informedRx (an SXC company)

If somebody were to hand you a copy of informedRx’s organizational chart, you might think that you were holding it upside-down. After all, who ever heard of a contact center organization positioning its agents at the top?

Well, informedRx, for one.

“Without them, there is no us,” says Kelli Barabasz, Senior Manager of Customer Care for informedRx, a leading provider of pharmacy benefit management (PBM) solutions. “[Agents] are the frontline for our members, pharmacies, doctors, and clients. Imagine having two call centers, a director, senior managers, managers, supervisors, team leads, an escalation team… and no agents. How successful would the call center be? The easy answer is there would not be a call center any longer.”

Placing agents at the top of the org chart is much more than just a symbolic move or a publicity play. InformedRx backs its org chart model up with employee-centric action – implementing programs and practices that foster a true culture of agent empowerment and engagement.

The payoff for such employee-centricity? How about an agent turnover rate that’s been slashed in half – dropping from 54% in 2008 to 27% today. 
 

A Finned Philosophy Has Agents Hooked

You might say there’s something fishy about how informedRx keeps its agents inspired and in place.

The agents wouldn’t have it any other way.

The contact center firmly embraces the famed Fish! philosophy, which comprises four simple, interconnected concepts and practices:

·      Be There – being emotionally present to improve communication and strengthen relationships.
·      Play – bringing a spirit of creativity, enthusiasm and fun to everything you do.
·      Make Their Day – serving or delighting people in meaningful and memorable ways.
·      Choose Your Attitude – taking responsibility for how you respond to challenges and how that
          impacts everyone around you.

Of course, a company can’t just command employees to embody the Fish! philosophy; managers have to live it and let employees see its powerful effects. At informedRx, it’s incorporated into everything from agent selection and development to incentives and facility design.

“To our company, the Fish! Philosophy is not just an engagement tool – it’s a way of life,” says Barabasz. “The philosophy can be embraced in many aspects in and out of work.”

So how exactly does Fish! fit into the contact center? According to Barabasz, it starts with hiring candidates who not only have the skills and knowledge for the job, but who also have the right attitude and personality to thrive in a highly team-oriented and customer-centric environment. “We make sure they are a great fit for the work they will be doing and the people they will be working with.”

There’s plenty of Fish! in agent training, too, says Barabasz. “We create a playful business atmosphere right off the bat with our training classes.” In both initial and continuous training, agents acquire key skills and knowledge via a variety of compelling learning tactics such as role-plays, games and shadowing. Agents also see early on that leadership is “there” for them. “Within the first two days of each training class, it is required for all leadership to introduce themselves to the new team,” Barabasz explains. Throughout training, they are encouraged to stop in when they walk by even if they only have time to say hi. This shows the new team members that we are here, and here for them. It relaxes them and gives them the family feel that we promote within the call center.”

The “Make Their Day” aspect of the Fish! philosophy is highly evident in informedRx’s rewards and recognition programs. Agents who exceed objectives or show notable improvement in key areas (like Quality, Hold Time and Attendance), or who go “above and beyond” with a customer or colleague, receive plenty of public praise as well as prizes likes Fish! trophies, award certificates, gift cards and tokens that can be redeemed for merchandise in the SXC store. Some top-performers have even been rewarded with a TV or an iPod.

Fish! may seem simple on paper, but as Barabasz points out, it requires a lot of effort from management for notable increases in agent engagement and commitment to occur.

“Anyone can read Fish!, show the videos and wait for results, but the philosophy has to be embraced and change has to take place in order to have success. Our leadership team spent months behind closed doors reading and talking about Fish! in order to have a clear understanding of it. If you do not truly believe in something, then how can you expect others to?”


Agent Engagement Begets Customer Sat

With leadership working so hard to “be there” for agents and “make their day”, it’s no surprise that informedRx’s agents aim to do the same for customers. And judging by the contact center’s average C-Sat rate of 88%, the agents have succeeded.    

