What to do?

[ESB225]

I manage a sales based call center and we are having a big problem with orders being processed incorrectly. Now training has been done time and time again and the issues is not that the reps. don't know what to do, but more so they are rushing to get off the phone. Now my question is what should I do to correct this problem? My vice president wants every single order checked by a supervisor and we do about 2500 orders a day and I only have 4 supervisors. This is not working needless to say. Can any of you give me feedback on this.

P.S. I have already gone with the ironfist routine and said 3 mistakes in a week will result in a write up.



Edmund S. Brown
JRCigars.com
Call Center Manager

[beejay]

You have a several things to consider about the issue. One interesting thing to consider, why are they rushing to get off the phone? What is driving that behavior?

I have a couple of suggestions for you that have worked for us. Pick about 5 reps. Get a cross section of the floor including some who make a lot of errors. Set up a team meeting with them and form a challenge team. Let them know your concerns about the error rate and ask them to come up with the solution to "why we make errors and how do we fix the problem?" Limit the first meeting to 30 minutes just to set the stage and give them the parameters.

You will need to give them time off the phone (within reason) to meet and come up with the plan. The timeline should be 1 week and they would need to hold no more than 1-2 meetings of 1 hour maximum. Designate a conference or meeting room they can have. Then agree to meet back in one week to hear their solution. You may want to have a meeting facilitator there for them so they stay on track. When the reps own the issue and the solution, you will get better buy-in from the floor.

Remember that recognition is powerful. When the solution is ready to roll out, couple it with some additional items if the reps don't come up with them. For example, each day post a stack ranking of reps based upon error percentges. That will get a lot of play and peer pressure. Include a stack ranknig of teams as well since your supervisors should be engaged in the error reduction campaign.

You could also couple the solution and stack rank with an incentive. The team with the lowest error rate for the week gets a casual day or some other benefit. For the month, they get a catered lunch like pizza, etc. Correcting an issue doesn't mean you can't have fun with it.

And you may want the error percentage to be part of the monthly performance expectations for the rep AND for the supervisor. So it should be part of their monthly review and one-on-ones.

Hope this helps.

[Jimmy Childs]

Insure that each agent reviews the order (before payment) giving the customer chance to catch mistake.

Track mistakes to agents to find out if a handful of agents are making the same mistake or different mistakes or whether the mistakes are equally shared. That information will tell you whether you need to retrain/coach every agent, retrain/coach entire staff or just replace a few agents responsible for large numbers of mistakes. You, at some level, are pushing volume too much and quality assurance not enough. Do you have a Quality Assurance coordinator or team? You must. Quality Assurance must focus and possibly even be responsible for training which is centered around QA issues pertinent to your call center.

[mikael]

<<"the issues is not that the reps. don't know what to do, but more so they are rushing to get off the phone.">>

Why? Are you managing by Average Handle Time? Are the agents being compensated for being fast talkers?

Haste makes waste is a true saying. If you push people to get off the phone as quickly as possible, or set the compensation scheme to reward fast-talkers, you have to expect that your error-rate is going to rise. You've correctly noted that you don't have enough supervisors to manually check all orders, so you must trust your agents to do the job properly the first time.

Where are the errors happening? Wrong products? Wrong quantities? Bad ship-to addresses? Incorrect payment method data? Can you attack these via your order-entry system?

--mikael

Mikael Blaisdell
mikael@mblaisdell.com

[JoelDup]

You may need to look into Statistical Process Control. You will never completely eliminante mistakes but you may be able to identify where they are being made and how to identify them is they are moving to an out-of-control state. Quality needs to be built into the process itself

Where and Why are these errors happening? Have determined the root cause(s)?

[ttrunnel]

Automate - Try to take as much of the order and let an IVR ask the questions and gather the information.

Assist - Where the IVR leaves off, let the agent know all that the IVR does about this customer and the information gathered to that piont.

Analize - Le the automation lend a hand again and make sure the customer experience was pleasureable and successful. Then, fix what is broken.

These are the precepts of good cusomer service and managment. Please contact me or Edify for further information, if you need more details.
Thomas Trunnell
thomas.trunnell@edify.com

[smack]

Agreeing with the comment on finding the root cause.

Answer these questions and maybe they will point you in the right direction:

1. How big is the center, rep wise?
2. What's the ratio of reps to sups? With 2500 orders a day and 4 sups, you may want to look at staffing up or finding suitable counterparts at the sup level.
3. What's your expected handle time?
3a. Are you reaching it? Do you have room to play with?
4. Do you have a quality process outside of order verification?
5. Better yet, do you have an order verification quality process?
6. What is the most common mistake that is made when taking the order? Second? Third? Design a plan around these.

Ask and answer these. They won't give you the answer but they will help you identify some of the roots.

[sanskriti]

I was reading your response to Edmund Brown's question in the call
center ops newsletter and you have suggested that he automate and let an IVR gather the information.That's exactly what we do at our center,however we face a lot of problems with the IVR. A few of them are:

1) The IVR gets disconnected in the middle of the sale.

2) The IVR does not take the phone number/ agent ID punched in.

3)The customer gets disconnected while trying to access the IVR.

4)The IVR is very feeble and the customer can't hear.

5) The IVR times out , when the rep tries to repeat the information to
the
customer to clarify his concerns ,and we lose the sale.

As a result of this, we lose so many sales everyday. Will you be able
to
recommend/suggest some measures so that we don't lose any sales?

[mlik]

Hi Edmund,
With only 4 supervisors and so many orders to handle everyday, you are surely going to have problems keeping track.
What I suggest you do is have some of the calls and the screens recorded. Prepare a template of questions that you are going to ask after you hear the recording and give ratings to how far the agent has been able to input the rights details. Your supervisors can sit with your agents after office hours and go through the recordings together and sort out exactly where the agent lacked.
Of course you may not want to record all agents and all transactions all the time. You could initially select a few agents or maybe a few campaigns where the cost of error would be high (remember the 80:20 rule?)

And if you are wondering where you would a solution which would do like I have explained above, I have just the solution for you.

Feel free to give me a call / mail if you would like to discuss this further. I could send accross some case studies to make you feel more comfortable.

maulik@avontechnologies.com
+91-40-6580837 (extn 112)
+91-98482 67147