In part two of this four part series designed to feature the unique challenges and solutions for businesses facing increasing demand on the performance of their contact center to increase customer lifetime value, Coordinated Systems, Inc. (CSI) takes a closer look at rolling out your solution.

 

The series is based on a white paper from CSI that provides an overview of how an organization can implement a call monitoring system to rapidly and effectively improve their agent performance.

 

The paper titled “How to effectively implement a quality monitoring system for rapid agent performance improvement” includes sections:

 

The Challenge

Rolling Out Your Solution

Benefits of Call Recording

Business Impact

 

 

According to the paper, preparing for agent reaction to the implementation of automated call recording systems is an important part of the entire process.

 

In that respect, the guidelines for rolling out your implementation can begin with writing a clear outline of the reasons behind bringing a call monitoring system into any call center’s work flow.

 

What are the benefits to your agents, customers and company? It’s always good to start with an outline before rolling out something new.

 

According to CSI, the outline is a blueprint for success.

 

Once the plans are laid for a call recording system, it’s time to introduce the concept of quality monitoring and initiate tasks to empower agents to participate in the process. While the purpose of call quality monitoring is NOT to catch employees slacking off, it is designed to help improve customer service and meet overall performance metrics.

For their part, employees have the ability to help define the quality assurance metrics and play a significant role in continuous performance improvement.

 

It is important to always remember customers are the ones who actually pay salaries and wages and is often much easier to retain customers than get new ones. These first two “customer service mantras”, as CSI calls them in the white paper, are followed by the reasonable concept of treating all co-workers as customers and good habits will form.

 

This should hardly be done only for purposes of the call monitoring implementation, but should be reiterated often, according to the white paper.

 

And of course, this can go a long way in creating a “team” atmosphere for your agents. 

One way to even further solidify a team atmosphere is to set up a team recognition and rewards program. Highlighting stellar service examples via internal e-mails and newsletter articles/photos/ Sub-teams can be formed to make task management easier

 

“Is it any wonder why basketball teams full of confident role players (2003-2004 Detroit Pistons) always overachieve while collections of individuals seem to fail (2005-2006 New York Knicks)?”

 

Good point.

 

Having a solid and motivated team in place helps make the transition to the next step even smoother as you make sure the Telephony and IT sub-teams know their roles and responsibilities in carrying out their end of the plan.

As part of the same larger team along with the agents, managers and supervisors create detailed project plans for each sub-team. If your IT and Telecom teams are uninformed about a new implementation, and they find out about it just as the call monitoring servers are rolled in to the data center, there may be unforeseen complexities that could have been prevented unnecessary problems.

 

Educating call center agents on their sub-team’s specific quality improvement goals is imperative and can go a long way in increasing upsells, saves, new sales, call time to resolution, caller time on hold. Ask them for other ideas.

 

An example of a goal may be that “Our common goals are to increase upsells by 40 percent over the next two quarters. We believe we can accomplish this by focusing on improving our customer service techniques in the call center,” according to the white paper.

 

Once the metrics are defined, your agents can help you define evaluation criteria, in essence, creating the form, include agents in coming up with evaluation criteria and forms. The reasoning is that self-evaluation is often one of the most effective building blocks to improvement.

 

By appointing a few agents to a “system review sub-team”, you can expect significant agent feedback on what could be improved with the quality monitoring program. System improvements wish list, Team goal review, Evaluation criteria review.

 

Now, with all that in place, you are ready throw a great kick off party. First, announce weekly performance goals and prizes and at the party allow your agents to evaluate supervisors’ calls. Every great party needs a contest with fun prizes.

 

Lastly, according to the CSI white paper, schedule a benchmarking session with another call center that has been quality monitoring for over a year and seen improvements. “The exchange of discoveries, stats and tips is not only fun exercise, but will go a long way in having people relate as they realize common issues in their everyday jobs – and watch them bond as they solve these problems….then watch your company’s customer service goals be accomplished,” according to the white paper.

 

The value of a call recording and quality monitoring solution is easily measured and there are multiple benefits received from a basic call recording solution, before advanced features and capabilities are added into the picture. Check in next week to read part three of the white paper series titled, “Benefits of call recording and quality monitoring.”