“The impact [on customer satisfaction] is huge!” says Barabasz. “In order to have happy customers, you have to have engaged and happy employees on the other end of the phone.”

Despite it’s consistently high C-Sat results, the center hasn’t become complacent. Managers continue to carefully analyze scores and comments from customer surveys to help identify training gaps and ensure that a high level of service is provided.

“It’s easy to lose focus on the positive things you are doing and let them slip away, and then you see your C-Sat scores fall. We look at the results to formulate a game plan to improve on the lower scores while continuing to focus [on the things that drive] the higher ones.”


informedRx – the Big Picture:
Location: Lisle, Ill, & Scottsdale, Ariz
Hours of operation: 24/7/365
Number of agents: 200-300 (depending on time of year)
Products/services provided/supported: Pharmacy benefit management (PBM) support for members, pharmacies, and doctors.
Channels handled: Live phone, IVR, email, web self-service
What’s so great about them? The contact center strongly embraces the famed Fish! Philosophy to drive agent engagement sky high and deliver stellar customer experiences.

_ THE NORTH TEXAS TOLLWAY AUTHORITY

Many companies fill their mission statement with “customer-centricity”. The North Texas Tollway Authority (NTTA) fills their actual contact channels with it.

A few years ago, the NTTA made a strategic decision to put its money where its mission statement was – implementing a dynamic “Voice of the Customer” (VOC) initiative that has since had a Texas-sized impact on agent performance, customer satisfaction and the company’s bottom line.

“[We wanted to] synchronize with customers and measure performance through their eyes,” says John Bannerman, Assistant Director of the NTTA’s Contact Center. “Our goal was to transform our culture to fully embrace our mission statement in becoming a truly customer-centric organization. It has become more than a mission statement to us – it is the way we treat our customers and each other.” 


Turning Customers into Coaches

The key component driving the NTTA’s VOC initiative is a unique and potent customer experience/performance management solution called Customer Driven Management (CDM), developed by Tamer Partners Corporation (www.tamerpartners.com). Using this new tool, the contact center is able to cleanly capture and analyze detailed customer feedback across all contact channels right after an interaction, thus arming the NTTA with timely employee-specific scores and commentary that can be used to continuously improve performance.

Here’s how it works: Following an interaction with one of the NTTA’s agents, the customer receives an email asking them to provide “advice” to the agent about service they provided. The customer clicks on a link to access the survey, which features questions about things like the agent’s skills/knowledge, courtesy/professionalism and ability to efficiently resolve the issue at hand. But this is not your everyday generic customer satisfaction survey application. What sets CDM apart is its customization; the NTTA is able to create “Individual Action Surveys” that ask for customer feedback on particular areas that each agent is working on.

In essence, CDM has turned the NTTA’s customers into coaches, says Bannerman.

“CDM not only provides feedback directly to the service representative from the customer; it also adapts to the unique skills of each representative and seeks feedback from each customer to directly guide the employee on their specific opportunities for improvement. Our customers are now directly coaching employees on all areas of improvement including listening skills, empathy, call control and energy, to name a few.”

The NTTA has programmed the CDM system to provide alerts whenever a customer scores an agent either very high or very low, thus enabling supervisors to identify issues as they arise as well as to praise/recognize agents whenever they receive accolades.

CDM stores all customer responses including scores/ratings, yes/no responses, and text comments. The NTTA’s supervisors and managers can view and report on all surveys and responses for their team. Each of the center’s agents has access to their personal feedback in the CDM system, as well.

 
Lower Headcount, Higher Performance on the Frontline

The NTTA hasn’t handed its entire QA function over to its customers. The contact center’s internal quality monitoring staff still evaluate recorded calls to ensure that agents are providing accurate information and complying with established policies and procedures.

