Does improving your center have to come down to a battle between "efficiency" and "effectiveness"? That was the key question we discussed with experts and call center pros in January in our Roundtable.

How do we measure what we're not used to measuring? And do so fairly, and rigorously? That, and issues of agent performance were what excited our participants most.

You can read the entire discussion here. What follows are some of the highlights.

Kevin Levi of NICE Systems started things out:
By using new emotion detection technology, companies can determine if a certain promotion offered by the agent during the conversation resonates well with the customer. With new word-spotting technology organizations can monitor calls to determine which customers might defect or what products are most often referenced positively. Or with new products that give executives access to recorded calls via any telephone, companies can learn right away if certain business processes need to be altered to better serve the client such as giving the agents access to billing records in real time so they can adjust double-billing errors readily while the customer is on the line. These technologies take the once "simply recorded call" and turn it readily into valuable enterprise intelligence that can be used across the board to improve business performance.

Art Rosenberg picked up the ball:
Monitoring agent performance has ongoing value because there are standards that need to be maintained (and adjusted). With agents, the enterprise provides the context for such metrics, But, for callers, there are so many variables that could impact their "emotions" and responses, it will be difficult to come to any practical conclusions by listening to a few samples. (And it will be time consuming to listen to a lot of samples.)

Since management is really interested in the "bottom line," i.e., did the caller buy or not, were they satisfied with a problem resolution or not, that information is still more easy to come by from outcome data, not the voice conversation. And, if the agent's presentation or call handling impacts the result, that is still a function of agent performance rather than the interaction strategy or script itself.

Marv Pedraglia asked a critical question:
What do you think about software that scans call recordings for particular sounds or words in order to peg bad calls? I imagine that there are certain words that might come up (especially on the customer end) pretty commonly when a customer is angry (or confused)....Does it work? Is it practical?

Joe Fleischer:
Marv, there are such tools, and, as you're aware, they're still new enough that there are limited examples of call centers that use software to search recordings for particular words or phrases.

APAC Customer Services, an outsourcer, is one example of a company that has employed software to confirm whether agents complete sales. For example, APAC verifies that agents elicited responses from customers, within the context of a call, that indicate consent ("Yes" rather than "Right").

Michelle Diedrich, AIM Technology:
One of the biggest issues we still find...is disagreement within a company over exactly what to measure and how to weight that measurement against others (since the data possibilities are endless!). In the end, everybody has to be on the same page within the organization to meet overall goals of performance.

Christine Coetzee:
Typically, the agent's performance is only part of the quality problem. Careful evaluation design and detailed root cause analysis can identify the origin of many quality problems. These may range from recruitment and selection to training, systems or process inefficiencies.

However, ensuring a successful QM implementation is more complex than simply purchasing the right product. The majority of the work is related to developing a Quality strategy that the entire organization can buy in to. All parties need to share the same understanding and approach to quality. Processes, standards, feedback, coaching and escalation need to be defined and documented. Agents need to understand the criteria for a quality interaction - we are not trying to catch them doing something wrong, but rather working to develop their skill, and remove the barriers to service.

Changing Ideas About Quality

Oscar Alban, Witness Systems, offered this:
The big question right now is which method best fits this new approach, proactive monitoring or 100% logging? On one side of the coin you can log all calls and listen to them after something has happened with little opportunity to impact cause and affect. With business-driven quality monitoring, you have the ability to record very specific transactions (voice, email, web chat, self-service) specifically when the issue you are concerned about happens.

This enables people outside the call center, such as the VP of marketing, to experience customer feedback first-hand from their desktop without setting foot in the call center. This is especially important since many call centers are not co-located with the corporate office. Additionally, the organization can be automatically notified of the issue, hear or see it first-hand and take the appropriate action. Now there is a big impact on cause and affect. This is critical because business is moving at lightning speed.

Will QM Work For Me? How Do YOU Know?

Charlie Garcia asked the most provocative question of the month:
Has there been any kind of exhaustive study done that relates basic (or more complex) call center metrics to the bottom line- i.e. sales? It seems to me that efforts to rank agents or customer experience based on call length, hold-time, et cetera, would be so industry specific as to prevent them from being practical in terms of widespread software sales. And risky, at best, depending on investment. A lot of claims are made, but I wonder how accurate they are. In short, how do we know it will work for my call center BEFORE buying?

Keith Dawson:
You're right on the money about several things - especially your assertion that rankings based on traditional telephony metrics are troublesome. Yes, they are heavily industry specific, and therefore not necessarily useful across the call center spectrum. But you hint at the larger issue - those metrics don't really measure *performance*, they measure aspects of the call. It's a very call center-centric notion. When you start to involve other parts of the company in the discussion, people are going to want to know how activity in the center is impacting SALES. Or revenue. Or some other metric that's more accessible and meaningful outside the context of the center.

Craig Marston:
One of the biggest costs in the call center market is that of staff churn. A good quality monitoring product will allow a call center manager the flexibility to monitor calls based on their specific criteria.

