Implementing a First Call Resolution Process

Posted on November 18, 2010 by BobBrittan

We have been discussing first call resolution (FCR) on this blog. A first call resolution solution should, at a minimum help you in evaluating and understanding your contact centers first call resolution rates, repeat caller trends, and the ability to apply a second call treatment plan to retain and balance the resulting customer experience. The underlying technology that assists you in this quest should be able to direct your repeat callers to the correct resource and provide important call information to your agents when developing a repeat call strategy.

You need the ability to gather and view your data. Many contact center systems and applications offer reports that can give you a glimpse into specific areas but do not give you the global view that is necessary to gauge your centers inclusive FCR effectiveness. You should be able to use a product that can give you top and bottom performance indicators for ACD groups, agents, and views into your centers overall success (or failure) rate. Low performance is the place you want to start your investigation and may give you the ability to identify port jamming, fraud, or other issues creating excessive traffic on the phone system. It is also the beginning for finding the possible cause for the low performance.

Identifying telephone numbers with excessive activity and visually identifying large call volumes from the same customer number or ANI can be used to identify fraud, telemarketing, mal-functioning auto dial systems, or other systemic troubles that could be locking up ports. This can also be used to identify ways to reorganize resources or routing schemes to redirect calls or change business strategy.

The goal of attaining first call resolution every time is not a realistic view of the real world. Putting technology into play helps you to identify and control repeat callers and implement a second call treatment strategy plan. Your planning will pay off when you use the technology to track and report your FCR improvements over time.

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Customer Service or Customer Rage?

Posted on November 11, 2010 by BobBrittan

This blog site has been focusing on the importance of providing great contact center customer service, and the added value of satisfying your customers the first time they contact you (first call resolution). One recent story (definitely not FCR) that particularly caught my attention was the disgruntled 78-year old customer of a cable company. She was so upset by her many attempts to get phone service she finally took matters into her own hands.

Inadequate customer service is regularly in the news. There is a consumer blog site called the Consumerist that is helping consumers with typical big (and small) business transactions and the resulting customer experience. One place you don’t want your company to be listed is the Consumerist “Worst Customer Service Ever.”  Take a look at what consumers are up against on a daily basis when you have a few spare minutes.

Although many companies offer consistently excellent customer service, the level of companies who don’t has created a new designation called customer rage. A 2004 National Customer Rage Study was issued by Arizona State University. It stated that 73% of people who “experienced a problem with a product or service… were extremely or very upset (defined as rage).” Reflecting back on our emphasis on first call resolution, the study reported that “it took customers an average of 4.3 contacts (called ping-ponging) to get their issue resolved. By that time, the aggravation and wasted time nullifies most resolution efforts.”

How you treat your customers; from internal staff to customer facing personnel, and that does include the contact center, is important to your bottom line. Giving your customer’s the best service is a key driver of brand loyalty and customer retention.

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Benefits of Great IVR Design

Posted on November 5, 2010 by BobBrittan

Automated self-service has become commonplace in contact centers. Not only does it save the contact center valuable human resources, it is also a time saver for customer’s calling in for simple tasks, and lately, more sophisticated transactions. The automated menus can quickly take care of many requests that once required a human to accomplish. Although there are still many customers who dislike “talking” to IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems, a well-designed system has value, practicality, and is easy to maneuver. If you don’t believe me, measure your IVR system to one of your key competitors and see how you compare. Which system do you think your customer’s would find more accepting and be willing to use?

IVR Benefits

Modern IVR systems are capable of personalizing calls, taking advantage of your own office automation (CRM), and are always available 365 days a year.  Several key benefits:
• Customers get immediate response – time savings
• Handles routine calls and frees agents for more complex transactions
• Enables skill based routing directing callers to the best agent or agent group to handle their transaction
• Collects caller information for agent screen pop when the call is connected
• Using ANI, every customer can receive a personalized message (better customer service)
• Multiple language selection is not an issue

One thing is certain, there will always be changes. Company processes, new management, products or technology are constantly changing. Is your IVR keeping up with those changes and reflected in new menus and other customer focused benefits? Start with design, an IVR is based on a well written, tested script. One common mistake is assigning the design task to a developer and not a design specialist. Over developing a script will make your customer’s frustrated and add additional overhead to your operations. This will add repeat callers that potentially will end up with an agent – in most cases, exactly what you are trying to avoid.

