To begin, we focus on the importance of Leadership and sharing the mission and vision of the call center. We review all aspects of agent management from best practices in screening, on-boarding, training and ongoing management of our most important resource.
Next, we concentrate on all of the day-to-day management issues. What are the high performing call centers doing to improve their quality assessment processes to drive customer satisfaction? In the Customer Satisfaction module, we discuss the multiple ways to measure, analyze and use the caller satisfaction finding. Then, our favorite topic: What do we do with forecasts, adherence and schedules? How do we find the solutions that meet the needs of the business and the work-life balance of our agents while still being able to meet our service goals?
Next, we discuss the support tools and technologies we use in the call center and that our customers are using to access us and information in the way and at the time they want.
Finally we discuss: "How do we measure and report our successes, progress and failures?" So how do we know if we are succeeding or failing? One part of the answer is to develop a benchmarking process. How do we decide which type of benchmarking is right for our organization?
Day 1:
Organizational Leadership
-
Strategy Alignment
- Understanding the corporate business model
- Understanding the importance of customer recognition
-
Strategic Goal Setting
- Strategy setting for the call center
- Where do we want to be five years from now
-
Leadership Styles, Approaches and Assessment
- Leadership styles
- Leadership roles and approaches
- Assessing your leadership style
-
Organization Design
- Organizational design criteria
- Understanding people, process and technology
Human Resource Management
-
Hiring New Agents
- Job description
- Finding applicants
- Screening applicants
- Testing applicant skills
- Interviewing applicants
- Realistic job preview
-
Training Agents
- Training design
- Training evaluation
- Initial training
- Nesting training
- Ongoing training
- Computer- based training
- Training in small call centers
-
Agent Satisfaction Measurement
- Agent satisfaction
- Agent satisfaction as related to agent turnover
- Agent needs assessment
- Picking actionable change initiatives
- Keys to a successful agent feedback
-
Agent Turnover
- What's "really important" to agents
- Top reasons for turnover
- Best practices in reducing agent turnover
- Exit interviews
-
Reward, Recognition, Motivation
- Instilling a performance culture
- Motivating the front line
- Best-in-class motivating techniques
- Reward and recognition
- Informal and formal programs that work
-
Generational Issues
- What is the impact
- Hiring & training changes
- Management techniques for Boomer vs. Gen X or Gen Y
Day 2:
Call Quality Monitoring and Coaching
-
Introduction to Call Monitoring and Coaching
- Introduction to call quality assurance
- Impact of call handling on company image
- Importance of superior service on customer-perceived value
- Hierarchy of caller needs
- Results from a one-minute survey
-
Call Recording
- Recording alternatives
- When to record calls
- Which calls to record
- How long to save recorded calls
-
Call Monitoring, Scoring and Evaluating
- Introduction to call monitoring
- Classic methods of call monitoring
- Evaluation process & forms
- Building the definitions document
- The evaluation form and scoring why the current methods are not optimal
- The components of call monitoring
-
Agent Coaching
- The art of agent coaching
- Who should coach agents
- How often do agents need to be coached
- What is the best way to coach agents
- Can the caller possibly coach the agent
-
The New Model
- Listening to the voice of the customer
- Agent performance at a new level
- Performance compensation to ensure goal achievement
-
Outsourcing Call Evaluations
- What does it mean to outsource your call monitoring activities?
- Can you improve the number of calls monitored by outsourcing?
- Why outsource call monitoring?
