in this industries every year. Many individuals have made a career out of this profession. There are individuals who are earning big salaries even as a Agent. Its weird but a fresher joining a call center as a agent would probably make more money than a Fresher Engineer. Being an agent is not the only job in a call center. There are various job roles that you could aim for in a call center.

Agent - This is the most common job opportunity you could have in a call center. An agent is a person who man's the phone. Calls coming in to the call center are attended by this individual. He speaks to the customer and understands his need, he then provided the relevant information/service to the caller on the phone. Practically speaking you dont really needs any qualifications certificate for working in a call center as an agent. You probably need to be a graduate with a good communication skill (You will also be trained on soft skills, call handling etc).

Team Leader (TL) - A team leader is basically a supervisor for a group of agent. He is responsible for a set of agent. Typically there is 1 TL for 10 agents, but this number may vary depending on the type of call center. A Team leader is responsible to manage his set of agents and make sure that the agents in his team get all that is needed to perform optimally in the the calls they are taking. Team lead is also responsible to arrange for team meetings, pep talks, manage escallations of calls etc. A little bit of managerial experience will help in this role, but typically an agent is promoted to the role of a Team leave based on his experiance and tenure in the company.

Group Leader (GL) - A group leader manages a set of TL's. Typically 10 TL's would report to a GL. The group leader is responsible to provide guidance and assisstance to TL's so that they are able to achieve the targets/company goals. Targets could mean Right party contact, Customer satisfaction percentage, Sales percentage, collection amount etc. Person having suffient experience as a TL may qualify for the post of a GL.

Quality Analyst (QA) - An QA is a person who is responsible to maintain quality of customer interaction. His job is to listen to call between agent and customer and analyse if the interaction was good, average or bad. Based on the analysis he would then coach the Agent and provide him review and guidance on how to improve.

Call center manager (CCM)- This person is responsible for over all target achivement of the contact center. All the GL's report to Call center manager. This role would involve viewing daily, weekly, monthly, quaterly, half yearly, yearly performace of the call center with respect to the goals of the company. Call center manager would be responsible for a particular division/product of the company. Example one CCM is reponsible for the Credit card division of the compnay while antother CCM would be responsible for Mortgage loans.

Center Head - A Center Head is responsible for the over performace and management of call center as a whole. This would involve all the process/projects within the company call center. Example a finance company has many division like Credit card, Mortgage, Home Loan, Personal Loan. All of these fall in the perview of a Center Head.

Best Time to Call (Dialer)

2010-03-09T00:36:00.001-08:00

What is 'Best time to call' (BTTC) and why is it needed in a call center?

BTTC is a performance most of the Collection contact center would want to achieve. This simply means, when is the best time of the day to call, to be able to reach a 'Right Party contact'? The aim of all the contact centers is to call the right person. If the right person is contacted, there is a high possibility that he will make the payment. If a wrong contact is contacted, the chances of getting the payment are very low. Example – ABC Company is calling Mr. Tom to remind him of his payment on the Credit card. Incase Tom receives the call, the chances of him making the payment is high. If his brother or any family member takes the call, all they will do is take a message for Tom. So my goal as a contact center manager is to get the right person (Right party contact) at the right time (BTTC).

The concept of BTTC is applicable to Outbound dialing only (AOD). In case I do not get the right party, I would need to call him again and again, until I get him on the phone. I want to avoid this and make sure that whenever I make the call, I get the correct person on the Phone. Another thing to remember is that this is a contact center, so it's not just few customers/prospect to call, its tons of them.

How do I set my best time to call logic?

There are ready made software's available in the market provided by vendors such as Avaya, Aspect, Nortel etc. But these are expensive solution and claim to increase the performance by 25 to 30%. Do you need to purchase these software's? Probably not, If you have a good logic written to achieve this yourself. I know of many contact centers that are excelling in this, without using software's available in the market. The way you will do this is by looking at the history of a particular contact. I would suggest using at least 90days (3months) of historical data. Try to embed the below in your logic to determine BTTC. You can do this by importing this data in a database and running stored procedures or any other interface to get this data. Alternatively you can also use tools as simple as excel.

In my working hour (probably 8am to 10pm) how many times the contact/customer was dialed. From these, what time did I get a 'Right Party contact' (RPC) and when did I get 'Wrong party contact' (WPC).
Now select all the times when RPC was made.
Compare the RPC with the various days in the week, month, year etc.
Using point 3 above, categorize the records to be called as BTTC in your calling table.
Set schedules, either manual or through a predictive dialer and dial those records in that BTTC hour only.
Reanalyze the logic for the next day dialing. This is a ongoing process.

Advantages of using BTTC

Lower cost – You need to dial less which means you are paying less to the telecom company. Also you don't need as many agents.
Get more for less – Now that you are calling the right person at the right time, your collections and performance will increase.
Customer Satisfaction – Customer will appreciate you calling them at times when they are relaxed and better frame of mind.

Call centers in India

2009-12-27T17:22:00.000-08:00

India has always been a preferred location for setting up a outsourced call center. The reasons for this are many. Compared to other outsourced destination like Philippines, China, Malaysia; India has a wide population of educated people speaking English. Although Hindi is the National language of India, many people especially the ones staying in major cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Calcutta etc speak English. In fact offices and companies in India use English as the language of communication both written and spoken. This brings a major advantage to India. Besides this other factors like cheap and professional labor, low infrastructure cost etc makes India a preferred location for outsourcing contact centers from countries like U.S, Canada, U.K etc.

