One of the biggest contact centre challenges and how to fix it

Original article (guest blog) taken from our partner’s website - Teleopti

Disclaimer – the solution is not an easy fix and might even go against your instincts!

We see it time and time again, Contact Centre Managers are constantly fighting the battle between meeting their service level agreements by having the right number of staff at the right time with the right skills, whilst also striving to retain their staff.

Employee retention has been one of the biggest Contact Centre challenges for a long time, and yet, Contact Centre annual attrition rates rarely fall below 50%.

We know what you are thinking – 50% seems high!

What we’re referring to here is your ‘gross’ attrition at ‘skill’ level. Very often certain types of attrition are excluded for reporting purposes and some are in fact encouraged, but in resource planning, you need to include everyone who leaves an advisor position.

For example; An advisor leaves Banking to move to Loans? That’s a ‘leaver’ as you’ll need to replace a Banking advisor, even though at a department level that shows as 0% attrition.
Had to fire a Sales advisor? That’s also a ‘leaver’ as you’ll need to replace them too. An advisor gets promoted to team leader? Yep – they need to be backfilled – they’re a ‘leaver’ too.

The best way to calculate this is to add up the number of people at each skill level you had to replace last year and divide it by the total number of people with the skill. For example; I hired 30 new service and 20 new sales advisors last year (50). I have 50 service advisors and 40 sales advisors (90) = 50 / 90 = 56%. That’s your long-term resource planning figure.

However, for the purpose of this article it’s the ‘involuntary’ attrition rates and the voluntary out of department attrition we would ideally like to minimise.

A high attrition rate isn’t just bad for the employee, it’s also a huge problem for the business:

1. It’s expensive. You have to hire people and train them all the while absorbing those costs
2. It leaves you understaffed and often unable to meet your customer’s demands
3. It reduces the overall experience level of your staff leading to reduced quality
4. Hiring a lot of people effectively reduces the quality and quantity of talent available to you (you’ve probably already hired, trained and maybe lost all the good local employees!)

There are normally a number of factors closely related that can cause a Contact Centre to hemorrhage staff – corporate culture, often sitting at the centre of it all.

So, what can Contact Centres do in order to improve employee retention?

Pay your staff a decent wage:

This might seem like an obvious one and yet no one wants to hear it as it increases your costs. However, in the long term it may save money if you offset it with the cost of hiring new staff; the cost of training them and the cost of having to employ a larger offline training team; the lost staff hours required for ‘buddying’, the cost of customers having to call back and the cost of ‘brand damage’ etc.

And for your employees it’s not just about the money, a decent salary will make employees feel valued.

Make your employees feel valued:

Making sure employees feel valued can be tough. Start by regularly communicating and investing in your people. Do it well, genuinely and honestly. It is here that good contact centre managers shine over bad ones – good managers can communicate their message sincerely and are heard and believed.

Employee loyalty is often commensurate with how valued they feel. Ask yourself – How are you investing in your people? New technology? Office environment? Training? Rewards?

Using tools like Gamification can help promote cohesion and a fun work environment that stimulates and motivates employees. Gamification plays into our innate desire for reward, feedback, status, competition, altruism, and achievement. Gartner recently called it “a powerful tool to engage employees, customers, and the public to change behaviours, develop skills, and drive innovation”.

You can find more information on how to implement Gamification in the contact centre here.

Meet your service levels:

Nothing makes a Contact Centre tougher to work in than consistently failing your service levels and picking up call after call of angry customers. It’s normal for agents to burn out under these conditions.

Workforce management (WFM) solutions can help you schedule and forecast the right number of staff, with the right skill sets to meet your service level agreements and create a more pleasant and positive work environment for your employees. Most contact centres today will already have a workforce management solution implemented. It’s a case of better understanding your solutions and learning how to optimise it in order to achieve the results you are aiming for.

WFM consultants can not only help you implement better planning and scheduling, they can also support you by coming up with a clear strategy and learn new ways workforce management technology can be utilised in your contact centre.

Some of the above will cost money. Some of it requires skill. None of it is easy. But, if successful, it builds a wholesome centre that delivers quality – which ultimately is more enjoyable and better for the customer as well as your agents!

