Workforce Optimization

In the 2003 bestseller "Moneyball," author Michael Lewis recounts how Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane used data-driven management to reshape a laggard major league baseball team into a world-class winner. Two of Beane's methods stand out.

First, Beane discovered that winning baseball games was more strongly correlated with lesser-known statistics than many of the metrics most teams were using. Second, he created measures on elements of the game where success metrics hadn't been developed in the past due to lack of data. Shift to today's contact center. If Billy Beane had been managing a customer contact operation, what meaningful measures would he use to guide his team to sustainable advantage? What processes within the contact center are intuitively managed that could be better run based on statistical facts? Would Beane change his culture and reward his managers to hire, promote, train and field a new team lineup based on these insights?

These questions are being asked by today's most aggressive contact center leaders, who believe there is much more productivity to be gained by using Performance Management concepts. And those who have implemented projects have seen quantifiable results.

Performance Management

Performance Management is an oft-heard buzzword in today's corporate world. Its meaning varies by the industry, function and operating context, but the general concept revolves around a core notion: the systematic use of data throughout the enterprise to define and clarify goals, measure performance, increase productivity and improve results. Performance Management rests on the premise that there are efficiency and quality gains to be captured by methodically uncovering and leveraging truths that live in existing systems and current stores of data.

Going Deep: 'Moneyball Metrics' in the Contact Center

Contact centers are a strong environment for data-driven management: rich in under used data and under tracked processes especially compared with functions like Finance or Manufacturing. Often, data exists, but it is costly to access, organize and put in proper context because it lives in dozens of different stores and silos. And often, vital components of the center go under-measured due to data living in paper or in binders. As a result, many centers favor those management metrics that are the easiest to get to, rather than those that correlate highly with portability and customer loyalty. Like the Oakland A's and other baseball teams before "Moneyball," many contact centers use time-honored measures but miss the opportunity to truly re-define and improve performance.

Finding these 'Moneyball Metrics' involves a disciplined process of gathering hard to get data, cleansing it, determining dependent variables and their desired business impact and statistically correlating the base data with dependent variables. For examples of uncommon and non-obvious metrics, please download the complete Merced Systems white paper, "Data-Driven Management and Transformation."

Making Performance Management Work

What does it take to implement Performance Management right in the call center and reap the full benefits? Having a clear vision of what you want to achieve and of the steps for getting there is half the battle. Having the right tools is also critical. Performance management software systems help call centers gather and organize their data and align everyone in the organization around facts and a common vision.

Summary

Performance management, whether in baseball or the contact center, is about thinking of people and tasks in new ways and putting in place the right tools and processes to drive performance toward specific goals. It's about moving away from casual or intuitive management to management by data and facts.

Mark Selcow is the president of Merced Systems. To learn more about the Merced Performance Suite, the partnership between Merced Systems and IEX and to receive a complete copy of Merced Systems White Paper, visit http://www.iex.com