Your call center may be an in-house operation or an outsourcer processing calls and contacts for other organizations. Regardless of the type of call center you work in, there is a common need for increased, positive visibility. This is necessary for two key areas. The first is budgeting; the second is your center’s ongoing viability and existence, that is, self-preservation. Related to both of these is staffing costs, technology upgrades, new software, and…respect.
One option is to do nothing and hope for the best. The other is to be proactive. One such tactic is to seek third-party validation of your call center and/or staff. These can serve to provide credentials on which you can form a positive PR push with upper management, justifying your call center’s budget request and, if need be, your center’s continued existence.
Fortunately, there are organizations ready and able to help this substantiation of your operations’ overall quality, professionalism, and adherence to standard operating procedures in the medical community. Although these are not the end-all, one-stop solution to guaranteeing a favorable nod from your organization’s budgeting and planning committees, they are a great first step.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
For as long as call centers have been answering calls for doctors, there have been requests to handle appointments, be it to set, cancel, or change an appointment. Although the doctors were serious about these requests and the call centers anxious to assist, the result was, at best, less than desirable and at worse, a complete failure. Problems with double booking, tracking cancellations, and coordinating openings were rampant, often overshadowing the benefits. The root cause of this was the lack of a centralized and common scheduling resource. Even after the advent of computers allowed schedules to be accessible electronically, connecting to a remote database was slow, cumbersome, and unreliable. Fortunately, the Internet has solved this last dilemma.
When powerful appointment scheduling software is married to the ubiquitousness of the Internet, the result is an up-to-date schedule, available to both the medical practice and the call center. This allows both medical staff and call center agents to fill, cancel, or change an appointment at any time, without the concerns of double booking or appointment overlap. With the Internet, accounts can also be easily dispersed throughout a multi-location practice or call center.
These programs can address a medical practice’s appointment-taking needs, while providing the option for remote access by supervisors, managers, and even doctors as they plan their day. Many of these scheduling setting programs are hosted software. This means that the call center does not need to purchase, install, maintain, or upgrade any software, but rather accesses it via the Internet. Fees vary from flat rate to usage sensitive. Some packages can alternately be purchased by the call center for in-house installation. This allows call centers to use the hosted version as they get started, with the option to purchase the software later, if it becomes cost effective to do so.
For all of this power and flexibility, these programs tend to be intuitive and easy to learn. The learning curve for agents is quick; they often comprehend the basics after just a couple of appointments and master the details within an hour.
Also, there is often a web component available, which can be extended to the patient or referring partners for self-scheduling. This can serve to increase visits and maximize doctor’s schedules. Common features include:
Multiple schedules (such as separate doctor and nurse schedules)
Multiple event or appointment types
Various length appointments
Ability to perform database lookups (to pre-populate fields with patient information)
Provision of drop down menus (to enforce database consistency)
Booking a full day’s worth of appointments, however, is just the first step. Unfortunately, it is all too common for appointments to be missed, either through neglect, forgetfulness, or patients who are simply too overloaded to remember. As such, reminding patients of their scheduled time, a day or two prior, is a needed task. Therefore, most appointment setting software also includes a means of confirming or reminding patients of their scheduled time. This can be completely automated and technology assisted, and often includes multiple contact methods, such as a phone call, email, or fax.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
A few years ago I bought a new car. Although it wasn’t my practice to take my cars to their respective dealers for maintenance, a new car changed that habit. After all, there was warranty work to be considered and their coupons for low cost oil changes were enticing. It was about the time that my auto servicing behavior was firmly altered that the warranty ran out and the discount oil change incentives stopped. Still, I continued returning to the dealer for service. It was smart marketing on the part of the dealer. Too bad their efforts were thwarted.
It was time for my regular oil change and I had a list of other things that needed attention. Since I am not a mechanic, I try not to tell them what needs to be done, but rather inform them of symptoms. I want to make sure that I don’t ask for, and pay for, a tune-up when the problem may be a loose vacuum hose. It only took one passive-aggressive mechanic to do exactly what I said, while ignoring the real problem, to drive this point home.
When I dropped off my car, I said, “It is time for an oil change. Also, the car pulls to the right and it starts hard and runs rough.” I left anticipating that they would change the oil, do a front-end alignment, and give the car a tune-up. I estimated the cost would be about $100.
Later, I was somewhat taken aback when I was presented with a $175 bill. As I read the paperwork, my mild surprise changed to anger. Here is what it said:
Change oil: Oil, lube, filter, labor: $24.95
Car pulls to right: Test drove car; recommend front end alignment: $19.95
Hard to start: Instruct driver not to press gas pedal while starting vehicle: $56.00
Runs rough: Perform engine analysis; checks okay; do tune-up in 3,000 miles: $75.00
So, for $175 I had my oil changed and was given some costly advice. My complaints to the service manager accomplished nothing, so I left and never returned. Once again, my local mechanic, who I trust to do good work and to be fair, is servicing my cars.
Like call centers, car dealers measure the work their employees do. Mechanics are checked to make sure they are productive throughout the day, that they document and bill for all of their time, and that they complete their work within the “standard” allotment. Mechanics who meet expectations are given raises and promotions; mechanics who don’t, even when it’s in the customer’s best interest, are given poor reviews, lower raises, or let go. Some garages pay their mechanics based on billable work. Therefore, the more they bill, the more they make. I think I have been to those places, too. At one shop, specializing in unusual foreign cars, it seemed that every bill was always around $500. They weren’t in business long.
