| Drawing a Crowd at ACCE: Conversations Created by Cartoons |
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Guest Blogger: Carl Nelson, President, Cartoon Art Associates, toonblogs.com
 “To make a long story short.” Let’s be honest. In life we have all wanted, at some time or another, this power. This is a popular cartoon from the ACCE contact center cartoon collection. Check out the new cartoons on the show floor when you are in Phoenix. And, make sure you enter the caption contest online by clicking here .In the contact center profession – where we can actually get what we wish for – how long a call takes to handle, or Average Handle Time (AHT), is an important metric and a dangerous one when applied incorrectly. As you know (or can google), three components make up AHT: talk time, hold time and after call work. “AHT, as well as calls per hour, calls per day – these are often misused metrics,” says Lori Bocklund, president of Strategic Contact, who will do her highly popular ‘Contact Center Technology 101’ session held on Monday, Sept. 15 before ACCE gets in full swing. In Lori’s Monday session she details the technology landscape and trends. And, it is these technologies that spew out numerous metrics that can get a call center in trouble. Do you compensate managers and supervisors on AHT? Do your customer service reps have an AHT target? Often, adherence to “Average Handle Time” targets distorts the vision of what truly matters to the customer and what truly measures the success of the relationship. “We tend to focus on the ACD statistics because they are easy to get to and people have historically used these stats,” Lori says. “That’s not enough,” she warns, “balance is important.” Lori’s counsel: “Quality, customer satisfaction, financial measures such as cost per contact and revenue per customer – there are many other metrics that are not as easily generated but that are critical to your business.” In another ACCE panel session titled “Who Needs Customer Service Anyway?,” Lori will join Bill Price, president and founder of Driva Solutions and Lior Arussy, president and founder of Strativity Group, to talk about new ways of thinking in the contact center. In that session, one key topic will be the need to change metrics used in order to create the right focus. Talk with Lori at ACCE, tell her what you are doing and ask for her advice. Networking is the rage at ACCE – and not the computer kind, the people kind. When you meet your peers at ACCE introduce yourself with a metric or two: number of agents, calls per day, inbound vs. outbound – even your average handle times. And, while at ACCE talking about metrics you’ll want to network with Bill Greenwald who has 18 years of management experience within large financial and insurance industry call centers having thousands of agents. On Tuesday, Sept, 16, attend Bill’s 3:45 p.m. session titled ‘What Metrics Really Drive the Business?” After attending, you will be better able to determine how to use metrics within your call center. During the discussion on metrics ask your peers whether or not your implementation of AHT is dangerous. As the cartoon suggests: Have you put an AHT button on your agent’s phone? Bill will ask you if have an AHT target for your agents. “When AHT is used to measure agents,” Bill says, “it often creates an invisible glass ceiling that limits customer satisfaction.” He explains, “Let’s say you create an incentive for agents to keep AHT within four minutes. Guess what? When they hit 3 minutes, 30 seconds, they start wrapping up that call, whether that client wants to be wrapped up or not. And at 3:59, they are disconnected. AHT has nothing to do with customer experience. It is often a self imposed metric that drives your agents to a result diametrically opposed to the positive client experience you want to build,” he says. “As a leader, we need to know AHT,” Bill continues. “Keep the metric in your call center to help business and strategy goals but do not use it as an agent tool. Get away from AHT on the agent scorecard; use AHT for leadership, staffing, budgets, for control and to manage for efficiencies,” he concludes. Checking back with Lori, she agrees. “Keep an eye on AHT but do not hold reps accountable for the need to hit an AHT tart. AHT targets – for reps and managers – can drive the wrong behavior.” Lori says, “You have to monitor AHT; look for the trends that it uncovers, and use it as an input for planning.” After ACCE overviews on technology and performance measurements, try a “deep dive” discussion with a call center that has put all the pieces together. Check out the session by Larry Eiser who is the vice president of call center operations at Duke Power. His session is titled “Duke Energy’s Merger Forges Fine Practices” on Wednesday, Sept. 17 at 3:45 p.m. Duke Power is one of the nation’s largest electric utilities. As a journalist, I have written and reported on hundreds of customer stories. Larry’s story and his presentation is one of the best I have ever listened to. The merger of Cinergy and Duke Energy had to address many areas – from technology to structure to business practices. What does Larry think about metrics? How about the cartoon button on my phone? Is this an option that we could really use? “While we do not use AHT targets in our rep incentives,” Larry tells me, “we do use other productivity metrics such as adherence to schedule and talk/available, which is the percentage of rep’s signed on time that’s spent talking to customers or available and waiting to talk to customers.” He says, “We couple these with quality scores, which we hope to supplement with customer satisfaction scores in the future. It’s a 50/50 blend between productivity and quality metrics.” “During my ACCE presentation,” Larry says, “I will talk briefly about metrics – both where we were pre-merger and where we’ve evolved to at this point.” The bottom line for Larry is simple. “We do not want any rep measure to drive reps to short-change the conversation with the customer,” he says. Ouch. Or, as a cartoon character would say, “#!@X” Lori, Bill and Larry want me to be more strategic. They all say that an AHT target is not an appropriate “phone option” for my agents! And, that folks is what makes this a good cartoon. We all know it is a feature we want, but should not have. We can laugh at others – and ourselves – for wanting the power. To make my long story short, why do more people attend ACCE than any other North American contact center trade gathering? The answer: It is the best place to network with your peers; to find out best practices in call centers worldwide, and to prepare you to implement them when you return to your company. |
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