The people who persuade the influencers are those highly experienced, trusted individuals who sit at the influencers’ feet. One of those who persuade the influencers is Louis Columbus of Cincom Systems.

“Columbus is truly influential in the relationships he has with the influencers he knows,” says Paul Greenberg, author of “A Guide to Influence(rs) Chapter 1.” “He is one of those people that influencers simply trust.” Greenberg’s “A Guide to Influence(rs) Chapter 1,” discusses the top influencers in CRM, where they fall into the scheme of things and who they get their information from, including Louis Columbus.

Louis Columbus has extensive experience in CRM, sales, product configuration and multichannel management systems and strategies. While at AMR Research (Gartner), Louis assisted many Fortune 1,000 companies with their product and sales configuration, partner relationship management and channel management strategies. In addition to working at Cincom, he advises CRM and channel management start-ups on occasion with regard to product and marketing strategies. Louis lives in Orange, California with his wife, daughter and two dogs. Louis likes to write and teach, in addition to hiking, mountain biking, snorkeling and scuba diving. He is also an avid traveler.

To read the full article, “A Guide to Influence(rs) Chapter 1,” visit Paul Greenberg’s blog.

Over the past five years, Brian reports that he has seen little to no improvement of customer service despite the extensive focus on customer satisfaction he’s seen in the industry. Customer service, or even moving beyond customer service to customer experience management, is paramount to a business’ success in highly competitive environment.

The interview contains tips for improving customer service in terms of technology, staff and business processes, and shares good and bad experiences with customer service in his own life.

Here are a few responses:

In your opinion, which industry sectors provide great service and which ones are poor?
Service in the retail sector, especially for large purchases such as appliances and automobiles where competition is high, has a great deal of focus and is generally quite good. Service in non-competitive industries such as healthcare and utilities, has little focus and I find generally not good. There are exceptions, especially in the utilities industry where there is competition and hence customer service has had the needed focus and has improved.

If you had to give just 1 tip regarding the use of technology in relation to improving customer service, what would your tip be?
Companies are trying diligently to move contacts to web self-service. I have found web self-service to be generally poor and getting worse instead of better. Simple functions are difficult to locate, buttons often do not work, testing has not been adequate across the browsers (IE, Chrome, Mozilla, etc.) so that self-service operates differently across browsers, and in many cases doesn’t work.

To read more, view the article on ContactCenterWorld.com

Learn more about Cincom’s initiatives with IBM in this short video:

According to an article from eWeek.com, IBM PureSystems, is as big an announcement as when IBM launched the mainframe 50 years ago. Ambuj Goyal, general manager of development in IBM’s Systems and Technology Group told eWEEK, “From an IBM perspective, in my lifetime, I have not seen so much of IBM all behind one thing with software, hardware and services … In many ways it is as big as that, but designed for a different world.”

IBM PureSystems is a new family of expert integrated systems offered by IBM that combines hardware, software and expertise into one solution, allowing us to help our clients eliminate the complexities of enterprise IT, reduce cost and encourage innovation. Synchrony is confident that this new system will significantly simplify IT infrastructure by tackling the biggest, consistent IT pain points that the industry has faced for years, resulting in more time and money for the IT projects that actually matter.

Synchrony is among the first group of companies to learn about, test and develop applications for IBM PureSystems. The combination of Cincom Synchrony and PureSystems will help businesses simplify deployment and ongoing operations. The Cincom/IBM solution will accelerate implementation times and reduce operation and maintenance efforts. This will result in fewer IT resources needed, lower costs and a faster time-to-value.

Everyone is excited to finally announce this partnership which we’ve been working on since late last year. Receiving one of the first certifications on the PureSystems platform is an incredible honor and one that will help our current and future customers immensely. The partnership allows Synchrony to focus on our strengths of improving the application to create smarter interactions for our customers, while IBM is available to focus on the best practices and expertise customers are looking for through the expert integrated solutions of PureSystems.

For more information about IBM PureSystems visit www.ibm.com/puresystems.

For more information about Synchrony running on IBM PureSystems call Randy Saunders 1-800-2CINCOM or 1-513-612-2060 or visit http://synchrony.cincom.com/partners/ibmpuresystems/.

The figure below, what is called an SPC Chart, shows the mean and lines for 1, 2 and 3 sigma.

An important point to note is that these lines are dependent on the input values, and should be a representative set of values, as large as possible. Statistical analysis is not going to work over a 1 week set of 5 daily measurements. A better example is the set of Average Speed of Answer (ASA) values by 30-minute intervals over a one month period.

