Off Center
 
One of the keys to success in managing a call center is being prepared for the chaos and destruction that lurks around every corner in this dangerous world.  Despite the constant threat of total catastrophe and mayhem, many call centers don’t have a formal disaster recovery plan in place.

It isn’t clear whether the leaders in such centers are unaware that complete calamity could strike at any second, or if they are aware of it but simply don’t know how to deal with it. Assuming the latter is the more common case, I’ve decided to share several tips on developing an effective disaster recovery plan. Follow this list of “do’s” and “don’ts” to ensure that your call center has at least a snowball’s chance of surviving the cataclysm that will likely befall it soon.

DO organize a Disaster Recovery Task Force to develop and oversee the implementation of your call center contingency plan. The task force should be composed of managers, supervisors, agents, IT specialists and a good bartender, and should come up with recovery guidelines for a variety of disaster scenarios, including an earthquake, extensive system failure, or center-wide hangover following a staff barbeque. Be sure to select a leader of the task force, as having a single individual in charge helps to keep everybody focused and ensures that there is somebody to blame outright should the recovery plan fail miserably.

DON’T select an outsourcer located in the same zip code as your call center to handle customer contacts during disasters. If your center is scooped up by a tornado, you’re going to need a company that still has a roof and walls to pick up your slack. Agents at outsourcing firms are under enough pressure as it is without having to worry about dodging shards of flying glass during calls.

DO take advantage of your own resources if your organization has more than one call center site. Having multiple call center locations is the best way to minimize damage during a crisis situation. Meet with managers of each call center site to discuss such important disaster planning issues as emergency call-routing processes, data security, customer notification, and how to have a panic attack without your agents knowing it. If your company currently has only one call center, start looking on craigslist for good deals on some used ones.   

DON’T forget to put the plan in writing, and make sure it contains short and concise sentences that clearly state each step because if it contains long and complex sentences then it becomes harder to understand and thus increases the likelihood that your call center will be unable to react quickly in the event of a disaster and stuff like that. Clarity and brevity are key. 

DO educate the entire frontline regarding the disaster recovery plan. It’s important not to leave your agents in the dark – there will be plenty of time for that when a hurricane or flood destroys all the power lines in your area. Make sure your agents fully understand the plan and their specific role in it. Occasionally test the plan by screaming “Fire! Fire!” and observe how agents react under pressure. Such drills are most effective if you are able to hide your giggling.


To assist you even more with your disaster recovery efforts, buy a copy of my Full Contact ebook (http://goo.gl/kVMhf). I actually don’t cover that topic, but you can print out the pages of the ebook and use them to prop up any table or desk that might get damaged during a disaster.

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Many of you probably read the title of this post and thought, “Oh great, another rant from some self-important rabble-rouser who feels he has to constantly question authority and shake things up.”

That was my intention, at least.

I know, I know, there’s enough negativity in the world as it is, what with the lagging economy and the cancellation of All My Children. But I feel that I must express my angry views on several irksome issues and trends that currently plague the call center industry – not just because I feel they are detracting from our collective success, but also because I crave attention.


Overly decorative terms for frontline staff.  There has never been a universally accepted term in our industry for the “folks on the phones”. Agent. Rep. CSR. Associate. I don’t really have an issue with this per se, but I do feel that some call centers have taken things too far – using such terms as “Customer Contact Engineer”, “Headset Hero” and “Service Level Soldier” to describe frontline staff.

Instead of trying to make agents feel important by giving them ostentatious monikers, try making them feel important by paying them what they are worth and installing a window or two in the call center.

I encourage creativity, just not in this instance. If I write an article on your call center and you ask me to change “agents” to “Customer Ambassadors” in the final draft, I might just have to take a swing at you.
 

Deceptive conference session (and webinar) titles. While attending an industry event a few months ago, I sat in on a session whose title caught my attention in the conference brochure: “10 Surefire Ways to Obliterate Agent Attrition”. Sounded pretty exciting, but when the speaker opened his presentation with a complex mathematical equation to calculate turnover and some motivational quotes from his high school guidance counselor, I knew he wasn’t going to deliver.