Other people also bill by time. Lawyers and accountants come to mind. I have been advised to never use an attorney trying to make partner. In order to get the attention of the other partners, he or she will need to log over 2,000 billable hours a year and their clients will pay the price.
I once called my CPA’s office to discuss converting my IRA to a Roth IRA. I talked with the junior accountant to whom I had been assigned, asking if there were any other tax ramifications that I should know about. She said there weren’t and suggested she do an analysis for me. “No, that is not necessary.” I replied, “You confirmed what I needed.” “But we just got this new program that I want to try out,” she begged. “Will you let me do an analysis for you?” Thinking that I was doing her a favor, I consented. The call took less than a minute. A few days later, I received a one page spreadsheet telling me that I should switch to a Roth IRA and a bill for $100. The managing partner agreed that the charge was unwarranted, but insisted that I pay it anyway! He promised to “make it up to me later.” I quickly found a different tax advisor.
Many years ago, a friend landed a summer job repairing TVs. He was paid 20% of whatever he billed. Being enterprising, he analyzed the rate chart and quickly determined how he could add $35 to each bill for only a minute and a half of additional work. He would take the back off of the unit and hit it with a burst of compressed air, charging $8.00 to “clean chassis.” Next, he would squirt the tuner with cleaning spray, charging $10.50 to “lubricate tuner.” Then he would turn on the set. If the filaments of the vacuum tubes glowed, he would bill $16.50 to “check all vacuum tubes.” With these rudimentarily tasks completed, he would then repair the problem and add to the bill accordingly. He earned a lot of money that summer.
It has been said, “What gets measured, gets done and what gets paid for gets done better.” Consider what you are measuring in your call center and what you are paying for. The intent, no doubt, is to improve your operation, be it to pursue greater efficiency, increase the number of calls handled per agent, decrease the cost per call, or maximize “revenue” (be it directly from callers or indirectly by charging other departments).
But carefully consider the consequences. In an effort to please you, maximize their statistics, or earn a raise, are your agents directly or indirectly encouraged to do things that ultimately drives away callers or hurts your call center?
If you monitor agent productivity by measuring talk-time time, does your staff, either intentionally or subconsciously, prolong call durations? If you track units of work per hour, do agents assume they need to work faster, being short with callers and abruptly ending calls, thereby setting aside all semblances of quality?
If your customer service staff, programmers, or project managers track project time, is unnecessary work performed? Are time logs padded? Do they think they need 2,000 hours of “billable” time a year to get a raise?
If your call center sells products or services, do your commissioned agents sell what isn’t needed, or even wanted, so that they can meet their quota or earn a bonus? Do you have a “no credits” policy, either stated or implied, that leaves staff with no viable solution for frustrated callers?
Lastly, consider billing (be it internal or external). One only needs to look at phone company bills for examples of how to do it wrong. First of all, does anyone really understand their telephone company’s bill? Can the phone company reps comprehensibly explain it? Often times they can’t. Consider the countless surcharges and fees that are tacked onto each bill. The amounts change frequently and coherent explanations are rare. These ancillary charges are blamed on the FCC, credited to an esoteric law, or attributed to local or state government. On my long distance bill, dividing the total owed by the minutes used, reveals that my 4.5 cents a minute long distance actually costs me 9.7 cents a minute.
What message do your invoices or intra-company charges send? Are they easy to understand and read? Can your staff correctly and concisely explain every line item and charge? Are you billing surcharges and blaming it on HIPAA? What about holiday fees, call logging charges, phone number rental, on-call fees, and so forth? Are you making a 75 cent a minute service, effectively cost $1.50?
Yes, there are sound business reasons for each task that you track and measure; these practices can leave your call center stronger and more fiscally sound, but there is also a risk. Don’t be “penny wise and pound foolish” when it comes to measuring your call center; being astute and pragmatic – from the caller’s perspective – will ultimately produce the result you want.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
Voice logging, that is the recording of calls in a call center, was once viewed by many as an optional product that was relegated to the annual budget “wish” list, but never important enough to become a “must have” technology and make the approved version of the budget. The original function of voice loggers was to resolve “he said – she said” dilemmas. All too often, the caller says one thing, the agent has an opposite account of what transpired, and management is left in a quandary who to believe. Without a means to verify the precise details, all that the call center manager can do is to apologize.
With a voice logger, this once inevitable outcome is no longer a certainty. Quite simply, the supervisor merely accesses the recording of the call to hear exactly what happened. Call centers with voice loggers regularly report that their agent is completely exonerated over 90% of the time. For that reason alone, call centers began to buy and install voice loggers. But then innovation by end users began to take place, realizing that loggers were a critical quality assurance (QA) device and an excellent training tool. Real-world voice logging recordings allowed call centers to provide examples to trainees of what to do and what not to do. Additionally, voice logging can be used for trainee, as well as agent, self-evaluation and discovery.
Quality assurance staff are quick to confirm the value of voice logging, noting that loggers are one of the most important systems in the call center. To further facilitate quality assurance, some voice loggers include an agent assessment tool that allows the integration of the recording, call record, and QA report. Another common option is a password-protected Web interface that lets key personnel listen to calls remotely.
There are some legal issues about voice logging to be aware of, related to notification (either one of the two parties on the call or both) and the way in which that notification takes place. Before you record any phone calls, each call center should check with an attorney familiar with laws in their state and at the national level for clarification before proceeding.