Main reasons for contact center growth in India.

English advantage

Without this advantage, countries like U.S, Canada, U.K would have never thought of coming to India to setup their contact centers or to outsource their operations to India. Indian's speak English with perfect grammar and pronunciations. The English in India carries a flat accent, this makes it easy for other country citizens to communicate with call center representatives. Indian are in almost all industries round the world, so many times the individual speaking to an Indian, sitting in India call center does not realize that the call has landed to India. This is a great advantage. Some contact centers running operations in India have asked agents to use English names instead of Indian names. Example Swati becomes Suzanne and Sanjay becomes Steve.
Low cost

Setting up a call center would involve many factors as you may have seen in my previous articles. The major cost in a call center is labor. An average agent in U.S would be paid a monthly salary of 4,000 US dollars plus other company benefits. On the other hand an agent in India gets paid Rs.15,000 equal to 350 US dollars. Multiply this with the number of agents in a call center and you will be amazed with the figure. A call center with 1000 agents in the U.S would cost yearly expense of 50,000,000 USD. Same job outsourced to India will cost 4,200,000 USD. A saving of 45,800,000 USD per year. This is huge saving for companies, which translates to profit.
Low infrastructure cost

India is a country with vast population and large landscapes. The cost of infrastructure is not as high when compared to countries in Europe and America. Besides this, India has a huge manpower of IT professional. Setting up a contact center here is cheap and easy. Besides companies like VSNL, TATA provide under cable links (IPLC) connecting Asia continent with America and U.K. This makes it easy to establish voice networks. India is far more advanced and growing to become super power of the world. Some people still think India is a country of snake charmers and have elephants walking on the road. This is far from the truth.
Government Support

Over the last 7 to 10 years the growth in contact center in India has been due to the support from Indian Government. Rules like STPI allows call centers to import good technology without paying import duties. Other benefits in taxes etc. help contact centers in India to be more government friendly for companies from out of India, to come and setup their operation here or to outsource their operations to an Indian company.
Professional workforce

Compared to a call center outside India, the call centers here employ workforce that are well educated and treat this job as a full time job. Unlike U.S and U.K where call center job is considered to be a part time job.

Due to the boom in international call centers in India, domestic contact centers have started understanding the benefits a call center brings to their business and hence are concentrating more on this component of their business. In recent years Domestic call centers in India are increasing on a fast pace hence providing job opportunities to millions of non English speaking Indians. These contact centers are run using local languages. There are total of 1,576 languages spoken in India (1991 census). Out of these 22 languages have been given official status by the Government of India.

BPO terms

2009-12-26T21:29:00.001-08:00

AO
Application Outsourcing

ASP
Application Service Provider

Basel II -

New capital accord that has already been agreed to by most modern countries. It will be a compliance requirement for most financial services players in 2005. It's a complex, massive change to capital adequacy requirements that are enforced by the central banks of about 110 countries.

The most important aspect is the new requirement that capital adequacy be at least partially tied to some of the most basic operational risks inherent to the company’s business.

This new accord will strengthen the market request for true strategic outsourcing to avoid major investments where possible. (See also Comprehensive BPO)

BPO

Business Process Outsourcing

Contracting with an external organization to take primary responsibility for providing a business process or function.

BPO goes further than infrastructure or even workforce. The outsourcing provider takes primary responsibility for ensuring that the process works, interfaces effectively with other company functions, and delivers the outcomes intended.

BPR

Business Process Redesign is "the analysis and design of workflows and processes within and between organizations" (Davenport & Short 1990).

Teng et al. (1994) define business process redesign as "the critical analysis and radical redesign of existing business processes to achieve breakthrough improvements in performance measures."

Business Process

Davenport & Short (1990) define business process as "a set if logically related tasks performed to achieve a defined business outcome." A process is "a structured, measured set of activities designed to produce a specified output for a particular customer or market. It implies a strong emphasis on how work is done within an organization" (Davenport 1993). In their view processes have two important characteristics: (i) they have customers (internal or external), (ii) they cross organizational boundaries, i.e. they occur across or between organizational subunits. One technique for identifying business processes in an organization is the value chain method proposed by Porter and Millar (1985).

Processes are generally identified in terms of beginning and end points, interfaces, and organization units involved, particularly the customer unit. High Impact processes should have process owners. Examples of processes include: developing a new product, ordering goods from a supplier, creating a marketing plan, processing and paying an insurance claim, etc.

Processes may be defined based on three dimensions (Davenport & Short 1990):

Entities: processes take place between organizational entities. They could be interorganizational, interfunctional or interpersonal.

Objects: processes result in manipulation of objects. These objects could be physical or informational.

Activities: processes could involve two types of activities: managerial (e.g. develop a budget) and operational (e.g. fill Out a customer order).

Business Transformation Outsourcing

In business transformation outsourcing companies look for outsourcing partners not only for running their business processes, but transforming them to unlock hidden business value and deliver transformational change.

Collaborative Outsourcing

Collaborative outsourcing involves a cooperative, flexible relationship with the outsourcing provider offering a broader scope of services. The company and its partner frequently define these services jointly. The company may or may not transfer people and assets to the provider.

Comprehensive BPO

Comprehensive BPO providers handle almost all the transactional and administrative processes in a function, or even several functions, such as Marketing, Sales and Customer Contact. Comprehensive BPO prefers global deals, which are typically 7-10 years in length, and are generally over $100 million a year. These providers will buy client assets and will take on hundreds and sometimes thousands of client staff.