Source: https://www.businesssystemsuk.co.uk/blog/2018/12/21/one-biggest-contact-centre-challenges-fix/

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ComSys S.A. CCube for Business Intelligence CCube by Comsys is a business intelligence application, developed for enterprise contact centers. It delivers powerful, and dynamic reporting that enable managers to gain insight into their business. CCube is natively compatible with Aspect Unified IP and Cisco Unified Contact Center (UCCE/UCCX) platforms Comsys is a provider of οmnichannel customer engagement solutions that assist companies around the world in delivering unique customer experiences. For the last 15 years, Comsys designs and implements complex projects for clients from the outsourcing, financial services, telecommunications, and retail sectors. Comsys enjoys strategic partnerships with technology vendors like Cisco®, Aspect... (read more)CCube by Comsys is a business intelligence application, developed for enterprise contact centers. It delivers powerful, and dynamic reporting that enable managers to gain insight into their business. CCube is natively compatible with Aspect Unified IP and Cisco Unified Contact Center (UCCE/UCCX) platforms Comsys is a provider of οmnichannel customer engagement solutions that assist companies around the world in delivering unique customer experiences. For the last 15 years, Comsys designs and implements complex projects for clients from the outsourcing, financial services, telecommunications, and retail sectors. Comsys enjoys strategic partnerships with technology vendors like Cisco®, Aspect Software®, and Microsoft® for the delivery of innovative interaction management and contact center optimization solutions.

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Consilium Software Consilium UniInsight™ The days of ‘business as usual’ are a distant memory for most of the world. And when it comes to contact centers, balancing between contact channels, deciding which agent locations or teams are doing well, working out how your customer satisfaction is being impacted by the less-than-perfect work environments of ‘lockdown’ agents…leaders are often at a loss when trying to get such insights from their contact center data. As the technology and business landscape changes, so too must the contact center reporting and analytics solutions that power decision making and performance management. With the new release of Consilium UniInsight™, we have tried to deliver contact center reporting and op... (read more)The days of ‘business as usual’ are a distant memory for most of the world. And when it comes to contact centers, balancing between contact channels, deciding which agent locations or teams are doing well, working out how your customer satisfaction is being impacted by the less-than-perfect work environments of ‘lockdown’ agents…leaders are often at a loss when trying to get such insights from their contact center data. As the technology and business landscape changes, so too must the contact center reporting and analytics solutions that power decision making and performance management. With the new release of Consilium UniInsight™, we have tried to deliver contact center reporting and operational analytics in a way that will make a meaningful impact on organizations’ ability to optimize performance and deliver exceptional customer experience (CX.) Consilium UniInsight™ is an intuitive business intelligence reporting and analytics solution which can combine data from Cisco and non-Cisco data sources to simplify custom historical and real-time reporting. The purpose of analytics and business intelligence is to provide the tools and best practices for the analysis of information to improve and optimize decisions and performance, and with UniInsight™ we help you get that done with the least amount of stress, and in the shortest possible time. UniInsight™ helps businesses to analyze and track key business metrics in real-time, make changes to the anticipated contact volumes, and thus optimize workforce productivity and customer service SLAs. In most situations, new customized reports and dashboards can be built and run within seconds as we use pre-aggregated, processed data which is optimized for fast results. There is an easy drag-and-drop design for rapid customization of both, reports and dashboards. • DIY custom reports and real-time dashboards to analyze and track key business metrics in real-time, anticipate contact volumes, and optimize workforce productivity. • Integration with multiple data sources using OLAP cubes from multiple data sources for slicing and dicing of data. Online analytical processing (OLAP) provides an optimized environment for multidimensional analysis. • Intuitive report designer tool for ease of creating custom reports and dashboards without the need for the users to know SQL or database schemas.

