Leadership Strategies

For High Performance Contact Centres

Live Experiences

• Lack of Personal Accountability

• Boring IVRs

• Redundant Technology

• Customer’s Opportunity Lost

• INEFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP

Some Important Facts*Source:

•NASSCOM(National Association of Software

and Services Company)

• Call Centre Outlook

►10.3 percent of all customer interactions can only be properly resolved by taking them outside the contact

center and need support from other departments across the enterprise

►More than 95. 4 million contacts a day require assistance from someone outside the contact center,

which is approximately 238 million minutes each day that contact center personnel spend asking for help or

transferring calls

►If a contact center can reduce the time per call by even one minute by fine-tuning or changing the

process for leveraging a knowledge worker that could mean contact centers could reduce their cost per call by

$2.013. When multiplying this across all of the calls handled by contact centers on a daily basis, this could add up

to a very substantial cost savings

►Attrition levels as high as 30% p.a, ranges between 30% - 40% in Australia and Asia Pacific

►Absence runs between 7% - 10% p.a**

►Call Centre Industry Involves high level of „Emotional Labour‟ and hence People Engagement in non-

negotiable

►The outlook for fiscal year 2010-2011 (NASSCOM) states that India's IT-BPO exports are estimated to grow by

13 to 15%, whereas domestic IT-BPO is expected to gain by 15 to 17% during the fiscal year of 2011

►The strengthening economy is expected to drive India's domestic spend to over $70 billion US in fiscal

year 2011, and increase the size of the workforce by almost a quarter of a million

► Chairman Rajendra Pawar (NASSCOM) was recently quoted as saying, “We are coming back to growth

levels seen prior to the slowdown and in the near term we see lot of headroom to catapult this growth”

Why Contact Centres Fail?

Lack of Empowerment and Decision

making at Lower Levels

Hygiene Factors ignored–

Attendance, Absenteeism and Training

Company only believes in Sales

Mantra

Short-sightedness in Technology

Trends

Leadership believes in ‘Following’

than ‘Leading’

10 Years +- HorizonS.No Criteria - 10 Years + 10 Years

1 Growth Rate By 20% each year By 65% each year

2 Technology Basic – Traditional PBX,

Distributed Components

Advanced – Unified

Communication

3 Mode of

Communication

WLL phones, Emails,

Paper

Virtual, Homecentres

4 Employee

Engagement

Minimal Highly Important

5 Customers Didn‟t Care Too Much Compare Services and

Move on

6 Stakeholders Outsourced or Off

shored

Moving Shores

7 Leadership Strategy Strategizing was

important

Strategy is the „KEY‟ to

SUCCESS

Ten Indispensable Leadership Strategies

10 ‘I’ Commandments

1. Get the Strategizing BASICS right

2. Work with the RIGHT Technology

3. Manage Operations Efficiently

4. DEFINE KRAs that Matter to People and not Organization

alone

5. ADOPT Quality as a non compromising tool

6. CAPTURE Customer, People, Stakeholder and Competition

voice and Take Corrective actions

7. Cost Centre to Revenue Centre – Do it with Caution !

8. REVIEW your decision of maintaining In-house/ off shored

/outsourced Contact Centre

9. DEVELOP Internal Champions to Lead the Team

10.Follow the ICE Approach

Commandment One:

Get the BASICS right

Get the BASICS Right !

“We only did what was asked of us.” – Attitude and Excuse

Example of a Contact Centre that Failed for non intervention and investigation by

Mid-level managers

Seven important tasks every LEADER must perform:

1. Be a part of formulating company‟s mission statement, its philosophy and long

term goals

2. Conduct an analysis that reflects company’s internal conditions and capabilities

3. Assess company‟s external and internal environment, including competition,

economic, social, political, technological, Industry and operations

4. Analyze the company‟s options by matching its resources with external

environment

5. Develop annual objectives and short term strategies that are compatible with the

selected set of long-term objectives and grand strategies

6. Implement the strategic choices by means of allocated budgets in which the

matching of tasks, people, structures, technologies, and reward systems is

emphasized

7. Evaluate the success of strategic process as an input for future decision making

Commandment Two:

Work with the Right Technology

Working with Right Technology

Self Service for Customers or Self Destruction ?

Human Interface Vs. Automated IVR. What is good ?

Be Tech – Savvy

Explore the Technology Market for Call Centre Solutions:

• VOIP Web – Based Interactions

• Web Based Self Service / Remote Access to Customer’s Computer

• Voice Based Training and Performance Management

• Home shoring and Homed Based CTI

• Predictive Dialer

• Debt Collection Software

• IVR with AI – Voice Recognition – Text to Speech

• Viewscast – Real Time Customer Feedback

• Cloud Based Solutions

• Virtual Assistance

- Unified Solutions: Technology that Improves your processes, Makes life

simple for a customer and Empowers employees !

