1) How many co-browsing sessions must an agent conduct simultaneously in order to be cost-efficient? What are the recommendations to increase agent's productivity? 2) What are the most commonly uses of chat? e.g. navigate through My Account page 3) What are the technical requirements (type of application, connectivity) to conduct a co-browsing session: from the agent and customer's perspective?

Answer:

1a) How many co-browsing sessions must an agent conduct simultaneously in order to be cost-efficient?

Slim pickings here…not enough basic research completed to answer this great question.

1b) What are the recommendations to increase agent's productivity?

There are scripting packages that make this exercise more efficient.


2) What are the most commonly uses of chat? e.g. navigate through My Account page

Most chat is used in conjunction with self-service offerings, i.e., get the customer trying to find the answer themselves, but have a chat window open if they get lost trying.



3) What are the technical requirements (type of application, connectivity) to conduct a co-browsing session: from the agent and customer's perspective?

This is a tough questions since many of the actual details are still a “work in progress.” I’ll pass on this very excellent question…needs more research.

1) What is an acceptable Service Level for a technical support program ? 2) What is an acceptable abandonment rate for a internet sales program ? 3) What is an acceptable abandonment rate for a customer service program?

1)service level for tech support 80% of calls answered in 40 seconds.

2)abandon rate should not exceed 5% for internet sales

3)abandon rate should not exceed 3% for cs program.

Can you offer some recent (2004) statistics on the cost per transaction accross agent-assisted channels? (e.g. phone, fax, email, chat) Does BenchmarkPortal offer this information by vertical? If not, can you direct me to another resource? I'm primarily interested in the public sector.

Amy, thanks for your question.

Here are the answers across agent-assisted channels for all industries:

Channel Cost Per Transaction
Phone $5.68
Fax $2.26
e-mail $3.12
Web-chat $1.89

We have the details by vertical, including public sector, but I suggest you contact MichaelFeinberg@BenchmarkPortal.com for more details on how to proceed.

Dr. Jon Anton
12/21/2004

Do financial service call centers handling business-to business calls have better performance metrics than those that handle consumer-to-business calls?

One would certainly expect that business-to-business (B-to-B) customers in any industry would receive measurably better call handling than consumer-to-business (C-to-B) callers. In financial services (i.e., banks and brokerages), the performance is mixed at best. Average time in queue is higher for B-to-B callers and the percent of "once and done" calls is lower for B-to-B. By contrast, average talk time is more than double for B-to-B, but makes sense since the transactions are bigger and relationship building is more important. Strangely though, caller satisfaction is lower for B-to-B callers and this certainly indicates room for improvement in financial services.

Do you have any information regarding industry best practice for the level of redundancy required within an enterprise call center? I'm speaking of the number of generators required, length of battery time, A/C systems, etc.

From our research, electrical power redundancy depends on several factors:

1. How mission critical is the call center...i.e., order taking is consider much more mission critical than post sales support?

2. Does the company have more than one call center so that a "downed" center can forward calls to other company sites with trained agents?

3. Does the company subscribe to an in-place "disaster recovery" (also known as "business recovery") strategy, namely, do they contract a third-party outsourcing company to have excess staff available in the case of a power failure, or fire, or "the flue", or a flood, or hurricane...and the like?? Depending on the answers to the above questions, some companies have a minimum investment in power back-up, UPS systems, etc.

The flip of this is that you will not find ANY contact center with over 100 agents that does not have as a minimum a 2-hour battery back up, or a complete diesel power generating unit...the price for this equipment has become so reasonable that it would be irresponsible to not make at least that level of investment.

Do you have any information statistical or anecdotal regarding the organizations who use outbound welcome calls to contact newly acquired customers? Do they work, are they effective, what's the return, impact on retention, etc? Particularly in the banking/financial sector. Many thanks, Peter

Peter, outbound “welcome calls” are VERY effective in customer retention. This can be particularly impactful if there is some small bit of information that you can decimate with the welcoming call. I have heard story after story about how welcoming a quick call can be to a brand new customer.
--Dr. Jon

Does benchmarking exist for cross-selling/upselling success rates in inbound call centers?

