BenchmarkPortal (News - Alert) is well known for its call center certification and educational services, but the company offers a host of other products designed to improve the performance of a call center. TMC (News - Alert) had an opportunity to sit down with BenchmarkPortal CEO Bruce Belfiore, to talk about some of the company’s other competencies and what they can offer a call center.
BenchmarkPortal got started offering benchmarking services to call centers that wanted to know how they stacked up in the industry. However, building an extensive database of metrics had the secondary effect of facilitating the company’s foray into the consulting world. With such a wealth of information BenchmarkPortal is in a unique position to offer guidance to companies that are looking for best practice standards.
According to Belfiore, “We now have the largest database of call center metrics in the world, which really we’ve leveraged for research purposes and also for purposes of consulting, Because a lot people have said to us, ‘Ok you’ve shown us the benchmarks, we now know were bad in certain areas, what should we do about it?’” These consultative services use the metrics collected to help centers achieve best practices, match companies to pertinent training programs and also technologies that will increase their performance.
While benchmarking and consultation can be helpful in determining where changes need to be made, BenchmarkPortal suggest that call centers with more involved benchmarking processes do better than those that conduct the process infrequently.
“What we’ve found in fact is that call center managers typically only benchmark once a year. The process to go through and find all the metrics such as average speed of answer or average call time, takes time and has been more of a report card than as a tool. When we see people use it as a tool we see absolutely spectacular results, because they will pick those improvements that make the most difference. It’s really very exciting to see how things get better,” Belfiore said. Certified companies under BenchmarkPortal’s programs have the unique opportunity to continually benchmark their centers which allows for a constant monitoring of their effectiveness and efficiency against industry peers. The ultimate goal with continual benchmarking is to save money and add to the bottom line of the organization through best practices.
The company’s latest product, iBenchmark will tap directly into a call center’s ACD and automatically keep track of its metrics. This software will offer ongoing benchmarking services that will constantly inform call centers on where to make improvements and where they stand versus their competitors. Organizations that utilize this tool will without a doubt gain a competitive advantage in their industry and improve the overall value of the center.
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Chris DiMarco is a Managing Editor for TMCnet. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Quinnipiac University. Prior to joining TMC Chris worked with e-commerce provider Suresource as a contact center representative and development analyst. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page. Follow him on Twitter (News - Alert) @cpdimarco.
Edited by Juliana Kenny