Professional Documents
Culture Documents
First, let's go through the list once and then we will get into more detail on each item below.
1.
Employee Training.
2.
3.
Information Systems
4.
5.
6.
Service Level
7.
Business Processes
8.
Call Control
9.
Call types
10.
Staff Experience
11.
Customer self-help
1. Training is the first and probably most important topic in our discussion. Good relative and applicable agent training
will pay for itself many times over. The best trained agents, answer customers calls correctly. Well trained agents
take less time to understand the customers issue (because they have been trained to understand), thus their AHT is
usually much lower.
Trained agents are more satisfied with their jobs and thus have lower staff turnover.
2. Customer Greetings are a factor in AHT. Have you noticed that the opening and closing greetings imposed on Call
Center Agents are getting longer and longer?
I dare you to find a customer who likes all those extra words.
No one really wants to be asked how they are doing today. Why, because the Agent asking that question probably
does not really care and the customer knows it is not said or meant in genuine way.
If you require your staff to say a specific greeting at the beginning of a call then realize that the greeting is adding
seconds to every agents AHT.
Try this greeting: Thank you for being our customer, how can I help you?
3. Systems (desk top computers, networks, databases, etc) factor into AHT. If the system response times are slow
then a call, email or Chat conversation will take longer to process. If agents have to wait for the computer screen to
refresh then those are extra seconds that add up to unnecessary and wasted minutes and hours and that time is
added to the AHT of each agent.
If slow system response an issue in your call center? Here is how you can check. Simply take some time during the
busiest hour of your operation and watch several of your agents working. Concentrate on the screen (not the agent)
and see how fast it responds. Also count how many different screens or systems they have to access to complete the
call.
I'll bet you will come back with time savings suggestions and a better appreciation for the importance of fast system
response.
6. Low Service Level or put another way lots of customers waiting on hold, means call after call for your agents. If
your Agents do not get a decent break between calls then they will get worn down and AHT will rise. A couple of
issues come into play here. First of all, the longer customers wait the more they complain. Complaining takes time. If
the customer does not complain then the agent will likely apologize for the wait time. Either way all this activity takes
time and it thus AHT goes up.
Another interesting thing happens. Agents will talk longer to happier customers to avoid the risk of getting an irate
customer who has been waiting on hold.
Poor service level drives up AHT.
8. Your Agents ability to control their Customers conversation is very important to lower AHT.
Customers will be mad, upset, confused or disgruntled. So they will want to explain their situation in great detail or
they will want to talk about the weather, or their grand-kids, where your agent is located or Sundays football game.
The goal of call control is to ensure your agent gets the customer back to the reason for their call. Call control is a
technique and a skill that ensures the Agent identifies and fixes the customers issue in the shortest time possible.
Call Control is a skill that needs to be taught and practiced.
Payback is immediate and significant.
10. The experience of your staff is a factor in AHT. I always remember when I started managing a call center for a
wireless company in Toronto, I had one agent who sat in the back corner and never talked to anyone. What as funny
was that he was the agent who received the most compliments from our customers. He learned what he had to do,
how to do it, and then just set about getting his work done. His customers loved him because he was fast, efficient
and kept talk to a minimum. His AHT was always the best.
What I remember the most was that Paul was the fastest typist I had ever seen. Again he took the time to learn how
to type on a keyboard with both hands and all 10 fingers. The system was fast but Paul was much faster.
You simply cant beat an experienced agent.
1.
We encourage agents to gather as much information as possible at the start of the call.
This should be relevant and about the situation, in order to best resolve the issue
instead of getting information filtering throughout the call.
3.
Be there to answer your team. If you can save them from searching through an online
resource you will save them time. Be accountable for them.
4.
Allow agents with a high AHT to listen to calls of their colleagues with a low AHT to
identify where they can reduce their own AHT.
5.
During the recruitment process, identify candidates who naturally speak, ask questions
and give answer concisely.
6.
7.
Identify silent times and look at what is happening. Is the member of staff updating the
system, is the system responding?
8.
Buddy-up agents
Buddy-up agents with high AHT with agents that have low AHT to listen in, gain tips and
share ideas.
Quality control is obviously important, so ensure that you have calibration between
agents with low and high AHTs.
9.
Avoid agents buddying with older or bad agents as they pick up bad habits.
10.
Call and screen recording tools are very effective when coaching towards a lower
average handling time.
11.
Team champions
Have team champions for each call driver who can then disseminate key points to the
rest of the team.
12.
Ensure people follow a predefined call structure. People need to listen; question; clarify
back; use hold; give overviews and deliver the solution effectively.
Focus needs to be on giving the right answer, first time.
Adapt, be friendly, helpful and enthusiastic
13.
Professionalise the workforce in their business area. The more knowledge agents have
of their whole business, the easier it is to answer customer questions and reduce time
to get the correct answer.