Yes, we have data on cross-selling and up-selling success rates for inbound call centers. PLUS, we could launch a simple one-minute survey with questions more tuned to your information requirements.

Dr. Anton what method do you use to measure input/output efficiency? How do you define the relationship between the inputs and outputs? What measures are considered? Is there a DEA - CRS or VRS employed? How is the isoquant defined that determines efficiency? Is this comparison information for goverment call centers published somewhere, along with there efficiency ratings? Thanks for your help.

Annette, thanks for your questions. Here are some brief answers:

1. For a call center I use 15 efficiency metrics and 15 effectiveness metrics to measure the I/O efficiency of call handling

2. If you’re interested I will send you the list

3. I am not sure what a DEA and/or CRS and/or VRS is...please explain

4. I do have a best practice report that compares government call centers with their non-governmental counterparts...you’ll find the details on our Web site at BenchmarkPortal.com for acquiring that study

5. Regarding overall call center issues, I just finished a book entitled “Call Center Management – By the Numbers” and this details all the issues related to managing by a balanced scorecard of efficiency and effectiveness. See the bookstore on our Web site if you want a copy.

--Dr. Jon Anton
Answered 01/17/05

Dr. Jon, One of my clients, a large candy company, recently came to me and stated that they felt an 85% service level in 20 seconds was the new industry standard for inbound order entry and customer care services. We currently operate at an 80/20 service level with 3% abandon as our key performance indicators outside of customer satisfaction and raw quality scores. While I certainly agree that an inbound sales channel would require a higher service level and would be provided at an increased cost, I'm wondering whether or not you would agree that the industry has moved on this metric or not? Regards, Cliff Martin

Cliff, this is a great question. Many, many people quote "new industry standards" with no statistical data to back them up. My team at Purdue University - BenchmarkPortal is the only source in the world that has thousands and thousands of performance data points regarding call center performance. We publish industry-specific reports that have industry-specific best practices regarding over 50 key performance indicators (KPIs) - service level being only one of those important KPIs. I have just reviewed the consumer products industry report, and you're right, the industry standard is 80/20 with a 3% abandon rate. Your client is doing fine. You might want
to purchase the complete Industry Report to scan other KPIs.

Dr. Jon, My company recently ordered a Benchmarkportal report that includes a U.S. "Call Center Budget Allocation" chart, broken out by HR costs, telecom costs, tech costs, etc. What are the equivalent call center budget allocations for Indian call centers? Thanks, Ed

Ed,
Thank you for your question. Can you please contact Michael Feinberg, Director of Business Development BenchmarkPortal at: (443)394 - 2500 or email at: MichaelFeinberg@BenchmarkPortal.com to discuss this with you.

Dr. Jon

Dr. Jon, I have been accessing your site and responding to your surveys for almost a year. I can not find the answer to one question that I have been asked. I run technical call center that provides support for an enterprise level software product. Our ASA is around 30 seconds which seems about right. Our abandon rate, on all calls is running about 5.2% this year. I can't seem to find any comparison on the abandon rate. Can you tell me how this compares to other similar organizations? Thanks Mike

Mike, We have an industry report for tech support call centers handling hardware and software products and services (much like your center).
I briefly reviewed this industry report for the industry averages for the two metrics you mentioned in your question. Your ASA is better than the average (congratulations), but your abandon rate is slightly higher than average for the industry…..not enough to be concerned about.


Thanks for responding to my many surveys…..I greatly appreciate your participation.

Dr. Jon, I would please like information on international certification courses and fees for call centre agents, supervisors and managers. Is AT&T Centre for Excellence the right place? Is there an alternative for STI Knowledge. Appreciate your enlightment.

