Carl Boothby, vice president of operations for renowned internet services pioneer Network Solutions, has no trouble admitting that some call center supervisors are not cut-out for leading the charge to drive profit from the customer service function.
After all, with an entrenched, metrics-first mindset prevailing in many call center environments, asking supervisors to reinvent themselves as business leaders and take on significant, rapidly-evolving goals and objectives is far from a walk in the park.
But as he detailed in his Wednesday presentation at the 12th Annual Call Center Week in Las Vegas, held from June 13-17 at Planet Hollywood Resort, the rewards are there for those customer management leaders who can initiate the changes in culture and process needed to turn their call center operations into profit-minded functions.
Over the past few years, Network Solutions has transformed its customer service effort from a narrow operation that was "all about the reps" and traditional metrics into one that brings legitimate value to the business.=
Boothby explained that as part of the organization's transformation, which included building "pods" around product lines that were run by the former call center supervisors as separate businesses, the contact center agents "became intimate with the calls. They could anticipate what the caller was calling about."
He added, "The sales focus became a lot tighter. We were able to offer better offers. We were better in tune with the next step of the customer lifecycle."
Providing an explanation for his organization's success and potential guidance for those looking to mirror it, Boothby broke down his process into some fundamental tenets.
Central to his philosophy is his "key to profitability." For Boothby, "This game is not a cost reduction game. It's P&L management, tied to revenue, cost and quality."
Boothby identified "three Ps" for achieving that flavor of profitability: people, process and platform. By emphasizing this philosophy not only at the senior management level but also in the day-to-day call center culture, agents become more invested in the proper performance benchmarks, more comfortable presenting ideas to management and, ultimately, more skilled and efficient at dealing with customers on the proper terms. This leads to desired, sustainable profitability for the customer management function.
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Strategies, unconventional for some adhering to previous philosophies towards call center profitability, include assessing representatives (people) not strictly on call performance but whether they can bring more value to the organization in another role (and then re-assigning them), a willingness to seize process improvements even when they do not tie directly to revenue generation and involving key stakeholders in platform discussions to avoid an us-vs.-IT mentality.
"Service chat [had] scared the heck out of us because we didn't want to lose the revenue," said Boothby of an idea to use non-sales web channels, rather than calls, to connect with customers on issues like forgotten passwords. Ultimately, however, this ended up minimizing call time spent on issues that were unlikely to turn into revenue drivers, thereby setting the stage for a more profitable call center process.
This culture of embracing ideas that improve the profitability of customer contact channels, even if not through significant cost reductions or significant revenue improvements, has proven immensely successful for Network Solutions, both on the bottom line and in terms of agent engagement.
Boothby confirmed that his organization addressed 400 employee-based ideas in 2010, and while "these [were] not four million dollar ideas, these [were] little ideas that [added] up to hundreds of thousands a year."
And with customer management professionals more dialed into the success of their work, "retention rates have improved by about 20%." Boothby says it is all "because we're listening to employees and getting rid of things that cause them angst on the job."
In addition to helping the Network Solutions customer management function avoid the talent crunch facing many call centers, the increased agent engagement and increased sense of ownership over the process has produced better representatives and, consequently, increased revenue from direct customer interactions.
As call center executives seek to truly remove the "cost center" stigma and achieve the profitability so often promised in conferences, webinars and expert trade papers, they have Network Solutions' strategy as a model of success. Rapid, bottom-line-minded changes might pay off and impress the C-suite in the short-term, but a comprehensive, constantly-evolving strategy that approaches the customer management function like a distinct business that leaves no process improvement or employee engagement stone unturned is a pathway to the desired long-term profitability.