Comprehensive providers strive to make interrelated processes more effective, so they aim to reduce the total cost of a function by introducing best practices – such as requiring direct deposit in an OB sales or increasing the customer retention ratio from 1:50 to 1:10. They are accountable for cost savings as well as outcomes for an entire function, so clients pay for outcomes, not inputs (as they have traditionally in outsourcing).

Comprehensive providers shoulder 70 percent of the operational risk of the in scope processes because they are responsible for the information technology, transactions, and administrative elements of those processes. Furthermore, they invest significant amounts of capital in the relationship, and they absorb most client personnel (GMAC example).

Conventional Outsourcing

Conventional outsourcing entails using a niche provider to provide a narrow scope of services through a contractual relationship. Most frequently companies use the provider’s processes to minimize costs. They may or may not transfer people and assets to the provider (Telemarketing for example).

Convergence

Supermarket effect of aggregating multiple products and services in a single brand to grab a greater share of the consumer's wallet.

Most of today's companies even have metrics to measure how well they are doing at grabbing that share of wallet with their converged business models.

This whole concept has developed from use in the finance industry so that retailers, manufacturers and technology companies are thinking like bankers. Today, it would be difficult to deny the fact that the car people (GMAC), the refrigerator people (GE Capital) and Credit Card people (AMEX) have become three of the largest financial services players in the world. Financial Services will grow in meaning for BPO providers.

CPI

Continuous Process Improvement

Effectiveness

The degree to which the features and capabilities of a certain system or process meet the user's needs.

Effectiveness is about how well an “intervention” is achieving its desired aims. In practice there are many different outputs that can be used to measure this:

Process indicators: describing the extent of different forms of activity, and their coverage.

Outcome indicators: describing how an intervention may change activities.

Impact indicators: describing the impact of an intervention on activities.

Often there are many methodological challenges associated with compiling such indicators, and assessing what may be attributable to one or more forms of intervention activity. In general, process indicators are the easiest of the three to monitor and compile over time, and impact indicators are the most difficult to estimate.

The quality of being effective: having the power to produce an effect or effects, producing a decided or decisive effect. Something can be described as effective if it produces the results that it was intended to. A person can also be described as effective if they are skilled in a particular way.

Efficiency

The degree to which a system or process performs its designated functions with minimum consumption of resources.

Obtaining the most possible satisfaction from a given amount of resources. Efficiency for our economy is achieved when we can not increase our satisfaction of wants and needs by producing more of one good and less of another. This is one of the five economic goals, specifically one of the two micro goals (the other being equity).

The state of resource allocation that exists when the highest level of consumer satisfaction is achieved from the available resources. In particular, this feat is accomplished when the price buyers are willing and able to pay for a good - based on the satisfaction obtained - is equal to the price sellers need to charge for a good - based on the opportunity cost of production. In other words, the value (satisfaction) of some thing given up to get a good is the same as the value (satisfaction) of the good produced. Satisfaction won't increase by producing more of either.

The quality of being efficient: working or operating quickly and effectively in an organized way.

ERP

Enterprise Resource Planning

Extended Enterprise

Concept that a company is made up not just of its employees, its board members, and executives, but also its business partners, its suppliers, and its customers (GM example).

Globalization

The elimination of geographic boundaries.

Today's market is much less willing to accept a multinational business model. Instead, the market is becoming much more demanding of a truly global business model - where resources and competencies are deployed without the traditional boundaries of geography, language, currency, culture or even time.

Additional dimensions of globalization are taking their place in the business agenda. Having a global view of the customer, understanding virtually all dimensions of the relationship that consumer has with the company, has become paramount to the most strategic plans of virtually every major company in the marketplace.

SITELs business model “Think global – Act local” with decentralized Bus and a global umbrella of SWW functions and worldwide standards and best practises enables to deliver truly global services in this new business environment.

Industry Volatility

Regardless of a business' industry or geographic location, challenges are compounded by the fact that they are ongoing, unpredictable, and often unmanageable, making the overall business climate volatile and the need for adaptability paramount.

Informationalization

Companies need to get the right information to the right people at the right time in the right place and right format - so that it becomes value for the respective stakeholders.

ITO

Information Technology Outsourcing

Mass Customization

The final business trend that challenges services today. Virtually every developed country in the world is awash in choices. Never before have consumers had such a dizzying choice of virtually everything. Consumers are being trained on all fronts to expect, and get, what they want, when they want it and wherever they want it. The need for best service, one face to the customer service and value oriented performance is also driven by this challenge.

Niche BPO

Niche BPO providers focus on two to four processes. For instance, a company focuses on DRTV and OB Sales. Niche providers will hire the client’s people, but only up to 50 or so. They will invest modest amounts of capital to release some of the client’s asset value. For instance, they will invest money migrating assets to their system or they will buy the assets in their specialist process area.

Niche BPO providers are generally domestic, and their deals range from three to five years in length, with a yearly contract value of $5-10 million. Niche providers aim to make selected processes more efficient, by lowering costs and raising service levels. They are paid based on outcomes, such as lowering turnover or reducing hiring time from 120 days to 90 days.

In niche outsourcing, risk is typically shared evenly between client and provider. Although providers will hire the client’s people and be responsible for outcomes, they only make limited investments in capital and only impact a few processes. Thus, clients continue to shoulder the other processes in a function. So the other internal processes of client and provider are interdependent.

