​360 View of Agents

Ask anyone what a 360 degree view means and they will probably talk about customers. Companies all over the world try to “deliver the love” from the moment of first contact through to the time when prospects become loyal evangelists. A 360 strategy uses every available channel to deliver a consistent message that is personalized for the individual.
One can use this same approach to maximize the value you get from your CSRs. The reality is that a 360 CSR strategy can add millions of dollars to your bottom line. The difference in productivity between an entry level individual and one who is fully trained can equate to thousands of dollars every month for just one individual. Multiply that by a few thousand agents and you quickly start to talk about real money! A large BPO can save tens of millions of dollars per month.
Our early field experience has documented the great potential of focusing on a 360 approach to managing CSRs. Our customers have reported a variety of positive outcomes including a 50% reduction in time to proficiency and a 10% reduction in average handle time. CSRs reported higher levels of engagement and less turnover as well.
Our industry has invested heavily to provide alternatives to human conversations. We now provide consumers with an entire array of options to get their questions answered. But person to person conversations are still the premium way to deliver customer experiences and build brand. It is time for technology to reduce costs and increase the quality of this high value connection.
So what does a 360 CSR strategy look like? And what are some of the benefits that it can deliver to the business? Based on decades of experience and in recent field trials with thousands of CSR’s, here are the key components of this approach.

• Define a new lifecycle. CSRs progress from hiring through to full proficiency. The implementation of a new 360 program calls for this entire process to be optimized with dramatically improved process enabled technology. This can be done in incrementally, as feedback gathered from early stage efforts can be used in subsequent refinements and updates. The unprecedented transparency that operations and training has into the behavior of each CSR can allow for incremental improvements as well. More substantial redesign can happen over time with even bigger return on the process improvements.
• Include all functions. A 360 strategy should include a full range of functional groups that can gain better access to the CSR and the CSR desktop. Everyone has a seat at the table:

1. Operations wants to improve productivity and adherence to the designed process.
2. SMEs are critical to the success of CSRs. Improving access and reducing wait times can improve a variety of customer experience and CSR productivity metrics.
3. Training evaluates how their efforts have translated into production.
4. Quality monitors adherence to process.
5. HR observes the CSR lifecycle and how individuals progress through the on-boarding process.
6. IT utilizes feedback on network and server performance.
7. Program Design gets feedback on how well the design works in production and how refinements might improve productivity.
8. Business Intelligence (BI) adds more data to its efforts to provide insight and dashboards.

• Think globally. The virtual conference table that hosts all of the functions that contribute to the 360 CSR strategy must also facilitate inputs from every part of the world. Today’s contact center business is truly global. Agents are distributed in multiple buildings and work at home or in multiple remote locations. Domestic teams coordinate with remote locations across the world. An effective strategy must lie on top of this global map. So technology to execute all of these tactics must be highly efficient and deliver responsive results without sapping resources that are cost prohibitive. New agent centric technology must use network bandwidth that is expensive and carefully managed by the IT organization.
• Be non-intrusive. Anyone involved with the study or management of human behavior knows that individuals perform quite differently when they know they are being observed. As an example, fraud is highly unlikely to happen on calls when the agent knows they are being observed. Software must enable people at the table to observe the behavior of CSRs in a totally non-intrusive way. They can effectively “look over the shoulder” of the agent without the individual having any idea that the observation is happening. Managers can evaluate the capabilities of an individual and they may also get feedback on the process that has been designed and implemented. At one level, this can lead to training and mentoring of the individual to improve their performance. At a broader scale, the feedback can help program owners to improve the recommended process and achieve even greater breakthroughs in productivity and customer experience.
• Track success metrics. Fortunately, operational managers are experts at measuring all dimensions of the contact center performance.  We monitor average handle time and first call resolution rates. We also know about the time it takes for an agent to progress through the system and what levels of proficiency that can be attained. When implementing a 360 CSR strategy, program owners should look at ways of systematically implementing components and measuring the impact those steps provide. Within just a few months, the contact center owners will be able to rollout the full strategy and be confident about the expected results.
• Remember the negatives. Nearly all of our discussion to date has been on the positives--how can we better manage CSRs to improve their productivity and extend tenure. However, one should also look at 360 strategy as a means of reducing negatives, especially fraud. On many calls, CSRs observe information about identity and credit that can be used for a nefarious purpose. This problem is especially problematic in remote settings. 360 management technology can allow operational managers to view specific screens and behaviors, thus serving as a strong deterrent. Our early customers have reported that fraud reduction is a significant benefit of a 360 strategy.
• Combine metrics into a ROI forecast. Success metrics should be rolled up into an overall business model. This delivers a view of direct and indirect effects. Direct impacts include contributions such as improvements in first call resolution rates. Secondary impacts include financial projections such as reduced risk of fines that can be incurred if SLA’s are not met. Ultimately, the model should include impacts on customer experience and customer loyalty--the ultimate measures of any change to the customer service mix. All of these business and ROI calculations will support further investment in the strategy.
• Incorporate Feedback loops. At the heart of every 360 CSR strategy is feedback. Three types that are critical to success.

1. Real-time feedback provides observers with a perspective on how an agent handles an individual call and even specific activities or screen behaviors within a conversation. This type of information can allow a trainer or process designer to draw very precise conclusions about what works and what doesn’t.
2. Feedback over time can be revealed in system logs and other systems happens over a period of hours or days. This type of process information can help to spot trends and causal relationships between various types of events. When used together, real-time and process feedback can be great tools to building incremental improvements in the CSR delivery system.
3. High level reports and dashboards can help the system owner to look at overall trends within groups that have implemented the new 360 strategy. This allows for further judgment on the business impact that is afforded by the investment.

While operations management can see the benefits from such a strategy, previous generations of contact center systems have failed to provide the requisite solutions. Only now is technology available that fits within the contact center and enables a 360 feedback strategy to happen:

• Integration with workforce and HR systems so that additions, changes, and departures can all be managed without additional workloads.
• Security that matches the same levels achieved by the core operational systems. In the case of financial services and healthcare, this will also include special requirements to protect critical personal information.
• Resource friendly architecture must facilitate the 360 system with a minimal impact on server and network resources.
• Non-invasive impact on the desktop ensures desktop responsiveness will not be decremented.
• Operational hierarchies must be mirrored in the technology. While the focus is on the individual agent, operations managers deploy a variety of client and project hierarchies that define how information is shared and accessed. All of this must be reflected in any companion technology preferably in automated fashion.

The good news is that this technology exists and has been proven to deliver substantial business results throughout the CSR lifecycle. Our solution, Smart Teams Communicator, has already empowered senior management at global BPO’s to realize enormous improvements in critical performance metrics like AHT and a reduction in workflow errors - all with a direct positive impact to the financial bottom line.
Because it piggybacks on infrastructure and permissions that are already in place, the entire implementation can take place in a few days. At that point, the contact center owners can begin to implement further process changes that will allow them to reduce training time, improve operational metrics, and extend CSR tenure. Companies can begin to count benefits of sitting at the table with CSRs and managing them in a way that delivers optimal results.