Adham,
Agent Certification is offered exclusively by the Purdue University Center for Customer-Driven Quality through its various agents, like Human Technologies. If you wish to offer the certification in MENA region, this
can be arranged by contacting Catherine Gilmore at CatherineGilmore@BenchmarkPortal.com.

If there is anything else I can help you with please let me know.

Dr. Jon Anton

Good Afternoon! Presently, I am working with an electric utility Call Center. I want to validate if it is correct to use the median of registered/incoming calls volume (one year (2003) data sub-categorized into normal and peak months) as the threshold to establish that the shift condition is abnormal and thus waive our set AL/SL for our Contractor. Calls peak every time a major line circuit trip usually during rainy season. Is using the median valid or is there a standard practice in the industry in setting the threshold? Thank you very much for your assistance.

Using the median of incoming call volume for one year as the threshold to establish whether the shift condition is abnormal is not recommended. You Contractor will too often be in a non-compliant condition. Instead, the norm is to use one-standard deviation away from the mean. This gives your Contractor a better chance of delivering the hoped for service levels.
--Dr. Jon

Hello Dr. Jon, I am an MBA student and our team is doing a project on Sales Call Centers for Hi-Tech industry. One of the topics we are looking at is the decision of Outsourcing Call centers, including selection of the country to outsource and the Economics of outsourcing. I am wondering if your database has information that will be helpful to us or if you can direct us to a good source of data. One particular topic I am interested in is the variation in Sales Margin, Upselling and Overall revenue generation from country to country (corrected for differences between vendors). Thank you very much!

I suggest your have a look at two of my books, namely, Selecting an Outsourcing Partner, and Off-Shore Outsourcing Opportunities.

Hello, Dr. Jon. I am looking for data going back 10 to 20 years or more on the call volume in different service channels like phone, email, self service, etc. Do you have this data? If yes, can you please share it with us? Regards, Jack Chawla

Jack, these channels do not go back 20 years. Here are some of our statistics:
1. Toll free calls began with the introduction of the 800 number on product ads and literature. This happened in 1979. Before that the only channel was to “write a letter.”

2. The first recorded customer e-mail was in 1999. It was very basic, and took 48 hours to answer...a vast improvement over “snail mail.” The volume of e-mails between customers and company in that year was less than 100,000 total. Today, we have that many e-mails every second of every business day...a dramatic increase.

3. Self-service customer contacts first began with the launch of the IVR in 1992, a very rudimentary unit at best. One of the first applications was at Fidelity where you could move stock from one fund to another with the IVR, very cumbersome even on a good day. Volumes were very low as the confidence of the customer in this approach approached zero. The concept and technology rapidly improved, however, and now, especially in the financial services sector, 75% of call volume is actually completed in the IVR without talking to an agent. The advent of speech recognition is vastly improving self-service of calls.
--Dr. Jon

Hello, I am interested in building a best-in-class call center from the ground up. Are you aware of a definitive guide to this? Best regards, Rob Hornbuckle

There is no one guide, or "how to" book, that can help you build a "green field" call center from scratch. I have written 24 books, all on sub-parts of the design, implementation, and management of a best-in-class center. But, reading 24 books might not be the answer.

I feel my team at BMP can be of assistance. We certify centers to be Purdue University certified "Centers of Excellence." We know exactly what the best-in-class have in every one of the 43 industries that we study and benchmark. We know what makes the trio of "people, process, and technology" work for call centers. Your best bet is to have my team participate with your team in all the phases listed below. Call center design "from the ground up" has at least the following steps:

1. Understanding the specific that the call center will play in deploying the business model and strategy of the company, or business unit, that the center will serve...

2. Understanding budget constraints,

3. Understanding whether this is a build versus buy situation,

4. Understanding the target customer's profile and probably information requirements,

5. Understanding the best geographical location to locate the new center,

6. Understanding the skill sets and core competencies of the existing
staff at your company,

7. Understanding the proposed time-frame in which you hope to accomplish best-in-class performance,

8. and more...