Does improving your center have to come down to a battle between "efficiency" and "effectiveness"? That was the key question we discussed with experts and call center pros in January in our Roundtable.

How do we measure what we're not used to measuring? And do so fairly, and rigorously? That, and issues of agent performance were what excited our participants most.

You can read the entire discussion here. What follows are some of the highlights.

Kevin Levi of NICE Systems started things out:
By using new emotion detection technology, companies can determine if a certain promotion offered by the agent during the conversation resonates well with the customer. With new word-spotting technology organizations can monitor calls to determine which customers might defect or what products are most often referenced positively. Or with new products that give executives access to recorded calls via any telephone, companies can learn right away if certain business processes need to be altered to better serve the client such as giving the agents access to billing records in real time so they can adjust double-billing errors readily while the customer is on the line. These technologies take the once "simply recorded call" and turn it readily into valuable enterprise intelligence that can be used across the board to improve business performance.

Art Rosenberg picked up the ball:
Monitoring agent performance has ongoing value because there are standards that need to be maintained (and adjusted). With agents, the enterprise provides the context for such metrics, But, for callers, there are so many variables that could impact their "emotions" and responses, it will be difficult to come to any practical conclusions by listening to a few samples. (And it will be time consuming to listen to a lot of samples.)

Since management is really interested in the "bottom line," i.e., did the caller buy or not, were they satisfied with a problem resolution or not, that information is still more easy to come by from outcome data, not the voice conversation. And, if the agent's presentation or call handling impacts the result, that is still a function of agent performance rather than the interaction strategy or script itself.

Marv Pedraglia asked a critical question:
What do you think about software that scans call recordings for particular sounds or words in order to peg bad calls? I imagine that there are certain words that might come up (especially on the customer end) pretty commonly when a customer is angry (or confused)....Does it work? Is it practical?

Joe Fleischer:
Marv, there are such tools, and, as you're aware, they're still new enough that there are limited examples of call centers that use software to search recordings for particular words or phrases.

APAC Customer Services, an outsourcer, is one example of a company that has employed software to confirm whether agents complete sales. For example, APAC verifies that agents elicited responses from customers, within the context of a call, that indicate consent ("Yes" rather than "Right").

Michelle Diedrich, AIM Technology:
One of the biggest issues we still find...is disagreement within a company over exactly what to measure and how to weight that measurement against others (since the data possibilities are endless!). In the end, everybody has to be on the same page within the organization to meet overall goals of performance.

Christine Coetzee:
Typically, the agent's performance is only part of the quality problem. Careful evaluation design and detailed root cause analysis can identify the origin of many quality problems. These may range from recruitment and selection to training, systems or process inefficiencies.

However, ensuring a successful QM implementation is more complex than simply purchasing the right product. The majority of the work is related to developing a Quality strategy that the entire organization can buy in to. All parties need to share the same understanding and approach to quality. Processes, standards, feedback, coaching and escalation need to be defined and documented. Agents need to understand the criteria for a quality interaction - we are not trying to catch them doing something wrong, but rather working to develop their skill, and remove the barriers to service.

Changing Ideas About Quality

Oscar Alban, Witness Systems, offered this:
The big question right now is which method best fits this new approach, proactive monitoring or 100% logging? On one side of the coin you can log all calls and listen to them after something has happened with little opportunity to impact cause and affect. With business-driven quality monitoring, you have the ability to record very specific transactions (voice, email, web chat, self-service) specifically when the issue you are concerned about happens.

This enables people outside the call center, such as the VP of marketing, to experience customer feedback first-hand from their desktop without setting foot in the call center. This is especially important since many call centers are not co-located with the corporate office. Additionally, the organization can be automatically notified of the issue, hear or see it first-hand and take the appropriate action. Now there is a big impact on cause and affect. This is critical because business is moving at lightning speed.

Will QM Work For Me? How Do YOU Know?

Charlie Garcia asked the most provocative question of the month:
Has there been any kind of exhaustive study done that relates basic (or more complex) call center metrics to the bottom line- i.e. sales? It seems to me that efforts to rank agents or customer experience based on call length, hold-time, et cetera, would be so industry specific as to prevent them from being practical in terms of widespread software sales. And risky, at best, depending on investment. A lot of claims are made, but I wonder how accurate they are. In short, how do we know it will work for my call center BEFORE buying?

Keith Dawson:
You're right on the money about several things - especially your assertion that rankings based on traditional telephony metrics are troublesome. Yes, they are heavily industry specific, and therefore not necessarily useful across the call center spectrum. But you hint at the larger issue - those metrics don't really measure *performance*, they measure aspects of the call. It's a very call center-centric notion. When you start to involve other parts of the company in the discussion, people are going to want to know how activity in the center is impacting SALES. Or revenue. Or some other metric that's more accessible and meaningful outside the context of the center.

Craig Marston:
One of the biggest costs in the call center market is that of staff churn. A good quality monitoring product will allow a call center manager the flexibility to monitor calls based on their specific criteria.