An important task of the leadership team is managing this variability. The tighter the control limits, or the closer they are to the mean, the lower the level of variability. The focus needs to be on moving these control limits closer to the mean and aggressively managing outliers. Another important focus is on improving the mean line over time.

Trends are important in statistics, and in managing a support center. In fact, typically a certain number of points or values that trend in a certain direction cause a redrawing of the SPC Chart. The mean is recalculated as are the control limits. In practice, the SPC Chart can be redrawn at any time, but this is typically done when a set number of values have trended in the same direction, or when a specific project has been completed or action has been taken to improve the operation with respect to the measurement under consideration.

The following SPC Chart shows values over time for a process, shows the warning limits shaded in red and shows one outlier point or value. The chart also shows a point in time in which a recalculation was done to coincide with a change, hopefully an improvement. The mean shifts , once again, hopefully closer to this goal. The shift would be even more positive if the control limits were closer to the mean as a result of the change.

SPC gives management the tool necessary to identify those processes that are performing outside of expectations so that action can be taken, or to identify specialists that are performing outside of an expected range, allowing for coaching opportunities. Outliers need immediate action, while mean line improvements and control limit changes need disciplined project-based actions.

An example will help clarify the SPC concepts and actions that should be considered by the leadership team when analyzing an SPC Chart. The SPC Chart below shows daily First Call Resolution, or FCR, measured for a one month period. The line labeled FCR represents the daily values for the measurement. You will also see the mean line, and the upper and lower control limit lines. There are three distinct periods visible on the chart, showing shifts in the mean and control limits.

There are three important points to understand when viewing this SPC Chart. First, the mean line (FCR) is increasing in value during the shifts. As a higher FCR value is better, this indicates that there is improvement being made in the FCR over time. If the shifts represent changes in the operation introduced by the leadership team, then the changes are having a positive effect.

Secondly, the control lines are moving closer together over time. This indicates variability is being managed out and the customer is receiving a more consistent treatment.

Thirdly, outliers become visible to the leadership team. Questions can be raised regarding the FCR values that fell below or went above the control limit lines. What might have happened during these days. If the FCR was below the control limit, was a new product or service feature introduced without the proper level of training? Were the specialists with the most experience off of the phones for some reason? What if the FCR was above the upper limit? Is this a problem? Not necessarily, but the values do show a greater degree of variability, and those days should be examined to understand why.

Overall, SPC allows management to measure and track the variability in the support center operation and hence the customer experience. Outliers and variability have a direct and significant impact on the satisfaction of the support center customer, and hence all Key Performance Indicators should be analyzed using the SPC Chart approach.

SPC also enables the leadership team to have a better understanding of where to set goals and stretch goals, or at least where not to set them, as discussed in the introduction. If your FCR data for the past year show significant variability, your operation is not well controlled. Variability equates to risk, and when high, you runt he risk of your number for the year coming in somewhere within a wide range of possibilities. Goal-setting under significant variability should address the variability, not the mean value. Once the variability has been minimized, you stand a much better chance of choosing a meaningful goal.

When considering measurements in each perspective, two distinct types should be considered: efficiency and effectiveness. Basically, effectiveness measures inform the leadership team if the organization is meeting objectives, and the efficiency metrics are focused on meeting the objectives at the lowest cost or with the least amount of resources.

Efficiency measurements are fairly easy to spot as they usually have an associated unit measure, such as per contact, or per hour. Examples are cost per contact and contacts handled per hour.

However, there are other examples of efficiency measurements that are not so obvious, such as handle time. Effectiveness measurements really get to the heart of the strategic question, are we meeting objectives?

Measurements such as a customer survey index, resolved on first call, resolved on call, call deflection rate, and speed of answer fall into this category. So do such measurements as schedule adherence and forecast accuracy. For internal help desks, service desks, or other cost-center operations, cost per call can be both an efficiency and effectiveness measurement.

When one adds up all of the efficiency and effectiveness measurements across the four strategic perspectives, the number of measurements in the support centers can be overwhelming, especially for the larger support contact centers which represent a blend of call center and product or technical support.

For example, I have seen a dashboard for a large support center with 36 measurements. Leadership certainly cannot manage effectively to 36 measurements, supervisors cannot coach to 36 measurements, and specialists cannot react to 36 measurements. Not that you should stop collecting all of the efficiency and effectiveness measurements, but go back to the strategy of the support center organization and choose those Key Success Indicators, or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), that present a balanced view of the critical factors that determine whether business objectives, and hence organizational strategy, are being met.

