A quick and easy reference for what you need to ask your Call Center Manager

1. Ten Questions Every Call Center Manager Should Answer From the people that brought you Call Centers for Dummies

2. Ten Questions Every Call Center Manager Should Answer How Does your Call Center Fit in to the Bigger Corporate Picture? Why Are People Calling You? What’s Your Ideal Service Level Objective? What Does It Cost to Run Your Call Center for One Hour? Are Your Employees Happy? What Does the Future Look Like in 12 to 18 Months? What New or Existing Legislation Affects your Call Center? How Does Existing and New Technology Affect Your Call Center? What’s your Disaster Recovery Plan? What Are Your Three Initiatives for Improvement?

3. How Does your Call Center Fit in to the Bigger Corporate Picture? What does the company need the call center to do? Clearly defined service level agreement. Create the operation that the company needs. Understand what success looks like. You can only get where you are going if you know where it is.

4. Why Are People Calling You? Drill deep into why people are calling. First call resolution – Call avoidance. Happier customers – Call center efficiency. Use intelligence to alter process and capture savings. Understand volume fluctuations to better determine staffing.

5. What’s Your Ideal Service Level Objective? Percentage of calls you answer in a specified time. Some calls could be answered in 3 minutes. Good 80/20 – Bad 80/20 Set strategic service levels. Get the recourses you need to consistently achieve service levels.

6. What Does It Cost to Run Your Call Center for One Hour? Consider all the costs. Cost per hour is an important cost-management tool.

7. Are Your Employees Happy? If your employees aren’t happy, they can’t make your customers happy. Work environment needs to be fair and rewarding. Conduct employee satisfaction surveys. Capture comments and make surveys anonymous. If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it.

8. What Does the Future Look Like in 12 to 18 Months? Practice short and long term forecasting and scheduling. Adapting to demand, process or products requires good planning. Failure to plan results in degraded customer service. Hold regular meetings with key people. Work with your analyst and scheduler and determine impact.

9. What New or Existing Legislation Affects your Call Center? Hefty fines for violating legislation – ignorance is no excuse Per incident fines means large call centers get large fines Hire a compliance officer and a good lawyer Learn about privacy, telephone sales, labour, human rights

10. How Does Existing and New Technology Affect Your Call Center? Well trained people and solid processes are necessary for success Look at old and new technologies, place strategically Understand technological effects on drivers to calculate benefits Don’t place technology in a vacuum With understanding, everyone can contribute to implementation

11. What’s your Disaster Recovery Plan? How important is it to remain operational? Begin by planning for temporary outages Progress to planning for prolonged outages Design an escalating series of actions to execute

12. What Are Your Three Initiatives for Improvement? Create a culture of continuous improvement Define ongoing initiatives Create a sense of excitement around improvements Some will work and some won’t The ones that work will make you a leader

13. Thank You