For more information about vendors who provide call recording equipment and software, see our listing Voice Logging listing.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
There are many benefits to having remote agents as part of your call center. Remote agents can either reside in a secondary, but connected call center, or work out of their home. Among the many benefits of using remote agents, according to Tom Curtin, president of Amtelco, are reducing or eliminating commute time, nullifying the ramifications of traffic problems, and avoiding weather related issues.
Home-based agents are much more open to accept split shifts, being on-call, and logging in at the request of management (Curtin calls them “on-demand” workers). All three of these scenarios are less intrusive to and easier to accomplish by a home-based agent who does not have the issues of a commute or dress code to impede their availability or thwart their responsiveness.
“If you know your traffic patterns you know when you get hit with high call volume,” said Curtin. “By using remote agents you can more economically have on-demand workers that may be part time, but get you through the high spikes in your traffic.” Also, “Remote agents can work nationally and internationally, across many time zones, which will also help with staffing.”
“This leads to more content and productive agents,” said Bob Erdman, Vice President of Qualify Assurance, Amcom Software. Plus, “a certain level of redundancy can be obtained by having multiple application node/agent sites.” Another benefit is “if the call center has reached capacity, allowing agents to work remotely allows for more FTE’s without necessarily having to build out more office space.” This is especially important when space is at a premium or simply not available at the main call center site.
Other reasons to use remote agents include a “desire to capitalize on a wider pool of labor” and reduce overhead, stated Peggy Gritt, Senior Director, Global Market Solutions, Interactive Intelligence Inc. Tax incentives are another benefit she recommends be considered.
Today’s technology, specifically the Internet, has taken much of the uncertainty out of remote agent stations, ensuring that “telephony traffic can be presented to the remote agents as if they are in the main call center, allowing them to access a remote data store for lookup information and to [send] back relevant information, in real time,” said Erdman.
The future is promising for remote agent stations. “Demand for remote agents will grow as employees look for more flexible scheduling and for ways to avoid the daily gridlock that plagues many areas. Employers will increase their use of remote agents as a way to cut costs and increase redundancy and employee productivity,” predicted Erdman. “It will become more of a necessity as our population expands and sprawl continues,” Curtin concurred.
To make a remote station work, there needs to be a provision made to extend audio and data from the main call center to the remote location. There are various ways to accomplish this, each with inherent advantages and disadvantages.
For the audio connection, dialup and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) are common methods. When using dialup, the connection is made at the beginning of each shift. This may need to be accomplished by manually dialing a phone number to access the needed analog port at the main location, though more commonly this is automated and therefore transparent to the remote agent. The VoIP option uses the Internet as a voice transmission path, sending audio, in digital form, over the Internet. In order to achieve quality audio, a high-speed connection, such as DSL or a cable modem is needed (though some vendors recommend avoiding cable modems due to reliability and availability issues that sometimes result on certain systems). The minimum recommended data speeds for VoIP varies from vendor to vendor. In addition to VoIP, Amcom can provision audio to remote agent locations via an ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) phone.
In similar fashion, a data path is also needed in order for the remote agent station to communicate with the call center switch and databases. All of the vendors contacted for this article accomplish this using the Internet (generally through a VPN – a Virtual Private Network). Two vendors, Alston Tascom and Amcom, also allow for dialup access as an alternative, but recommend VPN for both speed and reliability. Again, the recommend minimum data rates vary from vendor to vendor, but it is safe to say that, in this case, faster is always better.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
“You need a hobby,” my wife exclaimed in exasperation. I don’t recall the circumstances, but it is safe to assume that I was doing something she deemed a nuisance. Regardless of the cause of her frustration, her impromptu advice gave me pause. Yes, a pastime, a relaxing diversion, would be good, but what should I do?
I briefly considered stamp and coin collecting, both of which I sporadically dabbled in during my youth. But I realized that my interest lay solely in the hope of stumbling onto a valuable find or realizing greatly appreciated value over time. These were not hobbies but investments, investments which demanded time, organization, and planning. They would be more like work – far removed from a relaxing hobby.
I asked myself what I was interested in. What about my proclivity for watching classic movies? To be a true hobby, I reasoned, it must consist of more than watching timeless films. It seemed that to reach hobby status, I would need to collect them, catalog them, or perhaps read about them. This additional effort, however, would serve to diminish my infatuation with ageless cinema.
Next, I considered a passing, yet ongoing attraction to crossword puzzles. Even though I had only rarely picked up a crossword puzzle and was never able to complete one, it did seem like a worthy pursuit, a good complement to my interest in words and my longstanding effort to use them to help, educate, and inspire.
Yes, I concluded, crossword puzzles would be my new hobby. I began looking for these word challenges, setting aside time to contemplate and complete them, reasoning that with a consistent effort I would improve. I was wrong. By my own initiative, I had not been able to develop my skills.
The turning point came by chance, on a plane. As I puzzled over the seemingly impossible offering in the airline magazine, I sensed that my seatmate was reading over my shoulder. Finally, no longer able to contain herself, she gently whispered, “You should know 12 down.”
I looked at the clue anew and an answer formed in my mind. I shared my suspicion with her and with a pleased smile, she confirmed it to be correct. Immediately, she apologized for intruding, but I assured her that her help was appreciated.
Though she attempted to distract herself, a few minutes later she was again captivated by my perplexing puzzle, so I slid the magazine in her direction, allowing us both to see it. She quickly directed my attention to another clue, encouraged me think in a different direction, and then confirmed my uncertain solution.