As an aside, a frequent dilemma I encounter is what to measure at the specialist level. Human nature dictates that measurement targets will be met, but often with unintended consequences. Measure specialists on their Average Talk Time, or ATT, or they will the target value every time, by rushing through calls if need be. As will be shown later in this series, it is not necessary to manage measurements such as ATT at the specialist level. It is important to manage expectations, or outliers, the variability in the ATT and ensure continuous improvement keeps the aggregate ATT on a trend toward the goal. After all, the real value in measuring ATT, and in any measurement, is in driving overall support center improvement.

There are three facets to driving support center improvement, driving improvement in the aggregate or average value of KPIs, reducing the number of outliers and reducing the variability of KPI values. For example, the center leadership should be focused on improving the ATT across all specialists, coaching those specialists that are well outside of the average and reducing the difference between those specialists with a low ATT and those specialists with a high ATT. Thus, the focus is on reducing variability in the customer experience while improving the average customer experience over time.

Examine the following chat, which shows Average Talk Time values, and these can be over 10 time intervals or over 10 specialists. The chart shows four different sets of ATT values. Each set has a degree of variability.

Where would you want your values to be? Given that one cannot control that which is not measured, how can you measure the level of variability over time or across your specialist population? These questions will be addressed in our next installment of this series.

Measurements are so important to an operations organization such as a support contact center. They provide the dashboard into the efficiency and effectiveness of the operation. Larger support contact center organizations will have not only support-oriented measurements, but also call center measurements, adding to the dashboard. The key purpose of the measurements is to determine if the support center is meeting its objectives. However, the targets or goals for measurements are frequently binary, either the goal was achieved or it wasn’t. Some organizations use the concept of stretch goals, which are some degree better than the goals. But, there is typically no formulaic approach to setting the stretch goal — in other words, how much should we stretch our goals?

All support contact center leaders know that the goals are not binary. There is a certain perceived goodness attached to how close the organization comes to hitting its goals. But, how good and how close?

Another key consideration with respect to measurement and goals, is in the variability of the measurements. Contact center leaders know that there is very little information content in averages. For example, if the speed of answer goal is 30 seconds, and two calls are received for the hour, one answered in 5 seconds and the other answered in 55 seconds, on average the goal has been met. Obtain an averageacross a large support contact center with 1500 calls for the day, and an average is of little value. Of much greater importance is the variability of the 1500 measurements for the day. It is crucial for the support center to understand variability and the variability associated with key measurements. Too much variability is very detrimental to the customer perception of the operation. Face it, if you have an acceptable customer satisfaction on average, you have 50% of your customers that may be unsatisfied.

Variability in general is measured and analyzed using Statistical Process Control, or SPC, techniques. These techniques are vital to measure, understand, and control variability in the support contact center. This series focuses on the various types of measurement to be considered for the support contact center, and how to use SPC techniques to measure and control variability to ensure a consistent customer interaction.

This is part six of a series from industry expert Brian Flagg discussing how to drive, foster & encourage engagement in contact centers.

Many contact centers have embraced a work-at-home model for a variety of reasons. A work-at-home program is developed to either primarily benefit the employee, or the company, and the choice will affect engagement strategies. A program benefiting the employee will have a work-at-home designation used as a reward, for example by hitting goals on key metrics for a six month period. The company will promote such a program as a reward, and use words such as responsibility and empowerment. The employee will feel a sense of joint ownership of the program and its objectives, and hence will experience a higher level of engagement. This is very positive at face value. However, the leadership team must consider the potential unintended consequences and be prepared to deal with them appropriately. One major consequence is that what remains on site in the contact center is the lower performing, actively disengaged staff. Supervision and coaching or counseling is therefore directed at what management can see, and too much organizational resource is spent on the least desirable employees. The leadership team must recognize this possibility when designing a program and be prepared to address the potential. One way of doing so is to have the work-at-home employee spend a period of time in the contact center on a monthly or quarterly basis, perhaps a week every month or every other month. Another tactic is to explicitly provide scheduled, over-the-phone coaching time for the employee and supervisor.