Using deceptive session titles to attract conference (and webinar) attendees is unfortunately becoming the norm in our industry. Therefore, I recommend we create a law that requires all sessions to have short, unappealing titles like, “Quality Monitoring: An Important Thing”, or “Agent Training: Why Not?”. This will help to lower attendees’ expectations and increase the chances that the speaker will make it back to his or her room without being flogged by fruit.


An unhealthy obsession with “best practices”. How do you get 100 call center professionals to jump off a cliff? Tell them it’s a best practice.

I must get 20 emails a week from managers and supervisors who want to know what’s “best practice” (or “industry standard”) for things like service level objective and call abandon rate. I used to try to explain to such people that industry-wide best practices don’t exist, but they threatened to harm me and my family if I didn’t help. So now I just make up answers to appease them and get back to my nap. My standard response is: “Every world-class call center I have ever encountered answers 108% of calls within three seconds and has negative 1.7% abandonment. They also require all agents to wear Lederhosen on Fridays.”   

My advice is for you to ignore so-called “best practices” and instead focus your attention on determining what is best for your specific center based on what your specific customers and agents want and expect. But if you don’t want to take my advice and choose instead to continue your mad quest to uncover as many best practices as possible, then purchase my ebook – it’s chock full of them: http://www.greglevin.com/full-contact-ebook.html

7 Comments
 
 
Call centers are notorious for their less than inspiring (and often even damaging) facility design and aesthetics. Companies expect agents to efficiently provide exceptional customer experiences, yet house said staff in buildings that even maximum-security penitentiaries would deem drab and dangerous.

There has been so much focus in recent years on the evolution of call center technologies and channels, companies have failed to notice that their actual call center facilities are stuck in the Industrial Age. The poorly designed physical environment in which agents work often leads to chronic vision problems, back pain, wrist issues, and phalangeorbitosis – the uncontrollable urge to repeatedly poke oneself in the eye during calls and while on breaks.

Research shows that effective interior design, spatial dynamics and ergonomics result in employees who are committed to customers rather than to hospitals or asylums. Below are several examples of call center facility design innovation – based on interviews with several thought leaders in this area, as well as a few weird dreams I’ve had recently.


Strobe lighting. While traditional facility design experts say that indirect lighting is best in call centers (as it reduces glare and soothes nerves), the most progressive in the facility design community now believe that strobe lighting – with its rapid-fire flits and flashes – has the biggest impact on agent effectiveness and enthusiasm.

By creating an atmosphere more typical of a 1970s disco club or modern-day techno party than an office environment, strobe lighting shocks staff out of their workplace apathy and complacency and tricks them into thinking that there is excitement in their everyday lives. The result is a more vibrant frontline whose renewed energy can be felt by callers, thus enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Sometimes agents will even bust out funky dance moves.

What about the long-term effect on agents’ nerves? Proponents acknowledge that strobe lighting will undoubtedly wreak havoc on your staffs’ frontal lobes and limbic systems, but so will listening to customers complain and swear all day, so you might as well create a fun party vibe to assuage the misery.


Stackable workstations. The traditional approach of grouping agent workstations in clusters, pods or simple rows is fine, but it takes up a lot of unnecessary space and provides little opportunity to reward deserving agents with prime seating. That’s why forward-thinking design specialists have started recommending stackable workstations for call centers. Following this innovative approach, the workstations of the center’s lowest performers are placed at ground level, the workstations of the moderate performers are stacked on top of them, and the workstations of the top performers are placed above everybody. A ladder can be used to gain access to the middle and upper levels, or, if you’d like to whip agents into shape, a climbing rope may be substituted.   