Again, she apologized and again I said it was okay. This pattern repeated itself throughout the flight and soon we had most of the puzzle complete. I learned that she was a retired schoolteacher and that one of her many interests was crossword puzzles. She shared with me tips for discerning a puzzle’s theme and how to tap in to it.
She gave advice on deciphering seemingly arcane clues and cutting through the deceit of intentionally misleading references. In the span of an hour, she gave me the direction and education that I needed to improve my skills and increase my enjoyment in my nascent hobby.
Another interest of mine is horticulture, one instilled in me by my parents, but I only gave it passing attention for many years. My home’s landscape once consisted only of green grass and strategically placed trees. Inside the house were one miniature orange tree and a lone aloe plant. (Aloe is a reoccurring word in many a crossword puzzle.)
To increase the greenery inside and add color outside, I endeavored to tap into this slumbering fascination with plants. Again, guidance was in order and easily found in my parents. They have more insight and experience in this area than anyone else I know.
Also, any additional information can be quickly uncovered in their treasure trove of resource books, which would rival or surpass many a library. Now my yard has an abundance of carefully selected plants and shrubs, designed to add color and beauty throughout the growing season.
My indoor collection has also greatly expanded, at times prompting complaints of overflowing its designated areas.
All of us, myself included, need guidance in many endeavors, not just hobbies. A few years ago when I embarked on a consulting career, many people gave me sage advice.
Three people in particular stand out. One was an industry friend who helped me sort through and clarify a transition strategy and first year game plan. Another was an industry consultant who shared years of experiences and warned of common pitfalls. The third was a consultant in a parallel industry who gave expert recommendations for a pricing strategy.
Together, these folks shortened my learning curve and paved the way to success.
In similar fashion, when I bought this magazine’s sister publication, Connections Magazine, the sellers provided a wealth of advice, guidance, and recommendations. Even now, with the formal consulting commitment long past, they continue to generously share ideas and observations.
I also needed assistance from a publishing insider and contracted with an industry guru who quickly got me up to speed on standard practices and procedures for the magazine business.
In my previous column, “It’s All Virtual,” I mentioned that I have outsourced key aspects of AnswerStat magazine. Though I could lay out and design each issue, it is better left in the capable hands of Dave Margolis, whose creativity and genius far surpasses anything I could offer.
Similarly, I could handle advertising sales, but that important task is better suited to the focus, tenacity, and precision of Valerie Port. Additionally, I tap a team of proofreaders at Brynmor Associates to review each article, performing the final edits, correcting grammar, checking punctuation, and ensuring that each piece is clear and understandable
As with most businesses, I have an attorney to assist with legal matters and a CPA to navigate the maze of accounting and tax issues imposed by the IRS. Like many of you, I have a computer and technology expert available to guide me through the latest developments with Microsoft, the Internet, and computer software and hardware.
The point is that I get help from many people. With some, it is a formal, contractual arrangement; with others, it is informal and freewheeling. In all cases, it helps me find a quicker and better path to an end goal or desired result.
All of this is “outsourcing” in one form or another. In a previous column, I advanced the premise that any aspect of a call center (save the ownership aspect) could be and has been outsourced. Indeed, no person can master everything and no organization can excel in all areas.
If someone else can do something you can’t, tap into his or her expertise; it is foolish to proceed under your own resolve. Likewise, if another organization can do something better than you can, form a partnership or outsourcing arrangement.
Today, when excellence is expected and demanded, are you better off to do an acceptable job in house or to do a superb job with the help of others?
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
It seems that seldom a week goes by when I don’t receive a call from someone wanting to interview me. Over time, I realized that the tenor of these interview requests falls into three categories. The first group is those who are trying to better comprehend call centers. The second category of questions revolves around outsourcing. The third group of questions revolves around the future. “What are the major call center trends that you see developing over the next 12 months?” Or, “How will technology impact the call center?”
Other questions are less informed, such as “Will the Internet affect the call center industry?” Or “Do you think computers will ever be used in call centers?” Sometimes the questions are nonsensical, along the lines of, “With the documented increase in demand for left-handed widgets in the Pacific Rim, how will the ongoing viability of the home-based agent in rural America be assured?” I ignore questions like that and give a benign reply, such as “We can be assured that technology will play an increasingly important role in tomorrow’s call center infrastructure.” That seems to make them happy.
In truth, I am reticent in making future prognostications. So, it is with great trepidation that I stick my neck out about the future.
Home-based agents will be key. There is a shortage of qualified people to fill agent positions, especially in triage centers, which rely on nurses – who are in even greater demand. Therefore, the option of home-based agents will expand the labor market for hard-pressed call centers. Some people are homebound by circumstances, others by choice, but many are otherwise employable. So if they can’t or won’t come to your office, merely extend your office to their home. With today’s technology, this is not only possible, but also quite feasible. Yes, there are training, supervision, and management issues, but these can all be successfully dealt with. There are also advantages, such as lower infrastructure costs, increased agent loyalty, greater job satisfaction, and lower employment related expenses (no commute and no dress code). Call centers with home-based agents in their workforce have the opportunity for higher quality (not settling for a lesser qualified candidate on-site), better staffing levels, and lower absenteeism.