Still and all, Bannerman says that efficacy of the CDM solution has eliminated the need to hire four additional frontline managers. He adds that the supervisor-to-agent ratio has increased from 1:12 to 1:17 without sacrificing the level of coaching/support.

Of course, the VOC initiative isn’t all about managerial headcount reduction; it’s about providing a forever better level of service. Since implementing the initiative, the NTTA has seen agents’ quality and productivity results improve significantly. “We’ve found that the best opportunity for frontline change was putting our customers in charge,” says Bannerman. He points out that CDM scores and feedback are used not only during quality monitoring coaching sessions but also in annual agent evaluations and action plans. As much as 50% of the feedback during an agent’s annual review comes directly from customers. “Customers are effectively managing the quality of their future service experience by coaching and developing employees to meet their needs and expectations.”

And that’s just fine by the employees, Bannerman says.

“Agents love the VOC initiative, particularly CDM. They get far more [positive] feedback from customers than a supervisor would have time to provide for their entire team on a daily basis. This provides encouragement and motivation [for agents] to continue doing things well, and makes them more willing to accept suggestions for improvement.”

It also apparently makes them want to stick around longer.

“As a result of consistent positive feedback from customers, our attrition rate is 12% annually, which by contact center standards, is very low.”

 
NTTA – the Big Picture:
Location: Plano, TX
Hours of operation: Mon-Fri 7am-7pm; Sat 9am-5:30pm
Number of agents: 152
Products/services provided/supported: Account maintenance, toll tag acquisition and general customer service
Channels handled: Phone, IVR, email, web self-service, and store front
What’s so great about them? They’ve vastly improved agent performance, the customer experience and the bottom line via a highly dynamic “Voice of the Customer” initiative.

iiNET

iiNet may be headquartered “down unda”, but they are high above many organizations when it comes to incorporating social media into their customer care model.

Rather than drowning in or panicking over all the hype and speculation surrounding “social customer care”, the Australian ISP giant’s contact center operation has coolly and calmly developed a social media strategy that helps foster customer loyalty and brand advocacy.

“We believe social media will continue to grow as an avenue to address customer concerns, says Ilaisa Nacewa, contact center manager at iiNet’s Auckland, New Zealand site. “It is important to have this presence online; however, as more and more companies extend their customer care offering to include social media channels, you have to ensure you get it right.”

So far, it seems iiNet has done just that.
  

An Active “Social” Life

iiNet’s social media team is made up of a small group of agents who collectively monitor activity on such sites as Twitter, Facebook and the Internet discussion board Whirlpool 18 hours a day, seven days a week. The team uses the software solution CoTweet (by ExactTarget) to easily track customer feedback and manage conversations about the brand on the real-time web. The tool enables members of the social media team to publish updates, collaborate on responses and track interactions across today’s most influential social communities.

While iiNet’s initial foray into social customer care nearly two years ago involved mostly just listening to and, when appropriate, reactively responding to customers, the team has since become much more dynamic and proactive, says Nacewa.

“We have our own Facebook page and a Twitter account where we keep customers up-to-date with the latest information. This worked particularly well during the recent flood crisis in Queensland when customers were anxious about their connectivity. [These pages also serve] as an avenue for feedback when we release new products, plans, etc.”
 
He points out that, due to the fast paced social environment, it’s important to post information at least daily to keep followers/fans engaged. “Hitting them regularly with interesting and relevant information is the key to keeping the conversation alive online.”

Helping in that regard is the recently launched iiNet blog (http://blog.iinet.net.au), where members from all areas of the business are invited to share something about their work, a relevant experience, or a particular timely topic.

“We upload a blog entry almost daily and invite staff and customers to comment and discuss the posts,” says Nacewa.


Selecting the Right Social Media Reps and Metrics

Although all iiNet employees are welcome to join in on the blog conversation, it takes a special skill set to qualify for a coveted spot on the actual social media team.