A good design must focus on a human approach: what is the purpose of this script, intended audience, usefulness, and above all it must be customer-friendly. The only way you will know for sure if the script design is robust, but not overcomplicated, is to test all of your script designs both internally and externally. As mentioned, compare your new design to your competitors. Is it easier to use, have the correct options and flow, targeting the right audience? When was the last time you reviewed your IVR scripts or performed an analysis on containment rates? Look for a vendor like Primas who has 15 years of script design, development, consulting, and the expertise in migrating legacy IVR systems to new platforms.

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Benefits of Customer Self-Service Solutions

Posted on October 22, 2010 by BobBrittan

Customer service has emerged as a key business differentiator in a crowded and competitive marketplace. The dilemma companies face is the expense of supporting live (human) customer interactions, or offering less expensive customer self-service applications that are not always appreciated by the same customers you are trying to please. This is especially important for utility companies who interact with their customer’s for basic information to complex billing questions.

One company that has successfully migrated to automated customer self-service is Time Warner Cable (TWC) in upstate New York. Implementing a host of customer self-service applications on their IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system, they have enabled their customers to perform many tasks without ever speaking to a live customer service representative. This has not only benefited TWC’s bottom line, but improved customer satisfaction with their IVR system that was well-designed by Primas. The automated system reduces calls to agents by 50% or more, gives customers no waiting on hold, fast response, and frees up live call center agents to handle complex tasks.

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FREE – FCR Analysis Video from Primas

Posted on October 4, 2010 by BobBrittan

We have been discussing first call resolution in the contact center environment on this blog, why it is important and why you should know your centers FCR percentage rate.  What technology tools are available that can help us learn our own first call resolution rate?  Primas has just released a video that will show you how to capture your own data and create a FCR Analysis report based on your contact center data.   No more excuses, now is the time to challenge your team, try something new and unbelievable as it sounds, and get some free personalized information!

The end result of the Primas FCR Analysis video is to enable you to view your current contact center FCR percentage rate over a one week period of time.  A free report from Primas is included that will advise you on best practices and include a benchmark FCR percent displaying your contact center FCR rate compared with other contact centers.

Why is Primas offering the FCR Analysis video for free? Primas hopes you will benefit with a free and quick look into your organization’s FCR performance. You will probably be very surprised.  As with any marketing campaign, Primas believes that once you have sampled some of the data and learned more about other Primas performance and productivity tools, you will definitely want to see the full-blown Evolution FCR™ product.  Evolution FCR can deliver all types of data on your current and historical FCR rates, customer satisfaction via automated surveys, management reports, call tracing, and many other valuable tools in one package to help you understand your contact centers operations.

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Are You Tired of Waiting on Hold?

Posted on September 29, 2010 by BobBrittan

When you need to call in for customer support the situation may have already reached a critical stage, for example, maybe the cable is out and you have no Internet. If you work from home that can be catastrophic, so you pick up the phone hoping to get back online for your customer sales call that is starting in 15 minutes.  Well, if you are like many call-in customers to a support contact center, you will be intercepted by some type of auto-attendant device (IVR) before you get to a live person.  Once you have navigated the IVR menu, you will probably be subjected to irritating ads that are too loud and distorted to understand or drop into the bottomless music pit, listening to tunes that will either put you to sleep or slap you in the face with too much bass.

So why don’t more companies invest in technology tools that will end this brutal practice of keeping customers hostage while on hold? I think this would generate incredible customer satisfaction.  One such tool is a solution from Primas called FreedomQ™.  It is a contact center virtual queuing solution that enables callers to keep their place in the queue and get a callback when an agent is available.  How about that?  So in the scenario above, if all of the customer service reps were busy the IVR menu, and customer experience, could be much different. 

Here is how it works: when the expected hold time exceeds a set threshold, customers can hear a message that tells them the expected wait time and gives them the option to “continue to hold or request a callback” in the same amount of time they would have waited on hold, without losing their place in line.  Implementing a FreedomQ solution tells your customers that your company respects their time. It allows them to be productive while a virtual placeholder saves their place in the queue.

