Leadership Resources

Frontline leaders are so very important to the success of the call center.  That is why both "The Role of a Supervisor" and "Positive Leadership" provides you and your teams with the skills to drive consistent goal achievement.  Learn More...

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If you want to create consistent performance, then you need to start with your frontline leadership team. "The Role of a Supervisor" provides a clear path for new leaders, as well as, a great development module to help your current leaders learn, understand and to take action on improving performance. Learn More

Influencers utilize Positive Leadership tactics that have a lasting effort on people, performance and the bottom-line. Those that choose to employ these strategies, will just be better leaders. Learn more

Call Center Metrics and Measuring Productivity

This is an update that was originally posted on July 12, 2009, Under Call Center Metrics.

Most good Call Center Outsourcers are family with this call center metric and is often referred to as Bill-To-Pay (B2P) or as Productive-To-Pay (P2P)

Bill To Pay is the measure of the time an associate is productive relative to the amount of time the associate is paid (or the amount of time billed to the client)

Now I know what you're thinking if you run an internal center..."This Call Center Metric is not for me."  Oh but it is, and you may be shocked how low your numbers are.

B2P is typically a measure that outsourced contact centers use to track percent of agent time that is billed to the client. P2P is typically the measure in-house contact centers use to measure how productive their agent base is Represented as a Percentage of total paid time.

When used in conjunction with Occupancy, it is a powerful call center metrics tool for managing the effectiveness of the overall contact center. Here is the formula:

1 Available time may not be productive or “billed” time depending on the billing model used. Per hour billing methods typically include available time; per minute models do not. You should customize your B2P model to reflect your billing model

Call Center Metrics:  What is a productive state?

Most contact center companies define a productive state as any state in which the agent’s time is billed (regardless of bill type).

Internal contact centers usually measure it as any state in which the agent is productive, within their control.

Phone states that are typically included are:

TIP: Some ACD’s have other states that may need to be included in calculating B2P or your productivity measure may be off.

RING time may not be included in other states

Outbound calls while the customer is on the phone may or may not be included in AOHT or included in some other state

Agents in blended roles, such as email and chat, inbound outbound, may have productive time in more than one system – or– their time may be double counted.

The best course of action is to check with your IT staff or ACD provider to determine what work states are included in which measures.

You can still calculate B2P without this information, but recognize that you may need to confirm by observing an agent’s activities for a period of time, then comparing your observations with ACD reporting.

How do I know what the call center metric number should be?

The first step in developing the B2P target is understanding what the maximum average the target can be.

To develop the target, you will need to understand:

To determine your B2P goal, consider the following:

Use your best estimate or an average based on agent tenure. You don’t have to be exact when setting these numbers; however, the closer you are the better your goal will be. Remember—just by measuring, you will increase productivity.  That is the beauty of this call center metrics formula.

1 Even if training time is billed to the client, chances are it is at a different rate/gross margin. Consider leaving it out of B2P and adding it back in or calculating it separately only if it is substantial.

Call Center Metrics - Calculating B2P Goal

Using 2,080 annual hours and 430 unproductive hours:

• Normal (non-overtime) paid hours – estimated unproductive hours = maximum productive hours.  2,080 – 430 = 1,650 maximum productive hours
• Productive hours / paid hours = B2P.  1,650 / 2,080 = 79.3% B2B goal.
• In this example, the goal should be set at 79%

B2P is an annualized Call Centric Metric goal

• B2P should be set as an annual goal, but managed on a monthly or per-pay-period basis
• Most centers will chose to maximize B2P as it is a direct link to revenue and gross margin
• B2P normally correlates closely to Gross Margin
• High B2P results in high Gross Margin
• Low B2P results in lost margin dollars

Note: Paid training time and other “non-productive time” in this model will skew B2P, causing correlation to be off

Measuring performance-to-goal

B2P can be tracked at an agent, team, group, and center-wide level and be an extremely effective tool in ensuring everyone is focused on client value-added activities

• Agent level behaviors drive
• Team / supervisor level numbers
• Department results
• Center margin

Step-by-Step process to calculate B2P Call Center Metrics

Example Calculation / Case Study

Example: Tela-Ring

Tela-Ring is an outsourced contact center provider, providing Technical Support to a global client.Tela-Ring pays agents based on their log-in time, plus any paid time off; therefore, all associate time is captured by their ACD. When an associate is off of the phone, they must use an “aux” state.John works full time at Tela-Ring as a Tech Support Associate.During the last two-week pay period, John was paid for 80 hours. 8 hours of his paid time was for a vacation day.

