Live from Future Call Center Summit: 5 Steps to Successful Performance Management

Performance management is thus far the name of the game at this year’s Future Call Center Summit.

While no consensus has yet formed on the specific measures of greatest importance to call centers (and given the variety of businesses represented, it might not be possible), the idea that businesses need to improve their strategies for driving performances has absolutely garnered universal support.

No longer content to think of concepts like agent engagement, customer-centricity and multi-channel support from an abstract, idealistic, philosophical perspective, attendees at Call Center IQ’s Future Call Center Summit are demanding proof that their customer service endeavors are driving business results.

If the call center truly deserves the label of profit center rather than cost center, it needs to start justifying the new label.

In the early portion of his workshop presentation "Driving Contact Center Performance," Uptivity’s Ryan Prestel revealed the five steps to managing call center performance.

Those five steps, detailed below, form an endless cycle. Performance can always get better, which means improvement must be continuous:

Set goals: Before focusing on specific performance measurements, businesses and call center leaders need to come to an aligned understanding of the fundamental objectives most valuable to the business.

Define indicators: After developing clarity on the objectives, leaders must then establish a handful of integral performance indicators from which to gauge success. This array of metrics should encompass performance at all touchpoints and levels of the business.

Measure results: Confident that they have selected performance indicators that speak to the business’ fundamental objectives, leaders can rely on those metrics to provide a relevant, accurate snapshot of performance.

Identify opportunities: No business performs perfectly; the measurement process will reveal areas ripe for improvement. Whether it depicts crippling points of weakness or strengths that can become stronger, effective measurement will irrefutably uncover opportunities to create a better customer service function.

Enable action: At the end of the day, knowing how to improve a call center function is worthless if that knowledge does not drive change. In order to make the most of its measurement process, the business must assure the relevant internal and external resources are positioned to seize the opportunities for improvement.