Blog Host: Oscar Alban - Principal global market consultant, Witness Systems READ ENTIRE BIO

In one instance I was observing agents' interactions. The company had spent millions on a new CRM system, yet when that system came up on the agents screens, they went out of it to one of the six legacy systems they had been using forever! I could just imagine the expression on the face of the person who authorized the purchase of that system! Good luck getting the ROI on that one! When I asked the agents why they were doing that, they told me that they had not been trained properly on it and that the flow of screens was not conducive to their conversations with their customers! This is a problem. What are some of you doing to address this situation?
Posted by Oscar Alban Hiring good people
19 MAY 2005 08:47 EDT (12:47, GMT)
Although many of us have known this for a long time, it seems that technology providers are catching up to it: If you don't hire the right people to represent your company on the front line as contact center agents, you are risking your ability to deliver great service. This area is receiving more press. I have actually observed interviews where the hiring supervisor is actually trying to talk the candidate into accepting the job because he/she has hours to meet and needs "butts in seats." And we wonder why we have huge attrition numbers! Is this an area that your contact center is looking into? Let me know.
Posted by Oscar Alban Managed and hosted contact center services
18 MAY 2005 22:18 EDT (02:18, GMT)
It appears that managed and hosted contact center services are the wave of the future, especially for the small to medium contact center market. The 33- to 100-seat centers are the fastest growing segment of the market. Many of these operations don't have the budgets that their larger counterparts have, which is why managed and hosted services are so appealing. There have been some early adopter vendors who have made interesting inroads in this area. One such company was Ineto, which was bought by Siebel and is now branded as Siebel On-Demand. From an IT professional's point of view this could provide benefits and concerns. I'm curious to hear what people have to say about this growing trend.
Posted by Oscar Alban Cross-pollination
17 MAY 2005 14:12 EDT (18:12, GMT)
If you were to ask any IT person what their call center's most critical initiatives are for the quarter, would they just stare at you with glazed eyes? If you were to ask a front-line operations manager what are the top three critical initiatives for IT this quarter, would they be able to rattle them off right away? Probably not. And that is where the problem is. You see, delivering great customer service and providing value to the corporation is everyone's responsibility. Each person or group plays an integral role through their specific area of expertise. However, if we don't know what each other's pains and victories are, how can we truly achieve our goals?

When I was a call center director, each Monday morning the HR manager, IT manager and I had a breakfast meeting. They shared with me all of the issues they were working on, and I shared with them all of the challenges facing me in the management of the center. We called ourselves the Three Amigos. This helped us all to understand how decisions we were making in our respective areas affected the others. It also allowed us to get different perspectives on things, and as a result we had some pretty creative solutions. You might say, "The call center managers never invite us to anything," and that may be true. However, you as the IT professional may need to make the first move and either invite them to your meeting or ask if you can go to theirs. As technology continues to evolve as breakneck speed so will the way we conduct business.
Posted by Oscar Alban The chasm between call center management and executives
16 MAY 2005 20:18 EDT (00:18, GMT)
It appears that there is a huge gap between call center management and the executive suite.

This was the topic of discussion at a recent contact center leadership meeting. The core issue was the fact that executives may not fully understand the value of their call centers to the enterprise.

Too many times they look at them as necessary evils. A place for customers to call with questions or complaints. They demand that call center managers continue to drive down costs; however, at the same time make customers happy. An oxymoron if I ever saw one! In many cases this is having a negative affect on call center IT personnel who are trying to get resources, whether they be people or technology, in order to be able to support their centers' efforts. One of the discussion points was that call center management, both IT and operations, need to "market" themselves internally.

What do we mean by this? Well, most call centers provide reports up the line. Typically these reports include how many calls were taken, average time in queue, abandon rate, adherence level and so on. No wonder executives view call centers as tactical, overhead operations and not strategic. Although someone -- not sure who -- needs to see this, we also need to report the "strategic" stuff. This could include information customers are telling you about your competition, feedback on your new razzle-dazzle customer loyalty program that customers don't find so great or the fact that if you had one additional offering to your solution, you would be able to keep 20% more customers. This is tune that most executives listen to. Now you are talking their language. Once you have proven yourself in this area and created a track record of "wins," it becomes much easier to ask for money when budget time roles around. How are others attacking this issue?
Posted by Oscar Alban Point solution, suite solution or bundled solutions
13 MAY 2005 22:09 EDT (02:09, GMT)
There have been debates regarding the purchase of technology from point-solution verses suite vendors. With point-solution vendors you can purchase a single piece of technology such as workforce management, and from a suite provider you have the opportunity to purchase several solutions. This could include workforce management, quality monitoring and e-learning. The problem has been that some suite providers have done a good job integrating their solutions and some have not.

