Consider the Source

Being a Hero vs. Doing Things Right

By Chris Pfauser, Compass Principal Consultant

Let’s say you’re a talented and ambitious young IT professional. Late one Friday afternoon, the VP of sales corners you in the hallway and says his laptop has crashed, just as he was finishing a presentation for a Monday morning meeting with a new customer.

Do you:

A: drop everything and restore the document, even if it means calling in colleagues and working over the weekend.

B: tell the VP to call the Help Desk and get a problem ticket.

Obviously, in this instance the right thing to do is to jump in and resolve the crisis.  However, the scenario illustrates a key challenge of managing an effective IT organization: how to reconcile individual ambition and initiative with the need for process discipline and consistency.

Many large IT organizations make a virtue of fixing crises and putting out fires. As a result, what they become really good at is fixing crises and putting out fires.  Meanwhile, the truly top-performing organizations find ways to prevent crises and fires from happening in the first place.

The “hero” culture in IT can undermine efficiency and improvement initiatives in a variety of ways.  Consider, for example, an ITIL initiative – it’s all about process standardization, consistency, and repeatability. In a sense, all those things are a threat to the IT hero, because they don’t give him or her a chance to shine, to be different and better, to be heroic.  For executives managing ITIL initiatives, it’s therefore essential to gain the support of the IT heroes and give them a stake in its success.  Otherwise, because they’re talented and ambitious and smart, they’ll find a way to derail the process. Read more.

Sourcing relationships can also fall prey to the hero syndrome. In many instances, a client organization characterized by a hero-driven, ad hoc, and reactionary approach to problem management confronts a process- and standardization-oriented service provider. When these respective approaches clash, the client’s way usually prevails, for a variety of reasons. First off, the idea that the “customer’s always right” is a powerful one. Moreover, retained staff are often more experienced and senior than their service provider counterparts, particularly in offshore environments.  Hence, the vendor team often lacks the wherewithal to push back and insist on standards and consistency. An added danger of the hero syndrome in outsourced environments is that strong personal bonds often develop between the respective teams – everyone’s in it together, striving to be heroic. So both sides feel that the partnership is strong, even if service delivery is woefully inefficient.

The way out of the impasse is for senior executives from both sides to step back and reassess the initial objectives of the initiative, and to re-commit to the steps necessary to drive improvement. Again, it’s imperative to gain the trust and support of the best and brightest on both teams, and to give them a stake in ensuring that standardization and consistency prevail over individual heroics. Read more. 

Part II: Cloud Computing - The Next Big Step for Contact Center Services

by Tony Zmudzin, Director, TPI

Several weeks ago I posted the first installment of a 2-part blog that explored what the proliferation of Cloud-computing solutions means for contact center services, and I touched on the array of appealing offerings on the market today. Can the many potential Cloud-based solutions be beneficial for contact centers? Are truly virtualized operations achieveable? I encourage you to read part 1 if you haven't already.

Now I turn to several major factors to consider if you're contemplating the move to a Cloud Computing-based contact center model. The market offers something for every buyer, but you must take it upon yourself to conduct proper due diligence when considering whether the Cloud deliver practical and measurable results to your organization. Here is TPI's advice for how to frame your thinking:

Buyers should assess their operational considerations (many of them internal) as they consider moving to a Cloud Computing-based contact center model. If your agents will be remote from your facility, you will no longer be able to walk the aisles, hear the center’s “buzz” and be able to identify service or training needs first hand. You will need to establish a new management model, train or otherwise retool your management team to effectively manage remote performance and establish training competencies for your remote agents.

Security demands special consideration inasmuch as the buyer’s enterprise is extending its operations to third parties. Security components include public versus private or virtual private Cloud, physical facility security, desktop lockdown, browser cleansing, network security, encryption for data storage and transmission, network security (multilayer firewalling and network intrusion systems), data backup, application-level protection, and industry certifications such as PCI Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Buyers should evaluate the ability to perform independent security certification and auditing of the service provider’s service solution.

