Agent00 ® Self Motivated Agents

Agent 00 TM
Self-Motivated Agents TM
Kim A. Cooper
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Agent00
Self-Motivated Agents
Kim A Cooper
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Copyright © 2004, 2009 by Exceed III, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior
permission in writing from the author and publisher.
Published by Exceed III, LLC, Lindon, Utah, USA
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ISBN: 0-9771722-1-X
Cooper, Kim A
Creating and sustaining self motivated agents
maximizes company profits and ROI—while replacing
complacency among agents with self esteem.
/ Kim A Cooper.
First Edition
Self-Motivated Agents™ is a trademark owned by Exceed III, LLC.
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Introduction
In this rich and valuable practical guide, Kim
Cooper has distilled the lessons and insights he has learned
over the past 25 years while serving in senior leadership
roles for WordPerfect Corporation, Novell, Inc., TechTeam
Global, Inc., and Sento Corporation’s worldwide technical
service programs, and through his participation as a friend
and advisor to esteemed global contact centers executives
like Dave Garner CEO of Sitel, Jeffrey Tarter CEO of the
Association of Support Professionals, John Sykes CEO of
Sykes Enterprises, Amy McCarty VP of ACS, Ron Schultz
President/COO of Convergys, Richard Munn Chairman and
Founder of ITSMA, Chris Brown VP of IBM Global
Services; and as a Board member of Sun/JavaSoft,
Information Technology Services Marketing Association
(ITSMA), and The Association for Services Management
International (AFSMI).
This book provides a wealth of background and

detailed methods that can be applied in an agent-centric
business setting. It conveys with much clarity the depth and
breadth of experience of one of the leading practitioners in
the field—an innovative non-fiction presentation of,
strategies and programs that will help companies motivate,
evaluate and train their contact center agents as learned by
Mr. Cooper over the course of many years of real time
practice and research.
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Acknowledgements
gents are wonderful individuals. I learned this
A firsthand when I switched from Sales & Marketing at

WordPerfect Corporation to Customer Services. They
give others a boost everyday...! They continue to teach me, and I
hope this book returns that favor to them, while also helping the
contact center industry fortify its most critical resource: its
agents.
On this project I have also had the collaborative benefit

of three brilliant and treasured partners, David M. Brown, Craig
C. Smith and the exceptionally talented team at Vertigo
Software, Inc.: Scott, Cindy, Eric, Rick, Paul, Phil, Verena,
David, Shannon and Dan. Many thanks for your insights and
energy.
Additionally, my gratitude goes out to my special friends

and industry pundits: Jeffrey Tarter, Bob Johnson, Ted Derwa,
Alison Harris, and Kurt Johnson – each of whom have given me
wise counsel on this work.
Most of all, I’d like to acknowledge my undying

gratitude and love for my wife Karie, who has been my editor,
consultant, pole star, sweetheart, and best friend since our early
college days, and for my incredible sons Kris, Michael and Scott,
and my incomparable daughter, Kimberly Dawn (Kim Jr.). They
are my earthly source of pure joy and inspiration –even as
Sophia was for Nathaniel. I am truly blessed, and delighted to be
so.
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Contents
Introduction ............................................ 4
Acknowledgements ............................. 5
Chapter
One
The Missing Link.................................................. 8
Chapter
Two
Winning With “Heart” ........................................ 18
Chapter
Three
Is It Real? Is It Possible? Is It Worth It? ............. 59
Chapter
Four
Objective Performance Evaluations ................... 96
Chapter
Five
High Morale Culture......................................... 104
Chapter
Six
A SaaS/BI2.0 Application................................... 113
Appendix
Value Table....................................................... 120
Proven Results ............................................. 121
Gartner Survey ...........................................1211
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Chapter One
The Missing Link

[Circa: 1984]
“T hat’s pretty cool!” he said over my shoulder.

“What is it?”
“A word processor,” I replied —surprised that

someone was now in the store with me. Ten minutes
earlier, the door to this Tandy Computer Center in Houston
was wide open. But when I entered there was no one
inside! …?
I stood around for five nervous minutes waiting for

a store manager to appear from the back room, but then
decided to see if WordPerfect™ worked in the Tandy-1000
PC on display. I’d never tried a T-1000 before, but I’d
heard it was fast, and knew it was one of the few computers
you could buy that had a hot new feature called a hard-disk.
I slipped my 5 ¼” floppy disk in it and fired up
WordPerfect.
A guy walked up from behind. I expected it to be

the store manager, but it was just a pleasant looking guy in
a pair of khaki pants and a golf shirt….
“What else can it do?” he asked, interested.

Chapter O - The Missing Link
I thought to myself, “This guy thinks I work here.

Must be my tie? Oh well, I guess I can give him a demo
until the store manager shows up. Maybe the store manager
will be interested in WordPerfect if he sees this guy’s
interest in it when he comes in.”
“WOW!” he exclaimed. [pause] “Hey, do you like

to golf?”
“Yeah. Sure.” I replied . . . enjoying how friendly

he was.
He stuck out his hand and said, “Listen, I’m the

computer software buyer for Tandy, worldwide. I’m based
in Ft. Worth. The manager of this store is in the back room
filling out some papers I brought down. Why don’t you fly
up on Thursday, shoot a round of golf with me at the club,
and we can talk about . . . what did you call it,
‘WordPerfect’?”
By the 17th hole we had penciled out a deal where

Tandy would buy product from us and sell it through all of
their 700 retail computer stores. This was the beginning of
a very lucrative, long and enjoyable business relationship.
This story happened to me in early 1984 when I was

a sales representative for WordPerfect Corporation. We had
some heady, exciting days at WordPerfect as the world fell
in love with word processing. Our skyrocketing
WordPerfect sales were creating tens of millions of
customers –customers we wanted to make sure could use
9
our product. But with “millions” buying WordPerfect every

month, doing so was a problem of massive scope.
To care for the millions using our products

throughout the world we started a
free call-center-based support
program. Consumers loved it, and
began buying more and more
WordPerfect because of our free
support program.
As word traveled, press coverage of our support

offering grew. CBS’s Good Morning America even flew
out and did a market trends piece on our support program,
which was uncommon in those early days… computer
software was still a mystery to most.
However, business economics came to bear in the

late 1980’s as the price of WordPerfect and other
mainstream applications began to fall below $100. By 1990
we were taking 20,000+ support calls a day, but our sales
margins were no longer fat enough to pay for free, 24-hour
support. The owners of WordPerfect asked me to leave my
Sales & Marketing post and head up Customer Services for
the company. My charter was to build a sustainable
business model underneath our services programs that
would increase quality while reducing expenses.
There was no such thing as “Workforce

Management” or “Quality Monitoring” tools back then. We
didn’t even have Automatic Call Distribution systems
commercially available. Some of you may remember
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our “Hold Jockey” program whereby we played music and

gave live traffic reports to those on hold. What you may not
have known is that our hold jockeys sat facing a semi-
circle-wall of monitors showing every team and queue.
They manually moved calls from congested queues to open
queues. Ours was the harbinger of today’s “ACD” systems.
We continued to invest in technologies like

statistics monitors, knowledge bases and automated
scheduling programs. These helped improve our “process
efficiencies.” But we knew the finest call center equipment
in the hands of confused, complacent or dissonant agents
would be of little good. Our agents talked to 20,000
customers every day. They needed to be motivated to do a
superb job on every call.
We had 1200 agents in our US call center and

another 600 in multiple foreign call centers. I met
personally with random groups of agents from these centers
every week. We talked openly and they told me what
frustrated and discouraged them, and what motivated and
inspired them. We constantly brainstormed together on how
to weed out the bad and institutionalize the good.
Unfortunately we did not have web technology back

then to implement some of the progressive ideas they came
up with, but I’ve never forgotten those ideas, nor have they
become obsolete. Now, nearly twenty years later the same
confusion, complacency and dissonance still prevails
among contact center agents –for the same reasons.
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Indeed, it is getting worse. Turnover (aka, Attrition)

rates have increased from 15% in 24 month cycles back
then, to 42% - 80% in 12 month cycles today. These high
turnover rates kill profit margins in P&L centers and
destroy ROI in cost centers. Each rookie replacement agent
costs $6,000 to 8,000 extra and takes 3 to 5 months to
become productive. This is a downward spiraling death
cycle for contact centers –one increasing in frequency.
To alleviate the money side of the problem, contact

centers are springing up in low income areas around the
world. But rapid turnover cycles are setting into these
geographies as well. A decade of better technology and
efficiency measurement tools has not been enough to solve
the demoralized agent problem. *CAUTION* companies do
not want demoralized agents caring for their coveted
customers. The contact center industry, while increasingly
more important in a global market sense, has not yet
stabilized its most vital element –its agents.
I have remained intimately involved in the contact

center business throughout the years but have also been
immersed since the mid nineties in the creation of award-
winning, open, browser-based applications.” 1 Combining
the best theory and practice from each of these two
business sectors I have now produced a commercially
available new contact center automation solution called
1 If you are a C-level executive, project manager, software architect, or developer, no

doubt you have heard at least some of the hype about SaaS (Software as a Service) the
past few years. Twenty years ago, the maze of dissimilar computing platforms and data
protocols across WordPerfect’s fifteen worldwide contact centers made it impossible for
me to build Agent00. But today’s web technologies have fixed that. Agent00’s amazing
SaaS and BI features enable it to cost less and work anywhere/anytime/on any device.
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Agent00. It provides the critical missing link in a contact

center of immediate personalized agent rewards and
instruction –while at the same time increasing profit
margins and ROI. [Agent00 patented feature (“ ”)] 1
• Agent00 stands for “Agent’s Own Optimization,”

which bespeaks the unique driving force underlying
this automation product –namely, the
unconquerable human spirit of your own agents.
• It is branded Agent00™ after Ian Fleming’s famous

secret agent 007, because the name Agent00
symbolizes the modern strategic role your agents
play in securing and retaining the lifeblood of your
company –your customers.
• Agent00 is an advanced SaaS/BI2.0 application that

looks and handles as well as a local application. It
quickly integrates with every software program you
already have or will ever get –with no need to be
loaded on your server(s) or clients.
• Agent00 automatically gathers meaningful data in a

unique way and analyzes it according to the agent
performance parameters you set.
1 Exceed III, LLC owns 26 patents, and has 9 additional pending, on Agent00 in the
US and Internationally, including but not limited to: i) pay for performance labor
management, ii) real time individual balanced scorecard, iii) real time individual
behavior-conditioning scorecard, iv) real time customer surveying, v) real time analytical
integration of performance and conditioning data, vi) real time, sensory-based data
presentment to a human, vii) SOA/SaaS/BI2.0 architecture for rapid deployment and
modification, viii) a complex performance optimization process.
13
Designed for agents, largely by agents, over the

course of nineteen years, Agent00 will intensify the good
habits of your contact center agents and objectively weed
out the bad habits and the chronically bad agents from your
contact center—
• Your revenue and profit margins will increase

• You will keep your best agents longer
• Morale will steadily rise
• Turnover will steadily go down, and
• Customer satisfaction will improve.
This book sets out to build a map of five unique

deliverables of Agent00 and then to explore their
implications in setting breakthrough contact center business
strategy.
Agent00 is not just a better balanced scorecard. It is

a superior employee conditioning system.
The result is a positive, energized agent culture that

will steadily increase the productivity in your contact
center(s). Here’s a summary of what you can expect in the
chapters that follow:
Chapter 2 is entitled, “Winning With Heart” and

focuses on the unequaled power of agents’ self motivation.
Races are seldom won by jockeys that neglect, confuse or
abuse their horses –the competition is too intense. Great
races are won by horses whose jockeys wisely guide them
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through the turns and the traffic and then let them run
unrestrained at the right times—a pattern the two develop
together with repetition. I’ve started this book with this
principle because the energy that can be found within the
heart, internal drive and self-motivation of an agent is the
crown jewel of a contact center –much more so than its
efficiency tools. Once a contact center has learned how to
cultivate and harness this energy of the heart within its
agents, the rest falls into place and performance
optimization steadily and predictably rises to new heights.
Chapter 3 is entitled, “Is It Real? Is It Possible? Is It

Worth It?” and draws out from industry experts and executives
that there has sadly been very little improvement in contact
center operations the past twenty years. Attrition rates are double
or worse. Productivity rates are dismal because of turnover. And
industry keynotes are still advocating “personal touch” as the
only cure for these problems (just as they have done for more
than a decade). Fortunately, science and technology are now
ready to step in and assist contact centers with a progressive
sustainable solution. Daily repetitive contact center activities are
a perfect match for the proven principles of scientific behavioral
conditioning. And for the first time, automating precise
behavioral conditioning is now possible through Agent00.
Consistently informed agents, reduced expenses, increased
revenues, and increased customer satisfaction & loyalty are
among proven results. 1
1 Based upon recent production pilot results. See, Appendix: Proven Results page 120.
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Chapter 4 is entitled, “Objective Performance

Evaluations” and explores the positive benefits of using
Agent00 to objectively tally agents’ actual performance
against set goals in real time. [Boss to Dilbert:] "I've been
saying for years that employees are our most valuable
asset. It turns out that I was wrong. Money is our most
valuable asset. Employees are ninth." This now famous
Dilbert-ism captures the cynical and skeptical attitude
agents have about being rated, valued or evaluated. In this
chapter I’ve left the morale issues silent, since they’ll be
treated in the next chapter, and have clinically estimated the
costs of subjective evaluations that Agent00 can help you
do away with –to the profit and increased morale of your
company.
Chapter 5 is entitled, “High Morale Culture” and

takes an aisle seat look at the people-power that drives
Southwest Airlines’ sustained success, and provides three
key, scientifically-proven ways to transform your own
contact center to a high morale culture. As Jim Collins says
in his NY Times best seller, Good To Great, “real people
in real companies want to be part of a winning team. They
want to contribute to producing real results. They want to
feel the excitement and the satisfaction of being part of
something that just flat-out works. When people begin to
feel the magic of momentum -- when they begin to see
tangible results and can feel the flywheel start to build
speed -- that's when they line up, throw their shoulders to
the wheel, and push.”
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Chapter 6 is entitled, “A SaaS/BI 2.0 Application”

and describes in plain language the truly unique, state-of-
the-art technology that Agent00 is. This chapter explains
why you can have rock solid assurance that Agent00 is a
confident stride in the right direction toward the next
generation of standardized, reliable and secure global
computing technologies.
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Chapter Two
Winning With “Heart”
I was a guest at a magnificent Thoroughbred farm in