There is also a reasonable business case for this type of technology.  It eliminates hold times, reduces costs, and has a fast ROI. Industry analysis of virtual queue technology (ROI) demonstrates:

  • Reduces abandoned calls an average of 50%
  • Increases agent productivity and improves customer service levels
  • Eliminates long hold times, reducing toll costs and abandoned calls
  • Improves the customer experience, contact center efficiency and agent morale

While waiting in the virtual queue, callers are free to go about their business.  When it is the caller’s turn, they receive a callback within the time quoted.  When their phone rings, they are connected with a specialist who has the right skills to handle the call.  Implementing a FreedomQ solution results in a fast ROI and shows your customers that you care and respect their valuable time.

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Defining Second Call Treatment

Posted on September 24, 2010 by BobBrittan

Repeat call tracking is a powerful first call resolution (FCR) measurement tool. It allows a business to define a second call treatment range, track FCR rates and automatically collect information that can be used to determine root causes of problems.

The greatest benefit to understanding second call treatment comes from available technology that can locate resources more easily. When a repeat caller is identified the caller can be transferred to an agent with specific training or a managed queue with the proper expertise. This has the benefit of using the extensive efficiency and optimization technology within the contact center queues to enhance performance.

Another way this can be achieved is by having the integrating software perform a series of automated data “dips”, to examine the database for the information needed to route the call to the proper agent.  Another possible benefit is the real-time notification to a CSR that a caller is indeed a repeat caller.  The CSR can immediately see a real-time screen pop on their desktop with valuable customer information.

You now have all of the data from the completed repeat call transaction and as far as you know, the customer is satisfied. How can you be sure? Invest in an automated IVR survey like the one that is included in the Primas Evolution FCR product solution.  As discussed in a previous post, an IVR survey captures the customer’s view of the call right after the interaction. Remember to close the loop all the way to the end and know for certain that you are doing a better job.

FCR is difficult to achieve, and when it is not you must have a plan for second call treatment. Primas offers the perfect solution for identifying and handling repeat callers with real-time desktop agent tools, management reports and follow up surveys that can give you the knowledge you need to satisfy and retain your valuable customers.

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It Might not Seem like the Good Old Days but Compared to 100 Years Ago… FCR and Second Call Treatment

Posted on September 20, 2010 by BobBrittan

There have been several articles circulating lately about the “good ole days.”  Every era has its own set of problems and issues.  Things may be bumpy for a while, but we always seem to survive, including the current economic trials and tribulations the world is currently experiencing.  Turning back the clock one hundred years to 1910 would yield the following fun facts:

• The average life expectancy for men was 47 years.
• Fuel for cars was sold in drug stores only, and there were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads, with a maximum speed limit in most cities of 10 mph.
• The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!
• The average US wage in 1910 was 22 cents per hour.
• The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year.
• Sugar cost four cents a pound, eggs were fourteen cents a dozen, and coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
• Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
• Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
• Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

Assuming you were lucky enough to own a telephone back in 1910 odds are you would wait patiently on the phone for an operator, tell her the number you were trying to reach and then after several minutes you might get connected to your party. If there were any hang-ups, interference or disconnects it was understandably the “system” and not you intentionally hanging up (abandon) because you lost your patience.

Jump ahead one hundred years to 2010. Our modern day contact centers greets you with an automated menu (IVR) system that if well designed could be fun to use and offers voice prompts for self-service questions and answers. As mentioned, if designed correctly the IVR is a time saver for you the customer, and a time and cost saver for the companies that have implemented them. Where am I going with this? The best designed IVR and the most customer focused contact center staff cannot guarantee that all calling customers will have their needs met on the ever important first call.

What I am talking about is of course a common theme on this blog site, namely, first call resolution or simply FCR. In a recent study by the Ascent Group more than 90% of companies measuring first call resolution reported improvement in their performance. Another study by callcentres.com reported a dramatic fall in call volume — identifying that a minimum of 20% of all calls were repeat calls from customers needing an answer or help they didn’t get on the first call.