As a result of this a new (at least for the contact center) breed of providers is emerging: the bundled solutions. This concept allows you to purchase one license for a software solution that provides you with functionality of workforce management, quality monitoring, e-learning and performance management in one. The idea here is that you would be able to receive a piece of software that is tightly woven together in order to create a synergistic solution. This also is intended to address the ongoing issue of cost of ownership. I'd be curious to hear if anyone has thoughts or experience with this type of offering.
Posted by Oscar Alban Getting ready for VoIP?
12 MAY 2005 23:38 EDT (03:38, GMT)
There is a lot of hype around VoIP and in some cases rightfully so. Whenever I meet a contact center director or vice president, I ask them what their strategy is going to be around VoIP. To my surprise, too many answer with a very nebulous response. Others don't know. I classify VoIP with death and taxes; it is inevitable. The call center industry has had the same structure for the last hundred years. The only difference is we automated many of the functions that were done manually such as scheduling agents, monitoring and payroll. With VoIP we have the opportunity to truly create something new and different. In fact the call center is THE killer app for VoIP! We have the opportunity to redefine what we call a contact center or who an agent is for that matter! We will be able to create the truly virtual contact center.

To a great extent we will be able to do this at a better cost, since a lot of CTI investment will no longer be required. Those who understand this and begin to dream and plan will be the winners. Those who proceed with business as usual will be left behind. Which one will your organization be?
Posted by Oscar Alban Are you re-engineering your quality assurance program?
11 MAY 2005 22:09 EDT (02:09, GMT)
Whenever a company is going to purchase technology for the contact center, one of the key exercises is to determine what the expected return on investment (ROI) is going to be. More and more contact centers are beginning to use that same concept for their own internal operations. One of the areas that executives are asking about is their internal Quality Assurance (QA) program. In several situations I have been involved with, the answer was not good. They found that the internal ROI was not very good. In a couple of cases they were going to do away with the program entirely!

When I have been asked to provide my perspective in some of these situations, I have found one common thread that is causing the dismal findings. Most of the time these QA groups are monitoring and evaluating the contact center agents. They, in turn, pass their findings to the supervisors who then review these findings with the agents. In some cases the QA agents go directly to the agents and coach them on these findings, totally eliminating the supervisor. No wonder it is a problem! In all these cases I ask, "If this is what your QA group is doing, then why do you need supervisors?" To which I get a very puzzled look.

Here is what I recommend should take place to experience a very high ROI on this important function. First of all get back to basics. Supervisors should be held accountable for agent development. Period. This is more important than administrative work, special projects and analysis of data. There are people who can do this for them. Think of it this way: The average cost of hiring and training a new agent is $8,300.

Most of the attrition takes place within the first 90 days out of initial training. There is no way this investment is being recouped. If your center is running a conservative 15% agent attrition rate, you are loosing money; and if your one of the many centers that are hemorrhaging with an attrition rate of 40% or more, you are dying! The supervisor should be looked at as the protector of the investment you have made in these agents!

I'm sure you've heard the statement by now, "Agents leave supervisors, not companies." If the supervisors are now going to be responsible for monitoring and coaching of their agents, then where does this leave your QA group? It allows this group to now monitor for strategic issues such as execution against executive goals, how the brand is being supported (or not) through interactions, where process breakdowns are taking place and root-cause analysis of why customers are calling in the first place. This is when the ROI on your quality assurance program goes through the roof and you find that you cannot live without it. It also means that the IT group is going to have to be ready to meet the challenge in supporting this initiative.
Posted by Oscar Alban How are you dealing with IVR?
10 MAY 2005 23:54 EDT (03:54, GMT)
Almost all call centers have implemented IVR self-service, yet customer feedback tells us that an overwhelming majority of customers hate going into "IVR-hell"! The thought has been use the IVR as a self-service tool in order to elevate phone call traffic when in reality it appears to be creating upset customers!

What is the answer? I am curious how call center IT personnel are addressing this disturbing trend. And also to hear how you are utilizing voice-activated IVR technology. Submit your feedback.
Posted by Oscar Alban Who should own the self-service function?
09 MAY 2005 06:07 EDT (10:07, GMT)
We have all heard of the term "multi-channel" contact center. Immediately e-mail, Web chat and fax technologies come to mind in addition to the telephone. What about self-service? Up until now in many cases it has belonged to marketing or a group within IT. What about moving it to the contact center? After all, who does the 800# go to? Marketing or IT? No, it goes right to the contact center. As a consumer, it bugs me to no end when I go to the frequently asked questions and find that they are the same set of Q&As that were there three months ago! Who better to know what the most frequently asked questions are than the contact center agents! The speed of business is so fast nowadays that in some industries the Q&A portion of a self-service site might need to be updated daily. When alternate channels, including self-service, were first introduced, it was with the expectation that they would alleviate phone traffic into the contact center, when in fact the opposite has occurred. Even though we have more e-mails coming in and heavy self-service traffic, the call volumes have actually increased! Why is this? Well, there are many reasons and some are not bad situations to have. For example,s someone looks up a product or service to purchase but for some reason still desires the "human" interaction to pull it across the line. This is good.

However, there is the opposite. Because the self-service site is so poorly designed, the person calls up in disgust. This is bad. It can have a steep price. The customer went from the cheapest channel to the most expensive channel for the same transaction. They also experienced a poor branding experience. The company now risks a lost customer and bad word-of-mouth. In my speaking engagements I always ask who has moved self-service to belong to the contact center? About 5% of the audience raises their hands. It is clear that the early adopters understand this. Everyone else needs to now get on board.
Posted by Oscar Alban