Florida. One crisp sunny morning, the owner of the
farm took me over to his Yearling stables and race
track. We watched the exercise riders breeze four beautiful
yearlings around the track. He told me about each horse as
they came back to the barn, talking of blood lines, front
legs and hind quarters. Then he pointed to one particularly
feisty chestnut stallion prancing up the walk and waved the
exercise rider over.
This was one of the owner’s favorite

yearlings because of what he called the
young stallion’s “tremendous heart.” It
definitely wanted to run! This excited the
owner. He knew if his trainers and riders
could develop this horse physically, so
that it had the strength, endurance and structure to run hard
without breaking down, this horse had the heart and drive
to win. This horse was “self motivated” you might say, in
need only of strategic development, training and direction.
Can drive and desire, what I’m calling “heart,” be

developed in agents? Absolutely. Although unfortunately
not in every single case. But don’t let that stop you with
your agents. Carefully screen them for heart and self-
motivating tendencies during the hiring stage. And when
Chapter Two - Winning With “Heart”
you find those with heart, hire them, direct them –and then
open the gate and let them run. (*Hold this thought* I’ll
come back to it later.)
Pavlov is the household name that taught us about

being able to condition human reflexes. Ivan Pavlov was a
Russian scientist that was doing studies on the digestive
process in dogs, especially the interaction between
salivation and the action of the stomach. He realized they
were closely linked by reflexes in the autonomic nervous
system. Without salivation, the stomach didn't get the
message to start digesting. Pavlov wanted to see if external
stimuli could affect this process, so he rang a bell at the
same time he gave the experimental dogs food. After a
while, the dogs –which before only salivated when they
saw and ate their food– would begin to salivate when the
bell sounded, even if no food was present. Pavlov
published his results calling this a "conditioned reflex,"
different from an innate reflex, such as yanking a hand
back from a flame, in that it had to be learned. Pavlov
called this learning process (in which the dogs came to
associate the sound of the bell with the food, for example)
"conditioning." Pavlov’s scientific theory has proven to be
sound for over a hundred years of research and testing.
Heart, drive and self motivation can be conditioned

in your agents as well. To best understand how to do this,
and call out the breakdowns and demoralization that often
happens to agents along the way, let’s start at the beginning
of the agent cycle.
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Thrill of a new job
Starting a new job as an agent is usually very

exciting for most people, almost similar to the smell and
thrill you feel when you sit in a brand new car. All of your
senses are alive, drinking in the experience. It’s definitely a
big step above working at the mall, the coal mine or that
fast food restaurant where you used to work. You are now a
part of global business and high tech computing. You are
learning important skills –and getting paid for it at the same
time!
Most agents in the US are between the ages of 18

and 35, many of them just out of high school starting their
first “big company” job. There is usually a mixture of fear
and enthusiasm as they do each new thing for the first time:
e.g., walk into the office lobby as an employee, survey their
new computer and office furniture, take or make that first
call (this one usually causes a big wave of fear and
enthusiasm –especially if a senior mentor is sitting next to
them). Their heart is alive and pumping fast. And with
every fiber of their being they want to do a GREAT job on
every call.
Behavioral Science would say that their behavior is

driven by the “consequence” of their being a new
employee. Said another way, being a new contact center
agent is enough of a reward for them at this point in their
career that they pour their heart into every call, every day.
So why do agents lose this positive energy?
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“Heart” is driven by immediate consequences
Behavior is controlled or influenced most by

immediate consequences, the operative word here being
“immediate.” A new job is immediate. New appealing
business surroundings are immediate. But when immediacy
is lost, there is nothing new or additional to compel
behavior any longer.
Though breathtaking to tourists (a behavior), a

resident worker living in Zermatt, Switzerland did not find
the Matterhorn beautiful or impressive at all (a behavior).
His longing was to someday see the city of New York. On
the other hand, how many investment bankers in downtown
Manhattan would jump at the chance to escape their noisy
confines to be in Zermatt gazing up at the Matterhorn?
For a while, the mountain top they have just crested

in becoming a new contact center agent is totally
exhilarating. They will do just about anything their team
leader asks them to do, and be genuinely grateful for the
opportunity to do it. All they need is strategic development,
training, direction and most importantly immediate
consequences to compel productive behavior continually.
The lack of continual immediate consequences is

usually the first and the biggest breakdown in an agent’s
self-motivating behavior. The lobby is now just a lobby.
The computer and furniture are now just a blur of beige and
gray in every identical cubicle. And calls, while they have
some variety because of the diversity of callers, become
monotonous and unrewarding.
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In many contact centers there is a promise of a

“bonus” at the end of the year if an agent’s performance
meets his pre-set goals and all the numbers in the company
line up. Unfortunately, this is what is known in Behavioral
Science as an “uncertain consequence.” A year-end bonus
is too remote to effectively drive daily behavior all year
long. Daily immediate consequences are necessary, in
smaller more definite bites, to condition heart within
agents.
“Immediate Consequences” by Agent00
Agent00’s primary reason for being is to help

contact centers create and automatically administer
meaningful, certain, and objective Positive Immediate
Consequences (hereafter “PICs”) that condition and
produce self motivation in agents. The Pavlov principle.
Agent00’s state of the art technology welds agent

instruction and pre-set goals together with PICs and “NICs”
(Negative Immediate Consequences), and then divvies
these consequences out objectively, automatically and
individually based upon performance. To better understand
the critical nature of PICs and NICs in conditioning
behavior, let’s consider each of these four items one at a
time.
• Instruction
• Pre-set Goals
• PICs
• NICs
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1. Instruction:
Microsoft was the first IT company to really master

individual employee awareness and instruction. As early as
1992 it was said that you could walk into Microsoft and ask
any employee what the company’s core business was and
what the purpose of his job was in promoting that core
business –and he could tell you these answers in an instant.
When Novell bought WordPerfect in 1994, Novell’s new
CEO did a top down/bottom up review of the whole
consolidated company for the purpose of getting every
employee oriented with and committed to Novell’s core
business –and to their individual role in driving Novell’s
success. Novell spent millions of dollars processing this
company wide exercise, but never did get everyone on the
same page.
Agent00 makes it easy for the CEO and any other

authorized supervisor to communicate contact center
instructions to each individual agent with regard to:
• the purpose of every pre-set goal
• how each goal affects the company’s

strategic direction, profits and ROI
• each individual agent’s performance

expectations against each goal.
23
From an agent’s perspective:

To stay in synch with company instructions, all an
agent has to do is click on any element 1 that comes up in
her personalized Agent00 dashboard. As she clicks on an
element, a current, context-sensitive explanation pops up
for her. There need be no gap between the company’s
reason for a goal and her understanding of that reason.
More importantly, there need be no gap between her
understanding of the goal and what she will immediately
get for performing that goal well. These are the critical and
“certain” PICs that will continually generate her heart
driven, self motivated behavior.
From the company’s perspective:

To keep agents in synch with a company goal, the
CEO can simply update an element’s description within
Agent00 on the central server and the change is instantly
posted to all. Of course, if an element or a goal doesn’t
apply to an agent, he will never see that dynamic goal or its
elements based upon his login rights.
Agent00 is straightforward, powerful, and easy to

administer by in house staff.
Agent00 helps CEOs keeps every agent informed

and instructed in detail. This is a necessary step to
conditioning behavior.
1
An “element” is a specific task within Agent00 that has further description
and definition hotlinked to it for agent training and instructional purposes.
24
2. Pre-Set Goals:
Agent00 is flexible enough to be applied to any

employee instruction or incentive program in the company,
be it sales, marketing, development or production.
However, Agent00 comes as a flexible, pre-defined
template or dashboard 1 specifically for use in contact
centers, with three of the most common agent KPI goals 2
already set up in the template.
The three default KPI goals are

• volume
• customer satisfaction
• quality
Volume:
I remember a TV commercial where Jay Leno said,
“Doritos! Eat all you want! We’ll make

more!”
Have you ever heard a “cost-based” call center say:
“Calls! Make all you want! We’ll take

more!”
1
A “dashboard” is the layout user interface of Agent00 and is made up of goals and
rewards. Dashboards are flexible and can be modified.
2 “Goals” are the focused tasks of an agent and are made up of elements.
25
This is exactly what we said at WordPerfect as part

of our beginning product marketing and sales strategy –
even though we were an internal cost center. In the mid
eighties, during WordPerfect’s market ascent, we opened
the support flood gates wide. The actual words we used
were “unlimited toll-free support.”
At WordPerfect our agents were taking about

20,000 inbound technical calls a day, with an average
handle time of 18 minutes per call. A leading ‘outbound’
P&L contact center recently told me it was making about
two million calls a day, with an average handle time of 4
minutes per call. An Accenture year-end study stated that
each contact center agent speaks to 10,000 customers a
year, which suggests an overall average handle time of 9
minutes per call.
Regardless of inbound or outbound, P&L or cost

center, contact center financials hang on how efficient we
are at managing average handle time and the scheduling of
agents. Simple math revealed that if I could reduce
WordPerfect’s average handle time to 15 minutes a call,
and thereby reduce the number of agents we needed to
cover 20,000 calls a day, I could cut $16 million from our
contact center expense tab.
Volume matters. Indeed, volume is often the key

metric in a contact center’s master plan. As such, the first
metric goal I built into Agent00’s balanced scorecard
performance metrics is call volume. Here’s an overview
graphic of Agent00’s user interface:
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[Click here if you would like to request a live demo of Agent00]
A closer look at the Volume speedometer gauge:
For this example, let’s suppose the CEO of an

outsource contact center has a service contract with Enta
Corp. One of the agents assigned to Enta Corp’s account is
27
a female agent, and this is her volume gauge thus far
through her day.
Agent00 analyzes
i) how long this agent has been an employee,

ii) to what extent she’s trained and certified,
iii) what the company pays her,
iv) how much the contact center makes on each
incident or task 1 she completes for Enta,
v) what qualifies as a completed incident, and
even
vi) how well Etna’s customers have been rating
her quality of service on incidents this day
Agent00 analyzes all these factors and others in the

volume equation.
With specific regard to the

pre-set “Volume” goal, Agent00
keeps this agent continually
informed that volume is weighted
as her most important goal at 45%
out of 100%.
Were she confused about

anything associated with volume,
Agent00’s hotlink feature about
Volume can instantly provide her
with every meaningful detail she
1 Or the “ROI value” of each incident or task in a “cost” center
28
needs to know about volume –some unique to her; others
more big picture.
Managers with Agent00 system editing rights can

change the contents of this hotlink window as easily as
writing a memo. No programmers required. In this way
they can keep their agents instructed and informed on any
goal or detail real-time –without distracting or interrupting
their agents’ performance efforts. And with Agent00,
managers will be able to keep every agent informed
consistently, immediately and world wide if necessary.
Were she confused about the volume weighting of

45%, management can even provide a hotlink within a
hotlink for further context-sensitive instruction. In each
case throughout Agent00, whenever an agent clicks on a
live element, a context-sensitive window immediately
appears to inform them.
Many agents will keep the complete Agent00

dashboard or a
mini version open
on their screen at
all times so they
can monitor their daily progress. For example, from the
minute her day begins the volume gauge will keep this
agent informed real-time about how well she is doing
“today:”
Her thoughts:
I gotta’ get out of alert 10:00 am
almost there …
29
I hafta’ keep pushing
1:00 pm
3:00 pm
I’m getting’ close –can’t slack

off
4:00 pm
YEAH BABY!
one more
take another
I love it!
do another
Man, I gotta’ do this again tomorrow! 5:00 pm

This is Great. Hello new car payment!
She will always know when she is on alert for

underperformance, when she has covered her own daily
costs for the day, if she is making profit for the company,
and when she is making bonus money on top of her
guaranteed salary.
30
This gives her a perfect understanding of how her
performance today and every day drives her own prosperity
–and the company’s prosperity and stability. This level of
awareness and company connection is a CEO’s dream.
You might say she has a built in personal

performance coach cheering her on every minute of the day
– growling at her when she is underperforming,

and
– rewarding and exciting her when she does well.
Whenever she reaches the bonus level, the company

is assured she has cleared their predetermined profit margin
on her. The company of course wants her to do this every
day. To condition this behavior, it makes it possible for her
to make a personal daily bonus amount (can be “points”) on
every incident or task she completes in the bonus zone.
But even before she gets to the bonus zone, the

company relies upon Agent00 to keep her automatically
informed of how close she is to the bonus level throughout
the day and how much she will make for each bonus
incident or task she does once she gets there. This type of
crystal clear understanding empowers her, and she will
usually do her finest work because of it.
She is good at her job and now with the promise of

PICs, she even works on her agent skills during her off
hours. She has heart –she is self motivated –and she knows
she can earn PICs every day. … let her run!
31
This is the power of incorporating PICs into her
day. 100 years of behavioral science has proven that she
will reach for them everyday. This is how Agent00 helps
contact centers condition optimized behavior in their
agents.
Yesterday, she made an additional $3.27 in bonus.

That’s a yearly run rate of nearly $800 in bonus that she
controls entirely herself with her own performance –no
uncertain consequences. When she adds this to her salary
and benefits she is thrilled. She plans to stay for at least
another year or more.
The company is glad to hear it. It has been making

100% of its forecasted profit margin on this agent for
several months now, and if it had to replace her it would
easily incur $8,000 in sunk costs, all things accounted for.
Plus, history has shown it would take around six months
before a rookie replacement would begin performing at her
level.
But what about customer satisfaction? Doesn’t

customer satisfaction suffer when agents focus on volume?
This brings us to the next important pre-set KPI

goal that comes as a default setting in Agent00 –customer
satisfaction.
32
Customer satisfaction:
The VP of an inbound cost

center I consulted with in the
design of Agent00 explained that
customer satisfaction was more
important than volume in their
contact center because their chief
company objective for offering free support was to drive
sales of their flagship software product. They weighted
their customer satisfaction goal at 50%.
Their biggest problem, however, was measuring and

applying customer satisfaction ratings to their agents. They
were frustrated with the subjective nature and cost involved
in their customer satisfaction measurement programs. You
can imagine how enthused they were about the automated
and objective customer satisfaction monitoring available
within Agent00.
Customer satisfaction is extremely important in

contact centers but has always been difficult to measure
and apply. Agent00 not only analyzes indirect contact
center factors, like average handle time and good
attendance habits (see, Quality section ahead), but more
importantly measures, analyzes and records the level of
customer satisfaction that takes place on the incident itself :
• Ease of access to the agent?