Offshore

Companies based in a different country with advantageous banking and tax rules.

Outsourcing

The subcontracting of business function(s) to an external organization.

(See also Transactional BPO)

ROE

Return On Equity

ROI

Return On Investment

ROMI

Return On Minimized Investment

Strategic Outsourcing

A company's decision to outsource a business process that supports a larger business strategy.

Supply Chain Transformation

Managing and transforming the supply chain to achieve significant impact on cost structure, asset management and global integration.

Typical scope of services includes:

Lead Logistics Provider (LLP) - strategic management and oversight services for all elements of the supply chain

Strategic Sourcing

Process Management

Fulfillment

Streamlined Transactional Buying

Customer Relationship Management

TCO

Total Cost of Ownership

TQM

Total Quality Management

Transactional BPO

Transactional BPO providers handle transactions for only one process. In marketing, for instance, they do not take over a marketing department; they only perform the OB calls. These providers will not buy the client’s existing software to liberate capital and will use their own software at their location. They do not take on the client’s people, their contracts are short (1-2 years), and the contract values are not large ($1-5 million a year).

Working with transactional providers has many benefits, but the more processes are outsourced, the more fragmented the processes become. In essence, there still is an in house department to manage.

Transformational Outsourcing

Contracting with an external organization to take primary responsibility for providing a business process or function.

It goes further than services, communications or applications. The outsourcing provider takes primary responsibility for ensuring that a full process works, interfaces effectively with other company functions, and delivers the outcomes intended. (See also Comprehensive BPO)

Value Based Spending

Trend in business that confronts service companies today. Companies have spent vast amounts of money on infrastructure / asset and have been doing it for years. Global and large regional companies all have budgets that truly challenge the imagination of most experts themselves. Nobody is taking more notice of these budgets than the shareholders of these companies. More and more, there are mandates for value based spending. In a nutshell, shareholders are simply fed up with massive infrastructure / asset spending that doesn't produce measurable value. That doesn't mean the companies were spending foolishly in the past. It simply means they were spending with different criteria and different expectations. Today, however, they expect much more from that infrastructure spending than ever before and understand the value that lies in Comprehensive BPO to give them more value for less investment.

Call Center Based on TDM Solution

2009-11-21T05:32:00.001-08:00

In this solution, I have taken a very simple solution which is normally deployed in some of the Indian Call Centers. Gentle Disclaimer: I have used Manufacturer names just to show case popular solution models. You can replace the same with some other popular or efficient models available in the market.

Here to make you understand easily, I am going to show case how we are evolving to the call flow and equipment used after capturing requirement.

Requirement

Requirement is to build a call center of 50 seats in India.
Only Inbound calls will need to be taken in India.
Calls will be originating from US.
At any given point of time, the call center should be able to handle max of 45 calls.
The agents will need to login to applications. Servers would be in customer location in US.
End customer will call the call center to find out status of flight schedule, for which he has already bought a ticket.

Equipments Used

US
- PRI Circuits: 2 numbers (Dedicated)
- Firewalls: 2 numbers (Dedicated)
- Routers: 2 numbers (Dedicated)
- Nortel Passport: 1 number (Shared)
- IPLC from US to India: 2 Mbps (Dedicated or Shared if the capacity is more)
India
- Avaya ACD: 1 numbers (Shared)
- Nortel Passport: 1 numbers (Shared)
- Domain Controller: 1 numbers (Dedicated)
- Lan Switches: Qty as Required
- Desktops and Avaya Digital Phones: Qty as Required
- Application Servers (On Need Basis)

High Level Network Diagram (click on the image to make it bigger)

Call Flow

As seen in the diagram, the end customer might call using a desk phone / landline or a cell phone / mobile phone.
The customer will use a pre-defined / pre-advertised toll free number.
A Toll free number also called as free-phone or 800 numbers is a special telephone number in that the called party is charged the cost of the calls by the telephone carrier rather than the calling party.
To collect the incoming calls via the toll free number, you need to take PRI lines. Hence the 2 PRI Circuits shown in the diagram above. Our requirement is to set up inbound call center for 50 agents and at any given point of time you need the call center to handle max of 45 calls. A PRI circuit in North America would have 23 B channels, which means one PRI can handle only 23 calls max simultaneously. Hence we choose to use 2 PRI in the above solution.
These PRI will help us in collecting the calls coming via the toll free numbers. We need to collect and bring the calls back to India. Hence we can use a multiplexer like Nortel Passport.
As the Application servers are based out of US – Customer Location, I plan to take a leased line from Customer Location in US to the Colo center in US.
The Data connection can be made secure using a Cisco Firewall, one at customer location and one at Colo Center in US. Please note: The colo center in US is owned by the India call center and is used for connectivity in US.
The leased line connection again can be connected to the Nortel Passport in US.
Now you might be wondering why did we terminate our leased line and voice circuits onto Nortel Passport. Remember Bandwidth is costly and we need to save as much as we can.
There are compression methods for voice which can compress voice to the extent of 1:8. These are called codec's and you need to select the right codec to get the right quality and right compression. Lets assume we are going to use a codec which will compress the voice traffic to 8 kbps per call.
The Nortel Passport acts as a multiplexer. It compresses the voice and also transports both voice and data on the same IPLC which is connecting to the India Call Center.
At the India end, the Nortel passport separates the data and voice and de-compresses the voice as well.
The voice goes to Avaya ACD and data goes to the Cisco router and then the agents desktop via the LAN.
The voice reaches the agents digital phone via the ACD.
I guess this would have helped you by now in understanding how the call reaches the Agent in the India call center.