Even with a first call resolution plan in place you will never eliminate all repeat callers. The reasons are many and varied by industry and unforeseen events. You may even encourage repeat callers depending on your business model. Implementing a Second Call Treatment solution (like Primas’ Evolution FCR™ product)  offers special attention be given to the repeat caller and can diffuse hostile interactions between the customer and CSR (Customer Service Representative), and even save a valuable customers business. Building a Second Call Treatment process is imperative to avoid a third or subsequent customer contact, remember operating without a first call resolution process was found to account for a minimum of 30% of a call center’s operational costs!

There will be more insight and ideas on second call treatment later this week.

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Learning and Understanding Your Call-in Customer’s Service Experience

Posted on September 17, 2010 by BobBrittan

We have talked about first call resolution in a previous post and now understand that is an important measurement, often difficult to achieve, and when not accomplished, it adds additional and substantial costs to your operation. So what is the answer? How do I stop the repeat caller cycle? How can I retain my valuable customers? One solution is to understand what your customer’s actually experienced on their last visit into your contact center.

A Post Call IVR survey captures the customer’s impression of the call immediately after the interaction. The FCR survey measurement is straightforward – the survey asks the customer if their problem was resolved while the call is still clear in their mind. A good post call IVR survey will tie the survey to customer information and call reason, so that you can resolve any issues with a specific customer or call type.  Overall, you will be doing a better job if you close the loop to the very end.

Automatic surveys can be conducted immediately after a repeat call is completed or at a timed interval after the transaction. The automated system will conduct the survey in a human voice and it can be a simple script or multiple questions. The shorter and more precise approach will yield the largest percentage of participants. You now have the perfect solution to measuring the customer’s perception and reaction via management reports. Random sampling after a second call treatment will yield cleaner measurements because the agents will not know who is being surveyed but the opportunity exists to survey every repeat caller.  Invest in an automated IVR survey like the one that is included in the Primas Evolution FCR™ product solution.

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The Austin Contact Center Alliance (ACCA) Fall Symposium 2010

Posted on September 16, 2010 by HankGroman

The Austin Contact Center Alliance (ACCA) Fall Symposium 2010, was held on September 8th & 9th at the University of Texas, Austin.  ACCA is a non-profit organization comprised of central Texas contact center professionals and industry vendors.  Representing over 150 companies, it provides a forum for networking, exchanging ideas, and building expertise.  A 2004 ACCA survey showed that the Austin area contact center industry was thriving with over 100 contact centers representing more than 18,000 employees. A new survey will likely show more growth and prosperity within the local industry when completed.

The ACCA Fall Symposium was attended by over 200 contact center professionals and vendors. The forum offered workshops, interactive seminars, a fantastic marketplace, nationally renowned keynote speaker, Bob Furniss, whose topic was “Social Media in the Call Center.” great food, prizes, networking and this year an opening reception and bonus workshop with Tim Montgomery,  a seasoned industry executive, popular speaker and highly regarded consultant. The “7 Common Contact Center Headaches” was discussed in the workshop.

There were several other presentations at the ACCA Symposium, one by Brad Odom, Sales Director at Primas, a professional services and software firm focused on enhancing automated customer interactions.  He spoke on the importance of first call resolution in the contact center. Primas is an ACCA sponsor and offers a first call resolution solution called Evolution FCR™. Brad informed the audience on the importance of first call resolution and explained that Evolution FCR is a next generation enablement software that focuses on second call treatment through proactive routing and agent notification to create a strategy that ensures proper resolution of customer’s needs.

Other work shop sessions discussed “Measuring and Managing the Customer Experience,” “Innovative New Models for Managing Quality Performance,” and the very compelling “The Call Center of The Future: Emerging Trends and Technologies,” given by Mary Murcott, CEO of NOVO 1.  The Symposium closed with a special panel session moderated by Carol Trostle, called the Central Texas Call Center Excellence Award Winners Panel, and a talk given by Charisse Bodish of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, on the importance of contact centers to the Austin economy.  Overall, it was time well spent, meeting old friends and making new contacts.  Hope to see you again in Austin next year.

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