ICMI's Customer Management Insight - January 2008 - (Page 7)

TECHNOLOGY toring systems now offer. Speech analytics software is useful for speeding up how companies categorize interactions with customers. But such software doesn’t necessarily reveal opportunities to improve service, which is why it is one of several tools companies can deploy to understand how their customers behave. GE Capital Solutions and Purolator Courier, among other companies whose call centers we’ve profiled, combine internal evaluations of agents’ interactions with analyses of customer feedback. The practice of interpreting information from multiple points of view is what distinguishes performance management from the narrower realm of analytics. Analytics, in my view, is akin to reporting events that have already happened, such as tracking what percentage of their time agents have adhered to schedules and interacted with customers. We certainly need to establish some baseline targets for metrics like schedule adherence and talk time, provided we factor in the reasons customers get in touch with us. For this reason, performance management suites typically comprise tools, such as scheduling software, that enable you to observe if agents achieve baseline objectives. But performance management suites also include software to help you evaluate agents’ interactions with customers, analyze customer feedback and catalog possible next steps, such as assigning agents to training courses in areas where they need to improve. If analytics is about recording the past, then performance management is about planning for the future. It’s important to remember that although software exists to help customer care organizations icmi’s insight Preferred Methods of Communications for Customer Service Telephone E-Mail Web Site Store Paper Mail Online Text Chat Online Voice Chat Fax Other 0 n=1,501 Source: Yankee Group, Balancing Live Service and Self-Service in the Anywhere Enterprise, September 2007. © Copyright 1997-2007. Yankee Group Research Inc. All rights reserved. The graph above reveals findings from Yankee Group's survey of 1,501 consumers about how they prefer to reach out to companies with which they do business. 20.1% 14.3% 10.8% 2.5% .7% .5% 10 20 30 40 50 60 Percent of Respondents 70 80 28.4% 51% 71.8% measure agents’ performance, such software cannot manage performance. Computers discover correlations far more quickly than humans. But correlation is not causation; it’s up to you to identify reasons customers choose to do business with your company. It’s also up to you to identify the types of data that inform the actions you take to attract and retain customers; more data isn’t always better data. Although it’s often convenient to refer to performance management as a category of software, performance management must be an ongoing collaboration among many areas of your organization, including human resources, training and — if you want to reward agents for top-notch communication with customers — finance. With that said, as developers of performance management software suites continue to become more proficient at presenting indicators of why cus- tomers do business with your company, such suites will enable your call center to emerge as much more than merely a hub of information about customers. When you define your company’s performance in the context of retaining and attracting customers, your customer care team takes on primary responsibility for fulfilling your company’s aims. If you are ready to assume this responsibility, you’re ready for performance management. • JOE FLEISCHER is Chief Technical Editor at ICMI. joef@icmi.com. www.icmi.com | JANUARY 2008 7 http://www.icmi.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of ICMI's Customer Management Insight - January 2008

ICMI's Customer Management Insight - January 2008 Contents Customer Care Technologies Ad Index Editor's Page Contact Center Spotlight People: Prehire Tests In The Center Strategy: Video Contact Centers Show Preview Operations: Knowledge Management Industry Research Contact Centers Face Today's Realities: A Case for Consolidation 2.0 Is Your Agent Training Process Evolving with the Role? The Key to Innovation Is Maintaining Your Strengths Becoming Strategic: Using Customer Contact Analytics to Empower the Contact Center's Role

ICMI's Customer Management Insight - January 2008

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