While we often hear people around us complaining about endless IVR menus, in the Bright Index benchmarking we see that top performing centres have a larger proportion of self service calls without their customer satisfaction scores dropping. Customers appreciate a swift self service experience for simple queries as much as they dislike being lost in the IVR jungle.

Automation is of course attractive to businesses thanks to the positive effect on costs. Banks saw this early and now have as much as 70% of all calls handled by an IVR system, however many of them are now regretting this because they want to build relationships and sell more to these customers.

The trick is to get the balance right by continuously measuring its success and find pitfalls, and listening to both quantitative and qualitative feedback. When planning and implementing a self service solution a common starting point would be to make a list of your top 10 most common customer queries and list them according to value (to you) and complexity (for them). The queries scoring low on both are the ones you should look at including in your self service IVR.

Once your initial structure is in place the real development begins by finding out what’s working (out) for the customer. First of all, remember to measure whats relevant – not just whats easy. For example:

• How (long) *much* time do customers spend in self service – record this for each available option.
• What is the abandonment rate – again record for each option? When is the customer most likely to hang up or start over?
• Measure popularity and arrange options accordingly.
• Don’t forget about the qualitative data! Capture direct customer feedback from agents or from customer satisfaction surveys.

Second, make sure your design is easy to follow and that there should always be an easy way to speak to an agent. Customers will be sure to let you know if you get this wrong!

Recent automation statistics:
- On average in Bright’s benchmarking about 34% of all calls are handled by an automated solution.
- An average customer spends 80 seconds in a self-service solution.
- Around 15% of the calls are abandoned before they have come to the end, down from 20% a year ago.

What is the view on automation in your organisation and how do you maintain your Self Service IVR?
Looking forward to discuss!

PS. Don’t miss out on Richard Wilson’s lovely rant about IVR (and speech recognition in particular) here:

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/richard-wilson-on-hold/4od

Unfortunately there isn’t one single metric that will address this. Yes Net Promoter Score e.g. gives a good indication of CSAT but you need to measure and manage a number of performance and employee engagement metrics to be able to drive it. You also need to quantify if CSAT does in fact drive bottom line (it doesn’t always). By measuring and managing three areas you will be able to prove these links. Find out more by accessing Bright’s 5 minute VIDEO presentation on the topic below (courtesy of CSUK TV).

The key message is however still to try and cut your number of KPIs to as few as possible as long as they really are KEY in driving productivity, employee engagement or C-SAT. You simply cannot focus if you try to cover too many indicators. Having said that, we still can’t resist sharing trends for a couple of “secondary metrics” because they in turn drive KPIs.

• Agent v team leader ratio:
Bright has identified a sweet spot between 8-15 agents per team leader. Anything above and most KPIs will deteriorate. Anything below and you will not gain any additional benefit.

• Number of training days per agent and year:
A clear correlation exists between this and C-SAT but not primarily because of improved product knowledge. Agent engagement also increases therefore significantly improving both productivity and C-SAT.

• Level of self-service.
It is understood that automated solutions save money but we were surprised last year to find a positive correlation with C-SAT as well. Companies with a higher level of self-service (enabling customers to have their simpler “bulk” errands done quicker) scored several points higher with customers.

Have you managed to link KPIs with bottom line and given your board reason to sit up and listen? Or found “secondary metrics” that drive the key ones? Looking forward to discuss in our LinkedIn group “Bright Customer Management“!

Bright
November 2011

ECCA SITE

There are many myths out there on what really drives C-SAT. These myths are then made into targets communicated to agents, resulting in contact centres driving the wrong things.

When analysing 500,000 CSAT surveys carried out last year (through our automatic surveying tool Bright Navigator) we found two key things:

1. The breaking point for customers was between 1.5 to 2 minutes hold time. Breaking point meaning when customers started scoring general satisfaction low due to having waited too long.

2. The customers dissatisfied with hold time went on to score overall satisfaction lower than others however, not lower on average than 3 (on a scale of 1-5)! The customers dissatisfied with staff engagement and product knowledge however, scored their overall experience “very dissatisfied”. This even applied to customers having waited +5 minutes.

So engagement and product knowledge significantly trumps hold time in driving CSAT, yet what is the most common performance target to drive CSAT? 80% of calls handled within 20 seconds. Only 50% of calls across our industry are handled within 20 seconds and the target often cripples organisation who struggle to reach their service level targets.

When finding out their actual breaking points (when customers starting scoring them badly due to hold time), they often see that customers accept waiting longer than they previously thought, as long as metrics like FCR, engagement and product knowledge are ok once they’ve got through to an agent.

As they subsequently relax the service level targets this frees up resource to focus on the things that really drive C-SAT. When doing this for a number of clients last year, as well as showing the agents their individual C-SAT scores on a weekly basis; the clients’ number of very satisfied customers increased on average by, drum roll; 30%!

Join the discussion on LinkedIn

Do you have similar experiences in your centres? Have you found other areas that drive CSAT this much and last but not least; have you managed to prove the link between this and increase customer retention / spend and thus bottom line?

Discuss in our LinkedIn group Bright Customer Management.

Bright, September 2011

Download by clicking on the image below or email info@brightindex.co.uk for a printed version.