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Q?  Using Cockpits and Interdepartmental Collaboration to Improve Calling Results
 
Outbound contact center managers face an array of challenges. Managing everything from employees and IT call solutions to business strategies and processes, today’s managers have become multidisciplinarians, always on the lookout for new formulas and best industry practices. It is with this in mind that Elix decided to gather the Best Practices and Golden Rules of various outbound contact centers, from the telemarketing and collection perspective.
 
This is the fourth article in a series that seeks to guide outbound contact center managers in optimizing their soliciting activities. The series will tackle various contact center challenges, such as segmentation strategies, dialer productivity optimization, resource management, and tools. This fourth article discusses the best practices for using agent and management cockpits and for interdepartmental collaboration.
 
A LOOK INSIDE AGENT AND MANAGEMENT COCKPITS
All organizations need performance statistics in order to measure the impact of their solicitation activities and improve their performance. On the other hand, the tools used, the statistics measured, and the use and distribution of this information vary from one organization to another. Some contact centers use the measuring tools that come with their outbound solution to create a management cockpit. Others adopt a more complex hybrid approach, composed of statistics from components such as the ACD, dialer, external database, and central systems. Contact centers using the hybrid approach find themselves grappling with evolution problems when their solution evolves or when they need to upgrade their current version. In contrast, contact centers using a unified management cockpit for all involved departments tend to be more proactive and better positioned for optimization efforts.
 
Whether out of the box or homemade, if management cockpits are used to display information, statistics, and reports, they require input about what information must be presented and measured from various departments. In outbound contact centers, those most commonly involved are the marketing, contact center operations, and IT groups. Marketing creates lists and promotions and provides specific customer information such as segments or tiers. Contact center operations give input on what is needed for daily management. The IT group gets involved to ensure setup and maintenance. Representatives from these groups and departments all need the generated reports and statistics for analysis so that they can use their different expertise to help optimize outbound campaigns.
 
Obviously, to have a unified, goal-oriented result, everyone must be using the same assumptions and definitions when they analyze the same information. The involvement of and the role played by each department representative are extremely important, but it is even more critical to have all these team players “talking the same talk”.
 
On the agent cockpit side, similar scenarios are seen. Some contact centers use a homemade cockpit solution, while others favor the tools and cockpit that come with the outbound solution to display customer information, scroll sales scripts, enter call termination codes, plan a callback, etc. A virtual soft-phone usually completes the agent cockpit.
 
It is recommended that the outbound solution be used for the agent cockpit, to fully benefit from the advantages of a commercial product that is supported, that can evolve, and that offers seamless and rapid migration to a higher version. In blended contact centers, it is preferable to have the same solution used by both inbound and outbound agents, both for the sake of uniformity and so that development and modifications can be done once for both environments.
 
Important elements to include in agent cockpit:

• Customer profile such as name, personal information, range of products, services acquired and customer history
• Marketing strategy including the segment/tier to which the customer belongs and the list of promotions targeting this customer via other communication media
• Information particular to the current solicitation such as product or collection information and sales scripts with rebuttals to objections
• Call termination codes
• Real-time management statistics
• Virtual telephone toolbar
AVOIDING THE “TOWER OF BABEL” SYNDROME
Even though all data can be written to any database, it is always preferable, as mentioned before, to use the tools developed for the solution your contact center uses, because they will evolve in line with the other components of the solution and with later versions.
 
When tools or databases external to the solution are used, it is very important to have a unified final report, created with a powerful report generating tool that can access the various databases and thus create a common cockpit for managers of all involved teams. This allows everyone to see the overall picture, and not just the statistics related to their departmental tasks.
 
Besides having a unified view of agent performance, lists, campaigns, the dialer, and customer behavior, it is also vital that each report user have the same information interpretation. To ensure this, it is essential that performance indicators are well defined to allow each participant the same understanding. Thus, using the same reports, the operations, sales, marketing, and optimization teams, and even the IT team, can work to optimize each element of the solution. It is also important to educate all participants on the term definitions used, such as calling lists, campaigns, treatments, filters, fields, agent groups, and list contacts versus “workable” contacts, to ensure that each participant has the same understanding, and to eliminate frustration and optimize the solution to the highest possible level. For example, if the contact center team says it is missing contacts to finish a work shift, it is very important to know whether the team is speaking of contacts in terms of a calling list, or if the agents have come to the end of the list because a number of contacts could not be reached.
 