Call center outsourcing will be more common. Notwithstanding the opportunities afforded by home-based agents, call centers will increasingly look at the costs, the problems, and liabilities of running a call center and decide that outsourcing their operation is the way to go. This will allow them to focus on core-competencies and better manage resources. Certainly, this will not be an option for everyone, but more call centers will give this careful consideration.
Offshore outsourcing will continue, grow, and succeed. True, there may be unaddressed quality issues and political ramifications today, but those will diminish. My good friend, Mike Leibowitz, succinctly summarized the situation, “Remember when ‘Made in China’ meant the products were of low quality? For that matter, ‘Made in Japan’ had the same stigma a generation ago. But they learned and improved and now Japan and China produce the some of the highest quality items. So, don’t discount the Indians and Pakistanis just because they are having some issues with call center performance today. They are smart, they are motivated, and they will get better – much better.”
The Internet will become even more important. Lack of Internet acumen will relegate call centers to second-class existence – or worse. First, there are the basics.
Call centers must have an Internet presence. This could be your own website (especially for outsourcers) or a section on the parent organization’s main website.
All staff members need to have their own business email address. Having one email address that everyone uses is, well, appalling and second rate.
Your email addresses must convey professionalism. Is 2blond4fun@CheapEmail.com an email address that your call center can be proud to use?
Make sure that you actually test and check your published email addresses. In sending messages to the “contact us” email addresses on websites, I have found that about 15 percent are rejected and that about 65 percent are never answered.
Beyond these essentials, you need to be thinking about user services on your website, “talk-to-me” and chat options, high-speed Internet access, and hosted services. These will be future differentiators.
Voice logging will become necessary. With the legal liability that can surround any call, especially those that are medically related, recording all calls is becoming of increasing importance. Training and quality assurance advantages aside, call logging provides an absolute record that eliminates those annoying, “he said” – “she said” disputes.
If your agent is vindicated by a call recording, which is generally the case, then a lawsuit can be averted. In those rarer instances where the agent did error, then action can be taken quickly to reach an amicable resolution. Voice logging is less of an option and more of a call center essential.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) will become expected. When properly implemented and offered as an option, IVR is a timesaving, cost-saving, caller-appreciated service. (But whatever you do, don’t force IVR on callers and always let them “zero out.”) Some common applications are to give commonly requested information such as location, hours, and directions; allow for self-routing of calls; or retrieve test results.
Speech recognition will go mainstream. Twenty-five years ago, the conventional wisdom was that speech recognition would be viable in “about two years.” That prediction seemed to resurface annually! Finally, we are seeing practical and workable speech recognition running in the call center. While the early adopters are implementing it now, expect it to go mainstream quickly.
VoIP cannot be ignored. Sending voice calls over the Internet (VoIP) is an opportunity that every call center must consider. It allows home-based and remote agents to be cost-effective and viable and has the promise of lowered telco costs. Your next “switch” (maybe even your current one) will likely be IP-based. Be sure to choose your VoIP vendor with care; many will not survive.
Telco costs will go down. It was once postulated that the rate for long distance would converge at one cent per minute; rates will continue to move in that direction. However, with the aforementioned VoIP, the incremental cost of a long distance call could become zero!
Consolidation and mergers will continue. Consolidations and mergers will continue unabated. This will occur with phone companies, with equipment and software vendors, and among outsourcing call centers. They will need to grow by capturing greater market share, entering new markets, or finding a niche (preferably multiple ones) in which to focus, excel, and lead. The status quo is not an option.
Government will be an increasing force. Expect new laws and policies to affect call centers, especially relating to privacy issues and outbound calling. The degree to which the FCC does or does not regulate telephone, the Internet, and related services will have far-reaching ramifications in terms of service availability, feature richness, pricing, and taxation. It is hard to predict what will happen, only that something will happen – and that we probably won’t like it!
Adopt a mobile strategy. Do you know that half of all long distance calls are placed from mobile phones? Increasing numbers of consumers are jettisoning their landline phone in favor of a mobile phone, which affords them greater flexibility, “free” long distance, more features, and often lower rates. Our society is going mobile, and the call center needs to strategize around that trend.
Some predictions will be wrong. This includes not only the preceding comments, but those from everyone else, as well!
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
Your call center may be an in-house operation or an outsourcer processing calls and contacts for other organizations. If you are an internal call center, you will be viewed either as a profit center or as a cost center (outsource call centers are always profit centers); also you could be under the control of another department, such as telecommunications, IT, or even marketing. Plus, there is the issue of who the call center director reports to. Does that person understand the critical role that the call center plays in your organization? Do they comprehend your technological needs and the importance of a reliable infrastructure? Or is their primarily concern that you don’t make waves?
Regardless of the type of call center you work in, its place in the money stream, your department assignment, or the boss’s affinity for your operation, there is a common need for increased, positive visibility. Increased call center visibility is necessary in two key areas. The first is budgeting; the second is your center’s ongoing viability and existence, that is, in self-preservation. Relating to both of these is staffing costs, technology upgrades, and additional software. And then there is respect.
One option is to do nothing and hope for the best, which typically ends in frustration. The other option is to be proactive. Does this mean making demands and becoming a general irritant to upper management? No. But it does mean taking careful and deliberate steps to elevate your call center to a point of earning the respect and admiration of the decision makers in your organization. There are three strategies to do this: reputation, referrals, and credentials.
Reputation: For your call center, reputation as a quality operation plays a critical role. Whether you are an outsourcing call center in search of new business or an in-house operation fighting for more funding or a better standing with upper management, your center’s reputation will go a long way towards reaching that objective.