• Total time it took us to provide a solution for
your problem?
33
• Agent’s professionalism and willingness to

listen?
• Agent’s technical knowledge?
• Satisfactory solution to your problem?
• Maybe even Willingness to recommend our
company to other customers? 1
Years ago I created a customer satisfaction

recognition program at WordPerfect for agents. Any time I
received a letter or a phone call from a customer thanking
me for an agent’s assistance, I had my secretary produce a
certificate on beautiful bank note paper for the agent. The
CEO and I both signed each certificate. Then I presented
them to the agents personally.
Unsolicited customer comments were one of the

best ways we could measure customer satisfaction.
Unfortunately, many of these certificates were days, weeks
or even months old by the time we presented them to
agents. They certainly had some motivating power, and
remain a staple item of any good contact center today, but
agents need immediate feedback on customer satisfaction to
develop “heart” in this area.
At diving competitions judges immediately rate

divers’ performances on a numbered scale from 1 to 10.
This type of immediate feedback is critical. It not only
spurs them on to do better on the next dive, but also helps
them recognize the small things they either did right or
wrong while the experience is still fresh in their mind.
1 “The foremost questions that determine the level of ‘Customer Satisfaction’ in
today’s contact centers.” Claes Fornell, Director of the National Quality Research Center.
34
Agent00 does the same thing for agents, only the

customers are the judges at the end of the call. Agent00 has
a very quick way to extract six 1 customer satisfaction
answers from a customer real-time and then register these
findings back into the agent’s dashboard immediately –
while simultaneously allowing the agent to disconnect from
the current call and move on to the next call before this
customer query takes place.
In this way, Agent00 improves upon at least five of

the problems that diminish the value of customer
satisfaction surveys. For example, Agent00 enables
i) higher customer participation rates

because it only takes a customer seconds to answer
on the existing call and is simple to do,
ii) more accurate findings because the

experience is still fresh for the customer,
iii) more applicability because the answers

are always specific to a particular customer call,
iv) more influence on the agent’s behavior

because customer scores are reported back
immediately to the agent, good or bad, while the
experience is still fresh in the agent’s mind,
1 TIP: The number of questions asked, and the clarity of answers sought for can vary
as desired, according to response rate. Agent00 can be simplified or expanded as desired.
35
v) increased labor savings through

automation (not necessary to do follow up customer
satisfaction survey emails or phone calls).
An agent can see his compiled percentage rate of

positive versus negative comments via the customer
satisfaction gauge throughout the day. Within seconds of
their last call survey an agent can see the Agent00 customer
satisfaction elevator bar moving positive or negative. A
positive movement gives them a quick boost and the desire
to do more good. A negative movement gives them a signal
that they have to try harder.
Reports can be generated that compile the positive

or negative responses to specific customer satisfaction
queries as well. For example, if the contact center wants to
know how many customers are experiencing first-contact
resolutions to their problems, Agent00 can easily provide
this specific customer survey information.
Since Agent00 can analyze all contact center goals

in relationship to one another, a contact center can precisely
groom its agents’ most valuable contributions. For
example, a minimum customer satisfaction threshold could
be set, the likes of which if an agent does not achieve it that
day, he will not receive a bonus regardless of his score on
other goals.
How can an agent produce both high volume and

high customer satisfaction performance? The answer to this
question leads to the next pre-set goal that comes as a
default setting in Agent00 –quality.
36
Quality:
Agent00 measures Quality

in three ways:
• Expertise
• Schedule adherence
• Peer Ratings
Expertise
A few years ago a relatively new Novell sales rep
picked me up at Logan International airport in Boston to
drive me out to a meeting with the CEO of a multibillion
dollar corporation. The new rep missed the proper exit off
the I-90 turnpike heading west. We went the wrong way for
thirty minutes before we were able to turn around. It was a
costly mistake. I missed my appointment with the CEO.
I chose this illustration because a driving analogy is

easy to apply here. If an agent wants to achieve both high
volume and high customer satisfaction marks, she cannot
take a customer down a wrong road during a call. Either
customer satisfaction or volume or both will suffer.
Knowing how to navigate successfully through contact
center incidents and tasks takes expertise.
Training and practice is essential to an agent’s

expertise. A contact center will always provide training for
its agents. Personally, I prefer a heavier mix of online
training than classroom training for contact center agents,
37
so long as it is well done. The reasons are that online

training gives agents a chance to interact with the course
materials, which has proven to greatly enhance their
retention. Online training is also available 24/7 from any
web connection, can include video, audio, text and
graphics, and online certification testing.
Another reason I think online training is preferable

is it does not require agents to waste work time during their
day walking across the company campus or even down the
hall to attend a classroom training session. If they find
themselves in a lull, they can click into some online
training courses and pursue certification. Through online
training, agents can train themselves on new products or
processes whenever and wherever they want over today’s
secure web.
Being able to train themselves is critical. Even

Tiger Woods relentlessly analyzes, trains and practices his
job on his own. Though he has to rise at 5am to practice in
order to avoid the distraction of the crowds that otherwise
hound him, to this day he has never stepped up to a tee in a
tournament, without having first practiced that tee shot
until he’s confident he is expert at it. Tiger has heart. He
trains and practices his skills in his pursuit of professional
excellence. The same holds true for agents. Training and
practice are essential for them to master their profession.
Agent00 can link to computer based training

programs or web applications, making it easier for an agent
to train and practice their skills online. It helps in three
ways: it reminds her of her current level of expertise; it
38
keeps constant expertise-related PICs before her so she

knows the rewards she can obtain if she will improve her
skills; and finally Agent00 provides her a convenient hot
key to click on so she can initiate her own training and
testing sessions anytime she has a spare minute. 1
As mentioned above with customer satisfaction, a

contact center can set a rule in Agent00 that requires a
certain level of overall quality in an agent before she can
receive any bonus regardless of her score on other goals.
This is how Agent00 merges the power of PICs with the
important goal of increasing one’s own expertise.
Schedule:
Scheduling is a very important function in contact
centers. It is usually a complex process to do well because
of the hundreds or thousands of agents that need to cycle
seamlessly through three eight hour shifts every day,
assigned to different teams, with cross-trained skill sets.
Scheduling is like a tapestry made up of many intricate
threads.
Agent00 has a built-in schedule adherence feature

(for centers that do not have automated schedulers) but is
primarily designed to stand on the shoulders of mainstream
and in-house scheduling programs. Unlike any other
performance optimization program, Agent00 can transform
scheduling data into motivational power for agents through
PICs. Consider this: Professional basketball players are
1 A contact center should make computer based training programs available to agents
24/7 over the web.
39
always anxious to get “more minutes” of playing time.

They love the competition of playing, but even more they
know the PICs that come with more playing time: lucrative
shoe and clothing contracts, photos in the media, fame, etc.
Of course they also know the NICs that can sting them if
they don’t show up on time to practices and games, such as
thousands of dollars in fines.
Through Agent00, agents will always be conscious

of the PICs that are available to them. Rather than dragging
in late to work, they may begin to come early and stay late
on their own dime (if allowed) just to qualify for more
daily and accumulated PICs. They will want to work more.
This principle can be illustrated by a childhood

memory. I grew up in a potato farming community. One
October day just before sunrise, farmer Cox pointed to his
vast field littered everywhere with burlap gunny-sacks and
freshly dug potatoes and said with enthusiasm, “I’ll pay you
a dime for every hundred pound sack you fill. Pick all you
want.” Then he cautioned, “There are only two rules: fill
each sack clear up to the line, and don’t sneak any dirt
clods in the sack.”
I was twelve and really fired up. I knew I could

make a dime for every sack I filled. But there were
hundreds of pickers anxiously toeing the line to fill sacks.
When farmer Cox gave the signal to go ahead and start
filling sacks, a storm of mad bees hit the field. I ran from
empty sack to empty sack, filling them up to the line and
then moving on to the next. I kept a mental tally of how
many dimes I had made as I went. I looked to my left from
40
time to time to see if my older brother had filled more sacks

than me. My hands and legs grew tired, but my heart
carried me on … that is until I ran out of sacks. Before it
was even time to eat lunch that huge field was picked
clean! and a hundred of us were sitting in the soft dirt
wishing we had more potatoes to pick.
Wouldn’t it be incredible if there were this type of

self motivated enthusiasm in contact centers? Instead of a
surplus of calls, there is a scarcity of calls –and each is
handled well to generate a high quality rating. By
continually improving and then keeping your best
agents longer, it can happen. This of course would put
pressure on management, sales people and the scheduling
software to give these energized high quality agents enough
calls to keep them satisfied every day. Scheduling is not a
trivial issue in a contact center, and Agent00 can help
change agents’ attitudes about their schedule from
“burden” to “scarce opportunity” and from “survival mode”
to “ambitious go getter.”
Peer Ratings
Agents most often work in teams. As such, team
mates are uniquely positioned to give daily appraisals of
one another’s level of performance quality on a daily basis.
The four questions an agent can be asked to answer about a
fellow teammate are as follows:
• Agent’s adherence to daily work schedule?

• Agent’s technical knowledge?
• Agent’s respect for co-workers?
41
• Agent’s skill in caring for and dealing with

customers?
The process used to gather these peer evaluations is

highly important –in order to ensure continued maximum
objectivity. As an agent logs onto the Network the first time
each day, she will be presented with this Peer Quality
Survey:
Accompanying this survey will be the name of one

of her teammates, randomly chosen by the computer. She
will be given a different name each day until she has
evaluated all of her teammates in this manner. Then, the
process will be repeated in an ever-ongoing fashion.
What if she was asked to go on a date by a

teammate, but refused to go … and in retaliation the
teammate gives her an unfair ‘quality’ score? This type of
aberration would be easy to identify, and adjust. It would
also be a data element that could be made to work against
the ‘quality rating’ of the giver of the inappropriate score.
“We are what we repeatedly do.

Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
– Aristotle
42
3. PICs: (Positive Immediate Consequences)
There is nothing as important Believe it or not: The

to an agent’s ability to perform well – word “cattle” is how one
and therefore to a contact center’s of the largest contact
centers in the world
success– as the morale of the agents openly refers to its
themselves. Agents do amazing thousands of agents –
things when they are filled with self and what’s worse, it’s
how the agents of that
confidence and enthusiasm. company refer to
Unfortunately, there is a dismal themselves!
shortage of morale in contact centers Would you want this
and agents are quitting their jobs company taking care of
your customers?
within twelve months primarily
because their jobs are not rewarding
enough in three key areas: respect, money and a variety of
awards.
Agent00 links performance with immediate consequences
Money
Respect
Awards
43
In the center of Agent00’s dashboard, right under

their own name, agents first see the daily bonus money (or
points) they can make. Next, they see exactly what their job
is and how well they are performing it. On the left side of
the dashboard they are assured respect and recognition
when they do well. On the right they see the variety of
exciting awards they can win for doing a great job –
everyday.
Agent00’s default PICs are

• Money (or Points)
• Respect & Recognition
• Awards
Money
Money pays the bills. I began giving prizes away at

WordPerfect for good performance. Each month we would
give away $100 to $200 prizes to the top performers in the
form of goods, catalog credits or gift certificates. After
several months many agents began stopping by my office
to tell me they were appreciative of my efforts to spice up
their work life with prizes. But many of them then quickly
suggested they would rather have “money.” “Thanks for
the nice Awards, but I need to pay my bills. I would prefer
money,” they would say.
The great thing about bonus money as a PIC is its

flexibility. The bad thing about bonus money is it has little
sentimental value. It quickly blends in with the salary
money you put in the bank or pay your bills with. But study
after study shows agents prefer having money as a bonus
44
more than anything else. Part of this is because many of

them have an immovable salary ceiling that is suffocating
to their spirits.
The other bad thing about money is the company’s

little problem of coming up with the money to pay its
agents. Here’s the trick. As we will discuss more fully in
Chapters Three and Four, you will have additional monies
in your budget as Agent00 helps you:
i) Reduce the amount you spend on poor

performers.
If agents do not make the margins

you need them to make, above the
cost of their own expense, within a
reasonable amount of time on the
job, and with an appropriate amount
of management training, mentoring
and assistance, you will be able to
replace them with a new agent that is
better suited for the job without
emotional issues and lawsuits.
ii) Keep your best performers six to eighteen

months longer than average.
This will enable you to lower the

costs associated with high and
frequent turnovers.
45
iii) Reduce the number of managers you need.
Most of your agents will begin to

drive their own admirable
performance, requiring considerably
less management personnel. Trade in
the stick for a carrot, and in the end
you will not need to spend as much
on supervision. Remember,
“Management” is not a direct
revenue generator in a contact
center.
iv) Cut out a great deal of the busy work that

ties up agents and managers every day.
Agent00 is a scalable real-time

instructional process, advanced
performance and PICs scorecard
system, and a totally objective
evaluation process aligned with the
company core. Though fewer in
number than before, the supervisors
you keep on payroll will be freed
from all this busy work and will be
able to work more closely with
agents that need coaching.
These are just four of the ways you will be able to

afford to pay your best agents bonus money within your
current budget constraints. But there is another monetary
surplus you will realize through Agent00 the longer you
46
rely on it to help you groom and motivate your entire agent

staff.
As you successfully use Agent00 over the course of

a year or two to help you unleash the unconquerable spirit
within your best agents, many of your agents will be
consistently exceeding their margin amounts every day.
Once agents have exceeded their predetermined “margin”
amounts, the company begins earning windfall margin on
each additional incident or task these agents do. All of the
fixed and variable costs identified to these agents will
have been met. All of the profit margins associated with
these agents will have been met.
Without a doubt, some of this windfall margin will

have to pay for the agents that don’t make their margins.
But over the course of time and the steady process of
improving the performance of more and more of your
agents through the power of Agent00, you will be able to
pay bonus money to your agents by simply splitting the
windfall profits with them that they generate for you. This
is the bonus money you will eventually use to pay the
bonus amounts to your agents. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t
it? Pay bonuses with bonus money.
Here’s a position and trending visual that is

exciting. It illustrates what can happen over the course of
the next two or three years ahead with Agent00’s help and
your commitment to condition winning behavior in your
agents:
47
2008 Position after 20 years of status quo Trending in the next 2 years with
exceeds exceeds
margin margin
goals goals
underperforms underperforms
margin margin
goals goals
under 6 mos over 12 mos under 6 mos over 12 mos
Agent00 makes it possible for agents to earn PICs in

the form of money or points –which are both ultra flexible.
Agent00 charts your daily progress toward bonus money or
points just like a stock chart. You can see how close
you’re getting to the green bonus zone every call you take.
The agent glances at her PIC dashboard and thinks

to herself, “Wow, I have a couple hours left –and I’m
almost to the green zone. I wonder how many bonus
incidents I can make today?!”
This will be a favorite view spot in Agent00.
48
In this section of Agent00’s PIC scorecard, you can

also see how much you’ve made thus far during the year.
Agents can earn bonus money every day, and

Agent00 can make it possible for the company to pay the
agent any time they wish –even the next day if desired.
This is because Agent00 is designed to integrate with your
paycheck system (like ADP or Paychex) or your internal
paychecks database. No extra work for the company.
Maximum incentive for each agent!
Pay For Performance!