Other general considerations include implementing multicarrier redundancy as part of the solution; eliminating single points of failure; and ensuring that privacy and security solutions meet industry and client requirements. You also should consider service provider plans and commitments for continual innovation and refresh of hardware and software components, provider solution integration with existing buyer applications, and responsibility for new interfaces to internal applications, ongoing integration management, and maintenance.

It is vital for any enterprise to view a Cloud implementation as a strategic decision. Small to medium-sized businesses are most active in exploring the total cost of ownership benefits offered by Cloud-based solutions. Enterprises that have large installed call center infrastructures should assess the fit and purpose of a Cloud-based solution against their current investment. Parallel model office, pilot testing or geographical location expansion are good approaches for larger enterprises to protect the brand and established customer relationships. Regardless, a wide range of business issues must be codified in the statement of work and agreement. These issues involve physical and logical security, platform availability, disaster recovery/business continuity coverage, data backup requirements, data ownership terms, pricing, reporting and terms that facilitate “easy” expansion and contraction of support for changing transaction volumes.

Finally, buyers should assess their governance maturity and competency. A multi-operational and/or multivendor environment requires a specific kind of governance structure and process set. Buyers enhance their opportunity for success by having the right governance talent, experience, tools and methods.
Cloud-based call center solutions represent the latest available option to consumers of contact center services and should be viewed as a real potential alternative to internal or available service solution market offerings from third-party providers. These solutions, as with any other buying decisions, must be supported by solid business and sourcing strategies. Buyers must remember that these solutions transfer responsibility for the services, operations or processes to a third-party provider in a big way. The provider is now an integrator — not a traditional service provider putting agents in seats. Buyers need to ensure they are ready to successfully manage on this new horizon, and then choose wisely.

In 2010, Orange Business Services surveyed 500 multinational corporations in 12 European countries across the financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, retail and transportation industries regarding those organizations’ “application management plans and attitudes among decision makers.” Survey findings revealed that only 95 of the 500 companies — or 19 percent — planned to virtualize their call center applications. The survey summary played down the number, but a different way to look at this is that if the 19 percent is applied against the US$300 billion internal and sourced global market, there will be much activity and leverage of this solution option.

If you are considering a Cloud-based solution for your contact center, our experts can help you every step of the way. Contact me at tony.zmudzin@tpi.net.

Managing Your Service Desk for Quality and Efficiency

By Chris Pfauser, Principal Consultant, Compass; and James Kane, Director & Associate Partner, TPI


Editors note: Last month the parent company of TPI, Information Services Group Inc., acquired Compass, the premier independent global provider of business and information technology benchmarking, performance improvement, data and analytics services. This TPI Top 5 was co-authored by one of our Compass colleagues.

IT Service Desk management practices are evolving in response to a variety of technology innovations and new business requirements. As quality service at low cost becomes increasingly commonplace, top-performing organizations are seeking new and innovative ways to gain a competitive edge.

Here are the TPI Top 5 keys to optimizing Service Desk efficiency and value contribution:

1. Don’t just resolve incidents; manage problems. Analyze incidents and problems to identify root causes. Use this knowledge to take corrective action and drive improvement. Don’t fall into the trap of efficiently managing incidents; rather, seek to eliminate them at their source. Move beyond basic measures of incident resolution and link performance metrics to broader objectives. Clients increasingly favor a pricing mechanism where the focus shifts from quantity to quality. Be sure to integrate Service Desk measures with other parts of the IT organization and business to enable problem analysis and resolution. Use benchmarking to address three questions: What? So what? Do what?

2.  Manage contact volume. Use self-help and automation tools to reduce contact volumes and ensure that incidents are either resolved without any direct agent contact or sent to appropriate channels.  Invest in training and knowledge management databases and aim for first-contact resolution rates of 80 percent to 90 percent. For contacts involving agents, don’t just measure cost per contact; also analyze cost per resolution to assess the impact of activities outside of the Service Desk. Strike a balance between self-help tools and automation on the one hand, and the user experience on the other. Alternative contact methods, such as click to chat and video (Skype^TM) are rated highly in user experience and allow agents to manage multiple discussions in real time while leveraging contemporary social media interactions.