“There’s a number of core skills we look for in social media team agents,” Nacewa explains. “Written communication skills are a non-negotiable, both in terms of being able to phrase a reply properly and being able to communicate succinctly – on Twitter you’re restricted to 140 characters a post. Also important is being able to read and interpret the tone of a purely text-based message.”

He adds that networking skills are vital too, pointing out that social media agents often receive queries that require input from other areas of the business in order to provide an accurate and efficient response.

Along with careful agent selection is careful measurement and management of the right metrics to ensure success in the social media channel. For instance, response time is a key measure, with the team expected to respond to any customer inquiry over Twitter, Facebook and Whirlpool within a maximum two-hour window. (That window gets much smaller for urgent customer requests or problems.)

“This rapid response over multiple channels, and the encouragement of direct customer feedback, has helped our fan base grow,” Nacewa says. “We have seen a positive flow-on effect concerning our brand, as it shows we are listening and engaging with our customers.”

Quality is another critical objective. iiNet relies on frequent training and clear guidelines to ensure that the correct information is delivered in a courteous and professional manner. As Nacewa explains, “When you are talking to a customer via a social media channel, you are not just talking to them, you are talking to everyone. It’s important that information be delivered in a way that reflects the brand and is accurate.”

iiNet also gauges growth in “follower” numbers and other measures of online influence (e.g., “Klout” scores for Twitter), as well as how well the team raises awareness of social media internally. Says Nacewa, “The team is expected to deliver regular training sessions to staff elsewhere in the business.”

 
Staying Centered

As effective as iiNet’s social media strategy and tactics have been thus far, the company’s overall service approach is still strongly grounded in the traditional contact channels and metrics that drive positive customer experiences. The contact center’s main focus continues to be on providing quality customer care via the phone, email, chat and self-service, as those remain the most common channels through which customers seek service and support – despite all the “social” hype that currently surrounds the contact center industry.

iiNet hasn’t let the social buzz blur the importance of good people management practices in the contact center, either. Nacewa and his crew are quite proud of their commitment to agent development and rewards & recognition, as well as the fact that the center doesn’t hold agents accountable for metrics that are often out their direct control, such as Average Handle Time. “AHT is a measure for managers,” says Nacewa.  

Such dedication to service fundamentals is actually a key reason why iiNet doesn’t need a bigger social focus at this time. After all, when you delight customers and solve their problems quickly via conventional channels, there tend to be fewer fires to put out online. 

Still and all, iiNet doesn’t downplay the important role that social media is starting to play in the company’s overall service strategy. Nobody really knows how big social customer care will get or how exactly it will evolve, but Nacewa likes the position iiNet has put itself in.

“Social media is becoming such an important part of a customer care and communications strategy. Customers are becoming more and more comfortable with talking to us online. They trust they will be heard.”



iiNet – the Big Picture:

Location: Australia – Sydney, Perth and Melbourne; New Zealand – Auckland; South Africa – Cape Town
Hours of operation: 8am - 8pm local time at each site
Number of agents: Approx 1,600 in customer service across all sites
Products/services provided/supported: Internet access (ADSL Broadband, NDSL, mobile
broadband, fiber, dial-up); telephony (fixed line phone, VoIP, mobile); IPTV services; domains
and hosting; business products and solutions.
Channels handled: Phone, email, chat (business), self-service, social media
What’s so great about them? They have effectively incorporated social media into their customer care model while maintaining a solid focus on more traditional channels and performance metrics. 

BLUE CROSS BLUE SHIELD OF MICHIGAN

You might find call centers that report a higher FCR rate than Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan’s; however, few have embraced the drivers of true FCR success as intently or effectively as BCBSM has.     

“BCBSM stepped up its FCR efforts considerably in 2009,” says Amy Frenzel, VP of Service Operations. “Our decision to do so was driven by the need to improve our customer satisfaction and experience results, and the need to drive unnecessary cost out of our business. We also recognized that our metrics for measuring performance did not include enough of the ‘voice of the customer.’”

