30 Ideas in 30 minutes - 2
To: Call Center Campus 2003- Purdue University
Below you will find the ideas suggested by people at the 30 ideas in 30 seconds session. If you were there you probably have some of this. If you were not there you will find something of interest. As always any errors…omissions…. misrepresentations are my fault.
Participants- Mike Trotter (Purdue), Dru Phelps (Benchmarkportal), M Lanagan (CenterPartners), Paul Kowal (Kowal and Associates) , D Morgan (Contact Strategy), T Finn ( )
Reporter---your very biased…very witty…very bright..and extremely Richard Gere looking-type Richard Feinberg.
Save money by determining why you have after call work and minimizing it. Based on Benchmarkportal data if you can save 2 minutes and you take 2 million calls you are saving at least 800,000
Invite a manager/director from another division or section of the company to lunch. Talk about the Call Center so that they understand what you are doing and try to figure out what you can do to help them. At the least you maintain and build a relationship…and you never know when these allies will be useful. You also never know how you can be useful to others and that has payoffs that can’t be predicted.
IVR- We listen to our calls but do you ever listen to how consumers talk to your IVR…and they do talk. Most IVR’s have this capability.
We measure everything but we are not sensitive to the balance between efficiency and effectiveness. Efficiency is easy to measure and we tend to overemphasize them (ASA is efficiency). Effectiveness may be more important (e.g., customer satisfaction). There are 2 very important things here. Thing 1….you get what you measure. If you emphasize ASA your CSR’s will find ways to lower ASA (if you want to increase ASA they will do that too- yea right). Thing 2…Since effectiveness is usually what we want to do (once and done, problem resolution) you may find that many of the efficiency measures really are not important so you can stop measuring them. Thing 3…bonus…if you measure efficiency and effusiveness you can do the research necessary to find out how efficiency is related to effectiveness and this is really important.
Part of our problem in getting recognition within our organizations is because we call ourselves call centers and we have customer service representatives or telephone service representatives. In fact we are information specialists and we run Information or Satisfaction centers. Our agents do more than answer phones they satisfy and illuminate and educate and what we call them does not reflect this. Words have meaning….titles have meaning…and we are trapping ourselves by what we call ourselves.
Do the numbers on upselling. If the average sale is $300 and you can increase to $325 25% of the time and you have 2 million calls and 25% of these are upsold…you can incrementally increase revenue by . How much would you be willing to invest in education and training to get to $325? And let me tell you…the Big Bosses love it when they see the Call Center (or Fred – see #8 below) making money.
17 people every year are electrocuted by hair dryers…just wanted to see if you were paying attention.
Call the call center something spectacular. One center changed its name to Everest center. They built their culture around climbing mountains and other Everest themes. And now when asked where they work they could respond…”I work at Everest. Hmmmmmm. If you call your center The Richard you get a Purdue sweatshirt.
Let agents listen to themselves…they are their harshest critics.
Involve frontline agents in all task force and cross functional strategic and operational teams. Good to increase involvement, creativity, morale, and you might get some god ideas.
First person to e-mail me who said the following on who said this on what TV Show wins a Purdue T Shirt…”Ladies and Gentleman take my advise pull down your pants and slide on the ice.” No wagering decision of the judges is final.
Don’t just tell them what to do tell them why. You almost never lose when you provide context.
We all monitor calls for quality and we usually do it randomly or at least unknown to the CSR. Do it this way instead……I will pick an hour to record and monitor and you pick an hour.
Go through your own training…you will be surprised and what is going on…many times you will be shocked.
How do you handle internal customers?
Force your Agents to call 3 customers…and tell them they have to talk to them for 3 minutes about things…the company…the call center…the products…the services…Collect the information and share.
Train and educate supervisor with the same seriousness you train and educate frontline.
It is not just money…what makes the agents tick and how can you structure an individualized reward and incentive program based on unique interests and likes. Difficult certainly…worth it YES.
On one side of the page list all the reports you generate. Circulate the list and ask each person what they use and how they use it….enough said.
Engage in behavior and results based training.
How many of you are the person that is tough to work with? We put fluoride in the water what about Prozac in the cooler?
List your three most difficult people…then select some special problem you need to solve. Ask them to work with you on that problem. It works.
Instead of numbers graph it. Graphs show trends. A 3 second increase in talk times may be seasonal and when you graph it is very easy to see. I use to graph a “Whine Index”…the ratio of in office visits to in office visits that were complaint based.
One quality assessment doth not make a trend.
Develop a peer recognition program. Each CSR has a chance to organize and deliver special recognition to a peer.
Brown bag retention lunches between you and them.
Take your reports and chuck emmm…start over. Just do what is important. “We measure errors per thousand.” We have gotten them down to 1 per thousand and it has been that way for ten years.” Why do you continue to measure it…because we have measured it for 20 years?” Hmmmm.
When I hear CSR’s talk in acronyms I start to speak to them in French and see how long it takes them to get it.
Let people who do the job redesign it.
Coffee talks…informal hour long manager to worker…mano to mano…
Sumo wrestling day…just kidding
Write an informal newsletter (e.g., The Buzz)…events….who is new…profiles…interesting stuff…anniversaries….and what is going to happen.
Monthly 360 degree peer reviews. Everyone ranks everyone and it is published.
Fun Ambassadors for tours. People who tour the center should have fun and get stuff. Increases good will.
Big ticket drawing at he end of the year and you earn tickets to the drawing throughout the year. A car or 15k might add up to the same cost but have a bigger impact.
After a tour goes through the center ask for feedback.
The 1 idea club…modeled after Stew Leonard’s. Pack them into a van (on your dollar) take them to some business or other call center the only stipulation being that they have to come up with 1 idea each.
Have Gown and Tuxedo day…. Or just wear your fanciest once a month.
Have a break on me…anytime you want …once a (week, month, …) whenever you want I will take your calls for 30 minutes and you get a break.
Go and print love notes…give it out to people and tell them that they have to write these to three others who have done good work.
Collect fun and interesting facts about your people and publish it….favorite movie…favorite veggie…fav restaurant…philosophy of life…touch with greatness…secret hobby…favorite book…interesting family member…best impression…and on and on and on. (I found a student whose grandfather invented white out…and the twinkie..a cousin of Nelson Rockefeller…a nephew to Michaels). I once had Mohammad Ali in my cab and a cop once jumped in my cab and said “follow that car”…and drunk but amorous people who did not let my presence get in the way of an awfully good show. You never know.
Put a board on a cubicle and everyone has to write something special and interesting and nice about that person.
30 day focus groups…60 day focus groups…both critical points of time for CSR turnover. Have a Human resource….Training…Director…at the Focus groups.
Same person cannot win all the time.
Yo…..