| One of the best ways to plan for future success is to | | | | schedule adherence and occupancy percentage. |
| conduct a postseason analysis. I'll explain how to | | | | 3. Review hiring and training practices. Labor's cost, |
| perform a postseason analysis of your center as a | | | | quality and availability is becoming an issue for many |
| baseline for customer service, process improvement | | | | call centers, particularly in seasonal businesses where |
| and cost reduction. | | | | the selling curve is more compressed. Review your |
| Here's a step-by-step guide to the postseason | | | | advertising media costs and results, and exchange |
| analysis. | | | | information with other human resource departments. |
| 1. Form a postseason review team. Because your | | | | Review your prehiring testing, employee selection |
| efforts are directed at customer service, process | | | | criteria and practices. Is there a place for temporary |
| improvement and potential cost reduction, form a team | | | | agencies rather than relying completely on in-house |
| that can bring different disciplines to the process. While | | | | hiring? Should more calls be shunted off to outsourced |
| much of the work will fall to contact center | | | | call centers? |
| management (managers and supervisors), broaden the | | | | From a training perspective, how well did you train the |
| group to involve a few good reps. Also include general | | | | CSRs to take orders and provide customer service? |
| training and quality training, human resources, center | | | | In our experience, there's a considerable cost ($3,000 |
| scheduling, telecom traffic, IT, marketing, and returns | | | | to $10,000 per new hire) and loss of time by senior |
| and replacement if all of these areas are within your | | | | associates to hire and train new CSRs before they're |
| responsibilities. | | | | productive. How can this be improved (number of |
| Clearly, contact center management drives the | | | | classes and trainers; develop better training |
| process. But this effort should draw on the opinions | | | | approaches such as e-learning, post-training surveys, |
| and input of all. Challenge them to assess how things | | | | length of training)? |
| could be done differently, and make them answer the | | | | 4. Evaluate revenue generation. As part of their |
| question, "How can costs be reduced without lowering | | | | mission, many contact centers are charged with |
| customer service?" These meetings should occur | | | | becoming revenue centers in addition to taking orders |
| sometime between mid-January and mid-February, | | | | and providing customer service. What do your reports |
| giving you enough time to plan and achieve early | | | | show about your success with cross-selling, upselling, |
| results. | | | | outbound selling and increasing the company's average |
| 2. Review your metrics. Begin by reviewing your key | | | | order? |
| performance indicators and how performance | | | | 5. Consider process improvements. What does your |
| measures up against your standards and plans. The | | | | quality and call monitoring show about your operation? |
| major metrics include contacts per hour; service level; | | | | As you walk through your system and operation, |
| abandon rate; attrition/turnover rate; call-handle time; | | | | where are the bottlenecks? How can systems be |
| talk time; after-call work time; contact-to-order ratio; | | | | streamlined? What functions and types of information |
| transaction volumes for Internet, phone and mail; | | | | can your system do more easily online? If you're still |
| non-phone volumes and others. How accurate were | | | | processing batches of mail orders, can scanning |
| marketing's projections and your projections for calls? | | | | reduce costs? How can live chat and e-mail |
| Labor is 50 percent to 70 percent of the contact | | | | management systems improve your operation? Do |
| center's costs. So it's important to see how well you | | | | you need to move to the next level of call-scheduling |
| performed in terms of staffing-level accuracy, | | | | software? |