Is There Life After Contact Center Management?
1 May, 2007
By: Stephanie MappThe progression from contact center to corporate management depends on a few key indicators, the most prominent of which is the service level offered by the center. Service level has a direct effect on the propensity for those in contact center management to go on to corporate management.
Today, service received through contact centers can be rated from shameful to brilliant. According to a survey by the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI), in its February 2, 2007 report, “One in three centers (29.3 percent) do not measure customer satisfaction” and “More than a third (39.1 percent) of respondents reported they do not measure first call resolution in their call center.” According to a study conducted by Witness Systems released October 14, 2006, “The number-one challenge facing customer service organizations is first call resolution (cited by nearly 40 percent of respondents as the "biggest challenge"). The second most formidable issue reported was customer satisfaction / retention (23 percent cited it as the biggest challenge).”
Unfortunately, from many customers’ perspectives, too many contact centers do very little to truly satisfy and service their needs. Instead, it becomes apparent to these customers that some centers provide only the service the business itself is willing to deliver in order to suit its own priorities. This, of course, makes customers disgruntled, the brunt of which is taken out on frontline contact center agents and their managers.
According to the Aspect Contact Center Satisfaction Index, released on June 9, 2006 by Aspect Software, “Contact centers are failing to meet the expectations and needs of consumers. When surveyed, consumers gave contact centers a D+ (69 percent) satisfaction grade. This is evidenced by gaps between consumer expectations and their satisfaction levels with contact center interactions.” Again, this is reflected in the often unpleasant treatment customers heap on contact center employees.
The bottom line is customers are acutely aware of the difference between contact centers that just answer their calls and those that service their needs. And --- surprise, surprise --- the call center personnel know it, too. After all, call center agents and managers are people, too. They need to call into service centers for their own needs, and they judge service levels also, be it good or poor. Of course, when the judgment of the service they receive is poor, it colors their impression of the contact center as a career choice in general.
For years, it has been well documented that the employee turnover rate for call center agents approaches 80 percent, meaning that by the end of a single year of operation, nearly 8 in 10 of all the current employees will have been hired and trained within that year.
However, the trend is apparently moving in the right direction. In a survey conducted jointly by ICMI and TalentKeepers reported January 18, 2007, “nearly two thirds (62 percent) of call centers reported an external agent turnover rate of 25 percent or less. While most centers have been able to keep agent attrition under 25 percent, a fair number did report exorbitant agent turnover – 13 percent of respondents stated that they had experienced more than 50 percent turnover over the previous 12 months.”
Those statistics indicate that people who work in contact centers know when they are helping their customers and when they are just facilitating the frustrating game of providing the run around for customers. They soon grow weary of what they know is poor service, and they quit and move on. The job wasn’t paying enough to stick it out anyway, and the path to upward mobility was not clearly defined. Surprisingly, most contact centers put little effort into improving employee retention, but instead accept the traditional turnover rates and invest heavily in systems to train the next group of new hires faster and better. In fact, according to ICMI in its February 2, 2007 report, “Nearly half (45.6 percent) of centers do not measure agent satisfaction.”
More recently, industry practitioners have been reporting that frontline contact center personnel and managers alike view call center work as having a career opportunity ceiling, where they can''t rise any higher in the corporate ranks than call center management. In the survey conducted jointly by ICMI and TalentKeepers, the most common reasons for agent attrition cited by respondents include:
1) Better opportunities outside the organization (68 percent)
2) Low pay (55 percent)
3) Repetitive work (51 percent)
4) Lack of career/development opportunities (51 percent)
5) Inconvenient/undesirable work hours (46 percent).
The bad news is that, in many cases, these individuals’ gut feelings about their call center future careers are correct. The good news is that the trend is changing, albeit very slowly, for the better. The trend is toward the concept of the true service center, where personnel tend to thrive.
So, if people are looking for a career in contact center management with growth potential into executive management, how do they identify true service centers that will support their ambitions and endeavors and not leave them unduly burned out?
Here are a few key indicators to analyze before deciding to join a company when succession into corporate management is the goal.
First, look at the characteristics of the contact center and its operational philosophy and business objectives. Find out if the center is focused on call volumes. In this environment, management tries to forecast the timing of the center’s heavy volumes to predict its staffing requirements. The average time it takes to resolve a customer’s problem is tracked, but only for call volume forecasting purposes, and not necessarily for service improvement purposes. A customer may never talk to the same agent twice, and computer records are used extensively to familiarize agents with a customer’s account and to capture additional information for the next (different) agent. These types of centers measure success as “assistance” to the majority of the calling traffic and measure performance based on “quality” metrics such as response times, call cycle times and resolution times.
By contrast, contact centers focused on service have different objectives and focus emphasizing customer satisfaction and quality, not time and speed. Dedicated individuals or services teams are assigned to client accounts if it is an outsourced environment or to particular brands or customers if it is an in-house center. Agents are encouraged by management to take the time required to answer all customer questions and resolve issues to the full satisfaction of the customer, on the initial call. If follow-up is required after the initial call, the representative is most often responsible for the follow-up. Computer systems are used to document open and unresolved issues, and only then is the time required to complete the problem resolution tracked. Representatives can resolve issues without fear of spending too much time on a single problem, because their performance is measured through customer satisfaction levels and quality ratings provided by the customer. In some cases, representatives have only a few key customers to service and those customers are key in rating their performance.
Next, look at how executive management views the contact center. Is it considered a core competency of the business, meaning, do they feel it is vital to the success of the primary business? Does executive management measure the center as a necessary evil cost center, or is it viewed as a fundamental requirement and asset to conducting business?
Finally, look at the company itself. Determine executive management’s goals and strategy to discern if they place high value on customer satisfaction and retention, and invest in a contact center as a key asset.
Sooner or later, management will connect the dots. Their succession management problems are directly related to the service (or lack of service) they provide customers and employees. Service levels directly impact satisfaction of not only customers, but the morale of contact center personnel, which directly affects succession into management.
