|
To truly tackle rising talk times, you need to do some analysis to figure out what's causing the issue. Some agents will on average have shorter than others...you'll need to listen to the calls to determine the difference.
We undertook this initiative last year & dropped our talktime by over a minute. We used an on-line screen scraping technology to see what agents were doing during calls. Our on-line help system has been updated to make it easier for agents to find information quickly. We also developed almost 100 form letters that cover our most common procedures. In our business, many of our customers would rather have complex procedures in writing than listen to a 6 minute phone call & try to remember everything that was said. So all the agent has to do is ask the right questions & send a letter.
About 6 months into this, we had a pretty good idea of what was a reasonable talk time. We had agents who ranged from on average 3 1/2 minutes to over 11 minutes. We set a performance standard at 5 minutes & our supervisors were directed to manage their agents to that. Agents who were continually over that were coached until they got to the 5 minutes. Some agents use hold a lot & have a high hold time. You need to look at that too...why are they putting people on hold & what are they doing while on hold? There may be activities that can be better performed by an administrative person.
when undertaking a talktime reduction initiative, you need to pay particular attention to make sure quality doesn't suffer. The agents need to be efficient, but can't leave out anything important to your caller.
__________________
cjw
|