John’s ACD statistics show the following:

• Log-in time: 72:02:55
• ACD Time: 36:04:03
• Hold Time: 4:40:23
• Avail Time: 8:03:04

• Total “aux” states: 17:05
• ACW time: 5:45:21
• Ring Time: 0:25:58

Tela-Ring uses a scheduling software package that links to their switch. The following information was pulled from the system and correlated to John’s aux states (aggregated):

• 1- 1hour company meeting 1 h
• 1- day of vacation (not an aux state) 8 h
• 2- 30 minute coaching sessions 1 h
• 10-pre shift meetings @ 15 minutes 2.5 h
• 18-15 minute breaks 4.5 h
• 2- Training sessions 4.5 h

Total “known” off-phone/aux time 21.5h

Remember the formula...

36:04 + 4:40 + 5:45 + 0:26 + 8:03

____________________________________

        80

= 54.96      = 68.7%

_________

        80

If the goal was set at 70%, John would not have met goal.  Why?

Continue with Steps...

Step 5:  Roll-up to Supervisor

Step 6:  Roll-up to Center

Would you really want to pay an associate for 100% of their paid time consistently and only bill the client 69% of that time?

Was John as productive as he could have been? He was on vacation, should we cut him some slack? NO!

Look at the data and ask several questions:

- Was John on the phone in a productive state the time that he should have been? NO!

- John was paid for 80 hours and logged into the phone for 72 and had 8 hours of vacation: 72+8=80However, John was in AUX for over 17 hours, and you expected him to be in aux for 13 hours.

Remember the breakdown?

• 1- 1hour company meeting 1 h
• 1- day of vacation (not an aux state) 8 h
• 2- 30 minute coaching sessions 1 h
• 10-pre shift meetings @ 15 minutes 2.5 h
• 18-15 minute breaks 4.5 h
• 2- Training sessions 4.5 h

Total “known” off-phone/aux time 21.5h

21.5 hours – 8 hours vacation time = 13.5 hours.

John was in aux for 17.08 hours (17:05). That’s over 3.5 hrs “missing!”

Had John been in AVAIL, Talk, or even ACW, his B2P would have been:54.96 hours + 3.58 “missing time in aux” = 58.54 hours = 80

4 percentage points in B2P can make a huge difference to your bottom line!

Additional Considerations for B2P

Additional Considerations for B2P

Go From this:   

VP: “Why’s your B2P so low, Fred?”

Fred: “We were slow, so I took agents off the phone to up-train them on the new product.”

To this:

Fred: “Our occupancy was in the 50’s. I knew our B2P was at 87% last week, and since the volume was low, I took a hit on B2P to train on the new product. This drove our occupancy up to 75%. The extra training drove our B2P from 82% projected for the week to 78%. I decided that trade-off was worth the short-term hit.”

?

The post Call Center Metrics: Bill To Pay or Productive To Pay appeared first on Call Center Best Practices.

The Power of Positive Leadership and the impact it has on your call center performance is epic.

Benefits of positive leadership are numerous but on the flip side there are risks to your call center performance by not paying attention to this.  What is the biggest impact?

What Are the Risks of a Negative Workplaces??

Is this a surprise to you?

Negative leadership leads to unengaged employees and unengaged employees leads to many seriously bad systems of poor performance in your call center.

Take these startling facts...

So we know that many organizations do not have an employee engagement strategy in place.  Which also means that they are probably weak on positive leadership too.

Some organizations try but fail...

Why employee engagement fails:

Employee Engagement Strategy

So the big question should be... "What influences employees to engage?"

This info above was identified in 2013, by Edward Lawler III, distinguished professor of business at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business.

So, the talking points for Positive Leadership are the following:

Positive Leadership Webinar

Want to learn the tactics to use to promote Positive Leadership, which in turn, will improve employee engagement?

Join This Positive Leadership Webinar Event

Revealed: How to build your path to Positive Leadership and create an amazing call center by just following the tactics revealed on this webinar.

Register now

The post Positive Leadership In Your Call Center appeared first on Call Center Best Practices.

We Don't Do Soft Skills?

When I asked a successful process improvement consultant about his company’s approach to leadership and soft skills mentoring, he remarked, “Oh, we don’t do that. We’re not focused on that.” I was surprised how quickly he dismissed the complementary value that effective management contributes to business process improvement and organizational change.

By effective management, I mean the quality of leadership that optimizes team cohesiveness, employee engagement, and commitment to the principles of the business. While not precisely measured as discrete variables such as revenue and cost, staff morale, a sense of purpose in the organization, and higher levels of job satisfaction impact the numbers by which businesses rise or fall.

Soft skills are powerful determinants of corporate culture and business performance.

