Know More... Do More... Sooner... with Workforce Optimization Solutions
1 Mar, 2009
By: Brian SpraetzThe consequences of poor performance in today’s economic environment have risen to unprecedented levels, up to and including business-ending outcomes. Companies feel compelled to act faster than ever, but the costs of making a bad decision have also escalated. Failing to act can be even worse. Informed decisions are needed to guide the business through tough times, to take advantage of others misfortunes and to secure long-term prosperity.
”Know more…do more…sooner” is the new mantra for success; how to make it happen is the big question. It starts with a razor-sharp understanding of customers. Their wants and desires. What drives them to action and what inspires them to loyalty. This intimate knowledge is the foundation for making decisions that keep current customers happy and to gain new ones.
Informed decisions are just the start. Those decisions have to turn into actions swiftly and successfully to create the greatest possible impact. Performance must be monitored and managed to ensure the desired results are achieved. How well a business turns decision into action is even more important than making the right decision in the first place.
Finally, the bottom line must still be carefully guarded. Precious resources must be used wisely and without waste.
The customer contact center plays a featured role in achieving this success, for it is the primary point where the company and customer interact. These interactions each present a potential tipping point where customer satisfaction, and ultimately retention, hangs in the balance. It is also the ideal place to develop the necessary understanding of the customer.
Workforce optimization solutions, encompassing interaction recording, quality management, workforce management, interaction analytics, customer feedback and performance management, provide needed capabilities to turn the contact center operation into a strategic focal point for the business. With the notable exception of interaction analytics, these solutions have existed for many years. What is different about today’s versions is their ability to interoperate, streamlining processes and affording the necessary timeliness of information and action.
Understand the Customer
For years, companies have been recording most if not all customer interactions in their contact centers. Each interaction has a story to tell about how well the business is serving its customers’ needs, and can be a source of knowledge that may be incredibly useful moving forward. The vast majority of these stories remain untold due to the physical impossibility of listening to every recorded interaction.
Traditional methods of customer research such as surveys and focus groups are costly, and many times the results are suspect or hard-to-interpret, making it difficult to develop effective action plans in a timely manner. The quantity and quality of customer information contained in recorded interactions far exceeds anything possible to obtain through traditional methods. Interaction analytics opens up this vast information source and enables companies to anticipate what customers need or want, and even what their next move might be as opposed to simply understanding what has already happened.
The capability to analyze and extract valuable insights from every customer interaction creates amazing possibilities. Imagine being able to instantly locate incidences where customers indicate they are considering leaving for a competitor, where they are angry and upset or where they simply want to pass along an idea for something better. Each of these scenarios presents opportunities for action, with potentially huge results.
Insights gained through detailed analysis of customer interactions enable businesses to make better, more enlightened decisions, and make them quicker. An example illustrates this best.
A typical use of interaction analytics capabilities is to monitor and track every call where a competitor’s name is mentioned. Alerts can be automatically generated when defined thresholds are reached, for instance a 20 percent increase in competitive mentions. When an alert is received underlying details about the cause is readily available. It could be a new competitive promotional offer that customers are considering.
Timely knowledge of a promotional assault is obviously important. Knowing the exact details of it at the same time is a whole different level of understanding. This detailed insight allows preemptive decisions to be made on how to counter it. It is now time to turn an informed decision into decisive action.
Turn Decisions into Action
Implementing a decision is a multi-step process. First, information regarding it must be disseminated. Second, behaviors need to be monitored to ensure its acceptance. Last, results need to be evaluated to determine whether the desired outcome was achieved. Advanced capabilities of workforce optimization solutions help in all three areas.
Rapid dissemination of information is accomplished using information portals and action packages. Action packages are e-mail-like in concept, but integrated within the solution, improving usability and traceability. Continuing with the previous example, an action package is created containing the details of the new counter offering. This could take the form of a text document or perhaps a link to an internal information site. A sample recording of a customer discussing the competitive promotion could also be included in the package.
Once issued, notices appear on the users’ information portals alerting them to the new information and providing convenient access to its content. The package is also tracked to ensure all recipients review it.
Quality management capabilities provide confirmation that employee behaviors have changed as a result of implementing the decision. Ongoing identification of competitive interactions by the analytics feature automatically drives enhanced monitoring and review of the appropriate cases. This eliminates the need to search through masses of interactions to find the right ones. In instances where the new process was incorrectly followed, individually tailored action packages are used to reinforce the change and speed widespread adoption.
Quick confirmation of the results of the decision is provided through the ongoing monitoring of interaction analytics. Continued tracking of interactions where the previous competitor’s name is mentioned provides information regarding the effectiveness of the counter promotion. Differentiating between interactions where the counter offer was accepted or rejected by customers provides instant statistics on success rates.
Further investigation into instances where the new offer was not accepted provides insights on specific customer objections or reservations regarding it. Fine-tuning adjustments to the counter offer using this information serve to increase its effectiveness, while still in the early stages where results are magnified.
Use Resources Wisely
The final ingredient for achieving success in today’s dynamic and challenging business environment involves the intelligent use of resources within the organization. Improved decision making and action is important, but intelligent allocation and use of resources has a direct impact on the company’s bottom line.
In the contact center, the primary area of concern is employees, as they account for the majority of operational costs. Using employees wisely within the center is a complex challenge. The ultimate goal is to correctly balance the costs of labor with the needs of the customer. Too few employees, or not having the right mix of skill sets, and customer satisfaction suffers; too many employees result in unnecessary expense.
Traditional workforce management solutions do a good job of pre-planning for staffing and skill needs, but what happens when the assumptions used to create those plans change during the reality of daily operation? The new breed of workforce management, operating within the integrated framework of a workforce optimization solution, provides the capability to react and adjust to changing conditions.
Accurate tracking of the types and volumes of interactions flowing into the contact center lets organizations rationalize their staffing plans against reality and respond intelligently and quickly when circumstances warrant.
Beyond Reaction
Making more informed decisions and successfully implementing them sooner makes a business more agile. It is able to react quickly to changing conditions and take advantage as opportunities arise. It creates competitive advantage, fosters customer loyalty and sustains profitability.
Reaction, however fast, is not the ultimate business strategy. Businesses should strive to go beyond reaction to anticipation. The available technologies and solutions provide the capability to foresee customer wants and desires, and the opportunity to act preemptively to satisfy them. Companies that learn to do this are positioned for success in any environment.