15.
Examine what your top 10 agents do in regard to AHT that makes them consistently
quick. Then apply these tips to the slowest 10. Improving the slowest agents AHT will
have the biggest gains.
19.
Staff should be involved in the training, along with supervisors to refresh themselves at
the same time.
24.
Hold sessions for providing information direct to advisors, rather than using email.
Make sure this is a two-way session, rather than managers telling advisors what to do.
Empower the agent.
25.
Create more user-friendly service request forms for every scenario with a specific
service. This gives a more consistent approach for the customer.
27.
Put a search engine on the knowledge database. It will make it much easier to find
information.
31.
Design a structured question/flow for the agents so they have a set of questions to ask
the users and troubleshoot accordingly, rather than coming out with their own set of
questions.
32.
Encourage your top agents with the best call control to share their
experiences/strategies with colleagues in team briefings. Its more powerful than coming
from a team leader or manager as they can see it really works.
33.
Agent self-reviews
We think self-reviews are crucial in reduction of AHT this encourages the agent to
identify the problem and provide the solution.
34.
I ensure that the agents have the information at their fingertips and use the internal chat
feature so that they can get information from other agents where necessary.
What I find is that agents do not have time to do a lot of reading, so really the most
effective way is to probably split the team and bring them into a sit-down setting where
the interpretation will remain the same.
35.
Invest in your staffs technical knowledge, rather than rushing them through a short
induction. Invest in educating staff over a period of time, teaching them background
information. This should remove the need for referrals to team leaders and help the staff
member take ownership of their customers needs.
43.
Agents should feel the support by listening to recorded calls. If you coach them after
listening, this has the added benefit that they will learn from their mistakes.
45.
Never jeopardise call quality for AHT as you will not only provide bad service but also
encourage bad behaviour in the advisor population.
46.
My tip for reducing the AHT is to create a good opening question to have control of the
conversation directly from the start. An example could be: Good day, my name
is..did you call us before? Whether this is answered with a yes or no, you can take
control over the conversation.
3. A positive attitude
It is vital that recruitment team managers realign their expectations and take into
consideration the economic climate when setting targets and objectives. Whilst I dont
believe it is all doom and gloom out there, it is definitely tougher to convert leads into
sales and there are fewer opportunities. That said, team leaders must encourage their
staff to raise their game and sell themselves out of the credit crunch.
6. Dont be tempted to carry anyone who is not up to the job
Leadership skills are ever more important during a credit crunch and you must lead from
the front and inspire the team. Concentrate on motivating your best people and dont be
tempted to carry anyone who is not up to the job this can be highly demotivating for
the rest of the team.
7. Keep things fresh
You need to make sure that the environment they are working
in is conducive to good performance. Everyone likes to work somewhere nice, clean
carpets, working computers and phones, a couple of nice plants.
Consider this, which team do you think would give the best performance, the one who
works in a scruffy office where the equipment only works half of the time and the
managers never offer any support, or the team that works in a clean, friendly office
where everything works properly and managers spend their day patting you on the
back?
I appreciate that Ive given an extreme example but the fact remains that if your call
centre is clean and welcoming then your team will want to be there and motivation is
much easier to come by.
11. We all like to be rewarded or praised for doing it well
A good reward scheme is a great motivator, especially if your team are conducting outbound
calls. Human nature dictates that no matter what job we do we all like to be rewarded or praised
for doing it well. Sales people live by that, generally because the better they do the more money
they get.What you have to do is have more than one programme running at any given time
immediate, daily, weekly, monthly it doesnt really matter what timescales are involved the
key is to run a programme that suits all members of the team. Basically, the thing that might
motivate the top sales person wont necessarily work with an average performer and vice versa.
So if you have different options then you should 15. Learn from experienced agents
Dont be afraid to ask agents if they have created their own guides, tips, or FAQ
documents that they can share with you.
bunnycatz
Many agents create their own documents but this valuable information can get
overlooked.
be able to give all of them something to aim for.
16. Remind agents that it will get easier
Take time each week to assess and congratulate agents on how far they have come.
Remind them how nice it feels when you help a customer and they go away happy
19. Stress release days
Have stress release days for agents, fun days, etc. This all adds to relieving stress for
the agents. Also try and get management involved
24. Have fun!
Finally, and most important of all, is to have fun. We all perform better when we are
doing something that we enjoy.
25. Introduce colour in the work space
Inspire your staff to work hard and strive for success. Call centres can be bland, so you
can create a more vibrant atmosphere by introducing colour in the work space, using
motivational images and pictures to brighten the area. These little, low-cost
improvements can make a significant impact on your workforce.
You know your staff better than anyone else; if you have new motivational ideas for your
call centre workforce dont be afraid to try them. Sometimes the simplest of changes
can make a significant impact on employees working culture and attitude.