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KPIs
Barry Dowd looks at why companies are moving away from traditional Key Performance Indicators, such as average call handling time, towards measures that can streamline the business and really communicate something about the customer experience
The call centre has long been acknowledged as a vital source of KPIs to inform marketing and the boardroom of precisely what customers are asking for. As a result, there is a trend in the billing and CRM industry towards sharing of customer preference data with in-house marketing departments so that more personalised services can be provided. This empowers frontline customer service agents (CSA) to harness cross sell and upsell opportunities when they are on the phone.
In fact, some companies have gone as far as providing their customer service centres with sales targets, tightening the integration between customer feedback and the services they are offering. But an unhappy customer is not going to be receptive to offers to purchase further services, so getting the basics right in the call centre is critical.
By the same token, an effective fraudster can look like your best customer if you are simply looking at usage levels and not checking credit history and other customer information. So an integrated system that provides the business with a complete view of the customer is equally important.
What to look for
When choosing a call centre solution it is important to always keep an eye on the future requirements of your business. Therefore you need to ensure that the solution will scale with your business. You need to ensure that it will integrate with existing systems, rather than needing reinvestment, and you need to make certain that there is a clear and simple upgrade path.
Your agents are on the frontline of your business, so once you've ticked all the boxes for the business and system requirements, you need to remember it is vital that your customer service staff can quickly get to grips with the technology. Training on new systems can impact on service and sales, as CSAs come up to speed. So a clear, intuitive interface can deliver real cost-benefits. Having a graphical user interface (GUI) is a major benefit because it not only reduces training time but also provides call centre staff with quick access to real time customer information – vital in making informed decisions on matters such as customer retention and marketing new offerings.
Vodafone found that deploying a single billing and CRM platform with a user-friendly GUI significantly reduced training time. Each Vodafone customer service agent takes only a week to get comprehensively trained on the system – considerably less than with the previous combination of systems. The familiar interface was widely embraced, with CSAs exploiting their new tool quickly and enthusiastically.
To be most effective, CSAs need rapid access to complete customer histories when they are dealing with queries on the phone. Having a single, real time view of customer activity is a real asset, providing your staff with the latest information at their fingertips when they are speaking to your customers. Ideally, the single platform approach presents one source of data to be maintained by call centre staff and so reporting to other parts of the business is made much easier.
A single customer service/billing platform, that links and unites data from all parts of the business, also helps early detection of potential fraud. For example, usage thresholds can be applied to customers' accounts, which enable the operator to set a bar if there is excessive call spend on inappropriate tariffs, and therefore limit losses.
Operators that deploy a billing platform with an integral CRM element enable call centre staff to have immediate access to customer histories for same day callers, or call backs, so customers don't suffer the frustration of repeating information to different agents. If the customer has already called that day the service agent can see the details on the system and deliver a speedier resolution. Workflow features enable customer service staff to 'pass' workflow events on, with the associated history for that customer, safeguarding the resolution of customer queries and ensuring quality control.
The new KPIs
In the case of Martin Dawes Systems' telecoms clients, KPIs enable the marketing departments to put together bundles and offers which are tailored to that customer and encourage further usage of services such as SMS, mobile email or content. The uptake of these targeted offers will help maintain or increase the average revenue per user.
Broadly speaking, KPIs are broken down into: Financial, Customer and Operational Performance.
Within these broad categories detailed measures can be applied to analyse revenue/profit generation, operating costs, efficiency ratios, as well as customer behaviour – satisfaction, retention, churn, bad debt, and softer measures such as employee morale, absenteeism and staff attrition.
Analysis and review followed by the appropriate action will improve business performance.
The revenue generation areas deliver KPIs in terms of customer value and ARPU as well as providing information on uptake of new offers, services and tariffs. This is information helps guide the business on the market acceptance of new services.
Churn figures from the call centre not only provide the business with an insight into the network popularity, but also give an indication into the long term value of customers, lost or gained, against predefined targets.
Operating costs are a key indicator of efficiency that the call centre can provide to the business, particularly in the current climate of new service roll outs, balancing the cost of acquisition of customers against the cost of serving them is essential. Operators are increasingly under pressure to demonstrate where new services have been embraced by subscribers. Once again the call centre figures can provide crucial insight into return on operator investment.
Clearly, customer contact is the CSA's stock in trade. Here the business can measure the levels of customer satisfaction and personalised service delivered to key clients, track levels of first time resolution, and monitor the interaction method preferred for customers; whether this be phone, fax, e-mail or online account management.
Again, the monitoring of interactions gives an indication of the efficiency ratios of the business by providing cost comparisons of CSA: customer ratio and percentage of calls handled and issues resolved or escalated. You cannot sell to an angry customer, so getting this interaction right is crucial and having a window on success rates is vital to informing business strategy.
The integration challenge
A major factor in being able to see and respond to KPIs is to move away from the traditional 'silo' approach to customer management. This facilitates measurement of KPIs by holding the data in a single database and providing reporting capabilities across its functional areas.
Getting all of the touch points from your customers collated into one single data source does entail a carefully planned and executed integration process. During one system implementation, 11 legacy solutions had to be consolidated onto a single CRM billing platform.
Rather than applying traditional KPIs, the operator looks across its business and measures indicators such as the call centre solution's impact on churn and debt, as well as the impact on average revenue per user. These are all bottom line influencing factors.
An effective system for tracking KPIs also feeds into revenue assurance within the business. Having an end-to-end system linking the call centre to the banks, credit checking and fulfilment agencies, facilitates effective processes, enables fraud to be highlighted early and provides a clearer real-time record of calls.
This trend towards using call centre KPIs to inform marketing also means that the call centre moves away from being a cost centre to becoming a profit centre for the business. While there has been a clear progression towards providing online self-care to enable maximum access for your customers, for more complex queries people love to talk. A call centre system that provides a single view of your customer information is the best way to ensuring their satisfaction and retention – the most important KPIs of any business.
• Barry Dowd is the Customer Service Director at Martin Dawes Systems, and can be contacted via: Barry.dowd@mdsuk.com
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