3. Train to retain. Use incentives and bonuses to promote “positive” turnover that moves agents up and out of the Service Desk and places them elsewhere in the organization. Avoid “negative turnover” – terminations, resignations, and poaching by other businesses. Use cross-training and “walk-a-mile” programs to build awareness of the Service Desk’s contribution. Invest in the development of industry vertical knowledge in your Service Desk staff.

4.  Get the right staffing mix. Employ a mix of veterans and new recruits. Focus on the staffing life cycle and establish strong relationships with local universities to develop a recruiting pipeline of talent. Seek staff that not only are not only highly competent in technology but can build relationships, manage conflict and develop, contribute to high client satisfaction and seek to drive continuous improvement.  Design training programs to advance people within the organization, while maintaining a supply of qualified new trainees. Incentive programs should reward both individual and team performance and involve some level of competition.

5. Strive for a balanced sourcing strategy. Seek a balance between in-house and outsourced functionality; one that achieves cost efficiency with the highest service quality. Segment contacts and direct them to appropriate channels. Route standard and simple tasks to self-help options and automated tools. Send basic inquiries to junior staff and offshore centers to further leverage cost efficiency. Complex problems and inquiries from high-value users should go directly to experienced agents and specialists. Develop consistent criteria and tightly coupled procedures with the “feet on the street” organization when a dispatch of service is required.

The experts at TPI and Compass can help you meet your service desk challenges through industry experience and specialized knowledge of your industry. Contact Chris Pfauser, Compass, or James Kane, TPI, for more information.

Cloud Computing: Taking the Next Big Step for Contact Center Services

by Tony Zmudzin, Director, TPI

Managers of contact center operations as well as their counterparts in information technology and other areas are looking to the next big horizon in service delivery: Cloud Computing. As they look to take that next step, the key question is whether the “rainbow” on that horizon is true virtualized reality for contact center operations.

The history of this move to the Cloud goes back nearly 20 years. Intelligent Internet use has provided multiple benefits to industry, especially since 1991 when the National Science Foundation freed the Internet for commercial use. As beneficiaries, business and individual users have been progressively moving from pushing atoms — paper letters, invoices and purchase orders — to pushing bits — e-mail, online ordering and billing, and electronic delivery of book content. Businesses have continued to extend their use of the Internet to include hub-and-spoke delivery infrastructures and telecommuting and virtual officing for a substantive percentage of the work force — including adoption of call handling by home-based agents. Both captive and sourced call centers have applied such leverage. Cloud-based services offer a logical and continued extension of the Internet infrastructure to further improve service options and reduce the cost of servicing customer contact.

Providers of Cloud-based services position this virtualized solution as less expensive than traditional solutions (total cost of ownership) and as easy to implement. Cloud-based services offer three primary benefits:

1.    Minimizing or eliminating capital expenditures
2.    Facilitating quick deployment
3.    Providing capacity on demand for volume expansion and contraction

We see providers of Cloud-based call center platforms define these benefits using different names. Common terms used to describe the benefits include flexible capacity, flexible financial commitments, instant deployment, quick response to changing business needs, ongoing innovation, low cost of ongoing maintenance, cost-effective disaster recovery, always-on availability, proven security and ease of integration. In the end, the main attraction is the ability to move away from a large capital expenditure to a periodic (monthly or annual) fee.

The market offers something for every buyer, from software-only solutions to “full” infrastructure (hardware and software) solutions providing greater than 99.99 percent availability, inbound call routing, workforce management, interactive voice response, chat and e-mail tools, outbound call handling and dialing, computer telephony integration, agent management, quality monitoring tools, and user-driven reporting and analytics. At times, these solutions are oversold by service providers, so proper due diligence is an imperative phase of a buyer’s sourcing process.

In my next installment I'll address several major factors to consider if you're contemplating the move to a Cloud Computing-based contact center model. Should you have questions in the meantime, please feel free to e-mail me.

Five Easy Steps to More Effective Contact Center Performance Measures

By John Magliocca, Senior Advisor, TPI

“You can improve what you can measure” is an adage many contact center managers strive to realize. But while data collection and reporting systems are critical contact center tools, access to statistics alone will not ensure success in improving performance. Improper communication, unnecessary complications and inconsistent application of performance measures often cause the best contact centers to underachieve and cause key programs to fail.

