Submitted by ramiska on
in
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I am looking for help in determining some good team performance metrics and how to measure them.
After fixing my broken resume the MT way, I realized that what my resume now mostly lacks is a good set of measurable accomplishments. It's not that I am unaccomplished but that my organization has never implemented a way of measuring our team's performance. We've done some amazing things but have never been able to measure the impact.
Sounds like it's up to me to implement something. Today I have the ability to measure the workload but not the accuracy. I believe I can concoct something there.
What I need at this time is a good way to measure internal customer satisfaction. We have mostly internal customers. I work in a constantly live 24x7 environment. At least 90% of calls are related to something happening [i][b]now[/b][/i]. Due to the immediacy of the work, I am hesitant to rely solely on surveys. Not to mention that surveys will only reach managers, not the callers.
We have recently (last week) decided to take on regular meetings with our customers so that should help with relations but not deliverable numbers.
Mostly, we are asked to do the impossible and deliver. On budget, you ask? At this level, we do not handle capital so I'd like to stay more focused on accuracy, efficiency, and satisfaction measurements.
I came to this through a resume building exercise, but really it will help the organization by giving our non-MT managers something better to work with in annual reviews. :wink:
Thank you for any thoughts you may have.
-Rich
Team Performance Measurements
Satisfaction can be very difficult to measure without an established way to ASK their satisfaction. Your new meetings will likely give you a good idea - but it may not be the whole picture.
My company uses a subjective review of random calls. It's subjective in that the employee and the reviewer make a determination based on the call of the things they should continue to do, stop doing, or start doing differently to provide outstanding service on every call. This can be made to generate a number that will measure their performance.
Team Performance Measurements
Rich, you said you are also focused on efficiency in addition to accuracy and satisfaction (which are both difficult to measure), is that correct? Can you quote some efficiency number (i.e., percentage of calls answered within internal service level goals)?
If you are assisting internal customers don't be afraid to determine what it would take to satisfy your callers (thus lessening your dependence on surveys). If it's a technical type of call, it might be as option to look at the rate of single call resolution.
Call Center magazine ran a good article earlier in the year titled, [i]Are You Guilty of Survey Malpractice?[/i] in which they point out some things to consider when surveying customers.
[url]http://www.callcentermagazine.com/shared/article/showArticle.jhtml;jsess...
Team Performance Measurements
Efficiency on answered calls is tough to say. I think efficiency for us may be measured in man-hours more than call performance. That would probably be handled on the results of ingenuity.
We answer all calls or the work doesn't get done. Our trouble is in saying "you are lower priority than the other call, please hold" without actually saying [i]that[/i]. We need them to be happy to hold, after all. Their issue may be higher priority next time. :)
[quote]Can you quote some efficiency number (i.e., percentage of calls answered within internal service level goals)? [/quote]
The trouble there is that there are no goals. That's what I need to set.
Can you (the forum) give examples of some contact center satisfaction or efficiency goals that you have set at your organization? That may be the best way for me to figure out what we need.
Team Performance Measurements
Interesting, a "good problem" to have. You have to distinguish "measuring" from "fixing".
Everything is measurable. Brainstorm with your DRs broad areas to measure, within the parameters you've outlined here (e.g., no financial measures, no call resolution measures). List without judging then narrow down into manageble chunks. Step one is to get a baseline. After a month or two of collecting data have another meeting to determine priorities for improvement. Define what the metrics will be when improvement occurs. Institute ideas that improve. Adjust ideas that don't. Always give it back to the people- they know their goals, they know how to get there. All of it can (should) be documented. O3s, feedback and coaching will get things accomplished faster than you expect.
Now you have two things for the resume: measurable performance improvement, and, a system to capture and report on the data!
Team Performance Measurements
I've worked in a number of call centers; here are some of the items my teams have measured (this goes across different organizations and varies slightly depending on the business):
Service level: Our departmental goal is to answer 70% of the calls in 30 seconds or less. The other side of the business has a slightly higher goal of 80% of the calls answered in 30 seconds or less.
Average handle time (AHT): The total talk time plus any off-the-phone work time divided by the total number of calls. I prefer a 'in a perfect world' model of using the AHT to determine the number of calls that person could handle in an hour if they had calls constantly flowing and no offline responsibilities that are not customer-facing. Divide the total seconds in an hour by the total AHT. For my team, the goal is 4-6 calls per hour - more than that and they probably aren't meeting our quality standards, less than that and they aren't properly using their time.
FWIW, if your team handles a lower number of total calls daily but have a higher amount of time required to address them, look at calls on a weekly basis to get a reasonable average. You'll see patterns here in your employees performance that will allow you to establish norms, then goals.
First call resolution: Depending on your tools and reporting, this can be measured a few ways. One way is to monitor your incoming call patterns if your phone system allows the user to select general options as to the problem. If the customer calls in again within 30 days and uses the same selections, it was not resolved on the first call. The other way is if your team uses a ticketing/reporting system for all calls, did that customer call in for the same/similar problem within 30 days?
We also measure the tickets created - how many tickets were created when compared to the calls taken? These should be fairly close in a technical organization, especially if ALL calls are captured. (This also gives you data you can use about your common call drivers, allowing you to identify areas for process improvement, automation opportunities, and customer education needs).
Quality can be measured in a lot of ways.
One company I worked for sent individual surveys to the caller via email. They were handled by a 3rd party and were completely anonymous. This had the advantage of giving you true customer voice, but it could also lead to invalid surveys (I kept the one that said I was less intelligent than wilted plant life and needed to go to charm school - in the same comments the customer referred to several things that indicated the survey wasn't really mine).
Another company used a checklist of items they had decided lead to customer satisfaction. It was an absolute requirement that the greeting be scripted and ended with 'how may I assist you today?' After the customer's next words, no matter what they were, you were required to say 'I'll be happy to help you with that.' I'm not big on scripts and I routinely failed that portion of the quality assessment...it's just not always appropriate.
My current company uses the subject process I talked about earlier (PM me if you want more details on that). This is the individual contribution. We also use a 3rd party vendor to call customers and survey them on their experience. This is an overall score that cannot be traced to single individuals.