One of Agent00’s patents is based on its unique
ability to shows agents everyday whether they are making
money for the company, or losing money for the company.
This has incredible impact on agents. If the agent has not
made her quota yet, the company cup is empty and upside
down.
When she makes her quota and begins earning the company
its margin dollars, the company cup is right side up and full
of gold.
Every agent will always be aware of whether they

are making money for the company on any given day, or
losing money for the company. Moreover, via Agent00
every CEO can know exactly down to the penny which
agents are making them a return on investment, and which
agents are not. Through Agent00 companies can accurately
allocate daily individual pay for daily individual
performance …if desired.
49
Respect & Recognition
You can be the best agent in the contact center and

take more quality incidents than anybody else. But if no
one comes up and pats you on the back or praises you for
doing a great job to reinforce that behavior, your behavior
will decrease. This is a proven scientific fact. Instead of
feeling pride in what you are doing, you will begin looking
for something else to do where someone will show you
respect. Without recognition and praise, improvement does
not happen. Without continual improvement, your level of
production will drop down to the same level as everyone
else’s and your daily battle will be about maintaining, not
excelling.
Agent00 does an awesome job of providing

immediate recognition for stellar performance and
improvement. On the left of the dashboard Agent00 posts
the pictures (or preferred icons) of the day’s leading
performers. It is a real time, dynamic posting and updates
throughout the day like a horse race. Agents say “it’s like
playing a video game –for real prizes and money!” Agents
are thrilled when they see their own picture posted in front
of every other agent and upstream supervisor. This gives
them an immediate boost. They also see other agents’
pictures that they respect posted there, which inspire them
… or make them jealous and stir up their competitive
spirits to try harder. Agent00 makes work a fun and
rewarding contest every day, more so than anything else.
Years ago, as mentioned above, I used the concept

of recognition at WordPerfect and created a wall of fame
50
where we posted agents’ customer-comment-based

certificates.
However, we encountered a few problems with the

WordPerfect wall of fame. For example, agents could not
see the wall of fame while they were working inside their
cubicles, so this potential PIC was not a constant positive
force for them throughout the day –which is when they
need it most.
A second problem was that the wall was not

updated very often and grew stale in its impact.
But the worst problem we encountered was that the

agents began to prospect for customer praise during a call
so they could get a certificate on the wall. This took time
on each call, which was counterproductive, and actually
lowered our customer satisfaction ratings because
customers began to comment that they felt uneasy about
being asked by their agent to send in statements of praise.
Agent00 objectively measures and recognizes each

agent according to their own CEO/COO-set performance
metrics. Every agent has a chance to excel because their
metrics are based upon their own individual circumstances.
For example, if an agent is making less salary than

another because of tenure, it will take her less volume to
progress through the “alert ‫ ׀‬quota ‫ ׀‬margin ‫ ׀‬bonus”
zones. See the graph below. Agent00 makes it possible for
agents to be recognized objectively, and according to their
own status.
51
Agent00’s
Daily Individual Agent Goals
$ 250.00
bonus for this $12/hr agent begins at

Call Revenue
$ 200.00
margin for this $12/hr agent begins at
$ 150.00
$ 100.00
$ 50.00
$ 0.00
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Number of Calls
Call Revenue $8/hr $10/hr $12/hr $14/hr
Pictures or icons of the highest performing agents at

the end of the day can be saved in the company’s “honor
roll.” Agents can look back at these archived honor rolls –
show their family members. And points for being on the
honor roll can be credited toward future quality and
‘Awards’ assessments.
Having agent pictures pop up on everyone’s screen

will also create a positive buzz of camaraderie among the
agents. When they see someone whose picture was posted
that day, they can smile and congratulate them even if they
don’t yet know them well. A kind word or hello makes the
work place very enjoyable and brings the best out in us.
This will lead to an environment where agents who are
deserving of praise for good performance will begin to be
recognized often by their peers and supervisors.
52
Giving and receiving respect is the foremost form of

PIC. Agent00 allocates it immediately and without a trace
of bias or preferential treatment.
Awards
Awards are great PICs, and companies should also

strongly consider offering Awards to their best performers.
“Money” and “Respect” are both tremendous PICs, but I
have to admit, I really like the power of Awards in
motivating employees. I wouldn’t run a contact center
without them.
When I was a sales rep, I received a decent

commission on every sale I made. But the company liked to
create competition for us and also offered a $250 prize once
a month to each regional sales office. It was won by the
leading sales rep in each office for that month. I worked
extremely hard to win that prize every month. I still have
the wool suit and luggage, two of the Awards I won, as
trophies. The suit doesn’t fit anymore and the luggage is
tattered, but I still enjoy the memory of winning those
Awards.
Agents will too. The extra productivity and earnings

generated by the agents trying to win Awards will more
than cover the costs of the Awards. And the workplace will
be a more enjoyable experience for the agents. Of course
you will have to do the math as you select the Awards you
offer your agents. $250 monthly Awards may be a bit much
for some contact centers to offer, depending on the price of

the incidents, tasks and the ROI point. Good news is,
53
Agent00 is flexible. It can work with any type or range of

Awards you want to post … the important thing is giving
agents a meaningful prize they can be proud of winning. It
becomes a monthly trophy for them.
As with other aspects spoken of above, Agent00

automates all the hard work out of measuring and
distributing PICs, but it also makes it easy to support your
well planned budget. Agent00 is extremely flexible,
meaning you can fine tune every aspect of it in house. I’ve
set the default template up with this same approach to
Awards. Make them whatever you want to.
I wanted to avoid the problem of having only one

Award available to the best agent. Yes, Agent00 could
determine who the best agent is, and do so fairly and
accurately, as described in some detail above. But it is more
important to give the agents the ability to compete with
themselves … to drive themselves. Awards should be
“certain” in nature –that is, if an agent will do the required
work to make the pre-set profit margin for the company,
enough times each month, she should be secure in the fact
that she will get a meaningful Award for that
accomplishment.
The exuberance generated by Awards will not be

limited to one winner (as it was in my sales office), but all
those who win an Award will celebrate together. Knowing
agents as I do, there will arise a spirit within these Award-
winning agents of encouragement toward other agents they
54
care about. They will encourage them to join them next

month in the fun of earning an Award trophy.
The theory once again, is that once an agent has

made her predetermined “margin” amount for the company,
the CEO begins earning surplus on that particular agent on
each additional call she takes the rest of the day. Of course,
as mentioned above, this is the money you will
use to pay her bonus amount with. And without a doubt the
conditioned motivation and satisfaction she gets from
winning bonuses repeatedly will keep her on the team and
in the company longer. This is a key principal for reducing
Attrition Rates.
The long term goal of Agent00 is to keep agents

progressing to the point that they eclipse the company
“margin” every day –and start earning more than the
promised margin for the company. If every agent were
doing this, you would never miss an earnings target or
budget forecast.
So, why not help this trend accelerate among your

agents by offering them, for example, an Award every
month if they exceed margin at least 14 days out of the 20
days they work (70%)? This will provide them with a PIC
that will be fun and exciting every day. You may want to
add a bigger Award like a vacation trip for two to some fun
place if they win at least 8 monthly Awards during the year.
Of course, these are just figurative examples, and

your creativity and budget constraints will not be limited by
Agent00’s flexibility. To the contrary, Agent00 will actually
compliment the unconquerable spirit within your
55
managers too. Managers want the company and all of its

agents to do well. Many of them were agents at one time.
They will meet with their agents and tailor Agent00’s
MONEY, POINTS, RESPECT, and AWARDS scorecard to
create the best ROI for the company and the best incentives
for their agents.
Awards are also a great way to utilize points that

can be given for performance on areas like attendance,
expertise and quality. Now let’s take a look at NICs.
4. NICs: (Negative Immediate Consequences)
Many behavioral scientists contend you should not

spend time talking about NICs. But the truth is, PICs and
NICs happen to each of us every day, whether we want
them to or not. Personally, I believe NICs are powerful
behavioral conditioners … for some people more powerful
than PICs.
Something as simple as this view above, reminds

the agent that she is costing the company extra money so
far today. In other words, she hasn’t completed enough
incidents or tasks to pay for herself thus far through the
work day. This subtle NIC can have an enormous impact
for good on agents. They will know they have got to
immediately pick it up to stay on the team. And, they will
know if they cannot or will not pick it up, there will need to
be a splitting of ways at some point.
56
This is a “negative” consequence, to be sure, but it

is not cruel or malicious. They have been hired, and are
being paid to do a professional job. You wouldn’t hire and
continue the employment of a professional singer if he
couldn’t sing, a professional basketball player if she
couldn’t play basketball, a lawyer if he couldn’t lie … ;-)
It is no different for a professional contact center

agent. If over the course of her employment an agent is
constantly underperforming on her daily goals, with
Agent00 she will be the first one to know it. Her authorized
upstream supervisors can watch her daily scorecard as well,
but will not be as constant with it as she is herself in

monitoring her own daily performance.
Agent00 will keep her equally informed of her daily

underperforming efforts as it will of her compliant or
overperforming daily efforts. It is just like a gas gauge in
your car. If the needle is on empty you are aware of the risk
you face of running out of gas. You can remedy the
situation by putting more gas in the car. But if you don’t (or
can’t) put more gas in the car, it won’t be surprising to you
that the car will eventually stop running. It’s just physics.
Let’s face it, no matter how nice or attractive or

well spoken a person may be, some are not cut out to be
contact center agents. They just don’t have the DNA for it.
And after a reasonable amount of coaching and mentoring
if an agent still cannot or will not perform to acceptable
levels, she will have to be let go. In truth, the sooner the
better –for both parties.
57
This is what should happen. The agent should be

employed doing something she can excel at and be happy
doing. The contact center has to perform to its level of
sustainability, at the very least, or it will cease to be.
Agent00 makes this process completely regulated, objective
and unemotional –just like a gas gauge in a car.
Agent00 could be set up to measure NICs, instead of

PICs. But, on this point I definitely side with the behavioral
scientists … the water always tastes sweeter when the glass
is half full, rather than half empty.
Win with heart –your agents’ hearts!

It will make the sustainable difference in your
contact center. You can achieve this state in your
company by conditioning your agents.
58
Chapter Three
Is It Real? Is It Possible?
Is It Worth It?
“Call center managers must continue to

invent creative ways to motivate, reward
and retain valuable agents. Today,
companies must build more sophisticated
reward and recognition programs to boost
morale and create a light, fun working
atmosphere.”
Elio Evangelista, Cutting Edge Information.
E very contact center agent I have shown Agent00 to

has been genuinely excited about the prospect of
being objectively measured and rewarded with PICs –
but also very skeptical that owners or managers of contact
centers would ever consider giving them PICs.
How about it you owners and managers? What do

you think about Agent00, so far? Pie in the sky? Dreaming?
Setting dangerous expectations that can’t be met? You’d
like to offer PICs, but there isn’t enough money to make it
happen in any contact center budget?
Chapter Three – Is It Real? Is It Possible? Is It Worth It?
Many years ago I sat on a panel with Patty

Stonesipher the VP of Support for Microsoft and Dave
Champagne the VP of Support for Lotus discussing the
future of software support. At the conclusion of the
seminar, the moderator told the audience she was going to
surprise the panel members and ask them to predict the
state of software support in ten years. She turned to us and
said, “Kim, can we begin with you? Where will we be in ten
years?”
Being a “product” guy for many years prior to being

asked to head up “services” at WordPerfect, I suggested
that software and hardware may be self-healing in ten
years, and that we may not need human agents taking calls
by that time. I have not forgotten that particular top of head
comment, because it did not go over well in that ballroom
filled with “service” professionals. They interpreted my
comment to mean that they would be out of a job in ten
years. And they did not like that. Patty and Dave both
disagreed with me, stating that people would always want
to talk with people and that support centers would continue.
In this chapter I hope we can explore and learn

together about what is real, what is possible and what is
worthwhile with regards to focusing on and optimizing
your agents.
60
Twenty year old problem
Obviously, Patty and Dave were right and I was

wrong. Technology is self healing to some degree, and
growing more intelligent every day. But people still need
people, as witnessed by the fact that the number of contact
center agents, of all kinds, has grown by leaps and bounds
since then.
Unfortunately, the agent performance and attrition

problems I battled with twenty years ago have not been
cured or stabilized in the contact center industry. This is not
good. Agents are the staple resource of a contact center –
70% of its investment. Agent turnover rates are twice as
bad as back then. And agent productivity is still more an art
than a science, which means it is hard to chart and make
predictable, sustainable improvement going forward.
As witness to this, I recently attended a popular

industry conference. This conference had a seminar
offering a panel Q&A discussion with five industry experts
and authors on reducing the attrition rates and improving
the morale and productivity levels of contact center agents.
It was literally déjà vu. The packed audience of

contact center managers and team leaders asked the same
questions of the panelists that their predecessors were
asking us nearly twenty years ago. And with very minor
exception, the panelist’s answers were exactly the same as
those we gave ten years ago. Truth was, there wasn’t a
science-based answer in the bunch … either from the
panelists or from the audience.
61
Now don’t get me wrong. I have no desire to be

critical of their collective expertise, competency or
sincerity. Their questions and answers, while very good and
appropriately posed and answered were all based on a
solution of “art.” Meaning, their conclusions were
primarily ‘feel good’ solutions.
Again, please don’t misunderstand me. Feel good

solutions in a human setting are essential. Feelings and
emotions are definitely a divine difference between man
and machine. You must have a healthy dose of positive
human energy at work every day to succeed in an agent-
centric business. But simply stated, feel-good solutions
alone, are not fixing the business problems driven by
turnover. Attrition is two times worse today than when the
audience was asking how to cure it twenty years ago; and it
costs a potentially life-threatening amount to a contact
center, as disclosed below.
A company must make more money than it spends

or go out of business.
And for that very reason there must be a scientific

way to measure and fine tune the agent attrition and
productivity levels in a contact center in order to sustain
continual growth and profitability. Left unaltered,
escalating attrition and falling productivity are cancerous
problems of near fatal proportion in the contact center
industry. The good news is, there is at least one solution
founded in science and based on empirical research:
Agent00.
62
Scientific solution
One science that is coming into its own is

measurement science (i.e., data gathering and reporting).
Computing technology has advanced our ability to provide
a comprehensive view of a contact center’s overall
performance, by integrating operational, customer,
financial and growth measurements with other key
performance indicators. This is what Agent00 does through
its balanced performance scorecard views:
Agent00 gathers data from ACD, CTI, Workforce