Some FAQs

Why do we need servers?

Servers can be used for Agents to login to central domain controller.
Servers can be used in case any application servers need to be installed in India.

Do agents need to transfer the call and how?

The Agent might sometime need to transfer the call to his supervisor to handle escalation or transfer the call to another agent for more help. This is the reason we are using Digital Phones in this solution which have multiple lines. The second call to the supervisor / senior agent is initiated on the second line and after establishing the second call, the call can be transferred successfully.

Article Contributed by Raju N

Controversy on WFM (Work force Management software)

2009-11-17T21:47:00.001-08:00

Is work force management software really required in countries like India, Philippines etc where labor is cheap?

You will have people argue about the fact that in countries where labor is cheap we don't really require WFM. This is because WFM helps to minimize the number of agents required to run the call center. The people who say this lack knowledge on the product. They say so because WFM software is very expensive and takes time to implement. These people say that the ROI (Return on investment) is not possible with such expensive product. They prefer agent leaving and hiring new agents to fill the vacancy. To debate on this fact, let's understand what the job of WFM is.

Forecasting
In an inbound call center, the volume of calls on a particular day determines your success. Too less call will mean agents sitting idle and doing nothing. Too heavy calls would mean agents are too busy on calls and not able to take a breather, therefore having frustrated agents and angry customers, also many abandoned calls. WFM uses the previous history, market conditions, other data and helps predict the number of calls expected for the particular day, week or month. This information helps the call center manager to decide how many agents should be logged in at any point of time, to service those calls. Imagine a call center with 10,000 agent spread over 10 locations logged into different ACD. The WFM software predicts the number of calls at each location so that the call center manager can align resources in advance. Would it not help your business to know in advance the volume of the call expected in your call center?
Scheduling
The WFM software not only does the calculation of how many calls are expected, it also tells you how many agents are required to handle those calls. The software gives a breakup hour- wise to tell you the number of agents required per hour to service those calls. Not only this, it also prepares the roster with the names of agent. Does this not sound WOW? Now, you don't need someone to do the forecasting, which is manual and subject to human error, neither do you need someone to do the rostering. All of this is automated. The WFM software knows the number of leaves for an individual, weekly offs, total number of leaves etc. It will use this information to make sure it has not rostered an agent for the day, he was supposed to be on leave.
Empower
While doing the above, this product also empowers the agents to make swap in their attendance. Example - John is rostered to work on Tuesday, but he would like to take that day off since he has to attend a family occasion. John requests Bill to swap his off with his. Both agree for the change. Both now login to the WFM software and swap their leaves. Their supervisor notices the swap and either approves or reject it.

Now looking at the benefits as above, any reasonable person would say that this is not a cost but good investment. Not only my call center manager and supervisors are happy, but my agents are too. This creates a friendly and low stressed environment in the call center. Remember a happy agent means a happy customer. So you are effectively having a win win situation. Happy staff and happy customer means boost in business (sales or customer satisfaction).

Benefit of using Workforce management software

Reduced staffing, administrative and facilities costs.
Improved workforce planning.
Increase revenues and customer satisfaction.
Improved schedule adherence and agent retention.
Enhanced agent productivity and performance across different locations.

Products in the market

eWFM from Aspect Software

Blue Pumpkin from Verint

Austin Logistics

Call Logger for Quality Assurance - Screen and Voice recording

2009-11-16T01:42:00.001-08:00

The agent in the call center is the most important individual as he is sometimes the only contact point for the end customer and most of the times the customer's interaction begins with this contact point. Hence it is very important to maintain quality in call center. Mostly it is to do with call quality monitoring. Call Loggers (call recording) are used in a call center to help the Quality Assurance guy to measure the quality in the call center.

The two types of recorders / loggers which are widely used are:

Voice Logger / Recorder (Call recording)
Data Logger / Recorder (Screen recording)

Voice Loggers

A voice logger is a device, used to record audio on a computer's hard disk or removable media. A Voice logger can be used to hear live calls as well as recorded calls. A Quality Assurance executive uses both live calls as well as recorded calls to assess the agents for quality. The recording is usually in VOX format.

Do all calls get recorded?

It depends on how many calls are recorded. Sometimes it is random recording and sometimes it is a legal requirement to record 100 % of the calls. How much calls to be recorded is configurable on the application used to record the call (Verint, Nice,) Huge space is required to store these calls as there might be a legal requirement again to specify how many years of recording needs to be available at any given point of time. This is very critical for sectors like banking. One needs to be sure of the legal requirements, to avoid facing any issues in future.

What is Barging in?

Live calls can be listened by a Quality Assurance Execute using a software from within the call center premises/network. However there is a way to listen to the live calls from outside the call center. Many Voice Loggers support this feature. This type of monitoring is called remote monitoring. This is typically used when the call center services are outsourced to destinations like South Asia and the outsourcing entity (parent company or customer in this case) is based out of locations like US / UK. Mostly this feature is used by senior management who want to monitor the call quality of live calls randomly.

How do you Barge in ?

Most of the voice loggers support a feature in which case, it integrates with the ACD. The ACD again can be mapped to a toll free number. The person calling into this toll free number might need to enter a pin to get authenticated.

Where the voice logger can be located?

