QAQNA

Are You Creating a "Powerful Customer Experience?" You Could Win!

I'm proud to have been asked to be part of the faculty for ICMI's ACCE Conference & Expo in Las Vegas October 5-9. My pre-conference workshop will focus on building an effective Quality Assessment scorecard. If you're building or revamping your QA scale, it would be a profitable 3 1/2 hour workshop for you and your team. The week will include a veritable plethora of valuable workshops, keynotes, and networking opportunities.

ICMI has just announced a contest in which you could win a free trip to the event! All you have to do is create a short, creative video describing how your call center is improving the power of your customers' experience.

Come on QAQnA readers! Get your team's creative caps on and come meet me in Vegas!!

Double Dinging and Domino Dinging

In the world of Quality Assessment (QA) there are few injuries more heinous to a Customer Service Representative (CSR) than to "double ding" them. In the parlance of Call Center QA, this means that you mark them down on two different QA elements for the same behavioral infraction. For example, the CSR leaves the caller in a looooooooong period of unexplained silence (also known as "dead air"). The supervisor or QA analyst marks the CSR down on the QA form for "leaving the caller in dead air" and "not matching the caller's pace." The result is that the one behavior is being scored in two different places on the QA form. Thus, the dreaded "double ding."

Note: In many cases, "double dinging" result from poorly defined elements on the scale. The person analyzing the call doesn't know where a behavioral infraction "fits" in the scale, so they mark down in a couple of places. If you've got people "double dinging" you might want to take a look at your scale.

There are times, however, when one behavioral infraction results in a "domino effect." For example, the CSR pulls up the customer's account and finds that the previous CSR did not handle the customer's issue correctly. Rather than simply correcting the mistake, the CSR proceeds to complain to the customer how their coworker made such a bone-headed mistake. The CSR rambles on about how the company rushes people through training and puts them on the phone before they are ready. In this scenario, the CSR's disparaging comments result in the QA analyst "dinging" him for "tearing down the customer's confidence" but also for "not managing the length of the call." In effect, the CSR's inappropriate rant had a domino effect. He not only tore down the customer's confidence in the company with his negative comments (ding one), but his incessant rambling also resulted in keeping the customer on the phone longer than necessary (ding two).

When analyzing calls, it's important to make a distinction between "double dinging" (penalizing the CSR twice for the same behavior) and "domino dinging" (recognizing that one behavior had a domino effect, resulting in multiple infractions).

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr and pixiesticks23

Can You Afford the Hidden Cost of Off-Shoring?

The question has been debated for the better part of the last decade. "Does it make sense to send your customer service call center off shore?" It certainly made cents to do so. With lower labor and operating costs, the off-shoring craze saved a ton of money to the bottom line.

But, what is the cost in customer satisfaction? Some companies learned that the cost of customer ire was not worth the savings.

Now, there is more evidence that there is a specific, calculated cost in customer satisfaction when U.S. customers perceive that a call center is off-shore.

Does this mean that off-shoring never makes sense (or cents)? No. One answer does not fit all in this debate. Nevertheless, there is more warning than ever that companies should calculate the cost of lost statisfaction while they are calculating the savings in operation budget.

Praise or Criticism? What Works Best?

It's a classic debate in the world of call center quality assessment (QA). Do you use QA to praise Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) so as to encourage them and build their self-esteem? Do you use QA to be critical and hold CSRs accountable to keep them honest? Is there a happy medium, and if so, where is it?

When giving seminars, I often use the word pictures of the "QA Nazi" (who uses QA as a means of beating CSRs into submission) and the "QA Hippie" (who uses QA to give CSRs smiley faces and make their world a "happier place") to represent the extremes on both sides of the spectrum.

My coworker recently forwarded an article to me from NY Times Magazine about some research that's being done on the power of praise and criticism with children. While the research focuses on parents and their children, I would submit that there are some lessons for us all to learn in the QA, training and coaching arena.

The most recent research is finding that undue praise can actually have a negative effect. Those who are constantly and generally praised tend to become more competitive, less motivated and less willing to put out effort towards improvement.

Does this mean that praise isn't important? Not at all. What the research is discovering is that praise is a powerful force when it is specific and sincere.

