Well, to keep the quality, and even to improve the service for the customer, while cutting the costs and thriving in a though economic situation, contact centres need a way to automatise low value tasks, improving the CSRs experience, and allowing them to focus on the customer and the higher value adding tasks! Win-win!

We are a financial contact centre dealing with Banking, Credit & Charge Cards, Insurance, Finance and Unit Trust – all under One roof. We have an issue with efficiency and greatly impacted by the economic crisis. Spending has been cut & management are demanding higher performance results not to mentioned call volume has pick-up month after month. Therefore we have decided to change our approach to customer. If before we are very much product minded, now we are going into customer demand approach. Whereby our IVR will be base on i.e., product enquiry instead going by Banking, Credit & Charge Cards, Insurance, Finance and Unit Trust. We then train all our members how to serve customer on Acct. Enquiry as our front-end system is able to provide a holistic view of the customer. By doing this, we will have instead of 70 agents – we are suddenly have 140 agents to spread the calls. This will reduce cost, spread the calls evenly to everyone & meet mgmt expectation. Hopefully everything works out.

I am working for a contact centre which deals in banking. After analyzing the top call drivers, it has come to my notice that we have customers calling in mainly to check their credit card statement balances even thought his information is available on the IVR & online servies. We also have our agents driving customer to make full use of the above services, however, this doesn’t seem to help.
Is there any way of dealing with this situtation as this particular call type constitutes to 40% of the call volumes on a daily basis?

I believe that the article provides a good foundation for areas to focus on if efficiency or attrition issues exist. This is because it looks at business processes, people – in terms of psychological contract, HR planning and development, and a small mention of environmental analysis in the form of reviewing why your inbound centre is actually contacted in the first place.

I feel that a review of mgt style could also have added something to the mix as this very much influences the behaviour in others as they discover what is acceptable behaviour within the business. Looking at diversity, especially in terms of age, could add some benefit because typically older people are statistically more likely to act responsibly and less likely to move on from their positions (unless things are really bad), than younger employees.

The comments left by other are also interesting and useful. Unlike the person who left the first comment though I do not believe that quality, quantity and efficiency are linked in the way described. I feel that efficiency and quantity can be improved dramatically without a sacrifice of quality.

An example can be seen in the automotive sector. The introduction of new working methods as developed by the Japanese had a huge impact on the industry and as a result efficiency, quality, and quantity increased.

The person who left the first comment also mentioned motivated workforce and fun working environment as key, and I do agree with these.

All in all I’ve been impressed with the website and the people who view it.
Bryan