It is ideal to place the voice logger closer to ACD. Most of the software's require a physical integration between the logger and the ACD and also there might be a requirement for both the devices to be close. Please refer to the service manuals of ACD and the logger which you are using. It is always advised to follow the manuals to achieve maximum satisfaction.

What else ?

Apart from all the technical areas discussed above, it is very important for you to train the Quality Assurance Executive on how to use the client software for the voice logger. If he/she does not understand how to use the logger effectively, the whole purpose would be lost. Most of the logger companies offer training to the call center staff when the logger is being installed. Hence it is recommended to include maximum colleagues in the initial training and adopt train the trainer concept to propagate the training later on. This takes care of the cost as the logger companies charge a bomb for training purpose.

Data Logger (Screen recording)

A Data Logger is a device which captures the screen of an agent. This again like a voice logger can be used for real time viewing or recording the screens.

This is used in critical operations like credit card processing facilities, where you want to be sure about how the agent is handling the credit card processing. Here the voice recording is played along with the screen video. This way, the Quality assurance person can see what the agent was doing while he was talking with the caller.

Article Contributed by Raju N

How to reduce cost in a call center

2009-11-13T02:33:00.001-08:00

Reducing cost has become a key factor in various businesses. The thump rule is 'Reduce cost and increase profits'. Well, this may be true, but not always realistic. Cost cutting may benefit the business in one way but will affect it in another. There has to be a balance between reducing cost, at the same time making sure that you do not compromise of Productivity, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and company goals. For example, reducing staff may help you bring down your overall overheads but will also make the other employees unsecure. This will definitely affect the quality of service delivered by remaining employees. So the question is, how do I make cost cutting effective for my business? Well, I do not know your business & your goals hence cannot suggest to you, which measure shown below will work for you. However these points will set your thinking process and help you to make a calculated cost cutting measures.
To reduce cost, we need to first understand, what are the factors that contribute to cost/expense in your contact center? There are 2 types of expenses.

CAPEX (Capital expense) – Fixed expense. Onetime expense.
OPEX (Operating expense) – Recurring expense.

More information on CAPEX

More information on OPEX

I would not suggest you do cost cutting in CAPEX. Since this is an investment in your business and will yield you returns in the long run. CAPEX will involve things like infrastructure, technology, licensing, patents, etc.
OPEX would involve things like salaries, maintenance cost, rent, stationery, monthly telecom billing, annual maintenance contract, travel etc.

Salaries – this is one of the basic components of any business and contributes to major cost in an organization. This being the fact, it is found that most companies prefer reducing employees from their existing pool by firing them from job. Doing this will negatively affect the moral of other employees as well as create a negative image for the company. Great thinkers believe that removing employees is not the right way to target this cost cutting measure. They suggest reducing the salaries of all the employees by a small proportion. Probably 5%, reducing 5% salary of an employee would not really make an impact on his pay packet, but collectively it will be a huge cost cutting measure for the company. By doing this, the company can retain their existing employees and also achieve the target of reducing cost.
Maintenance Cost – This would involve electricity, stationery, rent, repairs, etc. Many a time, it is found that employees misuse the facilities given to them. For example: before leaving the office, the employees do not switch off their PC's. Also the air-conditioning is running in areas where no one is sitting. Stationary is being used and is not accounted for, as a result employees are unnecessarily printing documents and then destroying them. Thought these seam small, it works out to be a major cost when looked at the profit and loss statement at the end of the year. These can be controlled by awareness, probably putting up boards at some locations reminding employees to switch off PC's, use less paper etc. Companies should also reward employees who are adhering to these norms. I know off a company, who asked employees to suggest ways for cost cutting. They came up with brilliant ideas. At the end of the survey, the best suggestions were picked up and implemented. The person's giving these suggestions were also rewarded. Also, since these suggestions were from within the employees, they were accepted by all without any resistance.
Telecom bill – This is another major expense item for a call center. The business of a call center is to make out bound calls and to receive inbound calls. Almost always the incoming calls are toll free and the call charges are also billed to the company. So how can you save money?
1. Inbound – Since inbound calls are paid by the company, it is a general tendency of customer to call the call center as many times as they choose and also to wait in queue as long as it takes. An inbound call center should make sure that this cost for telecommunication is minimized. One of the ways is by minimizing the wait time for caller in queue i.e. ASA (Average speed of answer). Also promote FTR (first time resolution) so that the caller does not have to call back again. Another way to handle this is by rerouting the call to anther campaign or queue that has available agent.
2. Outbound – Here the call center is blasting out calls. Many a times an agent has to make many calls to a single caller to get the right person on the call. The unwanted calls and the recurring calls can be reduced by doing some optimization on the call table or doing profiling for every account that is called. The aim here is to contact the customer at the time he is available. This can be done by viewing the past history of the customer and determining the best time to call. There are many software available that do the BTC (best time to call) calculation in dialers.
AMC (Annual maintenance contract) – This is a recurring expense usually for technology related products and services. Every attempt should be made to check details offered by other service providers and take the best bid or negotiate better rate from existing service provider. This should be reviewed periodically to make sure you are getting the best deal.
Travel – This component also contributes to expense in a call center. The purpose of the travel and the requirement of the travel need to be analyzed. It probably may not require a person to travel. Example – Mr.Brown needs to travel from Cincinnati to Chicago for a business meeting. This meeting does not need face to face interaction, hence Mr.Brown can attend the meeting over a 'Live Meeting' online session. Microsoft Office Communicator solution is gaining popularity due to this feature.

