Performance Management Techniques

Managing call center performance is not an easy task; however, it plays an essential role in contact center success. Here at Qualishore, our team leaders and managers incorporate performance management into their day-to-day work ethics to achieve real results.

A significant amount of system data and management information is underutilized in contact centers. Fortunately, this information is typically at hand and can be put to work to improve performance. With that in mind, here are some quick call center performance management tips that we have been using to leverage information at our disposal.

1.  Determine Your Best KPIs

Defining clear KPIs can help establish the right business goals for your organization, which you can then break down into team and individual performance targets. Focus on the key revenue drivers for your business, whether it’s new sales, repeat business, debt collected vs. debt outstanding, or even number of appointments booked. Follow these through to the agent level to align their goals with those of the business.

Other call center metrics that you can use for performance management include the total number of calls handled (inbound and outbound), wait time, average call duration (talk time and wrap time), and the percentage of abandoned calls. In addition to being utilized for performance management, service level agreements can be set against these numbers.

2.  Motivate and Encourage Agents and Managers

In outbound sales or collection environments, you can reward top performers by giving them access to the best dialing data with league tables or similar reports. Or start trainees on old or recycled leads. You can keep them excited and improve their opportunities as they progress by giving them calls to reach customers. You should also consider quality measures – e.g., customer satisfaction ratings, employee engagement, call quality scoring, and first contact resolution – as these all play a role in the overall effectiveness of the operation. You can use quality monitoring and customer survey tools to identify potential problem areas.

Also, keep an eye on real-time dashboards to identify underlying performance issues like too much time in wrap up or ACW. A common problem, spending too long on after-call work, slows the pace of campaigns overall. You can relay these types of issues to agents and offer training and incentives to improve performance.

3.  Take Advantage of Time Saving Tools

With the proper features, you can save valuable agent time. For example, we have an outbound dialer that does not waste time calling mobile phones that are invalid, turned off, or roaming. In a typical call center environment, this equates to efficiency savings of up to 15%. It also increases talk time by 30% on average, meaning agents can concentrate on speaking to those customers who are available.

Local and mobile number presentation is also another great time saver. Used in conjunction with your performance management solution, it can improve customer pick-ups. In fact, your customers are 20% more likely to answer a call from their local area code than a call from an out of area location. And if they missed the call, they’re twice as likely to call back.

4.  Allocate More Agents to a Single Campaign

Do you segregate leads among specific agents? Are you overly reliant on personal callbacks? You might have fallen into the account ownership trap. Sometimes your customers don’t care whom they speak to as long as they receive quality service on time. If you use a predictive dialer, you can boost productivity by allocating more agents to a campaign. And don’t implement a well-meaning but misguided bonus plan that encourages agents to disable predictive by hoarding potential leads and repeatedly scheduling personal callbacks.

5.  Enable Personalized Customer/Agent Contact

It would be great if every call resulted in the desired outcome, but in the real world, many calls require additional follow-up to close sales or collect debts. While we pointed out in tip #4 that you don’t want to fall into the account ownership trap, some campaigns and customers call for a deeper rapport. Improving contact center performance management doesn’t happen overnight. Make sure you dig into the details when analyzing data and use your call center reporting tools effectively to help gauge success.