Management, Quality Monitoring, CRM, HRIS, and other
systems, such as manager observations. Each data
63
component is weighted and integrated with the others to

provide a holistic view of performance.
But the real key to reducing agent attrition rates and

increasing agent productivity in a sustainable manner lies in
behavioral science. Behavioral science turns
“knowledge” into “human action.” Agent00’s behavioral-
science-based PIC scorecard, is the tool that acts on the
information that Agent00’s performance scorecard gives it.
Without this integrated procedure, your balanced scorecard,
even Agent00’s balanced scorecard, is just a more complete
reporting device.
Agent00’s integrated performance and PIC scorecard

automates the conditioning of your agents’
behaviors and activities.
64
Contact center managers have been receiving data

reports every day for years. Yet, agent attrition grows
worse, and agent productivity is not much better. 1
This gap between scorecard reports and

performance improvements is what Agent00 is designed to
bridge. It provides the systematized ability to use
performance scorecard information to direct and focus
agents’ efforts every minute of the day (real time). By
means of integrated PICs (like bonus pay, recognition and
awards) agents can be conditioned to excel at the goals they
are given. Agent00 is the missing link that binds knowledge
together with immediate agent performance improvement.
Is It Real?
Yes. When agents are repeatedly, immediately and

objectively rewarded for good performance behavior, they
perform well again and again. This is the key principle of
behavioral science. This process is not art, but an
inseparable design of human neurological systems. It
should be used in all agent-centric environments to achieve
maximum agent optimization. The same is true for Sales,
Marketing, Development and Production employees, and
other human-centric endeavors.
1
“Over the past few years, software companies have struggled to keep the cost of
telephone-based tech support under control. Thousands of hours of consulting time,
conferences, and operations research have been spent on finding ways to deliver support
more efficiently, without cutting service quality to a level that might send customers to
the competition. So what has all this effort accomplished? Sadly, not much. Although
individual companies have fine tuned their phone-based support operations, overall
industry benchmarks for tech support performance have shown almost no
improvement.” --The Association of Support Professionals, Watertown, MA.
65
Furthermore, this compelling concept has been

proven to be real in each call center company that is using
Agent00.
Is It Possible?
Yes. But there are really two issues at question here.
First, can the process of determining good agent

behavior and immediately rewarding it be systematized?
The short answer to this is “Yes” because of the
combination of principles of behavioral science and the
latest internet and data-management Web Services-based
technologies. Creating Agent00 twenty years ago was not
possible. I had highly skilled developers trying to do so for
two years, but all efforts failed.
Second, can a contact center afford to provide

immediate meaningful rewards for agents’ good behavior?
The short answer to this is also “Yes” because the work the
agents perform to qualify for the rewards will pay for the
rewards, and then some, depending on how management
sets up and dynamically fine tunes Agent00.
66
Is It Worth It?
The answer to this is also “yes,” –but could be the

topic of a book in itself. For our purposes herein, I will just
hit the highlights and provide some simple case analysis
showing how Agent00 will reduce expenses and increase
revenues when compared to the current status quo.
The modern business environment is one of

increasing competition, globalization, and merger and
acquisitions. As a result, major business decisions are being
made with an increased level of scrutiny on the financial
implication of those decisions. This is especially true in the
current contact center environment.
Most contact centers generally have the same cost

components. Salaries and benefits for agents and the
management team usually comprise 65% to 85% of a
contact center’s total costs. The table below illustrates a
typical breakdown and description of costs for a contact
center.
67
COST % OF
DESCRIPTION
CATEGORY TOTAL
All agents and management
Labor & Benefits team members, benefits and 75%
training
All rent, utilities, maintenance,
Facility Costs property taxes and building 6%
services
Telecommunications Phone/data usage, including
5%
Costs monthly service fees
Transactional support from the
following areas: human
Support Costs resources, training, quality 5%
assurance, IT, telecom
and finance
Other Operating
Office supplies, postage, printing 1%
Costs
Monthly expense for assets, and
Depreciation &
cost of capital (interest) charges 8%
Interest
for purchased equipment
This means that decisions that increase or decrease

the number of management team members and agents
required to provide service will have the greatest impact on
profitability. This is exactly why Agent00 is so important
and timely to all contact centers throughout the world. It is
the only automated web solution that has been developed
specifically to condition self-motivation within agents.
Self-motivated agents will improve every aspect of

the contact center, from the better use of contact center
tools to higher agent morale and the need for less
supervision. As they become self motivated, their
performance improves. As their performance and self drive
improves, they need less management and training
attention. They govern themselves, their expertise levels,
68
their call handling processes and their schedules much

better and more maturely.
The business evolution in this type of healthy

environment will result in the contact center being able to
keep its strongest performers longer and decrease the
number of managers required to oversee the contact center.
As you will see below, the reduction of

management combined with a team primarily made up of
senior agents will result in much higher profitability. And it
is based on a science that ought to be a part of every
winning contact center –i.e., behavioral science.
Now let’s identify at least four prominent aspects

that help answer the weighty question:
“Is It Worth It?”
• Informed Agents
• Reduced Expenses
• Increased Revenues
• Increased Customer Satisfaction &

Retention
69
1. Agent00 is made to speak directly to agents.
One of the biggest

demoralizers for agents is feeling Most productivity and
efficiency solutions are
they are not important enough in
designed to inform
the organization to be kept well management, who must
informed. I believe this is one then take report
area where we have all missed findings and regulate
and motivate agents.
the boat. I predict the victory Agent00 is unique! It
will go to the contact centers that directly informs agents
turn this communication pyramid about their own
performance (real
upside down and institutionalize time) so they will be
technology systems that keep self-motivated! Of
their agents informed first – course Agent00 also
keeps management
including detail about their own
informed, and in sole
individual performance and control of performance
possible rewards. It naturally metrics.
shifts the primary responsibility
to these agents for determining their own level of success
or failure.
But can agents handle this responsibility?
Sam Walton had a great talent for unleashing the

capabilities of his employees. He built the largest company
on earth today by relying on good self-motivated
employees to rise to their highest potential in every store,
every day. Of this principle he said,
“Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost

the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in
themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish.”
70
Sam had to grow very fast in order to prevent Sears

or Kmart from stealing his unique and strategic vision, and
there was no other way to grow fast other than to make the
local employees i) accountable for their own store’s
profitability and ii) to stay in synch with Sam’s central
vision. Of course Sam then bet heavily on technology to
make this happen seamlessly and cost effectively.
Walton’s successor CEO, David Glass, recently

attributed their surging run of success to Sam’s vision and
to the information system they created throughout their
global footprint. Their IT solution was the means by which
they kept their store employees instructed and in step with
Sam’s centralized vision. The integration of these two was
the incredible success strategy that enabled them to
outdistance all their competitors.
I designed Agent00 to communicate directly with

agents for the same reason. Agent00’s functionality makes
it possible for contact center CEOs to treat agents like the
frontline professionals they need to be. It keeps them
instructed and in step with the CEO’s vision. Indeed,
through it, agents become their own bosses in a pretty
literal sense. They will know exactly what they are
supposed to do and why they are supposed to do it –at all
times. It can even carry a personal touch from the CEO to
each agent.
And through Agent00’s inviting dashboard agents

will always know how well they are doing every day. Just a
quick glance is all they need. And every time they give it
their best effort and shave a few seconds off their average
handle time for example, or make a customer happy, or
71
pass that latest online certification test, or get back from

lunch on time … they will immediately see the step they
just took toward their own personal PICs.
David Glass, when he served as CEO of Wal-Mart,

would often hang out in Wal-Mart stores, mixing with
staffers. He even worked the door as a greeter in stores as a
way to personally congratulate employees for reaching
their earnings goals. This is the type of top-to-bottom team
filled with positive energy that succeeds.
It begins at the simple level of understanding and

alignment. In a unique way Agent00 helps keep every agent
informed about how the company makes money and what
their role in that process is. This not only makes each agent
feel like an important member of the overall team, but also
gives the company that rare advantage of having every
agent rowing in the same direction –with great positive
energy.
Agent00 may be “worth it” –even if this is all it did.
72
2. Reduced expenses
In a contact center, profitability comes primarily

from agent productivity. Agent00 helps you muscle-up your
best agents, so to speak (i.e., magnifying their hearts and
skills), and helps you trim or prune the dead or non-
productive branches off. Through this process your contact
center’s capacity will literally increase, and you will begin
to win the battle for sustainable growth and profitability.
This is the second question of worth we will explore
…namely, does Agent00 help reduce expenses in a
constructive way?
I like charts and numbers. They help me forecast,

see trends, measure results, and better understand processes
that take some time to mature. Here are some facts and
figures that detail how you can reduce your expenses with
Agent00.
I will use a contact center that has 1,000 agents as a

model. There are many contact centers smaller than this in
the world, and quite a few larger ones. But for purposes of
illustration, and easy math, I’ve chosen a middle-of-the-
road 1,000-agent contact center. (You can scale this model
and its results up or down according to your size need.)
Assumptions
To set up this model, I’ll base its working

parameters on recent report figures from industry market
analysts:
73
1. Currently the average turnover rates in the

contact center industry worldwide is 42% - 80%
every 12 months. 1 As such, the contact center
model I’ve constructed is based on a model with
1,000 agents, including 300 newly hired agents.
2. The average wage per agent I have assumed is: 2

• Senior Agent, $ 18.50/hr
• Agent 2, $ 14.00/hr
• Agent 1, $ 11.50/hr
3. The average benefit rate is: 30% 2
4. The average overhead rate (including: phone,

equipment, facilities, etc) is:
$1,500/employee/mo 2
5. While in-house support groups have to absorb

some fixed costs that outsourcers don’t face
(making outsourcing cheaper), the median price
of an outsourced transaction is:
$ 15.38. 2
6. According to Merced System’s Matt Katz, it

costs $16,000 to $24,000 per attrit in the US.
Contact centers “spend an average of $ 6,000 to $
8,000 on recruitment and training per CSR.” Yankee
1
The US Contact Center Operational Review: 2nd edition – 2008
http://www.contactbabel-downloads.com/USOR2008.pdf; “This year’s mean annual
attrition rate is an eye-watering 42%.”
2 ASP, “Technical Support Cost Ratios.”
74
The average
Group: Customer Relationship Management Strategies.
cost of recruiting and training a call center
representative is between $ 5,000 and $ 18,000.
BenchmarkPortal.com. For purposes herein, I will use a
common median estimate of $8,000 in the model.
Agent Cost with and without Agent00
The single most significant resource of a contact

center is its human agents. They are its stock in trade. As
part of a recent study Harry Watkins, Ph.D. 1 reported:
“Agents with veteran experience are able to

immediately recognize customer needs and act decisively
and appropriately to satisfy them. These veteran agents are
far more likely to resolve issues on the first call or contact
than less experienced agents with the same skills.”
And yet agents are the most unstable element in the

contact center industry. "The turnover rate for agents in
call centers is abhorrent. A rate of 50 to 70 percent is not
uncommon with some more than 100 percent," notes
Christopher Fletcher. 2
1 Research Director, Aberdeen Group
2 Vice president/managing director of Aberdeen Group, The Outsourced Customer

Contact Center - Key Findings in Global Contact Center Outsourcing Services, Also, "A
lower turnover rate leads to greater stability and more continuity, which is much more
important than the initial cost savings," says Peter Ryan, customer relationship
management (CRM) analyst for Datamonitor, a business information services company
based in London.
75
Agent00 helps contact centers keep their veteran

agents longer and therefore reduces the number of new
hires required each year. Notice below how this reduces
expenses year over year:
REDUCED LABOR EXPENSES
45,000,000
44,500,000
44,000,000
43,500,000
DOLLARS
Labor $ w/o A00

43,000,000
Labor $ w/ A00
42,500,000
42,000,000
41,500,000
41,000,000
1 2 3 4 5
Labor $ w/o A00 44,614,920 44,614,920 44,614,920 44,614,920 44,614,920
Labor $ w/ A00 44,753,142 43,714,292 42,359,692 43,559,692 42,280,086
YEARS
In this chart, the blue bars represent the status quo

costs a contact center will experience, year over year. The
red bars represent the reduced labor costs that can be
realized using Agent00. You may wonder why there are
such dramatic reductions with Agent00, and why there is an
erratic upswing in YEAR 4? To help you better understand,
I’ll begin with an explanation of the underlying reasons for
the dramatic expense reductions. They are twofold:
recruiting expense and management expense.
a) Recruiting Expense Reductions. In this

chart, for simplicity and impact purposes, I
began by lumping the annual $ 8,000
76
recruiting fee per new Agent 1 at the

beginning of YEAR 1 for both labor cost
analyses: “Labor Cost w/o Agent00” and
“Labor Cost w/ Agent00” (see, assumption
#6 above).
Since Labor Cost w/o Agent00 operations have

an historic 30%|12-month turnover rate, the
blue bars remain constant across all five
prospective years.
Labor Cost w/ Agent00 operations, however,

reflect a reduced attrition rate that follows
this simple calendar:
Reduced attrition rate over five years –

YR1 YR1 YR2 YR3 YR3 YR4 YR4 YR5 YR5
YR2
Date MO MO MO
MO 7
MO MO MO MO MO MO
1 7 1 1 7 1 7 1 7
30 25 20 17.5 15 15 15 15 15 15
Rate % % % % % % % % % %
You will notice that as a contact center

incorporates Agent00, attrition rates start to
fall. I’ve forecasted this positive impact to
begin within the first six months of usage,
and continue working thereafter until
flattening out around 15% in a sustainable
fashion. Indeed, a contact center could
certainly do better than 15%, but at least for
our examination purposes herein you can see
the impact of this type of reduction in
attrition rate expenses per 1,000 agents as
77
compared against status quo expenses per

1,000 agents. In case you’re interested, the
total five-year aggregate savings per 1,000

agents in recruiting and new hire training
expenses is approximately $ 7 million.
b) Management Expense Reductions. When

agents are self-motivated and driving
themselves to attain stretch goals and
rewards everyday, a contact center does not
need as many supervisors running around
with clip-boards trying to spur them on or
keep them in line. Agent00 also does away
with a great deal of the subjective busy work
to instruct and inform, and rate and evaluate
agents that currently rests upon the
shoulders of the management team.
REDUCED MGMT EXPENSES
60
50
40
NUMBER OF
Managers without
Managers w/A00
30
Team Leaders without
Team Leaders w/A00
20
10
-
1 2 3 4 5
Managers without 5 5 5 5 5
Managers w/A00 5 3 2 2 2
Team Leaders without 50 50 50 50 50
Team Leaders w/A00 50 33 22 20 20
YEAR
78
With fewer disgruntled or demoralized agent

problems to deal with, and less busy work to
do for report and evaluation purposes,
managers can better focus on the reduced
number of new hires (and any Agent 2s or
Senior Agents not cutting it for one reason
or another) and really coach and skill them
up so they can be better performers.
Quick math on the above table

reveals the assumed ratios of team leaders
and managers in the two scenarios based
upon 1,000 agents. For example, in the “w/o
A00” examples, each team leader handles 20
agents and each manager handles 10 team
leaders. In the “w/ A00” examples, each
team leader by YEAR 2 is handling 30 agents
and each manager 11 team leaders. By YEAR
3 each team leader is handling 45 self-
motivated agents and each manager handles
11 team leaders. And as things settle and
flatten out by YEAR 4, each team leader is
handling 50 agents and each manager
handles 10 team leaders. The total five-year
aggregate savings per 1,000 agents in
management expense in this case study is
approximately $ 9.5 million.
c) Reduction Offset. As you may have

guessed the Recruiting and Management
expense reductions are offset by the
79
increased spending on an overall mix of

more veteran agents in the team of 1,000.
Here’s what a trending chart of 1st, 2nd and Sr.

