Perspectives on measurement

Performance management in general is the activity of tracking performance against targets and identifying opportunities for improvement. It is not just a matter of looking back at past performance.

In all good call centres, despite the emphasis on measuring so many things, the focus of performance management should be the future – what do you need to be able to do and how can you do things better?

Managing performance is about managing for results. With all the measurement data around them, call centre managers need to remember that performance-based management should demonstrate that:

• You know what you are aiming for;
• You know what you have to do to meet your objectives;
• You know how to measure progress towards your objectives; and
• You can detect performance problems and remedy them.

  "You are what you measure", is an expression that’s sometimes heard around call centres. And it is not surprising.

So much measuring goes on.

Some managers still give the impression that their business is exclusively about queues and the time taken to resolve queries.

A more enduring perspective is that call centres are about enhancing the quality of the experience between a customer and a provider of goods or service.

One of the big problems with Customer Relationship Management is that at its heart lies a host of soft factors that we find hard to measure, so we tend to measure the things which we can get a grip on. Maybe it is a soft option.

Many managers can tell a lot about how their centre operates but not that much about how it performs. There will be those who say: "hold on, we do customer satisfaction surveys to fill that gap", and yes, that is a good step in the right direction. But there is a big danger for call centre managers to become bogged down in the detail of specific measures.

Typical measures for most call centres today include:

• Abandonment Rate
• Agent Utilisation
• Average Speed of Answer
• Average Handling Time
• First Call Resolution Rate
• Idle Time
• Time In Queue
• Turnover Rate

Everyone knows it is the manager’s job to set targets and goals for staff. It is also essential to ensure that these are consistently achieved. But the real challenge is to make the targets realistic and achievable in the first place so that the planned improvements in efficiency and quality of service are achieved.

The place to start is to go back to a sound definition of what need the call centre is addressing and the priorities for servicing it.

For example: if the priority is to cut the time an agent spends on each call, yet maintain customer satisfaction, do you have a way of measuring those factors?

There’s no point in cutting the average call time by 30 seconds if it results in a decrease in customer satisfaction and an increase in the number of times customers call back to resolve further issues.

Reducing the average call time by 15 seconds and increasing the number of transactions completed successfully with a single call, will almost certainly be a better measure of success.

The important thing is to decide what you are trying to achieve and how you will measure success. Whichever measure you choose, make sure you have the measurement systems in place so you can track current and future performance.

Working out what these measures are, should help you define the management information you need and the goals you set to achieve the desired staff behaviour.

Remember you always need an effective way of gathering continuing customer feedback in order to check your performance.