When a reputation for quality service, fair dealings, and ethical practices exist, your call center moves towards the top of the priority list. The converse is true when negative connotations exist. Then it migrates towards the bottom, frustrating marketing efforts and political efficacy. As a low priority, it requires more time and energy to make the sale, obtain your targeted funding, or garner your CEO’s attention. Although it takes time and focus to earn a positive reputation, the road to a bad reputation is much shorter and quicker. Once a bad reputation has been established, it is incredibly difficult to overcome.
Reputation – either good or bad – is a great influencer of opinions.
Referrals: For the outsource call center, the second and perhaps easiest way to gain new business is when others do the work for you. To obtain more business, you can ask clients if they know of others who could use your services. These leads are generally pre-qualified and often pre-sold. Some outsource call centers and answering services have successfully added many new clients by merely asking existing clients for referrals. Some of these call centers elect to reward these “referring” clients with monetary or material gifts; others find that a sincere “thank you” garners even greater results.
The ultimate level of referrals occurs when clients tell their associates about your call center, suggesting they use your services. This is a sure sign of a delighted client. Sales via referrals occur when your actions match or surpass your words – you don’t just say what you will do, but you do what you say. These referrals are earned through the provision of quality service and are reinforced by honorable business practices.
For the in-house call center, you do not need referrals to gain more business, but you do need all the friends you can find when it comes time to expand your department, get budget approval for new equipment or additional staff, or provide new services. If your center’s work has earned the respect and admiration of others in your organization, they are much more likely to come to your aid when you need them.
Again, all you need to do is ask for help. When an agent receives a compliment, ask if they will pass it on to the manager, director, or upper management. Written compliments and recorded messages of accomplishment are even better, as they can be easily passed on to decision makers.
Credentials: Credentials are also important to call centers. You say and believe that your call center is the best, but can you prove it? Sure, you have callers or clients who say how much they value and appreciate the service you provide and written testimonials about your quality and professionalism. But doesn’t every call center possess that? How can you truly distinguish yourself? To substantiate your call center’s high level of excellence, you need credentials and you need someone else to provide them.
A credential is a verifiable recognition from an independent third party that you have achieved a standard level of performance. Having one credential puts your call center in a unique category that few can match. Having two or three moves you towards the top of any list. There are three general types of credentials: agent testing, certification, and benchmarking. Each provides an independent, third-party validation of your call center’s value.
Agent testing: When I was in the operations side of the industry, I enrolled our call center in a third-party testing program. Initially, I viewed its results as a quality report card. It wasn’t until after we earned this recognition that I realized it was an important, powerful mark of distinction that needed to be promoted.
The resulting scores provided 400 data points that could be analyzed to reveal areas of strength and weakness, as well as areas of consistency and inconsistency. (Here is something to consider: you may be better off being consistently weak in an area than to be inconsistent. At least when you are consistently weak, your callers know what to expect and you deliver it every time!)
Certification: Likewise, certification is when a third party organization verifies that your call center meets and complies with certain pre-existing and published criteria or values. The certification could range from technical viability, to agent quality, to adhering to best-practice standards. (The inability to become certified could signal a need for more funding, but that argument should be advanced carefully or it could backfire!)
Benchmarking: A third external source of credentials is benchmarking. Benchmarking focuses on quantitative call center measurements. For this reason, many CIOs and others in upper management like benchmarking; it gives a score on how one call center compares to other comparably sized operations. A good benchmarking analysis will also indicate performance gaps (even the best call centers will have some), make recommendations on options to close those gaps (which is a great asset when working on the budget), and may even include a cost-benefit or return-on-investment analysis of those expenditures. Hence, benchmarking offers a quantitative score and is one more credential.
Whether you are pursuing a client, requesting more funding, or seeking better visibility in your organization, it is my hope that you will have some credentials to share. That will make your job a whole let easier!
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
You say and believe that your call center is good, but can you prove it? What you need is a credential. A credential is the verifiable recognition from an independent third party that you have earned and met a standard level of performance. Credentials fall under three, sometimes overlapping, classifications: agent testing, certification, and benchmarking. The following organizations provide one or more of these services:
BenchmarkPortal manages the call center database originated at Purdue University’s Center for Customer-Driven Quality. This data warehouse of call center best practice statistics includes thousands of call centers in 24 industry segments. These performance data are used to establish best practice call center goals.
With this information, BenchmarkPortal is able to offer a call center certification program. It is based on a quantitative approach, rather than a qualitative approach (where performance issues depend upon the judgment of a trained auditor). It begins with a thorough statistical comparison between the call center seeking certification and a peer group of similar call centers in the same industry sector.
The certification is based on a balanced scorecard approach, which assumes that certified call centers are able to manage calls at a high level of both efficiency and effectiveness. Specifically, it means that they deliver high quality in terms of results and do so at a low cost. Using established scientific methods to measure the achievement of certifiable best practices standards, the results pinpoint areas of high performance and quantifies gaps in areas of low performance.
The Call Center School supports industry testing and certification in several ways. Students may attend an entire track of Masters Series programs or one of their two-day classroom programs to earn certification in a given topic area from The Call Center School. Upon completion of coursework, students may to take a mastery exam to demonstrate knowledge in a subject area. Those students with a score of 80% or higher are awarded certificates from The Call Center School.