In just a little over a year since implementing its FCR program – which centers around enhanced agent training, improved systems/workflows, better call analysis and direct customer feedback – the call center’s FCR rate has jumped 10 percentage points. Even more importantly, customer satisfaction has increased by 5% over the same period, thus confirming that the FCR initiative truly has teeth.

The call center has raised more than just its FCR rate and C-Sat scores; it recently raised a trophy – the one presented to BCBSM for “Most Improved FCR” at the 2010 annual SQM North American Call Center Awards conference, hosted by FCR/C-Sat benchmarking firm SQM Group. Frenzel says she and her team are honored to have received the award, though she hasn’t let the accolades go to her head.

“We are proud of our accomplishments, but realize we have more work to do to continue to improve our results.”


Educating, Empowering and Rewarding Agents around FCR

One of the biggest drivers of BCBSM’s FCR improvement since the beginning of the initiative has been agent education. Without agents’ full understanding of and enthusiasm behind what FCR is and does, progress is impossible, says Frenzel.

“We visited each servicing team multiple times to explain why we were placing such an emphasis on FCR, and we spoke to the agents specifically about what was in it for them.” She points out that this approach continues today during initial training, with all new agents learning about the impact of FCR on the organization and on the customer and agent experience. “Our staff now clearly understands the importance of the FCR measurement. CSRs now look forward to their coaching sessions to review the customer’s survey feedback results.”

Of course, agent understanding alone isn’t enough; staff still need the skills, knowledge and access to key resources in order to actually carry out their FCR mission. Frenzel and her team have done plenty to ensure this occurs, including continually revising call scripts and workflows, updating training materials, and providing ongoing coaching on FCR – not only to agents but to supervisors, as well.

Often, it’s the agents themselves who come up with ways to enhance FCR-related processes and resources. Managers and supervisors encourage and actively solicit staff feedback and suggestions during each team’s daily huddle meetings. In addition, agents can participate in determining root causes and coming up with viable solutions to reduce repeat calls. “We are in the process of implementing a Share Point site in which team members can submit their issues and ideas for resolution,” says Frenzel.

To help keep agents continuously focused on issue resolution and quality, management has built some alluring incentive programs around such customer-centric metrics. In one such recent program, agents received $25 for every post-call customer survey indicating a “World Class Call (WCC)” experience. As Frenzel explains, “WCC is determined by the customer’s top box score for satisfaction with the CSR, satisfaction with the overall service experience, and [first-call] resolution.”


Effectively Measuring – and Moving – the Metric 

No FCR improvement initiative is complete without an authentic and accurate process for tracking actual FCR rates. Unfortunately, too many centers rely on internal quality monitoring or repeat-call tracking technology alone to gauge FCR, thus failing to take a very critical element into consideration – the customer’s direct perspective.

No such problem exists in BCBSM’s operation. While quality monitoring and call-tracking tools do play a part in the center’s FCR measurement approach (as they should), VOC-based caller surveys are what really drive the process, helping to provide a truer reading of FCR achievement as well as valuable insight into the customer experience.  Following an interaction with an agent, callers have the option of completing the brief automated IVR survey, which asks callers to rate their service experience and to confirm if FCR was achieved.

Up until recently, the post-call surveys were conducted live by a third-party survey specialist, but the center decided to switch to the automated approach to quicken the feedback process, says Frenzel. 

“We have increased our opportunities to hear the ‘voice of the customer’. The automated survey tool allows us to see real-time customer issues that need an immediate response. Whenever we receive an ‘action alert’ indicating a highly dissatisfied customer [based on their survey responses], the leadership team analyzes the customer’s file, and contacts them for service recovery.”