I'm sure the debate will never end, and I'm not sure that it should. A professor of mine said, "truth lies at the tension between the two extremes," and I've found it apt in many situations. Finding that right balance between praise and accountability is elusive, but one to which all QA teams should strive. 

I continually come back to a few key tenets:

• Know what drives your customer's satisfaction, by asking them
• Define specific, desirable behaviors that will meet & exceed those expectations
• Measure those specific behaviors
• Give consistent, honest, data-led feedback to CSRs telling them which behaviors they are consistently performing, and which behaviors theyare inconsistently demonstrating
• Train and coach CSRs toward improvement
• Praise CSRs for the specific, documented acheivements and improvements
• Hold CSRs accountable for specific, documented lack of performance

Customer Service "Hall of Shame" a Lesson in Management

No less than three alert readers forwarded me MSN Money's 2009 Hall of Shame. So, I'd better pass it along! Nine of the ten "winners" are repeat offenders. Some might argue that turning things around for some of these corporations is like making a u-turn in an aircraft carrier. Nevertheless, many companies and industries have taken the recession as an opportunity to improve customer service and win market share, and clear improvements have been noted by consumers in certain sectors. In seems, therefore, that annual designation on the Hall of Shame points to a lack of true commitment from the executive and management teams of these companies to make the changes necessary.

The Hall of Shame is a great reminder of the oft forgotten edge on the double edged Customer Service sword. What Customer Service Reps (CSRs) say and how they say it is only part of solution. Positive change in customer service requires an executive management team that is committed to correcting the failed policies and procedures that CSRs are forced to manage and support on the front lines.

The Effect of Metrics on Customer Satisfaction

There's been an interesting conversation happening among the North American Call Center Professionals group on LinkedIn. The question originated with someone asking how you measure the effect that abandon rates and ASA have on Customer Satisfaction. In this case, the call center had implemented some internal initiatives to move their metrics, but wondered how it may have affected their customer's satisfaction.

Several have contributed to the discussion:

"This is the ageless question! The answer is like noodle soup. You run out of noodles or broth but not at the same time. My research found the following, 40% of abandons were wrong numbers, 25% solved the problem or did not need services or purchase, 25% called back, 5 percent were not sure why they called, 5 percent were drunk and just wanted to talk to someone! (Smile) We called every number abandoned during a week period to get this data!" - Arnold Talbott

"The correlation between ASA and satisfaction/loyalty can be measured and quantified, as can the correlation between other access-channels/issues and contact-handling attributes by correlated against satisfaction/loyalty and positive/negative WOM. It is an industry and company specific item to be measured. While generalized numbers (TARP's or anyone elses) can serve as a strawman, you really have to measure your customer's experience." - Jeff Maszal

I really liked Jeff's last statement, and completely concur. If you really want to know how your abandon rates or ASA are affecting customer sat, then a small, focused customer survey can easily do the trick. Over a period of time, call customers who abandoned the call and those who did not and ask them a few questions about their overall satisfaction with the experience. Do the same thing with customers who experienced a long wait in queue versus those who had a short wait.

These types of surveys can be relatively simple and do not need to cost an arm and a leg because you're limiting the scope of your inquiry to one basic question: "How satisfied were you with the experience?" The key is not to rely on industry wide numbers that may, or may not, reflect your customer's views. As our group regularly conducts custom surveys like these for clients, we find that there is no substitute for asking your customers about their experience and satisfaction when they called your call center.

If you would like to join my network on LinkedIn, you may use my email address tom@cwengergroup.com to send an invitation!

Why Are We Here?

When I present workshops and seminars about setting up a Quality Assessment program (QA), I always start by asking the participants to discuss why the purpose of the QA program and what the real focus of the program is going to be:

CSR focused QA programs often exist to motivate and build up the self-esteem of the front-line CSR. It becomes a way to give folks a pat on the back.

Corporate focused QA programs usually exist to hold the corporate line and hold CSRs accountable to comply with programs, policies and procedures. It becomes a leverage tool.

Customer focused QA programs most often attempt to measure interactions from the customer's perspective. It becomes a microscope.

Existential QA programs generally exist for no apparent reason other than for a company to say "we have one, therefore we must care about customer service." It becomes meaningless.