A program primarily benefiting the contact center usually falls under the overcrowding or facilities overhead savings. The employee is sent home to work not as a reward, but as a necessity. The obvious consequence here is that if your center is currently in the 1.83:1 category and employees are sent to work from home at random out of necessity, you will have 30% of your workforce, out of the sight of supervision, that is actively disengaged. Being out of sight allows your actively disengaged to exhibit much of the actively-disengaging behavior virtually unrestricted unless leadership is actively paying attention, though even the definition of “actively paying attention” is difficult to elucidate. Supervisors will have little or no control over what actively disengaged employees are doing at home, posting negative comments on external social media sites, instant-messaging using external tools with other like-minded actively disengaged employees, and participating in other potentially negative behaviors to push their disengaged agenda. A recommendation I would likely make to a contact center leader that is currently in this state, and simply does not have the facilities to have all staff onsite would be one of two alternatives; either only have engaged employees work at home, or find an outsource provider.

Regardless of the primary driver behind the work-at-home program, the considerations and recommendations in the previous section are all valid. Work-at-home employees still need to feel valued, still need to know their voice is heard, and still need to have the right tools and knowledge for the job. Communications channels will need to be augmented so as to be inclusive of work-at-home employees. They need to participate in department meetings, area meetings, need to participate in the innovation program, need to be at roundtables either on the phone or when they are on the periodic back-in-the-office week. They need to have their coaching, mentoring, and career discussions. To net, work-at-home employees need to be managed and receive communications as if they were onsite.

This is part five of a series from industry expert Brian Flagg discussing how to drive, foster & encourage engagement in contact centers.

Any contact center leader that has lived through the annual employee survey, or has held employee roundtables, knows that the most frustrating situation in a contact center is when employees do not have the right tools or knowledge available to perform their job. The right tools for the job is enlarged to include the environment within the contact center, including proper areas for relaxation and socialization, the layout of the employee workspace, the type of technology hardware within the workspace, the application or applications the employees need to access and use, and the knowledge or documentation available to the employees. A majority of the employee-level measurements in the contact center are directly affected by the tools available to perform the job. If the tools are inadequate, the employee will feel that their measurements are being impacted by factors outside of their control, and if not rectified, will drive employees into the ranks of the actively disengaged. Have proper feedback paths in place to ensure employee concerns in this area are surfaced and addressed as quickly as possible. The physical layout and facilities in the contact center will depend in a large part on whether the center is open for business 24 hours a day and the proximity to site services and facilities such as meal and dining, and break rooms. A variety of physical layout and work area footprints choices are available. I have found the best arrangement addresses the following considerations:

• High walls vs. low walls. If noise can be kept to a minimum with low walls, I have seen a much better level of engagement and cross-team collaboration rather than using high-walls where each customer service agent is unable to see anyone else in the center.
• Adequate storage space. Ensure staff have storage space for personal items. If the workspace is shared, a locked drawer or cabinet should be available.
• Adequate work space. Design the workspace layout for comfort and efficiency. Have enough room for technology and for personal items.
• Design for peak demand or rapid growth. Choose a workarea layout that has enough space for temporary expansion or for temporary peak staff demand, if needed. For this, I like the following layout:

The layout in figure 1 can be stacked in a line with the supervisor at one end or can be arranged as a replicated pod where the supervisor can be located in the middle of the pod. The cabinets in the layout can be stored under the temporary workspace when that area is not needed, and can also be used for supervisor seating when doing side-by-sides or other coaching activities. The net is, the customer service representatives will spend 7 to 8 hours a day at their workarea, and the workarea should be as comfortable and efficient as possible.

Tools also include the technology used by the staff. Easily-viewable, low-glare LCD computer screens, ergonomic keyboards, and wireless headsets are typical user-friendly physical technology. A unified desktop, integrating all back office and CRM applications is very helpful to assist staff in being as productive as possible during an interaction. As technology should not negatively affect staff measurements, a unified desktop should limit or eliminate multiple signons, copy or cut and paste, and other non-value activity, and potentially even automate some tasks typically performed by the customer service representative.

Knowledge also falls under technology. Engaged customer service employees have a real desire to provide an answer, solve a problem, or close a sale. Employees are frustrated when they do not have knowledge available to them that enables a successful contact. There are three imperatives around knowledge in the contact center; the content needs to well-structured and complete, the search engine or capability over the knowledge must be robust and accurate, and a successful change management process needs to be in place to ensure the knowledge is up-to-date.

In conclusion, facilities, work area layout and technology are key differentiators in employee engagement. When engaged employees have a poor working environment or inadequate technology, they can become disengaged and even actively disengaged as their desire to meet their measurement goals and desire to have successful contacts are thwarted. Is it strongly recommended to include a question or two on monthly or quarterly employee surveys that includes satisfaction with workspace and technology.