Top 10 Etiquette of call center

2009-11-03T07:32:00.001-08:00

The following should be followed as rules by agent of a call center. This will ensure a good call experience to the customer.

Greeting – This is the first step in taking or making a call. An agent should make sure that the greeting does not sound very casual. The customer should feel important and special when greeted. The tone in the voice of the agent should be polite and not sound machine like. "Good evening Mr. John, Thank you for calling us" This can be said with a flat tone. The customer should feel that the agent is genuine in his greeting and not doing it as a formality. Make every attempt to use the customer's name in your greeting. The sweetest music to any human being is to hear his name.
Listen to the customers concern and do not interrupt – Many agents make the mistake of interrupting the customer while he is speaking. Give the customer all the time he needs to finish is explaining or vent his frustration. Listening to him without interrupting will make him feel relaxed and satisfied; interrupting him in between will make him more irate. Listening is a virtue, and the first step of a healthy communication.
Don't sound sleepy or uninterested – You may be tired and bored taking so many calls and may be this is your last few calls. Make every attempt to sound energetic & enthusiastic about speaking to the customer. The caller on the other end will surely notice in your voice that you are not really happy to speak to him. This may make him feel unimportant and you probably will miss a sale. Every call is important and should be handled with the same courtesy and respect.
Treat every call as new call – During your shift, you will encounter all type of people. Some angry, others sad, some happy and others enthusiastic. Make sure you don't carry the emotions from the previous call to the next call. Example, your previous call was with a dissatisfied irate customer who gave you a tuff time. The tendency would then be to carry your emotions to the next call. This may turn out to be a blunder and ultimately will have an unhappy customer plus you are unhappy too.
Do not react negatively to angry and irate customer – As human, the basic tendency would be for an individual to react in the same way as the opposite. If the opposite person is kind and polite, you tend to behave the same. But what if the caller is angry and annoyed? Will you behave the same? The answer is 'NO'. You should make every attempt to calm the caller and give him the assurance that you will do all in your power to help him resolve his issue. Never take his comments personally. He is angry with the company, not you. You probably don't understand the troubles he has gone through and hence is angry. Converting an angry customer to satisfied one is in your hands, use this power.
Speak slowly and clearly – An agent should keep in mind that the communication channel is voice only. He cannot see the caller on the other side; neither can the caller see the agent. Speaking fast may confuse the caller and may cause misunderstandings. Speak slowly and clearly. This will enhance customer experience.
Don't eat or drink while talking – Avoid having anything in your mouth while speaking to the caller. You may feel that the opposite party will not know, but the sensitive microphone on your head set may pick up the sound and this will muffle your sound. You may eat or drink during your break or in between calls, not during a call.
Don't breath or sneeze into the microphone – Remember the microphone you are using will magnify the sound. Keep the microphone away from your nose so that the sound of your breathing doesnot interferes in your communication. Mute your phone in case you need to sneeze or cough.
Do not give wrong information – There will definitely be calls when customer may ask you question for which you don't know the answer. Never try to provide wrong information or misguide the caller. This may cause major repercussions which may even affect your credentials in your company. In case you don't know the answer, politely tell the caller you don't and try to get the answer. You may want to promise a callback after getting the details. Not knowing the answer will not affect your rating, in fact your customer will appreciate your honesty.Search Amazon.com for call center agents
Manners are important – Don't forget your manner in the call. Make sure you use the word like 'sorry' 'thank you' 'you are welcome' 'I appreciate your patience' etc on the call.

Key Performance Indicators of call center

2009-10-14T06:55:00.001-07:00

Average Handle Time (AHT) – Refers to how long a contact was managed. Quick, Accurate and complete resolution on every call. This is the average time an agent spent talking to customer. Every contact center will have a fixed measurement by which they set bars to how much time an agent should spend on a call. This may differ from call center to call center. For example for a customer care call center the average handle time may be 3 min but for a technical call center the average handle time would be 10 min. If the agent spends more time on the call (greater than the stipulated time) it would mean that the agent is less productive. This factor would directly affect total number of customers serviced in the call center.

Total Talk Time + Total Hold Time + Total Wrap up Time
Total Number of calls answered
Agent occupancy – Refers to the percentage of time the agent is productive with customer. Occupancy would mean the amount of time the agent is productive (talking and After call work). The idle agent occupancy is 80%. Having too low agent occupancy would mean that the agent is not productive. Having too high occupancy would mean that the agent is too burdened and will cause burn out, which in effect will cause high attrition. This percentage needs to be managed so that there is a balance between agent productivity and not cause agent burnout. Formula is total signed in time divided by idle time or available time.
TALK TIME + ACW TIME + HOLD TIME + BREAK TIME
(TALK TIME + ACW TIME +HOLD TIME + IDLE TIME)
Conversion rates (SPH) – Refers to percentage of connects converted to actual sales. This is the main parameter used by a sales call center to measure the performance on a hour to hour basis. Sales per hour tells the contact center manger if they are achieving the targets for the day or not.

Retention rates – Refers to percentage of existing customer an agent was able to convince to stay back. The main job of the agents of this call center is to try to make sure the customers donot leave their service and for whatever reason. Example - John wanted to discontinue his credit card because the contact center had put penalty on his account for delay payment done by him. In this case the job of the agent is to try and convince John not to cancel his card and to continue using it.