Within an organization, they influence the attitude that managers and staff share for their work and intra-company relationships. When employees at every level in a business embrace the purpose, mission, and ethics of the business, they extend and share those attitudes with customers, vendors as well as local, national, and global neighbors. Other profound subtleties of communication basics are acts of mentoring, teaching, coaching, team building, and conflict resolution. These aspects of leadership and communication provide the powerful means to achieve team cohesiveness.?

Higher order soft skills embrace an awareness that basic human traits such as talking and listening can build and sustain relationships of trust, respect, and allegiance. Effective application of communication skills strengthens bonds among families, communities and businesses. It has universal application including in the often testy world of politics. Excluding competency of expression and listening dilutes the efforts of process reform, organizational changes and compromise on thorny issues. Inclusion of management and communication skills improvement should occur in lock-step with operations’ reforms. Individuals will be more willing to participate and accept changes in an environment of trust and understanding.?

There are many books to read and seminars to attend on topics of leadership and effective communication. Some of the books top best-seller lists. Some workshops attract employees from all over the world. The importance of effective management is widely recognized. And yet, there is disappointment on many levels with the impact that these lessons have on an organization. Noticeable change in corporate culture is absent after flirtations with soft skills improvement.

So, here is where the discipline of business process improvement lends positive possibilities for enhancing attempts to improve basic and advanced leadership talent – clearly defined steps to transform inputs into desired output. In addition, the amassing of metrics to evaluate effort offers a window into the success of leadership initiatives. Some changes work; others need further refinement. This is common knowledge. The construction of process flow and measurements may be more easily achieved when manufacturing physical components or providing discrete services such as processing loan applications or responding to customer inquiries. But to fully benefit from the leadership initiatives, there must be a discipline to direct the application of knowledge acquired to real-life situations. This is where students of leadership, regardless of position and title, feel stranded amidst a sea of recommendations and guidelines.

The inputs in leadership sessions are the materials, conversations, role-playing, and other elements that elevate awareness of positive management characteristics and effective communication. The metrics are the measurable evidence that leadership characteristics have been applied or alternatively, that negative aspects have been reduced. The measurement of leadership enhancement is the weak link in the industry of management development. To make the process of soft skills improvement more robust, we need to complete the leadership enhancement cycle with observable evidence that verifies the extent of improvement.

Advancement in leadership and communication skills is driven by another type of process by which we acquire knowledge and understanding. We gather insights, even wisdom, into effective leadership through existing knowledge that then creates new knowledge. It is a cognitive process by which mental energy and activity build upon a base of understanding by awareness, attention, and comprehension of those events and stimuli that we encounter throughout the course of each day. Observation and language are crucial components to elevate the quality of soft skills. And, in turn, these skills affect not only one’s view of the world but the view of those with whom the manager interacts.

A new approach to develop better leadership and communication skills must include process steps to evaluate changes, hopefully improvements, in the characteristics that are presented to leadership participants. The collection of measurable results should be consistent in its approach over time, easily acquired, and certainly evaluated. Follow-up using the results of the study is essential. It is the absence of observable changes that distracts from the importance of soft skills enhancement.

The framework to present the ‘lesson’ for observation and assessment of impact on the participants will depend on the scope of the effort. Regardless of the scope, purpose of the project and desired outcomes should be revealed. When a special leadership project is launched due to serious problems in the organization, baseline numbers such as customer complaints or high employee turnover should be rolled into the plan.

In our own seminars, we stress the importance of establishing a mechanism to track the reaction to leadership insights and guidelines for effective communication. It is a challenging component of the presentation but it assures retention of the lesson after the conclusion of the presentation. In articles to be published in the future, we will explore specific examples of our work.

Reaction may appear as compliance, enthusiasm, or half-hearted attempts at change, or even dismissal. Gauging the return on investment requires follow-up to improve future attempts to enhance the overall culture of the organization. When organizations embrace the desire to learn and improve in areas of leadership style and corporate culture, the payoff is significant – both in measurable financial results as well as in the softer side of the business. Positive management style and effective communication is a valuable tier in existing processes of a firm. Its importance is magnified when change is on the horizon.

Call Center Leadership Series (Webinar Workshop)

Call Center Frontline Leadership Has The Greatest Impact on the Performance, and the Consistent Goal Achievement.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE WEBINAR SERIES

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An article in “The Leader in You” Series

Quality of leadership is not unique to an age or gender.

It is not bound by geography or awarded by nationality.

Its impact transcends space and time.

The marvel of positive influence extends beyond heads of state and corporate executives recognized for exemplary management.

Evidence of leadership appears:

And every time a person’s words or actions enhance the well-being of others.