This is part four of a series from industry expert Brian Flagg discussing how to drive, foster & encourage engagement in contact centers.

Gathering employee input to decisions and input to understand operational challenges and opportunities can take many forms. The annual employee survey has, as one of its aims, to improve engagement. However it can, in many cases be more destructive to engagement than helpful. To the extent the annual company-wide survey is viewed as punitive to management and leads to a flurry of activities and initiatives that are neither desired or welcome, in other words ‘you asked for it’, will be to the extent the annual survey actually damages engagement. Face it, in a contact center environment, either employees have not been around long enough to provide any meaningful input, or they will be gone by the time the dust settles on the annual survey process and any positive actions are begun. A better solution is needed for contact centers. However, simply running a 60 question annual survey more often is not the answer. A more frequent survey is needed, but it should be focused on the areas primarily affecting engagement. Asking questions about company benefits is still valid on an annual survey, but as the leadership in an organization typically has no way to affect changes in the company-wide benefits program, leave the question off of a frequent engagement survey. The Gallup research identified 12 questions that need to be asked to assess engagement. Don’t go much beyond 12 questions or the survey will likely be viewed an onerous and the leadership may be left with too much input to deal with on a monthly or quarterly basis

Employees on the front lines usually have a very good idea of what is and what is not working at the operational process level. They even will have a variety of very good recommendations to fix what is not working. A key problem in the contact center, especially large contact centers, is how to tap into this vast store of good ideas, and how to deal with all of the input. Asking for improvement ideas and being able to manage the ideas is key. If the ideas and suggestions are not properly managed, employees will become disenchanted and will drive lower engagement among the engaged employees and provide ammunition for the actively disengaged. Technology can be a great advantage to implementing an ideas or suggestions program. Technology can foster an environment where ideas and suggestions become owned by the employees. This is key to a successful program.

If ideas or suggestions are simply dropped into a box, whether actually or figuratively, management is left to handle the suggestion from that point forward. Employees are largely disconnected from the program and do not become engaged in the program or its objectives. Social technology can allow employees to raise suggestions that can be viewed, amended and voted upon by all employees in the contact center, ensuring a good deal of input and agreement is reached among the employees prior to a suggestion being given to the leadership team. In essence, the employees then manage the suggestion, ensuring it receives the proper level of discourse before reaching management for action. The leadership team needs to have a process in place to receive the suggestion, develop a business case if needed, and prioritize action on the suggestion. Employees should have the ability to view the list of actions and the status of each action so as to close the loop on communications. Having employees vet the suggestions should lead to a set of actions for the leadership team that is much more manageable. Online discussion applications are numerous and I suggest the leadership team let the employees choose the application they want to use. The contact center recognition program should be tied with the suggestion or ideas program where employees have an opportunity to share in the business case benefits created by the implementation of their suggestion.

Recognition and Rewards

Recognition and reward programs have been used in the contact center to foster employee satisfaction and engagement for many years. Front-line customer service or sales employees are typically paid hourly and are usually some of the lowest paid employees in a company, and hence their pay is not a key influencer of high levels of engagement. Incentives, both financial and otherwise do influence engagement, usually in a positive way.

The contact center leadership team should develop an overall award and recognition program, and have a process in place to periodically review the program to ensure its effectiveness. I have seen too many contact centers without a program but just a myriad of disjointed, point-in-time recognition ideas that address point-in-time problems or challenges that live on far past their usefulness. One contact center I visited had 13 separate recognition ‘programs’ that had the contact center looking more like a circus than a place of business. There were so many opportunities for recognition for so many reasons, virtually every employee was being recognized for something during the month. In the end, recognition was diluted and the employees actually grew weary of the plethora of banners, pictures, posters and other communications regarding recognition. Furthermore, the contact center had no measurements of the effectiveness of the recognition.

I recommended the center develop a program by first determining what the recognition was to be used for, in other words what value measurements or engagement measurements the program was to affect and how.  From the measurements, I suggested the center choose no more than three or four rewards. By keeping the number of rewards to a manageable level, and by understanding the outcomes expected, the center had a rewards program that improved engagement. Another approach is for the leadership team to develop the objectives for the program and have the employees choose how best to be rewarded. Whichever method is chosen to the development of the recognition program, ensure the recognition is specific and timely. Employees should not be left guessing why the winner of the particular recognition actually won.