It all forms a sort of “who’s a star and who sucks” performance pyramid that occupies much fewer square feet than traditional phone floors (though may require much higher ceilings). And since nobody wants to endure the shame and disgrace of being on the bottom level for very long, all agents will strive to continually improve in hopes of climbing to a more respectable level. Further, centers that embrace the stackable workstation design will find that their best agents are rarely offline, as the risk of a fatal fall will keep them glued to their seat.


BREAK rooms. According to numerous studies, angrily breaking objects that have nothing to do with why you are angry is the number one way to keep from killing customers or coworkers. Such findings have inspired many call centers to replace such hokey stress relief tactics as squeezy balls and Xanax placebos with BREAK rooms – dedicated areas where agents can go and destroy everything in sight after handling a difficult call, enduring a harsh coaching session, or receiving their paycheck.  

A typical BREAK room should include lots of easily replaceable windows, plenty of old computer monitors, and paper mache replicas of every manager and supervisor.


I’d love to hear some of YOUR innovative facility design ideas. Feel free to share them in the form of a comment below. (Serious ideas only, though – this topic is nothing to joke about.)
10 Comments
 
 
In a recent landmark study of over 5,000 call center professionals, when asked what was most needed to improve operations, the number-one answer given by respondents was “Irish-style rhymes about customer care.”

Upon learning this, I spent the better part of the next 17 minutes composing the following. Enjoy!


Call Center Limerick #1

There once was a manager who
Micromanaged all reps on his crew
For the reps it was hectic
Each breath was a metric
If you died, well, he measured that, too


Call Center Limerick #2

There once was an agent named Lear
To his schedule he’d never adhere
He’d sign off the phone
Then find his way home
And return too late smelling like beer


Call Center Limerick #3

There’s no way our service is level
Our customers’ nerves get disheveled
They growl and they yell
They shout “Go to h*ll!”
At times we must service the devil


Call Center Limerick #4

We aim to up Customer Sat
But nothing’s much tougher than that
With one guy this evening
I used a kind greeting
And swear that the customer spat


Call Center Limerick #5

Our call center’s scary and hectic
I get very buried in metrics
Most measure my speed
Like how fast I can pee
I can’t leave my seat – so I wrecked it


Call Center Limerick #6

My center launched chat out of spite
We know that our staff cannot write
They’re puzzled and vexed
Cause they struggle with text
Unless they’re out Saturday night


4 Comments
 
 
Very few people in our industry dreamt early on in life about being a call center professional. If you happen to know somebody who did, be careful – he or she is probably dangerous. (Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer both reportedly fantasized about customer care as kids.) If you yourself had dreams of a call center career when you were younger, then I was just kidding about the whole "dangerous" thing. Otherwise, I wasn’t.

Just because you didn’t plan on becoming a call center professional doesn’t mean that you haven’t landed in an exciting and rewarding field. With customer service being the big differentiator among competing brands these days, call centers are hot. You’ve probably even been invited to sit at the cool kids’ table in the company cafeteria, or at least you no longer have your lunch money stolen by some bully from Marketing.

Even still, many call center managers and supervisors – because of their random arrival in this crazy profession – continually struggle with existential career issues, constantly asking themselves such questions as,  “Do I belong here?” and “Is it too late to become a fireman?”

It’s ok to question whether or not you are a real call center professional. To help you find out, look for the following symptoms… I mean signs:


10 Signs You’re a Real Call Center Professional

1) You’ve legally changed your name to an acronym.

2) At the end of a date, you ask the person to complete a satisfaction survey.

3) You don’t giggle when you hear the term “shrinkage”.

4) If ever homeless, you’d create a sign that reads: “Will forecast call volume for food.”

5) You think an engagement party is a gathering to raise employee morale.

6) The fitness instructor at your gym told you to do 10 "reps", and you argued that that would be highly unprofessional.

7) You have a tattoo of A.K. Erlang… right next to your tattoo of Alexander Graham Bell.

8) You can’t telecommute because you’d miss the smell of headsets.

9) When friends ask about your social life, you tell them your call center now interacts with customers via Twitter.

10) You get all these jokes.


6 Comments