Leadership resides in the person not the title or position.

Examples of Leadership

Examples of leadership aptitude are often coupled with dramatic challenges – courage in a moment of fear, uplifting the direction of a failing business, managing a team to a championship season.

We salute the winners who appear in headlines.

But who were those persons before the major event glamorized their reputation?

What is it about the person who makes an impression that stands out in a crowd?

In the absence of a dramatic event, is that person less of a leader?

What Makes Somebody Into a Leader?

The assets that distinguish the extraordinary persons among us are a blend of ethical and behavioral attributes that align with the most dignified of human possibilities...

They cause action and reaction to events and observations that compel the leader to act when others do not have a response.

?The persons we perceive as leaders are those who demonstrate the ability to enrich their community by the decisions they make for themselves and others.

The Principles That Define?

The principles that define persons direct their behavior.

They act when time and location place them in a situation that seeks a response.

?The confluence of stimuli in which they exist prompts the leaders to manage, to govern, and to encourage those around them.

Certainly, a person in a position of authority has opportunity to demonstrate leadership skills.

But, position alone is insufficient. Guidance rooted in confidence must co-exist with opportunity.?

Characteristics of Leadership

The characteristics of leadership ability are born of experience, education, and preparation.

Life experiences and educational opportunities are platforms to evaluate events and conditions.

They expose styles of behavior, effectiveness of communication, and shape the profile of every individual.

Leaders take experience and education and do something with it.

They act; they contribute to the conversation; they even know when to remain silent to absorb more information to enhance understanding.

They take the elements that life provides and incorporate those with meaning for them into a ‘response in waiting’ as the flow of events dictate.

They are prepared.?

As moments to make decisions appear, they act.

Leaders are also prepared to respond to the unexpected.

They ready themselves to react to the unanticipated.

They ask questions.

They muse over alternative possible outcomes.

We Can All Be Leaders?

We lead when we contribute to the flow and direction of circumstances and events in which we find ourselves either alone or with others.

When we use the ethical leadership practices that motivate others, improve environments, resolve conflicts, and point the moral compass of our community in the proper direction, we exercise the option to lead rather than remain passive.

Leadership Development Happens All The Time?

Leadership development can occur all the time. When we heighten our sensitivity to matters that affect lives, we allow ourselves to measure our assessment of encounters and respond or prepare a response that imports value to present and future situations.

Opinions and assessments are bound to differ among observers but the style and pace of engagement, and the dignity that a leader brings to inevitable tensions will impress even the harshest critics.

Moments of significant drama that impact millions of lives will likely evade most of us. We each, however, have occasions where we can elevate the morale and condition of those closest to us by the way we behave, by explicit and implicit signs of concern for others, and adherence to a code of ethics that supports the dignity of all around us.

The post Call Center Leadership Goals? appeared first on Call Center Best Practices.

Listening Skills to improve engagement and performance in your call center?

Yep!

I know, developing your listening skills doesn't seem all that exciting and afterall, will it really have any positive impact?

Improving Listening Skills Improves You As a Leader

In an article written by Glenn Llopis and published on Forbes.com, 6 Ways Effective Listening Can Make You A Better Leader,  Llopis makes the assertion that listening is a leadership responsibility that does not appear in the job description.

I agree with this 100%.

... Additionally, if you are authentic and hone this skill you can easily improve performance and stand out as a leader.

Yet many leaders do not understand this...

And as Llopis expressed further in his article...?

Importance of Listening Skills

The value on improving your listening skills and that of those that talk to your customers is tremendous, proves to be valuable, when we look at the breakdown of the communication process:

Research By Ohio State...

Time Spent In The Communication Process:

Research from Ohio State University shows that the amount of time we spend on different parts of the communication process is divided as follows...

Sophisticated Listening Enriches the Experience of Communication and Strengthens Relationships.

What Are the Risks of Incomplete Listening??

Click on the graphic to enlarge

And that is just looking at it from the organization side.  What if you look at it from the customers side.  Results become very interesting.  

I found this great explanation from SkillsYouNeed.?com??

Improve Your Listening Skills - Try These Solutions

Imagine a training module to improve both your listening skills as a leader, as well as, your teams?

Our Listening Skills Module does just that.  ?Our goal is to quickly improve this skill so you can personally witness the improvement in performance and in your level of customer service.

Discover How To Improve Listening Skills?

Listening Skills Webinar

Discover How To Improve Employee Engagement and the Customer Experience

Join The Webinar

I hope you found value from this article. If you did, would you please share and like using the social icons.

If you would like to add to the conversation, or have feedback or questions, please use the comments section below.?

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