Optimize Call Center ASR & Improve the Customer Experience with Productivity Monitoring
Call centers are by and large measured by two differing KPIs: ASR and customer satisfaction. These metrics for call centers’ success often compete. In order to answer more calls, agents may sacrifice the customer experience by rushing through calls; or, reversing that, spend too much time on individual calls, lowering call answer rates and the number of customers that are serviced. To increase both of these key metrics without forfeiting quantity of calls or the quality of service, call centers need agile solutions that can be applied to their particular needs. In order to both optimize call center ASR and improve the customer experience, call centers needed a solution that could work to do both. This is how productivity monitoring became a solution for call centers specifically.
Improving the Customer Experience With Productivity Monitoring
Customer service centers play an integral role in creating the customer experience that builds customer loyalty and satisfaction.
In their Global State of Customer Service report, Microsoft found that customer expectations regarding their service experiences continue to grow; 55% of customers expect customer service to perpetually improve. If it doesn’t, the same study reported 58% of customers are willing to end their product relationship over customer service that falls short of their standards. With brand loyalty heavily reliant on customer service interactions, the pressure is put on call centers to deliver.
An example of this is seen in a popular use case reported by call centers who have turned to productivity monitoring to identify how they could improve their customer experience: shortening call wait times. Here’s how one call center used their productivity monitoring suite to do it:
Customer Experience Use Case:
After installing a productivity monitoring agent on their employee machines, the call center waited a month to collect a sample of agent performance data. Then, using the behavior analytics report provided by the agent, management got to work on understanding the new insights they were provided and quickly identified a productivity gap that slowed service and increased wait times.
The behavior analytics report revealed that call center agents needed to use at least four different applications in order to answer calls and customer service tickets they were receiving. The productivity monitoring agent showed that by toggling between one app to retrieve customer information, another app to open rendered services, another to request information and yet another to close the ticket, agents were losing time on calls as were customers.
Management was stunned by the data. Customers were kept waiting a minimum of nine seconds while agents had to switch and load the different applications in order to service the call. While the addition of applications was initially thought to relieve servicing processes, it was having the opposite effect. A fact brought to their attention only once productivity monitoring was introduced. Using the included behavior analytics reports, management was also able to identify which of these applications were the most necessary and which could be combined or retired in order to shorten customer wait time and duration.
A month after restructuring the applications used by agents, management turned to the behavior analytics report again. By truncating the app usage of agents, call duration times went down as did call wait times, improving the overall customer experience. By using productivity monitoring, management was able to decrease the call center’s average call duration by six seconds, all time the customer would’ve been on hold.
By using productivity monitoring as a way to improve the customer experience on calls, the call center also improved overall productivity as a result. With shorter call durations and less call wait times, agents were able to average more answered calls than previously possible. This allowed management to optimize call center ASR and improve the customer experience at the same time.
Optimizing ASR with Productivity Monitoring
Call center productivity is often in part determined by answer seizure rates, or ASR. ASR measures the amount of calls that were successfully connected and answered by call center agents. Busy networks, call congestion and the unavailability of agents negatively affect a call center’s ASR, lowering productivity and affecting consumers. Call centers can improve their ASR by improving these factors, especially agent availability. Easing agent call workflows is one such way this can be done.
By focusing on the overall work processes rather than singularly focusing on call monitoring, productivity monitoring agents supply the analysis of overall systems and agent performance. Armed with these insights, management can streamline the call center processes; and one such way productivity monitoring has proven to benefit call centers is by helping to improve call center ASR. A common usage for productivity monitoring in a call center, here’s an example of one call center specifically used productivity monitoring to increase their ASR.
ASR Use Case:
The call center was looking for ways to improve their ASR and after assessing and updating the health of their networks, began to look for ways to increase ASR through agent availability. As with all centers, the call center was facing staffing shortages and their employed agents were stretched too thin. While hiring more agents was underway, the center decided to implement a productivity monitoring suite in order to find ways to alleviate and optimize their existing agent workflow.
The call center also turned to the behavior analytics report to figure out how agents were working and pinpoint areas needing improvement. Using just a week’s worth of data, the call center immediately found a way to more efficiently and effectively respond to callers’ needs.
By mining the behavior analytics report then investigating app usage, managers found that many callers were requesting the same information and assistance. Agents were spending almost half of their time locating and relaying the same information. Managers knew if part of this information was readily available to callers, agents would have time to respond to more customer service inquiries, and customers would be able to help themselves without having to wait for an available agent.
Using the behavior analytics report and screen recordings and app usage data provided by the productivity monitoring suite, management was able to justify the investment in and scale their operations using an interactive voice response system (IVR). The IVR could replace the need for an agent when callers were seeking answers to commonly asked questions.
Setting up the IVR, the call center again turned to the productivity monitoring suite. Within the reports of productivity monitoring offered, managers were able to narrow down the list of common inquiries and make them available via IVR. After installing their new workflow, they reassessed the center’s productivity and ASR for a week.
The numbers spoke for themselves. Due to reworking their agent processes and introducing IVR, the call center’s ASR increased by 13% in just a week. Not only were more calls being answered by the center on both their IVR system and through agents, agents were also seeing more variety in inquiries from callers. Not wanting to plateau progress, managers repeated the behavior analytics report analyzation process to further optimize call center ASR and improve the customer experience of calls dialing in.
Conclusion
While monitoring solutions are widely used by call centers to track the productivity of agents, few call monitoring technologies provide the necessary insights managers and administrators need in order to improve workflows and customer experience. General productivity monitoring software has provided the solutions call centers need in order to do just that.
To fully optimize call center ASR and improve the customer experience with productivity monitoring, center managers and administrators must realize the potential of the tools offered by monitoring suites. While ASR and the customer experience are the two most important call center metrics benefited by monitoring suites, once call centers invest in the technology, more opportunities for the continuing improvement and advancement of call center workflows will become apparent.
Harness Data & Analytics With Teramind
Empowering your team to be more focused, decisive and productive is no easy task. Managers and team leads need clear metrics to manage their teams efficiently, but all of the data can be overwhelming. Teramind fills the missing gap in existing employee monitoring solutions by translating raw tracking data into meaningful metrics that can help you make data-driven decisions.
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