Improving Efficiency using Transaction Monitoring

In the majority of the audit forms that I have witnessed thus far, I have rarely seen any efficiency metric being included in the audit form. Our audit forms are normally used to check compliance to Customer Service Guidelines (CSAT requirements), Process guidelines, Client instructions and language accuracies. There is seldom a parameter in the audit form which objectively scrutinizes the efficiency of the transaction. This results in either the quality department or the operations team taking up additional projects to improve productivity.

In my opinion, being lean and efficient is a continual goal rather than a once-in-a-while attempt to meet targets when the productivity targets are not being met. In order to cultivate the culture of continually improving the efficiency of the project, it must be inculcated into an activity which is continually being performed and that activity is Transaction Monitoring.

So the question arises, how do we improve productivity using the transaction monitoring process. The answer is pretty simple – turn your transaction monitoring into a mini time & motion study. It would require you to draw a process map for each and every type of transaction that an agent handles, find the optimum time required to complete each of those process steps and arrive at an optimum time to handle the entire transaction.

After this exercise of baselining is complete and you know the optimum time required to complete almost all types of transactions, you will train your QAs on this process map along with the time required to perform each step in the process map and have them compare the transactions they are auditing with the process map that was baselined for optimum performance. When the QAs perform the comparative audit, they will be able to find the redundancies in the transactions. We can then classify these redundancies into controllable and non-controllable redundancies. For example: An agent wasting time due to lack of knowledge or placing the customer on hold without any reason or the agent’s system facing latency issues – each of these can be classified as a controllable redundancy. However, in the event that a Customer places the agent on hold for a reason, it can be classified as a non-controllable redundancy.

The data from the audit can be used to:

1.       Impart feedback to the agent on improving their individual efficiencies

2.       Analyze and derive action plans at process level by finding areas of high redundancies (Pareto) and then making changes to the training/refreshers

3.       Keep better control on time spent on each parameter using control charts

4.       Reduce variation amongst agents on different steps in the process map

5.       Use the data for Bottom Quartile Management

Once the process is setup, you will not need to look at any other source to find root causes for low productivity. You will have the most relevant and up to date data for analysis and taking actions on a continuous basis without wasting any time or using up additional resources. This simple exercise can pay rich dividends in terms of cost savings and improving the financial health of the project.

I hope you will find this article to be informative and hopefully, you will use it to become more competitive and profitable in the marketplace.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at callcenterexcellence@gmail.com

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Importance of Customer Relationship Management

When a company wants to share a first-rate rapport with the customers, the best strategy that comes in handy is customer relationship management. This is the only way a company can amplify the customer base, thereby augmenting the profits. The main objective of customer relationship management is to learn about the value of the customers for an increased gain. Apart from the intention of increasing the sales, there is also an employment of technology for an organized business process and also for automating and coordinating. The premeditated decisions related to the business are taken based on the needs, requirements and feedback of the customers.

CRM solutions and techniques

Below are certain factors discussed about the benefits of crm model and its techniques.
• Tracking customer contacts is one of the most essential parts of customer relationship management without which the process is simply out of question. The details of contact must be observed and the regions where a there is a possibility of a conflict must be located. Such areas must carefully be dealt with so that it does not later affect the notion the customers have on your company. When such a problem is solved, there is a complete customer satisfaction and this factor can greatly boost your profit. Follow up calls after a service or support sometimes, may annoy the customer and it is important to sensibly manage the situation.

• Pay attention to the needs of the customers. Listen patiently to what suggestions and ideas they have to give you. Ask them the right questions about what they think of your service in a way that is not irritating.

• The staff you have in your company holds the key to the profit as they are the ones who have a direct communication with the customers. So it is important that you develop a set of staff that is constantly aware of the business culture related to customer relationships with respect to crm model and crm it solutions. This is especially important when the business employs technical support staff. These technical support people are required to help the customers out with a positive approach when they are facing troubles.

• To cater to the needs of the customers, the staff needs to have a scrupulous knowledge about the possible technical issues and how to solve them. The staff must also be well trained to attend to the customers.

• Always fix a target not to attain customer satisfaction but to exceed the expectations of the customers. List down how you have accomplished the customer satisfaction factor in the former years and work on it to better the things with the help of crm it solutions. The service excellence is also a must and this is never possible without treating the customers with due respect. Having this in mind and performing will earn you not only money but reputation as well.

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Improving Customer Satisfaction using Transaction Monitoring

If a Transaction Monitoring Audit form is designed correctly, the average score of your Transaction Monitoring and the CSAT results will show a strong positive correlation (ensure that the sample size is statistically significant). Unfortunately, this is not the case in many of the centers. Transaction Monitoring seemed to be an independent exercise in itself!! This normally happens when the people responsible for designing the quality audit form do not consider the Customer's Verbatim and analyze it before designing their Transaction Monitoring audit form.

One of the main, if not the only, objectives of transaction monitoring in a call center is to ensure that Customers are able to receive a service which they expect resulting in higher Customer Satisfaction, but if the audit form is not designed keeping the expectations of the Customer in mind, it will not be able to objectively capture the Customer's expectations and when the Customer's expectations are not met, Customers will take their business to the competition.

Another reason you should have a strong correlation between the transaction monitoring scores and the CSAT scores is that you should be able to improve your CSAT scores by improving your transaction monitoring scores. Firstly, this provides you with better control on your CSAT results and second, it will eradicate the need to do a separate analysis to know what’s causing dissatisfaction amongst your Customers, thereby saving time and manpower.

In order to align your audit form to the Customer’s expectation, analyze Customer’s verbatim on DSAT surveys (bottom 2 boxes or may be the neutral surveys as well, if the sample size is not sufficient). The analysis performed should provide you should 8-10 top reasons for Customer’s dissatisfaction in a very objective format. You can then build a Pareto of the top reasons causing 80% of dissatisfaction amongst your Customer’s, which should not exceed 4-5 and include them in your audit form. Also, perform this exercise every quarter to ensure that you account for any change in the Customer’s requirement and make changes to the audit form accordingly.

After you have identified the top reasons for Customer’s dissatisfaction and have included them in the audit form, you need to provide a descriptive definition for each of those parameters that QAs and agents can be trained on and form the basis for calibrations and conflict resolution later on.

The next step will be to perform correlation analysis on a weekly/monthly basis (once again, the sample size has to be statistically significant to get accurate analysis).

If you are unable to find strong correlation with transaction monitoring scores and the CSAT scores, you may want to dedicate a section of your audit form to CSAT Drivers and then perform the correlation between the score of that segment of the audit form and the CSAT scores. If there is still not correlation, perform the DSAT analysis again and make changes to the CSAT Drivers segment of your audit form until a strong positive correlation is not achieved.

The effectiveness of the exercise will depend upon how frequently you are able to align your audit form to the requirements of the Customer as well as regularly checking the correlation between the audit scores and the CSAT Scores.

I hope that this article will help you in bringing a better purpose to your transaction monitoring process.