How do you acquire the biggest bang through measuring performance? Here are the TPI Top 5 steps that can boost your chances of operational improvement:

1. Plan your direction carefully. Determine which key measure(s) is/are most critical to the success of the operation and develop the plan for improvement around that measure.

2. Limit key measures to a core four or five. Do not be trapped into developing multiple simultaneous improvement plans.

3. Ensure that all goals are achievable. In an attempt to improve numbers rapidly, do not be fooled into thinking a lofty, unachievable goal will provide sufficient incentive for an agent to stretch performance that much further.

4. Avoid metrics that send conflicting messages to the staff. Key performance indicators and metrics that are contradictory in nature can lead you down a path to failure.

5. Carefully explain the objectives to all members of the contact center team. Every member of the team must clearly understand your objectives and work together to achieve the primary target.

Read John's entire TPI Top 5 here . . .

Following these tips may not ensure performance improvement, but it can certainly improve your chances of success. TPI can help you to compare your contact center technology to best-practice enterprises and identify key technologies and how best to apply them.

E-mail John Magliocca, Senior Advisor, TPI, or phone him at +1 412 527 8964 to learn more.

Contact Centers and the Off Shore Migration

By Amy McCarty, Sr. Advisor, TPI

 
Is the current economy changing the outsourcing practices of contact center services?  With the economic slowdown there are individuals that believe moving business offshore is unwise.  This group is in favor of keeping jobs in the local economy.  Recently however, I have been listening to a number of quarterly earnings calls from both the clients and the service providers.  These calls, along with a review of published industry papers, indicate just the opposite.  In a time where we are experiencing an economic slowdown, companies are still continuing to move jobs offshore.  And some companies are aggressively pushing jobs offshore.  Some might ask why…  There are a number of reasons clients and service providers tell us they continue moving the right jobs offshore. Below are just a couple:

Savings – the savings are undisputable.  Our research shows that offshore contact centers, efficiently operated, can save upwards of 40% over U.S.-based contact centers.  Savings in the contact center allow investment in core areas of the business.

Quality – the quality, for the price, is comparable to what you would experience in a U.S.-based contact center.  If you are looking to move your customer service, chat, or e-mail support offshore you will experience quality comparable to what you would experience in a U.S. site.  The quality is maintained through intensive new hire and ongoing training, higher frequencies of quality monitoring sessions, and regular feedback from leadership and peer groups alike.  Keep in mind that the quality of off shore work may or may not be appropriate for your premium customer segment.  For that reason strategy and customer segmentation must be thought through so your placement of Services is in line with your customers expectations and continues to support a positive experience.

Innovation – offshore sites employ a unique group that embraces and values the contact center position.  In some locales it is a new and exciting corporate opportunity.  These agents see their role within the contact center as a stepping stone to their career growth.

My experience indicates that tough decisions need to be made in difficult financial times.  Outsourcing, both within the U.S. and to offshore locations, can be the element that keeps your business operational and profitable during this slowdown.  It is critical that your company partners with a service provider that shares your company’s values and beliefs related to operational execution and innovation.   The right partnership will allow you to maneuver through the difficult times and capitalize on the improving economy earlier than if you were operating alone. 

Keep in mind that the strategy and customer segmentation must be taken into account so that the relationship you enjoy with your premium customer is not damaged.

I am interested in hearing how you have approached outsourcing and what initiatives you have put in place to weather the economic storm.  Have you experienced advantages related to savings, quality, and innovation?  Or do you feel the benefits lie in strategies other than outsourcing?  I’m interested to hear your opinion and discuss the options you’ve considered or implemented.

Top 5 Actions to Heighten the Strategic Impact of Your Procurement Organization

By Bill Huber, Director, CPO Services, TPI

During tough economic times, procurement is often called upon to “win” price and payment term concessions from suppliers and service providers in order to boost the bottom line. While there is no question that part of procurement’s role is to ensure that a company is paying the best price, the “blunt instrument” approach tends to simply focus on supplier profit margins without doing anything to improve quality or drive innovation that ultimately, permanently removes real costs from the supply chain. 