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Daisee Daisee Daisee builds technology that empowers people to solve problems by making interactions simple and smart so they can have a more significant impact, be more productive and be better at what they do. We believe incremental improvements carry huge potency and provide exponentially greater change for the better. Genesys customers can now automate risk and quality management using Daisee’s speech and sentiment analytics and remediation workflow software. Daisee helps improve customer experience, ensure regulatory compliance, identify missed commercial opportunities & training requirements as well as provide valuable insights back to the business directly from the frontline – the true voice-of-... (read more)Daisee builds technology that empowers people to solve problems by making interactions simple and smart so they can have a more significant impact, be more productive and be better at what they do. We believe incremental improvements carry huge potency and provide exponentially greater change for the better. Genesys customers can now automate risk and quality management using Daisee’s speech and sentiment analytics and remediation workflow software. Daisee helps improve customer experience, ensure regulatory compliance, identify missed commercial opportunities & training requirements as well as provide valuable insights back to the business directly from the frontline – the true voice-of-the-customer. Unlike legacy speech analytics providers that simply transcribe audio to text and use ‘word spotting’ (i.e building a database of synonyms for every use case - ‘angry’ and ‘manager’ as well as ‘upset’ and ‘supervisor’ and simply spotting for those words), the engine has proprietary use of its sentiment language – a University innovation developed at Daisee, resulting in far more accurate transcription, enabling derivation of the context of a conversation. The Programmable Scorecard™ scores every call, and automatically activates a workflow for low-scoring, high-risk calls in near-real-time so they can be immediately reviewed and remediated. As the solution is pre-trained out of the box, deployment is a matter of weeks, not months and there is no setup or professional services fees – just a straightforward SaaS based pricing model. Ensure 100% of your phone interactions are not only monitored but also analyzed and scored with high-risk calls triaged for fast review and remediation.

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eGain Corporation eGain Analytics eGain Analytics makes it easy to measure, analyze and refine your contact center operations, knowledge and web customer experience. Create informative reports, charts and dashboards effortlessly. Slice-&-dice the data in any number of ways and use it to manage the business effectively. 1. Operational Analytics™ empowers the business to measure and manage the call center directly and without IT involvement. 2. Knowledge Analytics™ provides insight for eGain’s knowledge and AI applications. 3. Digital Analytics™ measures contact center performance within eGain’s digital channel applications. 4. Journey Analytics™ captures customer behavior on the website—identify the churn points and cre... (read more)eGain Analytics makes it easy to measure, analyze and refine your contact center operations, knowledge and web customer experience. Create informative reports, charts and dashboards effortlessly. Slice-&-dice the data in any number of ways and use it to manage the business effectively. 1. Operational Analytics™ empowers the business to measure and manage the call center directly and without IT involvement. 2. Knowledge Analytics™ provides insight for eGain’s knowledge and AI applications. 3. Digital Analytics™ measures contact center performance within eGain’s digital channel applications. 4. Journey Analytics™ captures customer behavior on the website—identify the churn points and create a customer experience that will drive up sales and reduce contacts. All this capability is delivered in a solution that’s easy to deploy, manage, and optimize. Built to work with the award-winning eGain Customer Engagement Hub™, as well as leading Call Center technologies such as Cisco UCCE and Avaya CMS, eGain Analytics provides true omnichannel management.

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14.)	ethosIQ, LLC ethosAnalytics ethosAnalytics leverages data to provide business intelligence to enhance the customer experience and beyond. The analytics dashboards are customized based on client needs. ethosAnalytics enables data-driven decisions in seconds or minutes - not days or weeks.

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Lieber & Associates Contact center Analytics and Metrics Lieber & Associates provides services to develop, interpret, and improve contact center metrics and analytics. The firm's experience spans forecasting, customer service, order-taking, lead-qualification, sales, segmentation, media-source-tracking, and testing design. L&A's president pioneered segmentation for telephone scripts and the tri-level service level metric. He brings broad analytics experience to contact centers.

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MiaRec, Inc. MiaRec Voice Analytics A powerful new addition to our Customer Engagement Suite, MiaRec Voice Analytics provides a complete quality management solution that records, monitors, organizes, and scores your customer interactions. MiaRec Voice Analytics humanizes your data, empowering you to make real decisions about your customer service operation. Unlock the needs, wants, and concerns of your customer base while upskilling your staff, identifying service gaps, and tackling compliance. Our Voice Analytics solution produces a detailed picture of your call center, highlights the topics you want to see, and helps you get ahead of disputes, reverse churn, and seize emerging business opportunities. With a fast and low l... (read more)A powerful new addition to our Customer Engagement Suite, MiaRec Voice Analytics provides a complete quality management solution that records, monitors, organizes, and scores your customer interactions. MiaRec Voice Analytics humanizes your data, empowering you to make real decisions about your customer service operation. Unlock the needs, wants, and concerns of your customer base while upskilling your staff, identifying service gaps, and tackling compliance. Our Voice Analytics solution produces a detailed picture of your call center, highlights the topics you want to see, and helps you get ahead of disputes, reverse churn, and seize emerging business opportunities. With a fast and low learning curve, MiaRec Voice Analytics builds a custom fit around your operation’s needs and can be updated at any time to track new topics.