One of Elix’s contact center clients developed a common management cockpit containing all the measured indicators. This cockpit was used by all participants. The contact center, having clearly defined its measurement indicators, saw its productivity increase by 20% following the introduction of anomaly management through the cockpit. They achieved this by setting up an interdepartmental management committee that met three times a week. Because each member could see the “big picture” as well as the statistics pertinent to his or her own department, and because all members worked from the same information base and used the same jargon, the committee as a whole benefited in several important ways. During brainstorming sessions, it was easier for each individual to understand how changes implemented by one group might affect both the other groups and overall contact center performance. Thus, they were better able to pinpoint problem areas and their causes and to develop the most effective solutions, without having to deal with the “Tower of Babel” syndrome.
 
ELIMINATING SILOS THROUGH INTERDEPARTMENTAL COLLABORATION
As stated earlier, various individuals and groups are involved at different points in the process of designing cockpits. The differentiator element between one center and another is not the groups involved, but the role played by each.
 
Of all revenue-generating initiatives, telephone solicitation is among those that have the biggest impact on the most people within an organization. Basically, the marketing department is responsible for the quality of the contacts and their buying behavior. It is thus their responsibility to have correct names and telephone numbers, as well as the right offer at the right time, for these contacts. However, once the lists are created, collaboration must take place so that marketing can analyze the results and constantly evolve, improve its segmentation approach, and be on the lookout for trends.
 
There are some IT team members who deal exclusively with the technical aspects of the solution, such as development and integration, administration, and first-level support. The IT group also provides telephony specialists, who are more involved during the development and integration of the dialer. Other IT staff include those who provide first-level support for the dialer, and the administrators who look after the central systems, the databases, and the management and reporting tools. On the user side, the contact center operations team is responsible for the daily management of outbound calling.
 
It is thus crucial that a committee with representatives from all these groups be created to provide a discussion forum for the evolution and optimization of outbound activities. It is also important to be aware that group formation is a vital issue for interdepartmental collaboration, and requires support from the parent organization. Whatever the purpose of the contact center, the enterprise must recognize the need for collaboration and understand that collaboration is an essential step in the process of achieving business goals. The cost of not ensuring collaboration can range from ineffective use of resources, duplicated or increased cost or effort to achieve a goal, to a lack of direct responsibility for ensuring that the infrastructure needed to support the contact center is in place and maintained. An interdepartmental group can develop a shared vocabulary and common standards. Common goals and shared input enable the team to work with a single, coherent vision. Thus, it is necessary to decide what expertise is required and which individuals should be recruited for the team. Team tasks should be clearly identified and each team member should have a clear understanding of the team’s purpose, goals, and mandate.
 
To ensure that everyone involved is “talking the same talk”, it is essential that regular meetings take place with all services, so that each participant is up to date on concerns and problems, as well as on current and future projects. The purpose of this knowledge transfer is to allow all participants to be ready and proactive in case of glitches that would likely affect their activities.
 
In addition to this committee, it is becoming common practice to create a smaller team (depending on the size of the outbound activities, this team could range from 2 to 6 persons) responsible for the results of the outbound operations. This team manages all activities related to the dialer in a centralized way. Contact center managers, some technical people, and marketing are therefore not involved in the small “bugs” related to functionality, integration, version problems, support or maintenance, or the links with other systems and their associated users. The contact center manager can thus focus on managing resource performance, daily call management, and cost control.
 
In larger contact centers, another common practice is to have only one group to manage statistics for all contact center activities, whether inbound, outbound, or other. This allows the multiple statistics related to outbound call activities to be managed in a centralized fashion. Obviously, performance reports must be distributed quickly to all the group members discussed earlier.
 
Well organized interdepartmental collaboration that encourages team work and feedback and is focused on the overall business goals will bring accelerated problem resolution, increased calling list and campaign quality and performance, and increased productivity to the contact center and consequently the enterprise.
 
It is clear that an efficient, productive, and profitable contact center does not just “happen” and is not merely the result of choosing the best tools and solutions. Rather it is the result of mutual understanding and collaboration among various departments or business units. When Contact Center, Marketing, Sales, and IT team members all use the same vocabulary—that is, when they all use the same words and terminology to describe the same things—they will be able to join tools, strategies, and personnel to achieve their common goal of improving the company’s bottom line. Input from all these departments is required to define what statistics should be measured and how they should be measured. This process produces relevant, timely statistics that, in turn, help these departments increase their efficiency and productivity. Interdepartmental collaboration eliminates the “silo” syndrome and replaces it with a series of interlocking, interdependent circles of expertise and competency that nurture and support each other.
 
Click here for the first parts of this 8-part series and stay tuned for our next article on call scripts.
 
Mariane L’Ecuyer is Manager of Consulting services at Elix, an organization with over 16 years of expertise in contact center technologies and operations. To contact the author: mariane.lecuyer@elixonline.com, or1-877-909-3549, or www.elixonline.com.