agents would look like:
AGENT MIX OVER 5 YEARS
700
600
500
Senior Agents without
NUMBER OF
400 Senior Agents w/A00

Agent 2s without
Agent 2s w/A00
300 Agent 1s without
Agent 1s w/A00
200
100
-
1 2 3 4 5
Senior Agents without 200 200 200 200 200
Senior Agents w/A00 200 225 300 275 275
Agent 2s without 500 500 500 500 500
Agent 2s w/A00 500 525 525 575 575
Agent 1s without 300 300 300 300 300
Agent 1s w/A00 300 250 175 150 150
YEAR
Since veteran agents are more expensive

than new agents, the effect of reducing
attrition rates is an increase in spending on a
more veteran team of agents. The total
increase in spending on this mix of 1,000
agents is approximately $ 7.8 million.
The net effect of the two major reductions

above as offset by the increase for more
veteran agents pencils out like this:
80
($ 7M + $ 9.5M) = $ 16.5 M expense reduction

- $ 7.8 M expense increase
$ 8.7 M savings per 1,000 agents
d) Erratic Upswing in YEAR 4? The rise in

YEAR 4 expenses shown in the “REDUCED
LABOR EXPENSES” chart above is a result
of attrition cycles that are expanding from
12-month cycles at the beginning, to 24-
month cycles at the five-year point. (Of
course in practical application these
expenses would not be charted as lump sums
during any given year, but rather as amounts
spread over the full twelve months of each
year.) Here is a simple table to illustrate how
these lump sum recruiting and new hire
training expenses are hitting on this five-
year sample calendar:
Recruiting and Training fees over five years –

YR1 YR2 YR3 YR3 YR4 YR5 YR5
YR1 YR2 YR4
Date MO 1
MO MO
MO 7
MO MO MO
MO 7
MO MO
7 1 1 7 1 1 7
Rec & Trng
$2.4M 0 0 $1.4M 0 0 0 $1.2M 0 0
Fees
With a positive response by agents to Agent00’s

PIC conditioning, attrition cycles could reasonably expand
beyond 24 months –perhaps even well beyond. If veteran
agents do not have an artificial ceiling and can frequently
receive regular bonus money, meaningful respect, and
trophy-like awards … they may desire to stay in their agent
jobs for several years. So long as they stay productive and
above company margins, this would certainly be a big
81
advantage to contact centers because they have the capacity

to generate a much higher ratio of revenues to cost …
which provides a good segue point into our next important
section.
82
3. Increased Revenues
When I was running a contact center I always

wished I could keep the really good agents longer. They
took more calls, they had greater experience and expertise,
and as a rule they were more self-motivated and mature.
Agent00 is designed to help you keep your best agents
longer through behavioral conditioning. But, is keeping
your veteran agents longer really worth the extra salary
they cost?
We already talked about the contact center expenses

that can be saved above, so we won’t treat that topic again,
although you can keep a silent tab of other obvious
expenses that will likely be reduced or done away with over
time through Agent00’s automation. What we will dig into
is the positive revenue impact Agent00 can have. We’ll
explore this again through the 1,000 agent case study.
I laid out some assumptions of this case study

contact center above. Those assumptions still apply here, a
summary of which is provided in the box below to
conveniently refresh your memory.
Quick Review of earlier Assumptions:

1. Turnover rate = 30% every 12 months
2. Agent 1s: $11.50/hr, Agent 2s: $14/hr, Sr As: $18.50/hr
3. Benefits rate = 30%
4. Overhead rate = $1.5k/agent/mo
5. Revenue per call = $15.38
6. Recruiting & new hire training expense = $8k/agent
83
In addition, for purposes of looking specifically at

“revenues” we will add a few more industry generated
assumptions:
Added Assumptions…
7. Based upon the average price per call in the

above assumption #5, contact center agents will
complete the following number of calls per 8
hour shift:
• Senior Agents 24
• Agent 2s 22
• Agent 1s 18.
8. Each agent that takes bonus calls will complete

2 bonus calls. [The percentage of agents that
take bonus calls will be provided in the analysis
below.]
9. There are 21.67 eight-hour shifts per month per

agent
10. Monthly Awards will be valued at $250. 1 [The

percentage of agents that win Awards will be
provided in the analysis below.]
11. Companies will split the $15.38 per bonus call

with agents (50/50), or $ 7.69 per bonus call.1
These are the new assumptions.
1 Revenues go up if Monthly Awards and Bonus amounts are reduced.
84
Veteran Agents = Increased # of Calls Taken
Even the most talented new agents lack the intuition

and skills that come only from experience. A staff of
veteran employees translates into less time spent on each
contact, and, as a result, greater overall productivity. A
study by the University of Calgary further confirms the
connection between productivity and agent tenure—Agent
2s achieved a 22% higher level of productivity than Agent
1s, while Sr. Agents averaged 11% higher productivity than
Agent 2s. 1 % increase
# of calls
# of calls
tenure
agent
Agent 1s 18 x 1.22 = 22
Agent 2s 22 x 1.11 = 24
Sr. Agents 24
Applying this to our 1,000-agent case study, here’s

what happens to call volumes over five years:
1 University of Calgary survey quoted in Meta Group Research Report entitled "Agent
Training Automation: More than One Queue" by Elizabeth Ussher. See also: High-
performing employees in operations roles are 40 percent more productive than their
average counterparts. McKinsey & Company "War for Talent, Part Two."
85
INCREASED NUMBER OF CALLS TAKEN
5,750,000
5,700,000
5,650,000
5,600,000
CALLS
Total Calls Taken w/o A00

Total Calls Taken w/ A00
5,550,000
5,500,000
5,450,000
5,400,000
1 2 3 4 5
Total Calls Taken w/o A00 5,514,000 5,514,000 5,514,000 5,514,000 5,514,000
Total Calls Taken w/ A00 5,546,550 5,670,150 5,709,300 5,709,300 5,709,300
YEAR
The number of calls taken over five years “AS IS,”

(the blue bars) compared to the number of calls taken over
five years by a team with more veteran agents (the red bars)
totals out like this:
Calls taken w/o A00 27,570,000

Calls taken w/ A00 28,344,600
# of additional calls w/ A00 +774,600
The above calculation does not include the benefit

of agents taking “bonus” calls. That’s an add-on. Skilled,
self-motivated agents will want to win monthly Awards and
earn Bonus Money.
For purposes of showing the positive impact that

bonus calls will have on the number of calls taken, let’s
assume that a starting level of 10% of the agents (including
Agent 1s, Agent 2s and Sr. Agents) take 2 extra calls for
86
the company. Here’s a modified chart showing what this

number of calls looks like compared to the status quo:
INCREASED NUMBER OF CALLS TAKEN + BONUS CALLS
5,900,000
5,800,000
5,700,000
CALLS
Total calls taken w/o A00

5,600,000
Total calls taken w/ A00 +bc
5,500,000
5,400,000
5,300,000
1 2 3 4 5
Total calls taken w/o A00 5,514,000 5,514,000 5,514,000 5,514,000 5,514,000
Total calls taken w/ A00 +bc 5,605,059 5,754,663 5,819,817 5,845,821 5,871,825
YEAR
As the appeal and momentum of PICs grows, the

number of agents taking bonus calls will likely increase
throughout the five year period. I assumed a simple step up
in this percentage every six months over the 60 month
period. This table shows the anticipated increase in the
percentage of agents taking 2 bonus calls each:
Rate of increase in agents taking bonus calls over five years –

YR1 YR2 YR3 YR4 YR5
YR1 YR2 YR3 YR4 YR5
Date MO
MO 7
MO
MO 7
MO
MO 7
MO
MO 7
MO
MO 7
1 1 1 1 1
% 10% 12.5% 15% 17.5% 20% 22,5% 25% 27.5% 30% 32.5%
The number of calls taken over five years “AS IS,”

compared to the number of calls taken over five years by a
87
more veteran team with a minor but increasing percent of

them taking 2 bonus calls totals out like this:
w/o A00 27,570,000

w/ A00 28,897,185
additional calls w/ A00 1,327,185
Veteran Agents = Increased Revenue
With the number of calls scoped out, and an

assumed average revenue per call of $15.38, the impact to
revenue is straight forward:
INCREASED REVENUES
91,000,000
90,000,000
89,000,000
88,000,000
DOLLARS
87,000,000
Total Call Revnue w/o A00
Total Call Revenue w/ A00
86,000,000
85,000,000
84,000,000
83,000,000
82,000,000
1 2 3 4 5
Total Call Revnue w/o A00 84,805,320 84,805,320 84,805,320 84,805,320 84,805,320
Total Call Revenue w/ A00 86,205,807 88,506,717 89,508,785 89,908,727 90,308,669
YEAR
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Through the automated assistance of Agent00’s

Pavlov-esque behavioral conditioning process, as agents
become more productive and continue in their contact
center jobs at least six to twelve months longer (for
purposes of this case study), revenues will increase over
five years in a 1,000 agent contact center in the amount of
approximately $20.4 million.
“Can we afford PICs?” … you ask.
Assuming the above science and math are accurate,

the next issue is to learn how much the PICs cost that drive
and condition our agents.
“All the posturing about contact center

responsibilities, and all the training to support them--will
be meaningless without the proper inducements. We've seen
companies hire agents based on their ability to be
productive, and put fancy automation tools behind those
agents, but the real key is compensation and incentive. Pay
agents to be productive, and they will be productive. Pay
agents to solve problems, and they will solve problems. Pay
them to keep queue times low, and they will.
Employees are more perceptive than many

managers give them credit for being. Send one message in
training and another in the review, promotion, and
retention process, and they will discern the truth readily
enough … and in the end it is the messages managers send
about reward and advancement that will dictate agent
response.” 1
1 Analyst Chris Selland, of Reservoir Partners
89
The burning question on the minds of agents, CEOs

and VPs I’ve shown Agent00 to is “Can we afford it?" Can
we afford to pay for PICs? The case analysis above shows:
increase 1 in total revenues of $ 20.4M
total cost of $250 Awards + $ 7.69/call bonus pay - $ 7.4M
net profit increase of $ 13M
The answer, then, is affirmative. Indeed, these

uncontrived case study numbers seem to suggest you
cannot afford to run a contact center in optimal fashion
without the assistance of productivity-enhancing PICs.
Of course, if a contact center does not want or need

to give $250 awards to each agent who makes his or her
full margin goals, this can easily be lowered. Many agents
would probably be thrilled with a monthly award of a lesser
value. And $ 7.69 per call, or ½ of every bonus call may be
a bit rich as well. Many agents would love to be able to
split any type of bonus margin per call –just the fact that
they don’t have this suffocating ceiling on what they can
make will be very motivating and morale building.
If contact centers use lesser values for awards and

bonus incidents, the profit margins go up. I see it much like
an old fashion carburetor that can be fine-tuned by
management for the best results. If it is running too rich or
too lean, adjust the fuel mix.
1 Revenue increase is a result of i) more capacity per agent because of a more veteran
mix of agents and ii) bonus calls taken above margin goals.
90
Keeping veteran agents longer is a critical element

of generating this $20.4 million increase in revenues.
Attrition rates are the number one profitability problem in
the worldwide contact center industry today. Being able to
earn daily PICs (respect, bonus pay and awards) in an
automated and totally objective method is behavioral
science at work (not art or artifice), and the foremost key to
keeping agents longer.
91
4. Increased Customer Satisfaction & Retention
“There is a direct correlation between outstanding

agent performance and customer satisfaction. Also, there
is a direct correlation between sub-optimal agent
performance and customer dissatisfaction. Clearly,
Agent00 will create highly motivated, proficient agents that
will result in high customer satisfaction and profitability.” 1
On an abstract level, every senior executive

assumes some correlation between customer satisfaction
and the bottom line. Satisfied customers reward companies
with, among other things, their repeat business, which has a
huge effect on cumulative profits.
“Why does customer satisfaction seem to be so

closely linked to economic performance? The answer is
simple: for the most part, our economic system works. It
was designed with the idea that sellers should compete for
buyer’s satisfaction.” 2
Leading researchers have now begun a collaborative

study to quantify the “Customer Sat” economic impact. 3
Since 1994 the American Customer Satisfaction Index
(“ASCI”) has been measuring the customer satisfaction
ratings of over 200 public companies that each have an
average market value of 27 billion dollars. According to
1 Ted Derwa, Director of global IT for Ford Motor Company.

2 Claes Fornell, Ph.D., founder of the American Customer Satisfaction Index
3 Shannon Anderson, PhD Harvard University, Sally Widener, PhD University of
Colorado, Lisa R. Klein, DBA Harvard Business School, Jesse H. Jones Graduate School
of Management, Rice University.
92
ASCI’s findings, each market unit, or one point of

customer satisfaction, is worth nearly one billion dollars.
They interview thousands of customers every quarter.
Customers rate satisfaction on a scale of 1 – 100, with
higher scores meaning higher levels of satisfaction. ASCI
has then been correlating these scores to the profitability
and stock prices of these companies. Over time ASCI has
proven there is a definite link between customer
satisfaction and financial metrics, such as market value
added, stock price, and return on investment.
One specific case ASCI cited in a Harvard Business

Review article highlighted the impact customer satisfaction
has on Amazon’s financial performance. 1 Amazon’s
customers have given it an 80% customer satisfaction
rating over the years. Amazon sells more than 28 million
unique items, and the typical Amazon customer is worth
about five purchases. If Amazon can raise its satisfaction
and retention rate to 85%, each customer will be worth
about seven purchases. Multiply those two additional
purchases per customer by Amazon’s total base of more
than 29 million users worldwide, and you’re talking real
money.
With specific regard to the impact call center’s can

have on overall economics, Dr. Fornell asks in The Science
Of Satisfaction:
“How much does it cost a company to dissatisfy a caller?