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Navedas CSAT.AI CSAT.AI measures if the customer’s questions were answered, how empathetic was your agent and the customer’s sentiment to predict a CSAT score without pesky surveys, all in real time. QA is modernized and the CX game is improved - no matter if your agents are at their home or your office. CSAT.AI automates QA, analyzing 100% of text, email and chat interactions. Without spreadsheets or manual entry, managers have comprehensive data to guide decisions - no need to even be in the same location! CSAT.AI helps you protect your company and your people. Did a customer just threaten to sue you or abuse your agent? Now you know with real time push notifications. CSAT.AI provides granular details by issue (delivery delay etc) or agent score.

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OpsTel Services VIEW With OpsTel VIEW™, you are able to monitor and immediately audit your agent profile data for accuracy and compliance across the entire contact center solution stack. Features: *OpsTel VIEW™ tracks down unused stale profile licenses and provides clients with detailed audits explaining their location, current and historical status *Comprehensive audit across the enterprise, it only takes 10 minute *Provides a view in to the data accuracy of agent profiles across multiple applications *Drastically speeds up audit and validation processes *Validates actions to implement for profile data integrity issues across multiple applications *Can also assist in ensuring access level compliance... (read more)With OpsTel VIEW™, you are able to monitor and immediately audit your agent profile data for accuracy and compliance across the entire contact center solution stack. Features: *OpsTel VIEW™ tracks down unused stale profile licenses and provides clients with detailed audits explaining their location, current and historical status *Comprehensive audit across the enterprise, it only takes 10 minute *Provides a view in to the data accuracy of agent profiles across multiple applications *Drastically speeds up audit and validation processes *Validates actions to implement for profile data integrity issues across multiple applications *Can also assist in ensuring access level compliance for profiles across the enterprise *Out of compliance activity is easily identified through data accuracy

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Pointel CXi - Customer Experience Insights Pointel CXi, the IVR analytics platform, maps the entire customer journey and analyzes calls end-to-end to turn data into actionable insights. Centralized reporting is essential for seamless customer journeys, as it is critical to know where calls are transferred or abandoned. CXi generates multiple reports on IVR performance, the Customer-IVR interactions, and sticking points in the IVR that cause customers to struggle. CXi’s IVR Analytics platform provides a comprehensive understanding of customer engagement. Pointel Customer Experience Insights (CXi) delivers actionable information that enables businesses to reduce customer effort, operational costs and increase contact center effi... (read more)Pointel CXi, the IVR analytics platform, maps the entire customer journey and analyzes calls end-to-end to turn data into actionable insights. Centralized reporting is essential for seamless customer journeys, as it is critical to know where calls are transferred or abandoned. CXi generates multiple reports on IVR performance, the Customer-IVR interactions, and sticking points in the IVR that cause customers to struggle. CXi’s IVR Analytics platform provides a comprehensive understanding of customer engagement. Pointel Customer Experience Insights (CXi) delivers actionable information that enables businesses to reduce customer effort, operational costs and increase contact center efficiency. This helps contact centers optimize employee engagement, operations, and customer experience.

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PRILINK SIP-Trunk Demarc Monitor Analyzes SIP signalling and RTP audio stream of every call passing through the network demarcation point. Provide a real time 24/7/365 network baseline database that contains the IP bandwidth, call traffic of up to 128 voice groups, Call Detail Record (CDR), call blockage and MOS voice quality. All information are displayed in SIP-Trunk dashboards and are used in many applications, such as Telco collaboration, UC/CC analytics, Work Force Optimization (WFO) and caller identification.

 

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