Sometimes even with the facts staring you in the face, it's difficult to draw a sensible and logical conclusion. And so it was during a recent visit with the Contact Centre Director of Operations for a national insurance company to understand why the Average Call Handle Time (AHT) was not decreasing despite significant improvements in customer satisfaction levels. A high volume of outbound calls was not the reason, nor was it a specific call type or call reason, although ACD data did corroborate the call time calculations.
AHT across the Contact Centre was about 5.6 minutes and deeper analysis showed a wide range of call durations ranging from 2 minutes to 6 minutes, with a very small number of Customer Service Representatives (CSR's) taking 2 minutes on a call, and a large number taking 6 minutes. Was the AHT masking some truths?
Since the data lacked the granularity for full root cause analysis and drill down into reasons why some CSR's took a third of the time comparative to others, I took to the Contact Centre floor to observe some of the CSR's with a low AHT at work. Curiously, they weren't using a different or more efficient process or procedure than the others. They were just lightening fast at navigating the main system– a mainframe green screen based customer application. Moreover, they were very adept at multi-tasking: they could hold a conversation with the customer while looking up information, writing policy numbers and the like down on paper, and switching between several applications using ALT-TAB. One common use case required navigating up to 36 screens to complete a new policy quote. The super fast CSR's would sail smoothly through, but other CSR's would struggle or amble through at a much slower pace, carefully navigating each screen and cautiously pressing a key or clicking the mouse.
Now, if the Contact Centre could get a few dozen more of the super fast CSR's, they could dramatically bring down their AHT time and telephony costs! That wasn't going to happen though because the superfast CSR's had worked in the Contact Centre for several years, knew the procedures and applications inside out and even had workarounds for problems in some applications! While this was commendable, the length of service was the key factor and thus couldn't be replicated across other CSR's or new hires. This latter point became all the more pertinent considering that CSR attrition is a continuous and costly challenge and that training comprised of 4 weeks in a class followed by 4 weeks on the job training and taking calls with a buddy.
This exercise highlighted the need for not only good business intelligence, but one with the necessary depth of information. By taking the super fast CSR's out of the statistics, a picture could be painted of where the challenges lay for the Contact Centre and in this case a finger pointed firmly at the mainframe green screen customer application with 36 screens of information for the most common business process. Inevitably, what this also caused was lengthy and therefore costly training times and "band aid" procedures like desk notepads, laminated help sheets and guides, as well as floor walkers, all of which masked the Contact Centre's true state.
Karnail Jita - Pre-Sales Consultant, Jacada Inc.
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