How much does it cost a company if she takes her money
elsewhere and tells her friends to do the same?”
1 The Science Of Satisfaction, March 2001
93
Fornell does not answer this rhetorical question in

detail, but we can generate some idea of the overall
economic impact by application. There are over 7 million
agents in the U.S. growing at a CAGR of 20% and nearly
14 million contact center ‘seats’ worldwide. 1 As mentioned
in Chapter 2, Accenture estimates that an agent speaks to
10,000 customers a year. Combining these two estimates it
follows that agents speak to about 140 billion customers a
year, on the conservative side – and as many as 210 billion
customers a year when multiple shifts and multiple
channels (chat & email) are factored in.
In a traditional business environment, customers

who have had positive experiences with a company’s
product or service might recommend it to a friend or
colleague. While a satisfied customer typically tells one or
two other people, a dissatisfied customer is likely to tell as
many as 10 people about a negative experience. In the
Internet Age where e-mails, chat rooms, and message
boards spread information at the speed of light and hold it
in the public eye for great lengths, the spread of positive
and negative word-of-mouth experiences has a viral effect
that multiplies the traditional impact by up to 100 times. 2
Self motivated contact center agents that satisfy

customers with better, faster, more personable service will
make a huge positive impact –a viral impact– on customer
1 Telemanagement Search and F.A.C./Equities both report that there are in excess of
7,000,000 contact center agents in the U.S. alone – growing at a CAGR of 20% per year.
Ovum reports there are nearly 14,000,000 contact center seats worldwide.
2 Next Generation Web Metrics, Claes Fornell and Larry Freed
94
loyalty and repeat buying trends for companies. In today’s

global marketplace, where many competitors fight for the
same customer, this will be a significant characteristic of
the perennially growing and thriving companies. Those
companies and outsourcing partners of companies that
already understand this, and are conditioning their agents to
exceed their customer expectations, millions upon millions
of times every year, will prosper greatly going forward.
There is no better tool to help you condition the

outstanding behavior of your agents in this critical attitude
and skill set than Agent00. It may become a must have
element of a contact center in today’s global economy.
Continue to look for these research experts 1 to help

us all understand more clearly the measurable economic
impact our contact center agents have upon our customers,
their loyalty, and our profitability.
Agent00 patently systematizes

this valuable process today, resulting in Informed
Agents, Reduced Expenses, Increased Revenues,
and Increased Customer Satisfaction and
Retention.
1 Shannon Anderson, PhD Harvard University, Sally Widener, PhD University of

Colorado, Lisa R. Klein, DBA Harvard Business School, Jesse H. Jones Graduate School
of Management, Rice University.
95
Chapter Four
Objective Performance
Evaluations
“A company’s employees worked long hours on an

important project and were rewarded with tee-shirts,
because management felt the employees needed to
be given something for their efforts. However, this
action equated the value of the employees' extra
efforts to a measly tee-shirt. Management would
have been better off not giving them any bonus, but
instead giving them high praise and treating them
fairly in their next review.”
Scott Adams (Dilbert creator)
“M aybe it’s not objective enough,” said veteran

US Olympic coach Frank Carroll, shortly after
the 2002 Olympic figure skating gold medal
was awarded to the Russians rather than the seemingly
flawless Canadians. "Maybe we should just let 'em all race
against the clock."
This figure skating scandal captured the world’s

attention during the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. And
while most of us had no personal stake in the outcome of
that event, my guess is many an office and coffee shop was
Chapter Four - Objective Performance Evaluations
abuzz the next day with millions upon millions of personal,

emotional opinions issuing forth about the problems with
subjective judging. As Frank Carroll intimated in his
second comment above, if a person’s performance is
measured entirely by who crosses the finish line first or
fastest, there is little room for error, dispute or emotion.
The accuracy of this viewpoint was recently but
unknowingly attested to by professional jockey Mike
Smith, who finished second on Lion Heart at the 2004
Kentucky Derby … but graciously said, "I had a great trip,
but Smarty Jones 1 just had another gear."
Years ago Novell subcontracted my first web

application company Digital Harbor, Inc. to develop an
automated agent evaluation program for it. We wrote
Novell an innovative Java program specifically to help it do
its quarterly agent performance evaluations.
Based upon several technology advancements since

then, Agent00 now provides contact centers with even
better, real-time, objective performance evaluation
capabilities. Agents will always know how well they are
performing against their core company goals. And
similarly, management can instantly generate real time
performance evaluation reports based upon an agent’s goals
and performance.
There are at least two valuable benefits from this: i)

no quarterly revenues dip and ii) less labor requirement.
1 Thoroughbred horse and winner of the 2004 Kentucky Derby.
97
No revenue dip because of Quarterly Evaluations
Each one of us has probably had some negative

brushes with “subjective” evaluation processes, whether
they’ve been professional, academic or family related.
Figuratively speaking, there used to be a long line of
disgruntled WordPerfect agents outside my office seeking
redress for unfair performance evaluations at the end of
every quarter. It was personally draining on me to sort
through it all in the best possible way, but my real concern
was always the lost weeks of productivity we experienced
because of it.
Everyone has an innate need to know how well

they’re doing. But we all have concerns about subjective
judgments because they are human, and by nature
imperfect.
For a week or two leading up to a scheduled

quarterly evaluation, many WordPerfect agents would be
upset that they were not going to get a fair and objective
evaluation because they didn’t ‘kiss-up’ as well as another.
They stewed about this and their productivity suffered
some. But the severe overall productivity loss came after
they sat through their quarterly evaluations and received
lower scores than they felt they deserved. That’s when the
costly grumbling and factions and petitions really doused
our productivity flame.
Our best estimates were that we usually experienced

a productivity drop-off among one third to one half of our
agents for about two-weeks, totaling a 10% to 15% dip in
their performance.
98
Reflecting for a moment once again on the 2002

Olympics, the Canadians were very upset at the judges’
subjective evaluation of their skaters. So much so that they
filed an application before the court of Arbitration for
Sport, a non-Olympic body, asking the court to hear its
complaints. The court agreed to hear the case, and the
scandal appeared to be spilling over to a dispute-resolution
forum beyond the control of the Olympic committee. This
created an enormous and nearly fatal blow to the sport, its
lucrative commercial sponsors, and to the very reality that
figure skating would continue as an Olympic event going
forward.
On a micro scale compared to that of the Olympics,

the negative stewing, grumbling, factions and petitioning
that often accompanies quarterly reviews definitely bites
into a contact center’s productivity. Agents are just as upset
about their own lack of fair treatment and respect as the
Canadians were. And the bottom line is a substantial
reduction in productivity for about two weeks every
quarter, which in the above case model translates into
$2.8M in lost revenues over five-years (see the bottom row
of numbers in the chart immediately below).
99
PRODUCTIVITY LOSS
100,000,000
90,000,000
80,000,000
70,000,000
60,000,000
DOLLARS
Total Revenue
50,000,000 Impaired Ttl Rev 2-wks / 33% agents
Ttl Rev Loss at 12% / 2-wks / 33% agents
40,000,000
30,000,000
20,000,000
10,000,000
-
1 2 3 4 5
Total Revenue 86,205,807 88,506,717 89,508,785 89,908,727 90,308,669
Impaired Ttl Rev 2-wks / 33% 85,773,777 87,916,672 88,912,060 89,309,335 89,706,611
agents
Ttl Rev Loss at 12% / 2-wks / 432,030 590,045 596,725 599,392 602,058
33% agents
YEAR
Less management labor required with Agent00
Of course in addition to the threat of lost

productivity, the undeniable fact is that individual
evaluations cost a lot in labor expense to perform. I
recently asked the COO’s of two public multi-national
contact centers how much time their team leaders and
managers spend in processing quarterly agent evaluations.
Inclusive of the time spent by team leaders setting quarterly
goals with agents, gathering agent-specific performance
statistics and information, reviewing recorded calls, and
conducting quarterly evaluations, on average, here is what
they reported:
Activity Hrs/Qtr/Agent
Setting Goals 2
Gathering Individual Info 12
Reviewing Recorded Calls 2
Conducting Evaluation 2
Total 18
100
Assuming this is representative, traditional quarterly

performance evaluations take 9 FTE’s and cost around
$3.3M over five years. 1
But once again, what is even more difficult to

measure in real time is the number of agents that quit their
jobs because of disagreements with their supervisors over
subjective evaluation processes: “Agents might seek out a
job because of pay or benefits, but if their boss makes them
miserable every day, they won’t stick around.” 2
“Worse, executives often don’t act as though they

truly value their employees. Many CEOs who say people
are their most valuable asset sincerely mean it, but their
actions don’t reflect that. They say that, and then at the
first sign of a downturn in business, they have layoffs. In
contrast, companies that are gathering and analyzing
people-related data are seeing interesting results that help
them make better decisions and boost the bottom line—not
to mention improved employee management leading to
better retention rates and higher productivity levels.” 3
1 18 hours per quarter per agent multiplied by 1,000 agents amounts to 18,000 hours per
quarter spent on performance evaluations by team leaders or managers. Translated into
man-hours per team leader (18k ÷ 2080 hours per FTE), traditional subjective
performance evaluations require nine team leaders to conduct. This is equal to about
$660k per year based on the ASP salary survey, or $3.3M over five years.
2 Seven Secrets of Minimizing Agent Turnover, BenchmarkPortal.com
3 Jim Hatch, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers and co-author of Delivering on the
Promise: How to Attract, Manage, and Retain Human Capital.
101
Agent00 makes performance evaluations completely

objective and supportive of the company’s goals. Agents
will always know how they are performing, and so will
their supervisors without having to do a lot of expensive
busy work and without the emotional conflicts that come
with subjective judgments. This is a good culture shift and
will likely extend the length of agent turnover cycles
because of less conflict and more justified rewards.
Through Agent00, agents themselves stay on top of

their performance track. This hits close to home for me.
Through online programs, my kids follow their grades all
the way through the semester now, knowing exactly where
they stand before the grade reports come out at the end of
the semester. I asked a teacher last week how my daughter
was doing. The teacher pulled up the same web report my
daughter has 24/7 access to and we went over it together.
Totally objective evaluation processes enable true

progress and productivity. They come standard in Agent00.
It will save you a lot. Better yet, it will empower your
agents.
102
“If you have the right [agents], you don't need to worry
about motivating them. The right [agents] are self-
motivated: Nothing beats being a part of a team that is
expected to produce great results … the single biggest
constraint on the success of my organization is the ability
to get and to hang on to enough of the right [agents].” 1
1 Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others
Don't (inserts added –“employees” changed to “agents” for purposes herein)
103
Chapter Five
High Morale Culture
“Our real accomplishment is to have inspired

our 19,000 people to buy into a concept, to
share a feeling and an attitude, to identify with
the company -- and then to execute.”
Herb Kelleher, CEO Southwest Airlines
C ontact centers are often the backbone of a

company’s customer relations program. Not only do
agents provide information for the customer — they can
also provide the service and the connection that will keep
the customer coming back for years. Why is it, then, that
contact centers often seem to have such negative cultures
(as witnessed by unusually high turnover rates, and
comments like the “cattle” –see clip page 41 above)? Is it
the company? Is it the agents?
I did a Google advanced search ‘with all of the words,’

“high morale contact center” on the internet and it returned
the following finding:
“Results 1 - 10 of about 7,370,000 for high morale contact center.”
Of course we all know this does not mean there are

7,370,000 direct hits on-point. But clearly, there is a nearly
inexhaustible library of interest and advice on this
pervasive topic.
Chapter Five - High Morale Culture
I definitely used to worry about the negative culture

that existed in our WordPerfect contact centers. It didn’t
affect every one of our agents, but we always had a
counterculture of negativism. We did our best to keep it in
check, but productivity and profitability both suffered
because of low staff morale, poor attitudes and negative
working atmospheres in various pockets of each contact
center.
Indeed, no contact center is safe. From the chief

supervisor to the front line agent, it’s a silent epidemic
sweeping through the contact center industry, worldwide. It
can mean millions of lost revenues to companies.
According to recent report from HR Direct the two

most common quantifiable symptoms of low morale and
negative attitudes in a contact center are absenteeism and
tardiness. They estimate that a 1,000 agent contact center
could stand to lose $ 750,000 per year due to this factor
alone. (In our case model above, this amounts to $3.75M
over five years.) Not to mention the harder to quantify (but
very significant) lost revenue risk associated with having
grumbling agents that drive customers away … as your
main contact with your customers.
It was during this time at WordPerfect that I

remember taking my first Southwest Airlines flight. I had
seen a derogatory TV commercial a few times about
Southwest, herding people onto a plane like they were
cattle, so I wasn’t too anxious to fly Southwest. But that
particular day, Southwest was the only airline that would
get me where I needed to be, when I needed to be there.
And was I ever surprised with the experience.
105
The flight attendants were like none I had ever seen

on any other commercial flight (save a few Island-hopping
charter flights). They were dressed casual in bright colored
golf shirts and tropical khaki island shorts with boat shoes.
Instead of reading the typically boring safety rules

as the flight began, they made a comedy routine out of it.
Instead of just handing out peanuts and drinks, they created
a festival atmosphere out of delivering peanuts and drinks
personally to each passenger.
Being in the consumer-service business, I remember

looking around to see reactions. There didn’t seem to be a
grumpy passenger on that flight. Just the opposite –all the
passengers seemed as delighted to be a part of this flight as
they might have been at a comedy club. Some were really
getting into it.
I asked one of the ebullient crew members how long

she had been a Southwest attendant and what made her so
happy? She smiled and said, “I’ve worked here for almost
two years, and I love it. It’s my company. I own employee
stock in the company, and I even get a share of Southwest’s
profits. —So, if you’re happy, I’m happy! I want you to fly
Southwest every time you fly. Now cross your heart and
raise your hand and swear an oath that you will fly
Southwest every time you fly,” she said as she giggled and
took hold of my wrist and crossed my heart with my own
hand. Then she moved on to deliver the next lucky
passenger his peanuts and soda.
Curious at what was driving such outstanding

customer service, I checked around afterward and found
106
that she and the other attendants probably made about $

20,000 a year in salary. How about that? I expected much
more. This was on par with our first-year contact center
agents.
I also learned that it wasn’t just an act that

Southwest choreographed with their attendants beforehand.
They hired people that were naturally friendly and positive;
they instructed them in the legal matters they had to
observe; and then they told them to be themselves: “Be
happy and make passengers comfortable and happy … then
they’ll want to fly with us –and we’ll split the profits!”
Southwest Airlines Training Manual
I’ve flown Southwest many times since then. And

though I’ve heard some of the same comedy routines, their
culture is still a breath of fresh air in the travel industry. It
is this positive enjoyable culture that sets Southwest apart
from other airlines, and what conditions their employees to
be happy, energized and full of self-motivated desire and
confidence that they are going to succeed individually and
as a company. It’s also what causes customers like me to
fly them again.
So let’s focus for a moment on High Morale Culture

in a contact center, and how Agent00 can help you create
and sustain it in your own centers.
The granite foundation for my comments in Chapter

Two above is the decades of research and countless proven
concepts from Behavioral Science. The foundation for my
comments in this chapter is mainly taken from the decades
of research and proven concepts within the Science of
107
Psychology. Therein the scientific definition of “Culture”

is: “The predominating attitudes and behavior that
characterize the functioning of a group or organization.” 1
As described above in Chapter Two, “self-

motivation” is a behavior that can be conditioned within
agents through the scientific administration of positive
immediate consequences (aka, giving agents PICs) when
goals are met or exceeded.
But what is “morale” and can you scientifically

condition high morale in agents?
i) What is morale? “Morale” is a positive attitude

that emerges from a group or a team of employees. 2 In a
contact center, morale encompasses agents’ attitudes
toward their work, their coworkers, their customers, and
even themselves.
In today’s vernacular, agent morale can either be

high or low. In contact centers where morale is high, agents
do their work with energy, enthusiasm, and optimism. They
enjoy coming to work and are productive and enthusiastic
about their jobs once they get there. On the other hand,
when contact center morale is low, agents are bored, angry,
1 "C.P. Snow's Two Cultures: Hardware and Software, Discovery and Creation" by
MIT research scientist Dan Dewey (July 1999). The American Heritage Dictionary;
Usage Note: The application of the term culture to the collective attitudes and behavior
of corporations arose in business jargon during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Over 80
percent of Usage Panelists accept the sentence The new management style is a reversal of
GE's traditional corporate culture, in which virtually everything the company does is
measured in some form and filed away somewhere.
2 Impact Learning Systems International, 2004
108
discouraged, lethargic and sometimes dishonest. Low

morale is a leading reason for high turnover.
ii) Can high morale be conditioned in agents? It can.

