“Today’s contact centers have
undergone, and continue to experience, revolutionary changes,”
says Steve Wajda, Spherion’s Tampa district
director. “Most are known as multi-channel
contact centers rather than call centers
due to the diverse communications tools
they now employ, and those tools are the
product of enormous advances in technology. It’s a very exciting work place these
days.”
Smart Business asked Wajda to share
some of his insights into the evolution of
the contact center, why companies choose
to outsource their centers, how center performance is measured, and some of the
trends Spherion is seeing.
What type of contact center does Spherion
manage for clients?
We support both types of centers — the
inbound center that provides customer
service and support, order-taking, appointment-setting and other passive transactions, and the outbound center that performs active sales and telemarketing functions, whose agents work on a base-pay-plus-commission basis.
What are some of the current trends you’re
seeing?
We’ve seen an increased demand for
multi-lingual agents, especially in the residential or consumer market and in the
Tampa Bay area. The incidence of multi-purpose inbound calls is growing as well,
which involves marketing additional services to a customer during an inbound call.
Shift work remains commonplace in contact centers, and consistency is very important in managing shift work. After putting a
shift schedule in place, you need to hire to
the schedule and train to the schedule. For
example, you should not hire night-shift
staff and expect them to come in during
the day for a week of training.
Creative solutions are key to operating a
first-rate contact center. For example, if
you’re looking for ‘soccer moms’ to work
in a center, consider offering a part-time
shift from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. so they can have their work time and still be there for
their kids after school.
There is also a very positive trend to provide on-site, on-staff training expertise as a
standard part of the cost of operating a
contact center. This enables center management to develop quick refresher training as needed to fill gaps, respond to emergency needs, introduce new programs or
offers, and turn on a dime to stay out ahead
of the competition.
Finally, the trend in outsourcing contact
center operations continues to grow, on
both the inbound and outbound sides.
Why would a company outsource its contact
center operation?
For one, experienced outsourcers are
able to staff outbound and inbound centers
quickly and less expensively than most
clients can.
Two, outsourcing offers flexibility
through the ability to staff for peaks and
valleys and seasonal demands, and then
‘un-staff’ when the demand spike is gone
without having to lay off the client’s permanent employees.
Three, outsourcing can also enable a
client to avoid having to build facilities,
purchase equipment, develop training, manage advertising and outreach programs
and so on. And many companies that have
been operating successful inbound centers
find that trying to add an outbound operation, dedicated to acquiring new business
by phone, is just too large and different an
initiative for them to take on.
Finally, we’ve seen how important it is to
be flexible. Using an outsourcing staffing
provider can enable flexibility, whereas
sometimes the policies that an in-house
company center might have to follow
could actually inhibit flexibility.
Can you monitor how well a contact center is
performing?
Yes, and there are a number of key metrics that are central to performance. The
basics for an inbound contact center
include ASA, or average speed of answer,
as measured in seconds or minutes; abandoned calls, when the hold time has
become unacceptable to the caller; and
blocked calls, or how many times a call
reaches a busy signal due to call volumes.
They would also include how many contacts are required to resolve an issue.
There should be a requirement for acknowledging receipt of an e-mail or online
Web contact within a specified period of
time, and a standard for resolving that
inquiry. Other standards include forecast
contacts versus actual contacts and occupancy rate, which is the number of incoming calls versus the number of agents to
handle them.
In the outbound sales and marketing contact center, we might measure revenue, the
number of decision-makers contacted,
number of calls per day, and average talk
time.
Finally, we review agent turnover rates
and customer survey ratings to round out
the picture and enable us to constantly
improve the contact center experience for
our clients and their customers.
STEVE WAJDA is a district director at Spherion Corporation.
Reach him at (813) 623-6399 or [email protected].