I’m sure you’re receiving all sorts of ‘Best Practice’ Hardware/Software advice – just don’t lose sight of the fact that fundamentally it’s all about the quality of the ‘Humanware’ you deploy to begin with.

While most everyone can use a telephone - not everyone is cut out to work in a Call Center environment. And while someone may have “The Right Stuff” to be a great Customer Service & Support CSR – it doesn’t necessarily follow that the same individual is also a good fit for the more demanding & sales-oriented requirements of Up-Sell/Cross-Sell/Customer Win-Back – let alone Inside Sales or TeleSales..

Top Performing Call Centers drive their Revenue & Performance through Superior Hiring Tactics. Hiring the wrong Agent to begin with is the Root Cause of most Call Center Performance Issues. It’s also a significant drain on your Budget & Bottom Line – on Customer Satisfaction - and on your Sales Results. Every failed hire represents wasted dollars down the drain. Not to mention the Lowered Productivity, Poor Morale & Higher Absences associated with a Poor Job Fit.

Typically there are 3 grades of Agents found in a Call Center: (Above Average), (Average), and (Below Average).

(Above Average) Agents seem to have “The Right Stuff” that pushes them to succeed & a natural compatibility with the duties of the position. They work hard - exceed expectations - do more than asked - achieve high-quality consistent results - can always be counted upon - need little direction & work extremely well with everyone.

(Average) Agents perform their duties adequately enough “to get by” - but no better. They are the partially competent. Generally they’re strong from a Skills standpoint but missing a key ingredient or two from a Job Fit standpoint.

(Below Average) Agents are the people who just don’t fit somehow. Sometimes they’re good people in the wrong jobs. They need extra coaching & supervision just to achieve average results. Often they cause unnecessary conflict. (Below Average) Agents have the Highest Levels of Absenteeism, Lowest Levels of Productivity & Sales, Poorest Performance & Customer Satisfaction Ratings, and generally have a Negative Impact on Team Morale. They represent the real problems in a Call Center workforce. While (Average) & (Below Average) Agents may seem fully qualified at the Interview Stage – they’re a Poor Job Fit – the cost of hiring them is enormous – with little value add to an organization.

SPAS Call Center Agent Pre-Employment Screening Software is easy-to-deploy, very cost-effective and highly-predictive of an individual's suitability for a particular Call Center job.

SPAS Call Center Pre-Employment Screening Software is a Proven Technology that meets and exceeds all Government Employment Standards Requirements as a Hiring Tool in the USA/Canada/UK/Australia/New Zealand/South Africa and everywhere else in the world where the ‘Language of Work’ is English.

SPAS screens out the Job Candidates who will burn out fast because they aren't suited for the work - and identifies the people with the Personality/Job-Fit, Soft Skills, Motivation, and Work Ethic to be Top Inside Sales Agents. With SPAS as part of your Hiring Process you will be able to select new Agents who will fit your specific employment needs better - and stay on the job longer - leading to a Call Center Agent Workgroup that has more experience and is more productive.

SPAS Software is sold on an Unlimited Usage License basis - there are No "per Test" Fees - "Annual Renewal" Fees or any other User Fees. Technical Support for the SPAS Software is free & unlimited as well.

You can find out about a Free Trial of SPAS Call Center Agent Pre-Employment Screening Software at: http://www.telesoftsystems.ca/64201.html

Steve Davidson

Process/workflow consultant, Steve Davidson Consulting

Posted on March 24, 2010

Yup.

Talk to your customer base. Find out what they like about calling you at the moment, and what they don't like or would prefer to have changed. If they really like your choice of on-hold music, or your simple IVR (or lack thereof), then make a double-underlined note to keep those things the same (or as near as possible) in the new system. If customers currently like talking to Bob, because Bob's been around for a while and actually used the products/services, get Bob on board and make a note to hire more people like Bob.

Figure out early what you actually, genuinely need in your call center. Build in easy scalability, Build in flexibility, because there are going to be bumps at the beginning and you want to be able to address those quickly and cleanly. Get a manager who's been a successful call center manager before - ideally across multiple employers and sectors. Bonus points if the manager or their management team (or XO) knows the business inside and out, so they can not only escalate to the right area but can rapidly establish escalation protocols and inter-team scopes of support.

Nail your scope down. While you may have to alter and adjust it in the first three to six months, make sure that any changes, no matter how small, get funded and resourced. If an area of the business wants to dump part of their function onto the new call center, quote them an ongoing portion of their budget for doing so.

Make sure you have buy-in right to the top levels, or you're going to have all kinds of problems with cross-area support and messaging, not to mention funding.

If you can, get a mix of experienced call center staff and business-specific staff on deck and cross-train them. Use the experienced staff to get up to speed rapidly and spot/address process problems, and the business staff to be SMEs and direct liaisons. Make the business positions rotating, if need be. They can eventually be phased out as the call center picks up more business data of its own and builds links to parts of the corporate infrastructure.

If the call center is going to be a smallish one, you might want to skip the SME positions and just get always-available contact numbers for areas of the business, so that the phonedesk staff can ring through to quickly find out any information they don't already have listed on internal references.

Hire sufficient staff so that they have enough free time to be _building_ those internal reference documents and refining them in between calls.

If you can afford it, hire the best or as close as you can get. You might be paying 50% more on raw salary, but you'll be getting people who can do the work of five or six or their colleagues while taking up a fraction of the space and facility costs. They're also much more likely to be able to generate those all-important reference documents at extremely high speed, train other staff, report on developing and inherent problems, provide solutions, liaise effectively at all levels, and suggest improvements across the board.

Robert Lindsay

Posted on March 24, 2010

Paul.

I would recommend you contact Kyle Kelly at WCI, Inc. WCI is a Seattle-based telecommunications consulting firm. They specialize in setting up telecommunications solutions for businesses, including call centers.

I recently did a series of data sheets for WCI on their various services. Below is a link to a data sheet I wrote for them on SIP Trunking, an essential component of their call center solutions.

http://www.strategicwordsmith.biz/wcisiplongdistance.pdf

Contact Kyle Kelly at (206) 219-5701, or at kyle.kelly@wci.com.

Let me know if I can help you in any way.

Robert Lindsay
http://www.strategicwordsmith.biz
http://www.linkedin.com/in/strategicwordsmith