CSAT - Refers to Customer satisfaction level. This is a parameter which cannot be judged just by statistic from reports data etc. A separate department or a third party agency is asked to conduct a survey with existing customer. This is done on the web or through a phone call. The customer is call and asked to answer few questions related to how he would rate the accuracy of information, call experience, satisfaction level during the interaction with the customer etc. Usually 80% CSAT score is considered to be optimal, but this may differ from business to business.

FTR (First time resolution) – Refers to the percentage of customers who did not call the second time. First time resolution is a very important factor in a inbound call center. This would typically tell the company how good the agents are at solving or answering queries from customer. An agent of a call center is expected to resolve the issue or answer the question of the caller in a single call. The caller calling again would mean that the caller was not satisfied with the answer provided by the previous agent. Since inbound contact center usually have a toll free number, with would also mean additional cost to the customer.

RTP (Right party contact) – Refers to contact made to the correct person. This measurement is used in a collection contact center. Right party contact means that the agent has spoken to the right person or an authorized person (customer). Example. Steven owes money to xyz company. If I manage to get Steven on the call its give me a better chance of recovering my money. Instead of Steven, if I get his brother or Mother , the chances of collecting money from Steven is lesser.

WPC (Wrong party contact) – Refers to the wrong person contacted. This is the exactly opposite of Right party contact. In a collection environment if I get anyone other that the customer on the phone. It would be WPC.

Penetration – For outbound only. This parameter would tell you how many records have been dialed from the batch of calltable. Example. Total records available for dialing are 50,000. In that day, 2, 00,000 records were dialed. This gives a penetration of 400%. Typically a call center would like to penetrate a file at least 100% to a max or 500%. This figure needs to be managed. Too much penetration means that customers have been called more than once and this may would affect cost per contact. Penetration lower than 100% would mean that not all the customers were contacted and this would mean loss in productivity.

Service level – How quick the caller was attended to. Example 80% calls in 20 sec. Service level would refer to inbound call center only. The aim of every contact center is to make sure the caller does not stay in queue for long and is attended to as soon as possible. 80/20 parameter would be your service level, this means that 80% of the calls coming in should be serviced in less than 20 sec.

Contact per hours – Number of "Hello" against dialed numbers. This would be used typically in a outbound call center. The aim of every outbound call center is to get a live person. For doing this they use the concept of pacing. This means number of calls per idle agent. When calls are made out of a contact center, not all calls will lead to a human (live person). Only 20% of the calls would actually hit a human voice. The rest may be answering machines, no answer, busy, SIT tone, bad numbers etc. For doing this contact centers use predictive dialer that does call progress analysis (detection). Only the calls that are positive are sent to agents to be serviced. Rest are disconnected and disposed respectively.

ASA - Average speed of Answer is the average time a caller was in queue before the call was transfer to a agent. The aim of every contact center is to minimize this as far as possible.
Formula: Average wait time
Abandoned Rate – Percentage of callers who disconnected in Queue. Customer may not be ready to stay in queue for long and will hang-up waiting to be connected to an agent. This would mean loss in sale, loss opportunity, and irate customer. It's the aim of every contact center to reduce abandoned rate, if possible, eliminate it totally. Industry standard is 3% to 5%

Competitive Maturity Assessment

Survey results show that the firms enjoying Best-in-Class performance share several common characteristics:
• 86% have a quality monitoring solution installed
• 86% provide coaching and training for their agents
• 62% provide their agents and customers with sufficient access to company data

Required Actions
In order to achieve or maintain Best-In-Class status within the contact center, companies must:
• Align the goals of the contact center with those of the company as a whole
• Implement a whole call analytics solution to enable employees to review and understand the entire agent and customer interaction from the moment a customer dials into the contact center until he hangs up
• Employ speech analytics in order to provide more robust analytic capabilities that will allow for better insight into key performance indicator improvements ----Source Aberdeen Group

Terminologies

ACW – After call work.

Wrap time – Time spend on after call work immediately after hanging up the call.

Idle time – Agent in available state, waiting for call.

Talk time – Time when the call is connected to agent and active.

Hold time – Amount of time agent placed the caller on hold.

Break time – The amount of time the agent spends on break mode on the system.
AUX time - Similar to Break time.

Companies offering Call Center Solution

2009-09-10T05:39:00.000-07:00

Aspect Software – One of the leaders in contact center solution. Aspect software is dedicated in providing call center solution which ranges from ACD's, Predictive Dialers, Performance Management or enhancement solution, Work Force Management (WFM) etc. Recently the company has collaborated with Microsoft Corporation to provide Unified Communication solutions (OCS). The products names are as follows:

Unified IP – Supports all functionality including Predictive Dialer, ACD (inbound), IVR, Recording, Quality management, email, chat etc.
Spectrum – ACD only.
Aspect ACD – ACD only.
eWFM – Workforce management solution (Forecasting, scheduling and Rostering).
Conversation – Predictive Dialer.
Performance Edge – Analytical tool.

Avaya Corporation – Another major market player. This company is mainly into PBX and ACD (Inbound). The solution is hardware based and hence is more reliable and stable. Avaya also provided Predictive dialers and Unified Communications solution.

Cisco – This Company is mainly into providing network related products. Almost all the companies you would know of, or uses Cisco in some form or the other. May it be Data Switches, Router, Firewall etc. As far as contact center is concern the company provides a solution called 'Cisco Call Manager'

TSGCFQ2MJD5C