--Dr. Jon
answered 02/28/05

How do most call centers handle customer complaints?

Handling a customer with a complaint takes very specialized skills, for instance, anger diffusion, mediation, negotiation, empathy, and more.

Many call center report to me that they typically route complaints to a team that specializes in this activity. In our litigious society, complaints that are not handled properly can quickly become major financial risks. The opposite is also true, and that is, a complaint that is handled properly can produce a very loyal customer.

How do you measure callback rate? Given Total Calls = 1,000 Total Unique Originating Number = 500 Do you calculated Call Back Rate as: (Total Calls - Total Unique) / Total Unique = 100% or do you calculate it as: (Total Calls - Total Unique) / Total Calls = 50%

Callback rate is always:

(Total Calls - Total Unique) / Total Calls

I have heard a lot about a “balanced score card” for judging the quality of service that I provide in my call center. Can you elaborate?

The balanced scorecard is a well accepted concept that judges the quality of any process by using a “balance” between the company’s objective (usually low cost, i.e., efficiency) with the customer’s objective (usually getting what I need, i.e., effectiveness). We have created a balanced scorecard for call centers by designing the Call Center Performance Index (CPI) that divides all call center performance metrics into two groups, namely, one group that relates to effectiveness (for instance percent of once and done calls), and the other group that relates to efficiency (for instance after-call work time). By statistically weighting these into one index, you end up with a “balanced” view of a call center’s performance, i.e., balanced scorecard.

I manage a call center with a average incoming calls for May 2003 of 5936. I have 31 service reps. The average work time per call 150 seconds. The company I work for has a threshold of 20 seconds and captures how many calls are answered in that timeframe. I believed the industry standard of 60 seconds in determining good service. My Total service factor has plumeted due to this change. I do realize that a company can measure what ever metrics and timeframe they want, however is this 20 second threshold do-able with the amount of agents I have. The company goal is 70 percent service factor daily. My acd counts from 6am to 6pm. Sometimes our calls are 800-900 a hour during peak hours. Please respond. If you require more information, I will provide. ASA was 39 seconds for the month of May.

Thanks for your question. I really think the best thing for you to do is to participate in our complete benchmark of all your statistics. Performance in a call center is NOT determined by one metric. I need to see the whole picture to give you the advice.

Please go to our Web site and enter your data. The first report is FREE, and I would be most happy to review your specific performance metrics based on the FREE report.

Once I have the complete picture, it would be a pleasure to answer your questions more comprehensively.

You're definitely on the right track to question arbitrarily set metrics of performance.

Jon

I would like to participate in the one minute survey for Upselling. I saw it from a colleague and I can't assess it on your web site. Can you please send it to me. Thanks.

Sharon,
We just closed that survey a couple of days ago. I'm sorry you didn't get a chance to participant. However, the survey results are available on our bookstore for purchase. Simply go to www.BenchmarkPortal.com and search for "upselling".

If I can help further, please let me know.

-Dr. Jon Anton
Answered 07/22/05

Is Service Level calculated as the number of calls answered within 'n' seconds divided by the number of calls answered or answered+abandoned?

The standard measure is the number of calls answered within 'n' seconds divided by the number of calls answered, expressed in %, for instance, 80% of calls answered in 20 seconds. The problem with adding abandoned calls to the mix is that abandoned rate is quite variable between industries and between type of call. Though a logical alternative, it is less accepted and less used.

--Dr. Jon

Most call centers use something like 80/20 for service level. What is an acceptable service level for chat? ~ Nina Westvold

As I am sure you already know, a Web chat session is certainly a different customer interaction than a call. So far, our research into key performance indicators (KPIs) for chat sessions indicates that customers are much less demanding of a chat session. I have witnessed an experienced agent handle as many as four chats simultaneously. From my observations, I think most chat users will tolerate having their answers in one to three minutes.

