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March 1999


Uniting High-Tech And High-Touch Workforce Management

BY ROBERT P. TALTY, NEC AMERICA, INC.

When call center executives develop workforce management solutions, they usually evaluate call-flow management, as well as their capacity to generate the greatest productivity from their technological resources. However, concentrating on productivity alone rarely yields optimal results.

The best solution considers that a successful call center simultaneously satisfies two basic goals: productivity and customer satisfaction. Process-management principles indicate that these objectives require different approaches: call-flow (high-tech) management, which impacts the business more directly, and work-flow (high-touch) management, which impacts the customer more directly. Both of these processes ultimately affect the customer, as well as the organization, but a closer look at the two helps to decipher the issues that need to be addressed.

High-Tech Call Flow: The Technology Behind The Customer Experience
High-tech call-flow management describes the technology implications behind the flow of inbound and outbound calls in a call center. These dynamics are more centered on effectively handling calls from a business-management perspective rather than from a customer interaction perspective. High-tech call-flow management focuses on the technology deployed to manage the business. To establish this process successfully in the organization, the elements that comprise it must be examined.

Contact Center Direction
First, an overall direction for the customer contact center must be set. Today's direction must be established to decipher tomorrow's expectations. Steps such as developing a needs analysis, determining which solutions meet those needs and planning how best to implement the solutions are the primary steps that must be taken.

Center Resource Management
With direction in place, call center resources must be considered, including those already in place and those to be acquired. Considerations should include the facilities needed to house staff, the capital to equip them, the technology platforms needed to build upon and the applications that will reside on them.

Call-Flow Optimization
With direction and resources firmly in place, the flow of calls in the call center must be mapped out. Which department should receive which calls? What routing options are most efficient and cost-effective? What are the alternatives when traffic increases? How can lines be kept open? The platform, services, applications and ACD scripts should all be working to the company's best advantage.

Call-Handling Management
What about each specific call? When are some calls more important than others? How can the distribution steps that lead to an ultimate transaction be minimized? How can queues be shortened?

These issues can be addressed by developing specific scripting rules for specific high-impact circumstances. These procedures should be published, implemented and enforced. In addition to the procedures, the technology deployed within the call center must be equipped to support these steps quickly and efficiently.

Service-Level Management
With so many calls coming in at once, control must be maintained. Call flow should be examined on a structural level before the agent level can be managed. Monitoring the types of calls being made and received is important. Determining what types of products, services or information data are most required is another key component. Based on the findings of these reports, key members of management should evaluate the effectiveness of current traffic flow and consider alternative modes.

Any enhancements made in the five areas of high-tech call flow will help establish a better-managed customer contact center. Calls will flow in and out more efficiently and staff and resources will be better, as well as more evenly, utilized. Most call centers try very hard to excel in the above high-tech processes. However, what makes a call center truly a customer-oriented operation is a concerted effort to improve the customer experience - and to strive to become high-touch.

High-Touch Work Flow: When Technology Enhances The Customer Experience
Essentially, high-touch work flow explores the human implications behind the flow of inbound/outbound calls in the call center. This flow works from a customer-interaction perspective rather than a business-management perspective and evaluates the capacities of the human (versus technological) resources employed in the call center and how they are serving customers. It focuses on the people deployed behind customer service. The elements that comprise the high-touch work flow must be examined to establish this process successfully.

Work-Flow Management
What processes are in place to give agents the ability to effectively handle each call? The customer contact center must evaluate every potential work-flow possibility and ensure that the procedures are published and practiced to accomplish each particular goal. Failure scenarios should be reported and used as learning examples. Successes should be established as benchmarks.

Service-Level Management
In a customer contact environment, the need for accurate and meaningful reporting cannot be stressed enough. There should be online monitoring and real-time status reporting to gauge shifting traffic patterns. Resources should be adjusted accordingly. Customers should never be penalized when business becomes too brisk. Batch reporting helps illustrate long-term trends that can be helpful in fine-tuning the big picture.

Workforce Management
Customers aren't calling a company - they are calling people. It is imperative that the very best people are recruited and sufficiently trained. Use reported information to identify trends. These forecasts can be used to determine when it is necessary to downsize, upsize or reschedule staff. Don't be afraid to part with convention and shift resources rapidly and often. There is only one first chance to make a good impression and repeated infractions can erode long-term loyalties.

Performance Supervision
Even the best people can perform only as effectively as they are trained. Investment in training should never be taken lightly. Monitor performance and monitor it deeply. Make sure sales and service messages aren't being compromised. Institute personal-development programs that will motivate associates to improve the delivery of the business' offerings and sales. From this, satisfaction figures should grow in direct correlation.

It is the combination of both these task sets - high-tech call flow and high-touch work-flow management - that results in an ideal customer contact center environment. In such an environment, agents find everything they need right at their fingertips to ensure a more streamlined, cost-effective call. At the same time, customers feel they were treated well enough to judge the experience as a pleasant one.

So, what is left? In a word - fulfillment. The customer has ordered. The agent has sold. Is the back office prepared to deliver?

Information Flow: Uniting High-Tech And High-Touch Call Flows
Information flow is the last piece of the puzzle. All the planning accomplished with high-tech call flow and high-touch work-flow dynamics means nothing if the information generated from these functions doesn't flow to the back office. All departments, including sales and marketing, data processing, data warehousing, human resources, order processing, credit and finance, manufacturing and production, and shipping and delivery, must be aware of what the front office is doing, saying and promising. In other words, a successful customer-oriented call center must not only be well connected to its customers, but also to its own organization.

When deployed together, high-tech and high-touch call flows dictate seamless workforce management solutions that ensure not only greater productivity, but, more important, customer satisfaction.

Robert Talty is marketing vice president for the Corporate Networks Group of NEC America, Inc. The Corporate Networks Group markets a complete line of advanced communications products and software, including digital key telephone and PBX systems, ATM switching systems, facsimile equipment, videoconferencing equipment and data communications products.







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