Recovery is nice, but prevention is even better. That’s why the center calls on its aforementioned “2+ Call” research team to identify and, where possible, fix the underlying causes of poor service experiences and issue resolution woes. Thanks to such ongoing efforts, BCBSM has seen its “average number of calls to resolve an inquiry” improve from 1.65 to 1.55 (which has reduced overall call volume). “Our goal is to reduce it to 1.40 by the end of 2011,” says Frenzel.


Not Just a Call Center Thing

FCR is typically considered “property of the call center” in most companies, but continuous FCR improvement always requires collaboration with other key departments. After all, some callbacks are often the result of an employee outside the center not completing a follow-up task (e.g., form processing, etc.) after an agent “resolved” a customer issue during an initial call. And some initial calls could be avoided in the first-place with better interdepartmental communication and accountability.

Recognizing all this, the BCBSM team have worked hard to make FCR improvement an enterprise-wide initiative at BCBSM.

“When we [used to talk] about first-call resolution, employees around the organization would immediately think, ‘That’s a call center thing’. We had to do a lot of education to make sure our partners in other areas of the company understood how what they did each day could positively or negatively impact first-call resolution.”

The campaigning has paid off.

“FCR is now a component of one of the company’s long-term goals. This has taken FCR from the call center to the organization, and heightens the sense of accountability and ownership beyond just the servicing team.”


BCBS of Michigan – the Big Picture:

Location: Primarily Michigan-based, spread geographically throughout the state.
Hours of operation: Monday-Friday 8:00am-9:00pm EST
Number of agents: Approximately 950, supplemented by external partners when needed
Products/services provided/supported: Individual and group health insurance coverage.
Channels handled: Phone, IVR, web self-service, limited email, social media
What’s so great about them? Their VOC-based first-call resolution initiative has resulted in a legitimate10% increase in FCR in just over a year – with future improvements expected.

DELOITTE CallCenter

Every time I talk to long-time colleague Gerry Barber – a man whose sparkling contact center management and consulting career spans three decades – I learn something new about customer care and see things from a fresh perspective.

Gerry currently directs Deloitte’s CallCenter in Nashville, Tenn., where he has used his years of expertise and insight to drive continuous improvement and help set Deloitte apart from its competitors – and most other contact center organizations, for that matter.

I ran into Gerry at a conference in New Orleans last summer, where he told me his center was – not surprisingly – doing some cool and innovative things. I told him I wanted details, and that I would likely blab about them in writing at some point. Always eager to help the collective contact center industry raise the bar and rethink norms, Gerry happily agreed to speak to me on the record.

Here’s everything I asked, and – more importantly – how he responded.  

GL: Deloitte states that it aims to sustain a culture of “distinctive service”. Is this just a buzz phrase, or does it truly have teeth? What’s Deloitte CallCenter’s definition of   “distinctive service”, and how is it measured and promoted within the contact center and to your internal customer base?

GB: Deloitte’s focus on distinctive service is evident and ingrained in our CallCenter vision statement, training materials and in the metrics we use to run our centers. In our CallCenter, the definition of distinctive service actually starts with the internal customers we serve. Our customers help us define distinctive service through the positive comments they provide in our customer satisfaction survey responses. With this said, to us distinctive service is the art of delivering knowledge the customer can use, providing solutions that give peace of mind, and delivering service that is beyond expectations.

GL: I am intrigued by your center’s “Wall of Distinction” that you mentioned. Please explain what the Wall is exactly, why you created it, and how your analysts get on it.

GB: The Wall of Distinction was created to recognize consistency in delivering distinctive service. The criteria for securing a place on the wall is to achieve high customer satisfaction survey scores in addition to receiving a high number of specific customer compliments. An analyst will remain on the wall for a period of six months based on their performance during the past six months. We update the wall twice yearly: in October (during Customer Service Week), and again in April. 

GL: Do your analysts receive other related awards/recognition when they attain “Wall” status?