Our call center works towards an 80%/20 second service level objective. We are looking for a metric that assures that the exceptions are not out of control. What are some common metrics used to monitor what is happening to the 20% of calls that miss the objective? Is Average Speed of Answer the most common? Is it % of calls within x% (ie 93% within 60 seconds?). I'd appreciate any help to avoid reinventing the wheel.

Good question, Jeff. In managing the other 20%, we often try to understand more about the maximum queue times while watching ASA closely. Another approach is to do a histogram of the 20% of calls that are outside of the 20 seconds to better understand the out-lyers.
-Dr. Jon

Studies through the Benchmark Portal have been valuable in moving from a service only to a service to sales environment. One question that I have not been able to find is a benchmark of sales per sales FTE for those industries that have a dedicated sales unit within their center. For example, our branch staff are around 3.6 - 3.8 sales per FTE and here in the center, we're at around 5.5. We would be curious to see how we compare to the industry. Any information or direction on where I could find that information would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Service to sales is the goal of many call centers that are trying to move from being completely a cost center to a revenue center. Sales per FTE per shift varies widely by industry. I do not know what industry you are in from your question above. However, across all industries (not very accurate for comparison purposes) the sales per FTE per shift is 9.3. Obviously, this includes at one extreme, big ticket items that take longer to sell.
--Dr. Jon

We always struggle with service level performance statistics. What do you find is an industry-wide average for the number of seconds in which 80% of all calls are answered?

A specific run on our entire database across all industries indicated that US call centers answer 80% of all calls in an average of 42 seconds.

We are concerned with agents' data entry error rate. It costs us thousands of dollars each year to correct errors. Can you advise me what other call centers do to reduce the error rate?

Some call centers spend a lot of money implementing software to check the validity of every piece of data thereby scrubbing the data before it enters the system. Others purchase monitoring and coaching software to improve the training and data entry skills of individual agents. A combination of the two approaches is the best solution.

We are just beginning to implement a quality monitoring system that will allow monitoring and screen capture as well as call mining. Is there an industry standard for the % of calls that should be mined to determine why customers are calling?

This is a purely “statistical” question that is often asked when managers look at “raw data.”

The answer is that in order to be “sure” at a 95% level of confidence, with a possible error rate of +/- 5%, you need a sample size of at least 350 randomly selected calls.

From a layman’s point of view, being “sure” at a 95% level of confidence means that your final conclusion will be “correct” 19 out of 20 times...this is more than ample for most business decisions. BUT, of course, if you want to go to 99% confidence, you just need to increase your sample size very substantially...this is basically not necessary in the case of call monitoring…

Hope this helps
Jon

We have a call center that processes about 750,000 calls per year and a website that receives about 900,000 hits per month. We are thinking of adding a very visible "CONTACT US BUTTON" to the website. The question at hand is how to determine how many e-mails we would receive a month. Do you have any information about what has happened at other companies? Robert Hankin

Americans love email. From our studies, I would forecast you will receive one email for every 200 NEW visitors to the Web site. The definition of Web site "hits" is too vague, and often far exceeds the number of NEW visitors.

We run a small (5 reps) inbound call center. We are curious what the industry average is for call per hour per rep. for this type of center. Can you assist? Thank you.

The very important metric of calls per agent per hour is less dependent on center size, but much more dependent on the industry and the type of call being handled by the center. For example, a claims processing call will be on average longer than a catalog order-taking call. So, to be more responsive to your question, I would need to know your industry, and what types of calls your five agents are handling.
-Dr. Jon
Answered: 11/05

We're developing a build-out plan for a B2C (Business to Consumer) contact center and we expect that e-mail will be the most prevalent contact type. It's a simple model (think e-bay) in that most e-mails will fall into a handful of catagories which lend themselves to easily scripted answers. What kind of daily productivity ratios of e-mail contacts to CSR should we expect.