Of course, you may detect traces of all four within your existing QA program. Nevertheless, I find that most programs will have a determined bent in one of the four directions.

Which way does your QA program bend? What gives it away? Which would you prefer? What could you change to make it what you think it should be? Please share!

Prioritizing Goals for Improvement

Through years of helping struggling QA programs and training/coaching CSRs, I've found an opportunity for improvement that is consistently overlooked within the organization. The opportunity is found in the setting of performance management goals or QA improvement goals.

CSRs and front-line supervisors will often go down the QA report quickly and pick out the lowest scoring elements to place as the highest priorities for improvement. However, years of crunching QA data reveal that the lowest scoring elements on the QA form are usually those behaviors that rarely apply and, therefore, carry relatively little weight in the customer's overall service experience.

For example, hold etiquette and transfer elements typically apply to a relatively small percentage of calls. Because these elements are required less frequently, they tend to be easily forgotten and CSRs in the contact center usually score poorly on them.

When setting goals for improvement, I'll hear CSRs quicky say, "I need to work on thanking the caller for holding!" because their score is so low. But, they only put the customer on hold on 8 out of every 100 calls. An element that applies far more often, like apologizing for the caller's unmet expectations, may have a much higher score but represents a higher priority for improvement. It applies more often and will have a much greater impact on the overall customer experience.

When setting goals for improvement, be sure to consider applicability and relative impact on the customer experience as well as the QA score itself!

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr and anitacanita

Check the Scores for Consistency

Most companies who monitor calls and do Quality Assessment (QA) have some form of calibration. This usually follows some pattern of listening to a call with a group of people and analyzing it together to find out where you agree and disagree on an evaluation. It can be a painful process.

You can often learn just as much, if not more, by simply comparing a large sample of evaluations scored by different analysts.

For example, I was recently pouring over a comparison of quarterly data for one of our clients. I have a member of my team run the raw data on a regular basis and provide me with a comparison report. In this particular project, we have four analysts scoring a couplehundred calls per month. There are roughly 65 different behavioral elements we analyze that are rolled up into 14 corresponding attributes. There is a score for each attributeand a corresponding Overall Service score on a scale from 0 to 100.

First, I compared the average Overall Service score for each of the four analysts. The four analysts were within a half-point of the overallaverage for the group. This told me that I didn't have anyone who was particularly lenient or harsh in their analysis. Our overall service numbers were very similar. If an analyst had an overall service score that was much higher or much lower, it would have motivated me to dig into the underlying data to find out why. So far, so good.

Next, I compared the average scores for each of the 14 Attributes. Because some Attributes rarely apply, there are much higher deviations. Keeping this in mind, I focused on the attributes that apply most often and have the greatest impact on the Overall Service score. Once again, our scores were very similar.

Finally, I looked at the average number of times each analyst marked a behavior "yes," "no," or "not applicable" for each of the behavioral elements. In this instance, I found one of my new analysts who had marked a particular behavior as applicable on 100% of the calls analyzed while the other analysts had it applicable on less than half. Because it's an element within an attribute that the client normally scores very well - it didn't show up in the corresponding score. Nevertheless, it could eventually make a difference, and we were clearly not calibrated in scoring this particular behavior. By looking at the data, I was able to address the issue with the analyst and coach them on how to more accurately measure that particular behavior. From this point forward, we should be more closely calibrated.

Sometimes, you've got to let the data show you the way.

Call Monitoring Is Essential to Acheiving Contact Center Goals

QAQnA regular, Glenn Ross, recently gave us a heads up on an interesting article from CRM magazine by Donna Fluss. The article lists the Top Ten Contact Center Goals for 2009:

    1.    Improving productivity and reducing operating expenses
    2.    Retaining customers
    3.    Generating incremental revenue
    4.    Providing an outstanding customer experience
    5.    Increasing use of self-service systems
    6.    Reducing agent attrition
    7.    Identifying reasons customers call or email
    8.    Migrating to virtual environments
    9.    Improving the perception of the contact center
    10.  Preventing outsourcing for the wrong reasons

What struck me about the list is that an effective call monitoring and QA program is either essential or can be instrumental in acheiving almost every item on the list.

Is there anything you would add to the list? Anything you would subtract?

Is your QA program positioned to help acheive these goals?