Welcome to the first in our series of "Insights" aimed at providing you with some pragmatic detail relating to the key findings of the Merchants / Dimension Data 2008 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking report. Through these insights, we aim to unlock the drivers that are affecting performance in contact centres and why it is so important that you are aware of them. Ultimately, managing and getting the best performance from your contact centre delivers value to your organisation and - most importantly - for your customers.
Today, we analyse a core suite of "People" metrics and discuss why the underlying trend 10 year trend is negative as opposed to positive. With a more mature industry, better technologies and systems and greater customer understanding of contact centres - why are the core people metrics worsening?
The table clearly shows the downturn on the people metrics over the last 10 years. We believe that there are a number of factors which have influenced this including cost reduction, increased complexity of queries, declining management capability and overall job satisfaction.
When you evaluate each metric more closely, there is a 3% increase in agent turnover where the agent is moving to another role within the organisation. Whilst this impacts negatively on the metric score, on a positive note, it appears that:
- Agents may be using the contact centre as an entry point into a particular organisation. This should be viewed positively as starting in the contact centre can be an excellent career path for an individual and for an organisation.
- Agents are being promoted into roles such as Team Leader rather than the organisation sourcing more experienced but external candidates. Again, if managed correctly through a robust performance development programme, this provides necessary career development and, in fact, potentially reduces attrition.
Annual Attrition and Absenteeism continue to plague the contact centre as these metrics have a major impact on the commercials aspects of the contact centre. Within our own contact centre operations, factors such as:
- job security,
- reduced company loyalty a
- increase in customer demands- they want 24/7, 365 access
- location of contact centre - employees rely on easy and regular transport links that are able to service irregular shift times including weekends
We have also seen that there are higher the levels of contract and temporary employees in contact centres. Combined with apparent decreased management capability, this lack of people management all adds to negatively impact attrition and absenteeism. Net, we believe organisations need to review their people models with these metrics in mind.
Whilst the comparison data also shows that the number of training days per FTE and agent to supervisor ratios have remained the same over the comparison period, we believe that these metrics should be thoroughly reviewed. We think that as the complexity of calls increase and the more simple calls are managed by the IVR or self-managed online by the customer, agents need MORE training. We believe that as agents work in a more complex and stressful environment, they need enhanced skills to manage the calls. Lack of capability and knowledge as a result of insufficient training often leads to higher levels of absenteeism and attrition as agents look to less stressful environments to work in.
So, the high level findings on the 10 year People Metrics benchmarks don't look very good! However, we have seen many contact centres changing their approach to contact centre management. Some key action plans that have positively impacted on the trend metrics include:
- Appropriate and relevant investment in agent/supervisor training. Relooking training methodologies and time spent in training to empower and equip employees with the necessary skills. We believe this delivers improved customer and employee satisfaction and positively influences a number of other relevant KPI's.
- Innovative and flexible approaches to accommodate irregular shift patterns and working hours. Agents need to be given appropriate options that will allow them to trade and slide schedules that help to create a positive work/life balance.
- Facilitating and managing internal attrition. We believe employees starting in the contact centre bring valuable insight to an organisation and especially as it relates to their customers. Employee lifecycle development programmes can be immensely powerful in retaining employees and improving negative attrition and absenteeism.
There are many more solutions that can improve the people metrics in your contact centre. We also know that our data looks across 300 centres and trends can be misleading as each and every contact centre has specific and unique people challenges. To find out more about your own environment why not contact us and request a free consultation and comparison on your top five people metrics to benchmark data.
To find out more please email Mark Busuttil alternatively contact Mark on +44 78 269 46741 |