For some students, this certification is an end in itself. For others, it is an intermediate means of preparation for the industry-wide Call Center Industry Advisory Council (CIAC) certification testing. As an official Training Consortium Partner of CIAC, The Call Center School offers organizations the option to purchase combined training/testing packages for one-stop shopping for education and certification.
The Senior Partners of The Call Center School have been involved in certification since its inception in 1995, serving on the initial CIAC Board of Directors. The Call Center School is the only training organization where all its faculty members have earned the CIAC Certified Call Center Management Consultant designation.
CAM-X (Canadian Call Management Association) offers two testing programs addressing agent performance and quality. These are the Award of Excellence and the Call Centre Award of Distinction.
The Award of Excellence program, started in 1989, is a benchmarking tool to test call center agents at telephone answering services in telephone technique, call control, client knowledge, and overall service quality. Over a six-month period, participating organizations are called ten times by mystery callers. Independent judges listen to the recordings of the calls and assess a score. The average of all ten scores becomes the overall score. Those achieving a score of 80 percent or higher will receive the Award of Excellence, presented at the annual convention.
Call Centre Award of Distinction: The Call Centre Award of Distinction program was created by CAM-X in 2000 to meet the needs of members who serve call center and contact center clients. The program focuses on customer relationship management, courtesy, etiquette, and proper call techniques, providing unbiased testing for quality assurance. The Call Centre Award of Distinction operates in the same manner as the Award of Excellence, however the evaluation criteria is geared towards advanced call processes not covered by the Award of Excellence program.
Customer Relationship Metrics offers CATs® (Completely Automated Telephone surveys). CATs programs are cost-effective, have high response rates, and a fast Return on investment (ROI). They are designed to accurately measure the service performance of callers. The company’s proprietary, comprehensive reporting provides information regarding performance at the business unit, team, and agent levels. This provides a call center with an action plan for improving service, training, and coaching to exceed customer expectations. The program supports call centers in their efforts to improve customer satisfaction, increase operational efficiency, attract more clients, and develop best practices that are in alignment with customer needs.
CAT surveys provide higher value than conducting telephone interviews using a live interviewer. Also, with the national “Do Not Call” list, customer research using live callbacks is no longer an ideal method. CATs allow call centers to collect caller feedback automatically and in real-time (at the close of a call) that is statistically reliable and valid. In most cases, CAT surveys can do everything a telephone interview does while completing more interviews at a lower cost.
In addition to providing CATs to call centers, Customer Relationship Metrics can also benchmark your calls with those of other companies (they do tens of thousands of surveys every month). This is done at no additional cost each quarter; they can also provide monthly comparisons upon request. This program is a useful means to assess how one center compares to others.
JD Power and Associates offers a call center certification program. Call centers that become certified by JD Power and Associates can show that they are “process-oriented, professionally managed, and focused on providing high levels of caller satisfaction.” Further, this effort helps call centers to “improve caller satisfaction, increase efficiency, attract more clients, and develop best practice standards.”
Phase one of their certification includes evaluating a call center’s:
Recruiting, training, and employee incentives
Management roles and responsibilities
Standards for performance measurement
Quality assurance
For those centers that meet phase one performance standards, phase two is surveying a random sample of callers. The intent of the survey is to ascertain caller satisfaction. The survey results are quantified and compared to a national benchmark. Those operations achieving a score of 80% or higher may then become certified by JD Power and Associates. Certified call centers receive a trophy and relevant promotional material.
NetReflector provides automated solutions for agent and contact center performance monitoring and benchmarking. The company integrates multilingual online survey technology with CRM (Customer Relationship Management) applications and incident management tools to measure caller satisfaction and loyalty scores in real time. NetReflector combines these quality indicators with internal call performance metrics to generate a series of balanced scorecards by geographic region and individual contact center, all the way down to workgroups and individual agents. This provides an accurate, up-to-the-minute picture of contact center performance and effectiveness – in any language.
These scorecards are delivered in an online reporting environment designed to fit the needs of all internal audiences, from agents to upper management. It provides the actionable, real-time insights necessary for successful change strategies to drive operational efficiencies and enhance company profitability.
NetReflector is a wholly owned subsidiary of GMI.
The National Certification Corporation (NCC) offers a variety of credentialing options for healthcare professionals. Although certification is limited to nurses, subspecialty examinations which lead to a certificate of added qualification are open to multidisciplinary populations including physicians, primary care nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, physician assistants, and others. More than 60,000 professionals have earned their RNC (Registered Nurse Certified) or certificate of added qualification.
Core examinations awarding the RNC credential are Telephone Nursing Practice, Inpatient Obstetric Nurse, Neonatal Intensive Care Nurse, Low Risk Neonatal Nurse, Maternal Newborn Nurse, Women’s Health Care Nurse Practitioner, and Neonatal Nurse Practitioner. Subspecialty examinations are Electronic Fetal Monitoring and Menopause Clinician.
Computer examinations are available throughout the year. There will be a paper and pencil examination administration on August 19, 2005 for institutions with six or more candidates for any exam mix. Exams are given at the institution sponsoring the opportunity.
SNUG (Startel National Users Group) has developed “a three-tiered educational program to provide members with certification levels covering the areas of their business with the focus on achieving 99.99% annual run-time,” said Dan L’Heureux, SNUG executive director. The three areas are CSR (customer service representative), supervisor, and site.
CSR Certification: The CSR certification program is designed for a telephone answering service to certify and accredit CSRs. The goal of the CSR certification program is to offer CSRs a professionally prepared program where they can be tested and accredited in customer service skill sets based on the features of the accredited telemessaging platform.
