How does a contact centre compare results with competitors or against organizational goals?  Depending on the process used by the centre, results can vary greatly.  Because of these unknowns, most centres turn to some kind of benchmarking process.  It is easier to compare your results with other centres within the same industry but do these results reflect the success within your centre.

 Benchmarking can be defined as:

A point of reference that compares performance and creates a knowledge-based that can be used to create an action plan to achieving objectives.  

The principle of benchmarking was developed by IBM in the 60s to compare the performance of computer hardware and software. It’s a scientific method to measure performance in terms of time taken and results.  Contact centre benchmarking practice started with the Telco’s that provide directory services. These centers focused on processing the highest volume of calls at the lowest cost.  

But in your contact centre is the revenue you generate the underline goal of the centre, or is your success measured by customer satisfaction and retention?  According to the Harvard Business Review, a 5% improvement in customer retention can result in profit increases of up to 85%. Keeping customers is also one-fifth to one-tenth the cost of acquiring new ones

As a contact centre manager you need metrics to manage your center, but what metrics should you benchmark?  Traditional benchmarking processes will give some results. But are they relevant to your organization and its goal?   The standard productivity measurements such as; calls handled, call duration, sales per call, etc, are important to be aware of.  But if just processing calls is not the mandate of your center, then you require other metrics also.

The task of developing your own benchmarking process to illustrate the value of your contact centre can be a painful undertaking.  Since each centre is unique in its business goals, there are no off the shelf solutions to draw on.  The benchmarking elements for your centre need to align and assimilate with, your organization goals.  This will allow all levels of the organization to understand and assess the value that the contact centre is making in achieving these goals.

Quantitative and qualitative metrics in a benchmarking process needs to illustrate the contact centre’s success in improving the value of customer’s satisfaction and retention within your organization.  Therefore to evaluate success within your centre both benchmarking results and organizational goals need to be combined to create realistic metrics.  All elements and processes within your centre can and should be measured to ensure end-to-end consistency and compatibility.

The focus of these metrics will be based on your contact centre business plan objectives and organizational mandate.  This focus can range from productivity oriented in an order taking environment (Pizza Ordering) to customer fulfillment (Financial Transaction).  Once the core metrics have been established each workgroup and process needs to map their activity to these organizational core values.

This concept of evaluating success needs to include all touch points within the contact centre, commencing with their hiring practices.  Hiring and training cost vary greatly based on the industry your centre is supporting.  The new hire cost in the Catalog industry is around $5K and average up to $25K in industries requiring complicated transactions such as a Financial Institute.  Based on these cost your organizations recruiter and trainers need to have metrics in place to be able to identify successful candidates. 

The recruiter role is to attract people that have the appropriate skills, desire and ability to assist your organization in achieving their goals.  Many organizations today are outsourcing all if not part of this task to a third party.  But no matter if this task is done internally or outsourced, metrics and expectations for success needs to be established.

Is your recruiting process attracting candidates with the:

A process analysis that your centre can perform is to assess the recruiting steps and evaluate the number of candidates that passes per step.  Each step is assigned a time and cost factor to illustrate the value it has for the entire process.  By creating this benchmarking analysis, recruiting campaigns and recruiters can be compared.

The next step to evaluate is your training process.  This process accounts for the bulk of the hiring and training cost that was quoted.  There are a number of aspects that need to be measured in this process:

With the initial training completed, the new hire staff is now ready to commence processing the contact centre workload.  The front line manager needs to ensure that their staff is supported during the learning curve process.  With all employees having varying levels of competencies, it is important to ensure that each individual is progressing at an appropriate level based on their initial success in training.  The measurement tools used for this group will vary greatly depending on the historical information available for other new hire classes using the same training modules. 

A key to successfully measuring the quantitative performance of new hire staff is to review their results in appropriate sampling periods.  If an experienced agent handles fifty calls in one day and their handle time is reviewed daily new staff being 30 to 50% less productive should have their handle time reviewed every two to three days.  The new hire should have access to their results throughout and reported daily, but a formal review need not take place daily.  This allows both the new hire and more experienced staff to be reviewed after the same amount of work has been completed.

Establishing coaching and performance quantitative objectives to meet operational expectations based on the experience of the individuals is not a difficult task, if historical information is available.  The difficult task is to establish the qualitative metrics and to determine objectives per tenure of experience. 

How to determine experience also would depend on the type and frequency of activity in each individual centre.  Tenure of service can then be defined as either number of hours in completing a task or number of times the task was completed.  With the focus on customer satisfaction and retention versus revenue, there is an increase in quality as new hire staff receive more exposure in repeatedly completing a task.

This same principle can be applied to senior staff as they are trained in new products and services.  There is more of an expectation for senior staff to provide better overall quality of services based on their previous experience.  All staff has some kind of learning curve when there is a change in processes, the curve should be steeper for experienced staff but there will still be a curve.

The same principles used to determine the benchmarking metrics for the performance groups should be applied to the support groups.  The support groups would include any administrative, scheduling/analytical or technical staff that belongs to the contact centre.  Their metrics are based on creating the environment that allows the front line staff to achieve their quantitative and qualitative metrics.

There are a number of administrative tasks within the centre that need to be completed with professionalism and focus to detail.  These tasks are to support the contact centre staff in administering to their needs as an employee or to fulfill a customer request.  These tasks may seem minor in nature but are viewed by both internal staff and customer as the unique differences between competitors. 

With 70-80% of a contact centre operating expense being managed by the scheduling group, clear targets and areas of responsibilities need to be defined.  Validating benchmarking targets with the scheduling group within a centre can also be difficult to define if they are not responsible for managing the plan on the day of operation.  If there is a separate group that manages the day of operation issues, the planning for the days events need to be separated for the actual results. 

The annual operating cost of supporting a technology platform within a contact centre cost between 18-25% of the initial capital cost of purchasing the equipment.  Therefore, with maintenance cost exceeding the initial capital cost in four to six years, Technical support staff needs to focus on system availability and cost avoidance.

Benchmarking like any other report within a contact centre can add value in achieving overall operational goals.  But the information gathered needs to pass three criteria’s:

1.      The data needs to be timely, benchmarking results along with industry comparisons need to express current activity in the industry under similar situations.

2.      The data needs to be correct.  Both internal and external data needs to be assessed for accuracy and substance.

3.      Management needs to be able to take action on the results.  Contact centre managers need to focus on elements that they can influence and re-measure to determine the impact of the change.

A contact centre needs to establish a baseline for their comparison prior to making operational changes so that these changes can be measured for impact.  The data gathered is very valuable for both the budgeting and business case development process.  By focusing on your contact centre opportunities and successes, the data gathered during the benchmarking processes can create action items to allow your centre to create a continual improvement environment.