                                                                                              

Here are five actions that you can take to raise the strategic impact of your procurement organization.

1. Define the target role for your procurement organization. Review your department objectives and formalize the role and results that you would like procurement to achieve for your company during tough economic times. Set strategic objectives in terms of innovation, quality, cost savings and customer service that the procurement organization will embrace as a response to recessionary times, and measure your progress toward those goals.

2. Segment your supply base. A formal tiering of your supply base, with best-practice supplier management processes for the top tier, can have a dramatic effect on the value that you derive from your most important suppliers. Set frequencies for reporting, monitoring, collaboration and financial reviews with each, and require that your most strategic suppliers bring a certain number of innovation suggestions to the table each period. Set a formal process whereby these suggestions will be vetted, with the best ideas submitted for review by an executive-level procurement governance team.

3. Realign your resources. Identify underutilized or misaligned resources, and shift roles to focus talent on your greatest areas of opportunity. Often individuals who have been focused on a particular commodity because of their expertise could bring a fresh perspective to other categories. People who make the greatest impact in their current areas can have an even greater effect on an entirely different category.   

4. Review processes and technology to identify roadblocks and underutilized capabilities. Processes can be slower and more cumbersome than they need to be. Stay on the lookout for procurement processes that were designed to address a past problem that is no longer relevant today. Also, organizations often have only partially deployed procurement technology solutions for lack of resources to support a more ambitious rollout. A second look can reveal underutilized technology that could be leveraged with a different support model to drive faster cost savings or improve visibility or user satisfaction.

5. Evaluate governance structures, and change if necessary. Good procurement governance should enable transparency and balanced decision making. In order for it to be effective, procurement governance must be designed to ensure that important decisions are made at the right level to balance risks with rewards, and to ensure a timely flow of information to the right levels of the organization.  

Implementation of these five actions could ultimately improve the effectiveness of your procurement organization by 3 to 5 percent or more, increasing your impact on the bottom line and transforming the role that procurement plays within your company.

TPI’s CPO Services experts can collaborate with you to assess your current procurement processes, then help you identify and implement strategies to improve quality, drive innovation and permanently remove real costs from the supply chain.

Contact us today to begin the dialogue.

Successful Contact Center Outsourcing

Today's guest blog entry is by Amy McCarty, Senior Advisor, TPI Contact Center Services

 

Outsourcing is an attractive proposition in today’s economic climate.  Using contact centers for outsourcing projects allows companies to shift their cost structures from fixed to variable and avoid large technical investments. Companies benefit by taking advantage of a large service provider’s buying power and broad industry expertise through its multi-client - multi-industry approach. 

While these benefits are hard to argue with, it’s important to do your homework first.  The time and energy investment upfront can make outsourcing a positive, successful, and financially beneficial experience.  The top five issues to consider are:

1. Creating solid, well structured contracts – In my experience, a poor or loosely defined contract structure can lead to confusion and poor execution. The lack of structure leads to varying interpretations of the contract’s original intent as personnel changes over time.

2. Managing an ongoing service provider relationship – Identify the right person to manage the relationship on a full time basis to ensure successful delivery by your service provider.  Lack of oversight in the relationship will cause long-term dissatisfaction with the service provider if communications are fragmented and internal client goals are not met.

3. Aligning vendors with corporate goals and values – Service providers should have the same goals as your organization. Differing goals can lead to varied expectations, misunderstandings, and general dissatisfaction with the process.

4. Defining your contact center’s strategic vision – Your strategic vision should be defined and communicated internally prior to executing a contract with a service provider.  Once defined, the vision can act as the guide for selecting a service provider and developing a beneficial contract.  Without a vision, a mismatch can only be discovered once the contract is executed and implementation is underway.

5. Identifying the right (qualified) service provider – Each service provider has an area of expertise. There are no one size fits all service providers. A client should spend time researching the right service provider before moving forward to prevent a bad outsourcing experience.

It has been my experience that far too often there are critical factors missing from a contract. Doing the due diligence from the start and making sure your address the five points outlined above can result in a positive outsourcing relationship and a return on investment. I’m interested in learning about your past/present contract experiences and how you may have tried to repair the relationship.