A virtual investigation of global contact center technologies

Customer Inter@ction Solutions, Apr 2001 by Tehrani, Rich

My friends often tell me they wish they had my job, as I get to travel regularly. On the surface, it may seem glamorous, but the boring part of my travel schedule is that it usually takes me to the same U.S. cities, month after month and year after year.

What I need is a change; perhaps some travel abroad. Europe comes to mind as a place that is full of interesting technology I have yet to explore. It's not that I haven't had many opportunities to leave U.S. borders...I've just had my hands full with trips to very familiar cities.

As a result of my limited international travel, I haven't been covering companies located outside the U.S. as well as I should and as much as I would like. So I have decided to make up for my oversight by discussing my recent visits with three companies that have European headquarters. What better way to whet our appetites for technologies that aren't "home grown?"

I have decided the best way to start my "International tour" is in order of proximity to the U.S.,just as if I were flying from company to company (I wish!) My first virtual stop is in Ireland. I recently met with Performix Technologies (www;.performixtechnologies.com), an Irish company with is roots in CRM consulting. The truth be told, I actually met with them in their Massachusetts-based office...a two-and-a half-hour drive from TMC's Connecticut headquarters.

CRM Falls Flat?

Performix's business philosophy is that without trained employees, CRM will fall flat. Fof this reason, they have developed Emvolve Performance Manager, which they tell me is a unique software solution that improves bottom-line performance in the contact center by increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of employees working at the customer contact level.

It can be argued that the effectiveness of a contact center is difficult to measure and as such, you can't tell whether it is increasing or decreasing. As a result, Performix's philosophy is, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it." By not only measuring agent performance, but also charting it, they are able to bring the ends of the bell curve more toward the center. Furthermore, performance data are made available to the agents themselves so they can measure their own progress and set goals for themselves.

Performix Technologies told me their software increases both morale and productivity, and the company points to an install in a phone company in which their system is said to have improved morale and reduced average talk time by 17 percent.

In case your contact center is smaller than the average phone company, you may be inclined to ask just how big a contact center needs to be before such a software system can be of use. The company said 50 agents is a good starting point and that they see service agencies, banks, travel companies and service providers as some of their future growth areas. They stress, however, there is no reason why their solutions would not work for any sufficiently large contact center, regardless of its business.

To give you an idea of how the system works, we need to delve into what it is being measured. One such area is human resources assets such as empathy, technical skills and trouble-shooting. They can also break down business goals into achievable objectives -- anything that can be measured, such as wait time, hold time, satisfaction, sales, team contribution, sickness or absence. Users can even rank agents in their team meetings by tracking the number of interactions in which they are involved.

Performix's product also measures things such as the amount of Web collaboration conducted, the number of contacts made or the percentage of closed business on the first contact or even by the number of products sold per call. The goal is obviously to improve these percentages.

Discouraging absences. Another interesting feature of this solution is its ability to set up sickness and absence bonuses by team. In this way, team peer pressure encourages workers to show up for work. Performix assures me this type of system does not victimize workers and does indeed drive performance, as the team is able to receive award values based upon an array of performance metrics.

You may be wondering how to assign objectives to individual workers. The easiest way is to set up teams in which each team has various sets of objectives. What do you want the team to do? You can ask them to improve their level of quality, their conversion rate, team initiative, the number of leaflets sent out, their schedule adherence, etc.

Managing agents and managers. It is important to point out that you can now not only accurately measure agent performance, you can manage the performance of the managers as well. Another important point is that you can evaluate the effect of a training class on all agents instantaneously. Finally, the busy work and difficulty is mostly removed from the monthly and quarterly review process as the criteria for these reviews is' now collected and graded electronically. Think of the time and pain saved with a feature such as that!