Contact centers are facing increasing pressure to up their performance in today’s slow economy, from both demanding and – thanks especially to social media – powerful customers and resource-conscious CFOs. To get some insights on contact center performance issues TMCnet recently interviewed Matt Storm who is director of strategy and innovation with NICE, long a leading supplier of performance management/workforce optimization solutions.

TMCnet: What contact center performance issues and trends have you seen emerge over the past year and which are continuing? What are their impacts? What are their drivers?

MS: There are several:

*             The cross-channel view of the customer is now becoming increasingly important to the customer journey between various channels. This could include phone, e-mail, social media, brick-and-mortar and SMS

*             We are increasingly seeing the contact center shift to secondary support for the corporate website. While this may lower costs per interaction, it is important to know the customer’s journey from the web to the contact center when additional assistance is needed

*             We have seen great emphasis placed on creating revenue within customer-service-oriented contact centers. This means that non-sales employees have to be equipped and trained to position cross-selling opportunities

*             Customer expectations for service have increased and thus have created a greater need to provide real-time information to the employee about the customers to make personalized, context-aware, timely decisions about service, support, as well as customer-saving and revenue-generating offers

TMCnet: What changes have you seen in the metrics that contact centers use to measure performance and what is driving them?

MS: The experience metrics are now across all channels, driven by the shift to new channels in social media and the web. Customer behaviors are also measured across all channels, driven by channel preferences. We have seen back office metrics analyzed alongside the contact center measurements to represent true “handled time” as a reflection of all customer facing and non-customer facing processes. 

TMCnet: What issues have you seen being faced by contact centers in ensuring performance and what are their causes?

MS: To ensure performance, all channels have to be measured in the organization and because the channels are often in silos, companies are looking for new ways to capture this information, gain insight across the channels and then deliver impact. Contact centers are no longer simply relying on good agent training to provide coaching for superior customer service. Real-time guidance given at just the “moment-of-truth” offers a way to ensure performance needs for revenue growth are met.

TMCnet: You mentioned back office metrics. What effect and to what degree does back office performance have on contact center performance? What issues have been arising, why, how have they affected contact centers and if negative how can contact center managers respond?

MS: Back office operations are complex and often have many different departments in various geographical locations, employees that speak different languages, have different skill levels and use many different desktop applications. The completion of processes that span numerous desktop applications and the quantity of manual or paper-based work make it difficult to capture the work throughput and real-time data to manage the workforce effectively. Added to these complexities are the frequent desktop application updates, changing processes and compliance requirements that the back office employees must quickly master. There is often a domino effect of calls to the contact center with the back office fails a process or in service levels. 

TMCnet: The rapid expansion of wireless technology has made it possible for more managers to carry out their tasks such as coaching and training without being tethered to their terminals. How much of a benefit is there with –and do you recommend – enabling contact centers managers to use wireless devices, like smartphones and tablets that access web-hosted performance management applications?

MS: At NICE, we believe that the wireless phase described here is strictly a new way to handle an old problem – and that is equipping the agent to handle, save, sell and support the customer. While wireless devices may provide great freedom for the supervisor, NICE is committed to providing better information on the agent’s screen in real-time rather than enabling traditional methods of coaching to new devices.

TMCnet: Contact center managers have long been concerned that when agents work from home their performance drops, specifically “if I can’t see you how do I know you’re working?” Is this issue still salient or is it fading? What means and tools do you advise that managers adopt to ensure that home agents perform as well if not better than their bricks-and-mortar counterparts?

MS: At-home agents are an excellent way to expand the potential hiring pool, reduce absenteeism, reduce facility-related costs and strengthen disaster recovery. With that said we encourage companies to handle coaching on a regular basis similar to on-premise coaching as well as leverage workforce management tools such as real-time adherence and scheduling to insure compliance to schedules and easy access to schedule changes. In addition, we recommend that tools such as speech analytics be used in similar ways to insure compliance with processes and procedures in the same manner as an on-premise employee.

TMCnet: What methods and solutions have been devised and recommended to ensure superior performance? Outline by specific metrics the results that have or would be gained.

MS: While there is often a lack of insight into the back office, there is a movement to bring workforce optimization technology best-practices to the back office to better align these customer expectations. The key metrics that have shown results include increased forecasting accuracy, occupancy, schedule adherence and self-service management. 

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