Good question. In contact center situations similar to e-Bay, we have measured CSR productivity at between 7 and 8 e-mails per hour. Scripted answers are a big help, but the e-mail channel is hampered by the following:

1. Most Americans do not write very well.

2. Routing e-mails to the right CSR with the skills to handle the e-mail quickly is not yet very accurate.

3. E-mails can become the source of litigation, therefore assuring the quality of final e-mails is much more important than the quality assurance of the center’s phone calls.
-Dr. Jon
Answered: 11/05

What have you found to be the most challenging issues facing call center professionals?

1. Better software to do value-based routing of inbound callers. 2. Cross-channel integration. 3. More sophisticated agent monitoring and coaching techniques. 4. Smaller call centers that are geographically dispersed, but virtually managed. 5. IVR equipment enhanced with speech recognition, making it seem very much like customers are talking to live agents. 6. Caller data warehousing with active ad hoc data mining.

What is the formula to determine the number of phone lines that a call center should have? Thanks in advance.

Barbara, this is really two questions.

The first answer is simply “take your total contact center budget and divide it by the total number of contacts handled by your center in the same time period as you budget….this will yield cost per contact, and is typically how this performance measure is calculated…..there are permutations of this, but let’s keep it simple for now.

The second question is “not that simple.” This depends so much on the product, its complexity, the user documentation, the intuitiveness of the product, and, and, and...

Once you have been running a center that handles customer service calls, it is very common to come up with the statistic you seek for that center...if this is your case, there are existing statistical formulae to forecast changes in sales revenue volumes.

There are no generic predictive formulae to estimate the number of service reps for all products simply given their annual sales revenue.

Dr. Jon Anton
12/20/2004

What portion of your total customer service contacts is completed on your Web site?

In a recent One-Minute Survey posed to our community of call center professionals, we asked the question, "What portion of your total customer service contacts is completed on your Web site?"

For the majority of respondents, only a small percentage of total contacts is handled via their Web site. Given the lower cost of a Web-based contact, more and more customer service centers are beginning to offer incentives to their customers to encourage them to use the Web as an alternative self-service channel. Of those respondents who do currently offer these kind of incentives, "product discount" and "priority service" were the most popular examples. Some examples of the "other" responses were "points in our loyalty program" and "discounted shipping."

What's the next big thing that you see for call centers?

I am part of the team at Bronco Communications that has implemented the MacDonald’s drive-thru window service completely using VOIP. We go from the “Radio Shack” speaker box in the drive thru lane to a DSL line over the Internet to our call center, where a relaxed agent takes the order and has ample time to up-sell, and then submit the order in “zero” time to the kitchen at the MacDonald’s fast food restaurant. This application would NOT be possible without the new computer telephony technology.
-Dr. Jon (answered 8/22/05)

Would you define First Call Closure the same as Repeat Calls (and therefore the numbers would be the opposite of each other--ie: 80% First Call Closure would equal 20% Repeat Calls)? Historically in the work that I have done related to data analysis, we kept these data points separate. We defined First Call Closure as a a call that didn't require the CSR to do any follow up work. Repeat calls are those in which the customer had to call back on the same issue. What are your thoughts on this? Do you have any industry data on repeat calls?

In our experience, these are really two different and important key performance indicators (KPIs). I would track them separately.

We have a technical support industry report that tracks both KPIs.

-Dr. Jon Anton
Answered 07/2005

Would you recommend to implement a virtual agent tool to facilitate the Search and Use on the Website? and why?

No...not necessarily...Facilitate the search and use on your Web site using a chat window. It is simple, effective, and low cost. BTW, the chat agent could easily be virtual in North American, or really anywhere.

Would you recommend to implement a virtual assistant (i.e an Avatar, not a real person but a graphic representation) to facilitate the Search and Use on the Website? and Why?

Rinu, adding a “net-sage” to a Web site has become very popular. I have observed a number of Web site where such a virtual assistant does, in fact, improve the use of self-service search, and does get the Web visitor to their answer quicker. My answer would be that virtual assistants are definitively worth investigating.

-Dr. Jon Anton
Answered: 01/10/05