-
Quality Monitoring Solution Providers
- Range of solution providers
- Features and functions
Caller Satisfaction Measurement
-
Introduction
- Defining caller satisfaction
- Survey design and fielding
- Listening to the voice of the customer
-
Survey Design
- Determining which customers to survey
- Determining which questions should be asked
- Determining the appropriate length of the survey
- Determining which attributes should be measured
- Determining sample size
-
Survey Fielding Data Collection Methods
- Focus groups
- Customer advisory panels
- Outbound telephone calls surveys
- Inbound telephone calls surveys
- Post-call IVR surveys
- E-mail surveys
- Snail mail surveys
-
Survey Analysis
- Statistical routines
- Mining the caller feedback data
-
Most Caller Satisfaction Programs Don't Have an Impact
- Most stop after the fielding
- Reporting makes the difference
- Results must be actionable
Workforce Management
-
Resource Planning
- Forecasting fundamentals
- Advance forecasting
- Capacity planning fundamentals
- Advanced capacity planning
-
Scheduling Defined
- Documenting staff special skills
- Scheduling shrinkage
- Scheduling options
-
Intraday Management
- Intraday forecasting
- Crisis and absentee planning
- Intraday adjustment essentials
-
Analytics and Metrics to Manage Optimizing
- From raw data to management information
- Data analytics
-
Organization of the Workforce Management Team
- Workforce management organization
- Typical control tower organizational structure
-
Workforce Management Software Tools
- Key workforce management metrics and goals
- Workforce management tools
- Range of solution providers
Day 3:
Technology
- New BenchmarkPortal Research: Measuring the Value of Technology
-
Call Center Architecture
- Physical architecture
- Future architecture
-
Automatic Call Distribution
- Introduction to automatic call distribution
- Call routing business rules
- Call management systems
-
Virtual Call Centers
- Introduction to "virtual"
- Intelligent virtual call management
- Virtual call centers (inbound and outbound)
-
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
- Introduction to a new technology for call centers
- Best practices for IP network convergence
- VoIP network implementation strategy
-
Premise Based or Software as a Service (SaaS)
- Discussion of relative benefits of each service
Technology Enabled Processes
-
Expert Hub for Escalation
- Benefits of this structure
- How to staff
- How to measure
-
Outsourcing
- Benefits of outsourcing
- Which calls to outsource
- When to outsource
-
Social Media and Customer Service
- What is happening
- How social media and customer service intersect
-
Remote Agents
- Benefits from remote agents
- How to hire
- How to train
- How to manage
-
Operational Issues
- Policies
- Technology
Caller Self-Service
-
Introduction to Caller Self-Service
- What is caller self-service?
- Business imperatives impacting self-service
- Caller self-service challenges
- Minimizing "opt-outs"
-
Giving Callers Channel Alternatives
- How to migrate to other channel
-
IVR Self-Service Technologies
- Evaluating scripts
- Key performance indicators
- Impact of Calls on Brand image
-
Web Self-Service
- Why the move to the web
- Examples of effective web self service
Analytics and Reporting
-
Introduction to Analytic Tools
- What should companies measure
- What is the problem with numbers
- Best practices in analytics and reporting
-
Designing Effective Reports
- Determine the report audience
- Determine the information needs
- Common report types
-
Corporate Information Needs
- From data to knowledge
- Decision- maker's needs
-
Managing by the Numbers
- Why do managers measure?
- What should managers measure?
- From data to data analytics to action
-
Call Center Performance Evaluation
- Metrics - old and new
- Metrics for the New Frontier
- Metrics matching
- Your ultimate report card
- Now let's talk about numbers
-
New Analytic Tools
- Text analytics
- Speech analytics
Performance Benchmarking
-
Introduction to Benchmarking
- Benchmarking defined
- A snapshot of BenchmarkPortal (BMP)
- Benchmarking for profits
-
Call Center Benchmark Metrics
- What metrics to compare
- Collecting performance metrics
-
Performance Gap Analysis
- Driving gaps into improvement initiatives
- Determining broken process
- Investigating how each process is broken
-
Implementing Improvement Initiatives
- Implementing improvement initiatives
- Re-benchmarking to assess improvement
- Benchmarking and the bottom line
- Call Center Certification
-
Call Center Benchmarking Solution Providers
- Range of solutions providers
- Features and functions