GB: We celebrate our analysts’ success in delivering distinctive service in several ways.  Daily, we circulate an email to all CallCenter personnel listing all of the positive customer compliments we’ve received the previous day. In the email, we include the name of the analyst along with the customer’s comment that identifies how the analyst delivered distinctive service.  On a monthly basis, we again review all of our customer compliments and I send a congratulatory note to those analysts receiving the highest number of customer compliments during the month; some analysts will receive monetary awards.

Our quality recognition program has evolved organically over time. Along the way, analysts’ comments have enhanced these programs shaping what we do today. 

GL: Your center has a somewhat unique quality scoring model in place. Please briefly describe the model and explain the reasons behind it.

GB: We wanted a monitoring program that encourages continuous improvement. For our needs, none of the standard approaches seem to drive performance – not the 100-point scale, nor the “check the boxes” approach, nor averaging scores. In our model, we’ve removed the idea of numeric scores. We’ve also resisted averaging scores for the collective call.  Rather we look for a set of “quality targets” across each of the four distinct and separate contact quality attributes. These four attributes include: 1) Call Ownership; 2) Communications and Courtesy; 3) Documentation; and 4) Resolution Effectiveness. Then, based on what we find within the context of the call, we determine if (in each of the four quality attribute areas) the analyst “missed the targets”, was “approaching the targets”, “met the targets”, or delivered distinctive service (exceeded targets).

Our quality team then looks at the percentage of instances, over time, that the analyst was either on target or surpassed the target. It is also important to understand and document where the analyst missed targets and where they can make improvements. Our goal for our analysts is to have 80% or more of their monitored calls “on target or above”, with no more than 5% of calls at “missed targets”. This is how we gauge individual analyst improvement.

Our analysts are coached daily but work with their team leader/coach twice monthly to review quality monitoring results. Most importantly, our analysts are given time off the phones to review their monitored calls prior to their coaching sessions.

Our analysts have bought into the process in a big way. They seem to have better insight as to what it takes to deliver distinctive service. We’ve also seen a movement on the part of analysts to do significant self-coaching.

GL: You’ve mentioned that your center has been exploring “unique ways to mix up random monitoring”. Could you please elaborate?

GB: Our quality team monitors a minimum of five random calls per month. One example I can share is that we asked each analyst to select one recent call that they felt surpassed our stated service targets. Our quality team then included this call as one of the five monthly quality monitoring calls. It was interesting to review these calls to see if the analyst had a solid understanding of what it takes to “exceed targets”. The calls indicated which analysts required more coaching and helped us better define what distinctive service looks like. 

GL: What impact has your “distinctive service” had on such things as customer satisfaction, first-call resolution, analyst engagement/retention, and operations costs?

GB: On a seven point customer survey scale, we have moved the bar on customer satisfaction consistently over the past three years. First-call resolution has also significantly improved year over year.

Regarding agent engagement and retention, our analyst engagement scores are among the highest within the Deloitte US Firms.

And best of all, over the past three years while service delivery has greatly improved, our cost of delivering support service has significantly decreased. Better service at a lower cost has been the result.

GL: Is there anything else you would like to add, Gerry?

GB: Yes. One secret ingredient to our success is the collaboration and inclusion produced by our continuous quality program.  In addition to the analysts’ role I mentioned earlier, our team leaders are measured on their team’s success. They are also measured on the amount of time they spend coaching for continuous improvement, which should be about 60% of their work day. And as mentioned, our analysts participate in the process by reviewing the same quality sampling as our service quality team and team leaders do.

Deloitte CallCenter – the Big Picture:
Location: Three centers: Tennessee, India, and California
Hours of operation: 24 x 7
Number of agents: Approximately 170
Products/services provided: Deliver a number of support-type services, including IT support,
business application support and HR benefits support, to name a few.
Channels handled: Phone, email, self-service
What’s so great about them? They sustain a culture of “distinctive service” – highlighted by a unique and comprehensive quality monitoring initiative as well as an employee rewards/recognition program that centers almost entirely around customer satisfaction ratings and feedback.