Supervisor Certification: Examination candidates are given problems and case studies to solve. They also answer questions in essay form about system operations and procedures. Supervisor Certification is as much a test of character as it is a test of knowledge.
Site Certification: The 24/7 site certification program sets forth nearly 60 criteria to be met or exceeded. These specifications represent a collection of the best practices and guidelines to which call centers must adhere. Certification specifications have been developed for Startel systems, the Amtelco Infinity system, the Telescan Spectrum, Professional Teledata’s PInnacle, and Alston Tascom’s Evolution.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
Benchmarking is the comparison of your call center with statistical results from the norm of industry peers. These numeric measurements are called metrics. Metrics can be in the form of financial figures, operational quality and efficiency, human resource efficacy, or whatever is deemed the most valuable to the participants, though typically and primarily they are operational in nature. “If it can be measured, it can be improved,” asserted Kelly Doran of Simcoe Message Centre in Barrie, Ontario. The “objective measurement of quality standards can help highlight areas of strength and weakness in both individuals and teams.”
Successful benchmarking follows a progressive path towards a desired outcome. First, there must be a desire to obtain, have, and use the information. Next, you need to determine who will be invited to participate. The basic requirement is for participants to have an interest in the results and a commitment to contribute. Beyond that, it is imperative that all participants are in sufficiently similar business niches within a common industry. In many cases, it is wise to select those using a common hardware or software platform, since operational metrics are hard to reliably compare when their source is different, employing dissimilar statistical standards. Some will assert, that from the caller’s perspective, a call center is a call center and therefore it doesn’t matter who your center is benchmarked with as long as they are of similar size. Yet everyone knows that a telephone triage call center is much different than an order-taking operation and a physician’s referral line has different objectives than a literature request function. Quite simply, it makes no sense to compare your call center to another one that is in a different industry, pursuing different goals, and with different cost-benefit standards.
The third step is to determine which numbers to measure or gather. It is recommended to start small, obtaining only a few key numbers. As participants become engaged in the process and realize the value of it, then other metrics can be added. This is followed by developing a standard determination of how the information will be gathered or the calculations will be made. For without a standard methodology each participant will make the calculation as they see fit, rendering any results unreliable. These two steps can be both time consuming and contentious. Assistance from someone with experience in benchmarking or a background in statistical analysis is most beneficial at this point, serving to greatly simplify the process and save valuable time. Also, if this person does not have a direct stake in the results, they are able to more objectively guide the process.
The fifth step is a critical one. It is to develop the survey form, which includes documenting the source or calculation of the data. Although this seems like a simple and straightforward process, it is one fraught with peril, as a less than ideal survey form will doom the process to misanalysis or failure. Again, someone with experience in benchmarking or developing survey forms will be most helpful. Then, regardless of the quality of the survey form, or its developer, it is of paramount importance to test it. What may seem perfectly clear to those who developed and reviewed the form, it could cause confusion or misinterpretation among those completing it. Therefore, a small field test should be conducted. Any problems uncovered in the test will need to be corrected before the benchmark survey is distributed to all participants.
The next two steps are the most important, as concerns in these areas can cause otherwise willing participants to decide not to complete the survey or to color their responses. Quite simply these steps are to gather the completed surveys and then to compile the results. Concerns reside in who performs these two items. It is imperative that this person or group be trusted, respected by all participants, and that there not be any perception of a conflict of interest. As such, it is recommended that someone not participating in, nor who will benefit from, the benchmarking results be assigned the task of both collecting and tabulating the responses.
The results of the benchmarking survey should only be presented in aggregate form and then only to those who responded. All individual answers must be fully protected. In some cases, such as providing cross-sectional or demographic analysis, certain sections may need to be eliminated due to a small number of responses that would effectively expose one or two members. The results, often along with analysis and a commentary are distributed to all who participated.
Although conducting a benchmarking study once is valuable, the real benefit comes from repeated studies over the course of time. Therefore, it is important to follow-up with those who participated to determine any problem areas needing correction or additional data to be collected. These changes must be made and the survey repeated. Depending on the nature of the information, the survey should be repeated at least annually, possibly semiannually, quarterly, or even monthly. The benchmarking results then become a periodic report card showing your successes, your shortcomings, your improvements, and your relapses – all with respect to your peers. This provides the basis for celebration and self-improvement.
Some Examples of Benchmarking Metrics
Operational
Percent of calls answered
Average time to answer
Percent of calls placed on hold
Average hold time
Occupancy (percent of time spent working)
Average call duration
Average wrap up time
Number of calls answered per month
Amount of time spent on calls per month
Schedule adherence
Human resource
Annual turnover rate
Average employee (CSR) tenure
Cost to hire one new employee
Cost to train one new employee
Starting pay per hour
Average hourly rate
Financial
Percent of revenue spent on labor
Cost per call
Value of the call
Profit margin
Summary of Steps for Benchmarking
Possess a desire to obtain, have, and use the information.
Determine who will be invited to participate.
Determine which numbers to measure or gather.
Develop a standard for how calculations will be made.
Design the survey form.
Test the form and correct problem areas.
Distribute the form.
Gather the completed surveys.
Compile the results of the collected surveys.
Present the findings.
Analyze and correct any problems for next time.
Determine additional data to collect the next time.
Repeat the process periodically (at least annually).
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