Most psychologists concur that morale is conditioned or
“learned” in three primary ways:
a. Classical & Operant conditioning is a

learning-through-association process which
involves the pairing of stimuli. "When one stimulus
regularly precedes another, the one that occurs first
may soon become a signal for the one that occurs
second." 1 After frequent pairings, their exists an
expectation that when the first stimulus occurs, the
second will then follow. Consider these two
examples:
(1) Wal-Mart CEO-David Glass

frequently promised to treat first line
employees with peer-like dignity as they
earnestly performed their jobs well. As Wal-
Mart profits continued to climb, Glass
frequently went from store to store serving
as a greeter along side his employees as
promised.
(2) Southwest Airlines CEO-Herb

Kelleher repeatedly promised he would see
that all his employees were compensated
fairly as they performed their jobs well. As
1 Baron & Byrne, 1994.
109
Southwest earnings and stock prices

increased year over year, Kelleher
repeatedly gave out stock options and a
share of the profits to every Southwest
employee as promised.
In both real life cases, an infectious attitude of trust

and loyalty was formed between the employees and the
company because the first stimulus (i.e., executive promise)
was always followed up with the second stimulus (respect
or compensation). The result of this was a high and
sustained level of morale, and a positive and empowering
corporate culture. These companies became stronger and
more successful together because of it. A quick testimony
to this is the fact that $ 1,000 invested in Southwest stock
in 1973 is worth over $1.8M today. 1
Agent00 automates the Classical & Operant

conditioning process which results in high morale culture.
b. Instrumental conditioning. Rewards and

punishments are commonly used in Behavioral
Science to condition desired behavior as described
1 Southwest is the only airline that has made money every year since 1973, with stock
value up more than 500% since 1990. An investment of $1000 in Southwest stock in
1973 would be worth over $1.8 million today. Southwest's stock trades at about 20 times
on earnings, double the industry standard, and Wall Street Investor Peter Lynch says
"Southwest's (stock) performance has yet to be outdone." Its net profit margins averaged
over 5%, the highest in the industry, since 1991. Foundation for Enterprise Development
/ Beyster Institute, Washington D.C. 20006
110
in Chapter Two above. But these same techniques

are also often utilized in the Science of Psychology
to form positive attitudes in employees and to
establish empowering cultural legacies in
companies. For example, when daily respect, bonus
money, awards or other positive forms of
recognition are repeatedly given to an agent who
exceeds her daily company goals, the result will be
that she will develop a fondness for trying to
exceed her goals every day.
You might wonder why this subtle scientific

detail (fondness) is important? The answer is that a
motivated agent may exceed her goals every day,
but still not like her job. As a result, she may still
quit being an agent sooner than you would like.
On the other hand, the Science of

Psychology has proven through Classical and
Instrumental conditioning, agents can also be
conditioned to become fond of their daily successes,
and form an attitude and a desire to stay in their
jobs longer.
As enough agents begin to exhibit a

predominance of positive attitudes and positive
behaviors in the contact center, the culture of the
contact center itself becomes enjoyable –in other
words, a workplace environment agents will want to
be a part of longer.
111
Agent00 automates the conditioning process
which results in high morale culture.
c. Modeling. Finally, this third process of

forming attitudes often occurs without intention.
This process, often referred to as "Social Learning
Theory," suggests that behaviors and attitudes are
acquired by observing and imitating the actions
displayed by peers. 1 So, for example, if a co-agent
is observed receiving a meaningful award, a bonus
check, or praiseful recognition, another agent may
also increase his performance so he can enjoy the
same PIC, regardless of whether he really needs or
wants the PIC.
Contact center managers frequently ask, “What do I

do about our morale problem?” There are scientific ways
to fix it, which will amplify your respectful and caring
efforts. More important, a system that builds morale,
loyalty, and enthusiasm in employees is preventative
medicine, so that reactive modes need not be invoked over
and over.
1
Bandura, 1969
112
Chapter Six
A SaaS/BI2.0 Application
t the turn of the century, fiber optics broadband
A was being burrowed into the middle of every

metropolis and residential neighborhood. This
effort created a new business opportunity for
others to provision that broadband “the last mile” into
offices and homes.
I worked closely with an early national broadband

provider. It had an ingenious business model by which it
could provision the last mile to metropolitan office
buildings. It identified 45 major cities in the US that now
had fat fiber optics depots located in mid town or near
town, but could not provision it the “last mile.” There was
no way these cities could dig up streets, stopping traffic and
commerce, in order to stretch “last mile” fiber optics
underground to each office building.
Seizing the opportunity this broadband provider

quickly negotiated “roof space leases” with the tallest
buildings in these major cities. They then created the
Chapter Six - A SaaS/BI Application
long-range microwave infrastructure to stream rich

bandwidth wirelessly from the mid or near town depots to
the roofs of these tall buildings; then from the tall buildings
to the surrounding shorter buildings; and finally through
internal copper and short range wireless infrastructure to all
internal offices.
Let me apply this story by way of analogy to your

call centers. You probably have multiple data crunching
systems (I call them data “Silos”) in house to run your call
centers more efficiently. Such as:
• ACD (automatic call distribution)

• CTI (computer telephony integration)
• IVR (interactive voice response)
• WFM (workforce management)
• CRM (customer relationship management)
• HRIS (human resources information system)
These various Silos grind along every day

doing their jobs—that is, creating
“performance metrics results.” In the
case of this PSTN> the results might be
‘number of calls taken,’ ‘average handle
time,’ or a host of other metrics.
But what happens to these results is

analogous to my “last mile” story above.
“Fat broadband” is only valuable when
people can access it and use it. Similarly,
metrics results are only valuable when they
create desired behaviors within agents.
114
However, metric results are not usually delivered to

agents quickly and intuitively enough to cause them to
improve their behaviors. Most individual agent metric
results for a single KPI are buried inside a data table that
has metric results for lots of agents on the same KPI. The
table is routed to a manager who must sort through it,
analyze it for each agent, score it for each agent, and then
hopefully use it to improve the performance of each agent.
A laborious process, this manual agent by agent system,
fraught with human mistakes—a process made even worse
by 1) the many KPI results flowing into the manager, 2) the
varying times the KPI results arrive, and 3) the need to
analyze all the various reports together in order to provide a
360° performance scorecard for each agent and team.
Great News! Agent00’s patented SOA | SaaS
-E x a m p l e d a t a s o u r c e s i n a c o n t a c t c e n t e r -
& BI architecture enables it to connect rapidly, securely

and affordably to just about any data sources necessary to
115
create a real time, intuitive, 360° performance and

conditioning scorecard for each individual agent … and for
that matter for each team, coach, site, region or company
as desired.
SaaS is delivering on its promise of rapid

deployment, limited upfront investment in capital and
staffing, anywhere accessibility and a reduction in the
software management cost and responsibility. All these,
and other virtues, are making SaaS a very desirable
alternative to on-premise systems, looking forward.
As such, stake-holders 1 are trending away from

proprietary, on-premise systems with new budget spending,
1 Most notably, CIO’s, OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) and ISVs

(Independent Software Vendors), and End Users.
116
and trending towards a new era of computing comprised of

SaaS, BI and Cloud Computing. And as of September 19,
2008, this trend has greatly accelerated because of the
significant economic benefits available via SaaS, BI and
Cloud Computing.
As an example, a recent IDC report projected SaaS

growth at 42 per cent for 2009 and estimated that 76 per
cent of US organizations will deploy at least one SaaS-
delivered application for business use. Meanwhile, the
percentage of US firms planning to spend at least 25 per
cent of their IT budgets on SaaS applications is expect to
increase from 23 per cent in 2008 to nearly 45 per cent in
2010. [link]
What about your current on-premise systems?
“Metrics and key performance indicators are important

performance management tools, but they’re only as good as the
behaviors they elicit.”
Agent00 works with all your existing and future

data systems, via its internal Data Collector™. Agent00 is
the missing link! It intelligently converts your existing data
(i.e., knowledge) into desired agent behavior.
“Managers typically drive performance management, but they tend

to focus on reporting and decision support. They often forget the
need to drive agent’s behaviors, “yet they’re always surprised when
agents don’t respond as expected when they’re confronted with a
budget, scorecard, or key performance indicator.”
117
Agent00 is an agent-designed, SaaS/BI2.0 application

system. There is no closely comparable agent conditioning
system in the world market today. Other performance
management tools are, at best, non-real-time reporting
tools aimed at informing contact center managers—rather
than changing the daily behavior of agents.
 Epilogue
Agent00 rapidly and most affordably connects to

any data source, works across any platform or device that
supports a browser, measures the performance and
profitability of every individual employee, and positively
and personally conditions the thoughts and actions of every
agent, every day. In other words, not only do agents like
their jobs more, do their jobs better, and stay in their jobs
longer—but Agent00 conditions desired behaviors into
agents, such as: positive, profitable, satisfied and
dedicated.
It can be the catalyst of a positively disruptive

improvement in your agents as it scientifically conditions
self motivation, high morale, and longer tenure into your
most critical resource: your agents.
118
119
Appendix
Value Table
Agent00 does more than just save money and
increase revenues, but clearly these are key elements
of a thriving contact center. So, for your convenience,
I have created this easy index table to provide you with
a consolidated look at the productivity gains outlined
in this book, associated with the 1,000-agent case
study.
POSITIVE IMPACT OF AGENT00 on Expense & Revenue Pg.

Recruiting Expense Reductions + $ 7,000,000 78
Management Expense Reductions + $ 9,500,000 79
Senior Agent Increased Expense - $ 7,800,000 80
Net Reduction of Expenses + $ 8,700,000 81
Increase in Calls Taken + 1,327,000 88
Increased Revenue + $ 20,400,000 89
Cost of Bonus & Awards - $ 7,400,000 90
Net Revenue Increase (- bonus & Awards) + $ 13,000,000 90
Performance Eval Productivity Increase + $ 2,800,000 99
Performance Eval Reduction of Management + $ 3,300,000 101
Morale Productivity Increase + $ 3,750,000 105
Appendix
Proven Results
Beginning in Q1 2006 Agent00 was installed in
its first production operation within a global manufac-
turing company’s centralized helpdesk operation.
Thereafter, Agent00 has been used in various contact
centers.
These three charts click > show the live

improvement results from three companies using
Agent00, customized to condition their agents in the
most advantageous ways as determined by the client.
The fourth chart in this series is the summary

of a primary research study within call centers of all
kinds and locations created by Gartner and admin-
istered by their preferred outsource research firm over
the course of several months. click >
Lastly, while the results were not produced by

Agent00, to see recent, incredible proof of concept of
the power of conditioning employees performance —
and the dramatic 5X effect this had on a major
company’s ROI, profitability and brand value. click >
121

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Agent 00 TM

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

Published by Exceed III, LLC, Lindon, Utah, USA

Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Self-Motivated Agents™ is a trademark owned by Exceed III, LLC.

This book provides a wealth of background and

A firsthand when I switched from Sales & Marketing at

On this project I have also had the collaborative benefit

Additionally, my gratitude goes out to my special friends

Most of all, I’d like to acknowledge my undying

Gartner Survey ...........................................1211

The Missing Link

“T hat’s pretty cool!” he said over my shoulder.

“A word processor,” I replied —surprised that

I stood around for five nervous minutes waiting for

A guy walked up from behind. I expected it to be

“What else can it do?” he asked, interested.

I thought to myself, “This guy thinks I work here.

“WOW!” he exclaimed. [pause] “Hey, do you like

“Yeah. Sure.” I replied . . . enjoying how friendly

He stuck out his hand and said, “Listen, I’m the

By the 17th hole we had penciled out a deal where

This story happened to me in early 1984 when I was

our product. But with “millions” buying WordPerfect every

To care for the millions using our products

As word traveled, press coverage of our support

However, business economics came to bear in the

There was no such thing as “Workforce

our “Hold Jockey” program whereby we played music and

We continued to invest in technologies like

We had 1200 agents in our US call center and

Unfortunately we did not have web technology back

Indeed, it is getting worse. Turnover (aka, Attrition)

To alleviate the money side of the problem, contact

I have remained intimately involved in the contact

1 If you are a C-level executive, project manager, software architect, or developer, no

Agent00. It provides the critical missing link in a contact

• Agent00 stands for “Agent’s Own Optimization,”

• It is branded Agent00™ after Ian Fleming’s famous

• Agent00 is an advanced SaaS/BI2.0 application that

• Agent00 automatically gathers meaningful data in a

Designed for agents, largely by agents, over the

• Your revenue and profit margins will increase

This book sets out to build a map of five unique

Agent00 is not just a better balanced scorecard. It is

The result is a positive, energized agent culture that

Chapter 2 is entitled, “Winning With Heart” and

Chapter 3 is entitled, “Is It Real? Is It Possible? Is It

Chapter 4 is entitled, “Objective Performance

Chapter 5 is entitled, “High Morale Culture” and

Chapter 6 is entitled, “A SaaS/BI 2.0 Application”

Winning With “Heart”

I was a guest at a magnificent Thoroughbred farm in

This was one of the owner’s favorite

Can drive and desire, what I’m calling “heart,” be

Pavlov is the household name that taught us about

Heart, drive and self motivation can be conditioned

Thrill of a new job

Starting a new job as an agent is usually very

Most agents in the US are between the ages of 18

Behavioral Science would say that their behavior is

So why do agents lose this positive energy?

“Heart” is driven by immediate consequences