VideoUnified Communication

Commandment Three:

Manage Operations Efficiently

Five Steps to Setting Up Effective Operations

Manage Operations Efficiently

Hire Right Train RightOngoing

Performance Management

RetrainSuccession

Plan

Uncompromising Aspects: Skip Levels by Managers and Regular Interaction with the Employees

Daily Huddles

360 Degree Feedbacks

Weekly Performance Report

Monthly – Quarterly – Yearly Appraisals

Quality Audit / Monitoring Team

Workforce Management Team

MIS Team

Manage Operations

Efficiently

De - Risking Your Process

Commandment Four:

Define KRAs That Matter To People

Define KRAs that Matter

Relationship between KRAs, Incentives, Employee Motivation:

Y = f(x) + x1 + x2 + ……….

KRA = f(Incentives) + Employee Motivation

Rule of Incentive:

Profit

Volume

L M H

M

L

H

Volume

Profit

L M H

H

M

L

Hygiene Matters - Monetary

Incentives AttachedPromotional Incentive Attached

Define KRAs that Matter

Relationship between KRAs, Incentives, Employee Motivation:

Y = f(x) + x1 + x2 + ……….

KRA = f(Incentives) + Employee Motivation

Rule of Incentive (contd):

Profit

Volume

L M H

M

L

H

Self Motivated Team -

Herzberg’s Motivation Factors

Freakonomics:

Incentives can be damaging if

designed inappropriately

What are the triggers and

What are you trying to achieve?

Very Often, we fail to

measure the effectiveness

derived out of existing incentive

system

Commandment Five:

Adopting Quality as a Non Compromising Tool

Adopting Quality as a Non

Compromising Tool

- How effectively are we monitoring our Quality aspect? Are our QA’s efficient?

- Assess issues like-

- Calibration

- Quality form reflects customer expectations

- Quality form sets standards for the service we wish to provide

- Is something more needed apart from generic Quality team and to survive

in today’s competitive environment?

- Research shows that tools like Six Sigma and Lean management has

helped various companies achieve the following:

- Yield Improvement

- Productivity enhancement

- TAT reduction

- Reduction in wastes / defects

- Improved Customer satisfaction

Adopting Quality as a Non

Compromising Tool

Criteria Six Sigma Lean

Principle Reduce Variation Remove Waste

Defect Reduction Focuses on producing

99.99966% defect free

products

Focuses on elimination of

waste and creating value

for customers

Steps Involved 1. Define 1. Identify Value

2. Measure 2. Identify Value Stream

3. Analyze 3. Flow

4. Improve 4. Pull

5. Control 5. Perfection

Focus Problem Focused Flow Focused

Primary effect Stable Process Output Improved TAT

Commandment Six:

Capture and Work on All Voices

Capture and Work on All Voices

Do we only assess the Voice Of Customer?

Important Components of a Survey:

SURVEY COMPONENTS

Customer

Process

Stakeholders

Competitors

Identifying Vendors for CSAT

SurveysWhat to look for in Vendors:

►Take Customer Satisfaction measurement to the next

level

►Identify your competitive advantage

►Understand best practice and superior performance

►Take a strategic look at your industry and / or region

►Efficiencies / competencies

►Weak Points

►Pinpoint the most important drivers of service

delight

►Know the link between satisfaction and operational

aspects of the call centre

For some industries,

reducing customer

defections by just

5% can double

profits – ‘Harvard

Business Review’.

Commandment Seven:

Convert from Cost Centre to Revenue Centre

Cost to Revenue Centre

GE CASE STUDY – Successful Revenue Center !

Cross Selling Up Selling

Tie Ups with Other

Vendors

Outbound Sales

Process Improvements

Cost to Revenue Centre-

Be Cautious !

Caution Statements:

Persistent Outbound Impact –

Ø Wrong Timings

Ǿ No Research of Customer Background

Ǿ Lack Of Training

Ǿ Sell and Forget

Ǿ Intruding into Customer’s Privacy

Make the Most when the Customer Calls You !

Commandment Eight:

Review Your Decisions

Ongoing Review

Every Year do the following checks:

CHECK• Is the Contact Centre Model Sustainable?

CHECK• Can the Cost be Reduced?

CHECK

• Does it help us achieve us mission statement?

Commandment Nine:

Develop Internal Champions

Employee Engagement

The ‘HELP’ Factor

Engagement Loyalty PerformanceLevel of Work

Health Meter =

Employee Engagement

1. Measure the strength of the relationship between Work Aspects,

Employee Engagement, Loyalty and Performance for individual

employees as well as the whole centre.

2. Identify areas of low performance compared to industry

benchmarks.

3. Through multiple regression analysis derive the significant drivers

of Engagement, Loyalty and Performance.

4. Recommend key areas to focus on to improve employee

Engagement, Loyalty and Performance at individual and centre

level.

Commandment Ten:

Follow the ICE Approach

ICE Approach

Coordination

Engagement

Innovation

1. Incremental

Innovation

2. Continuous

Improvement

3. Breakthrough

Innovation

1. Internal

Stakeholders

2. External

Vendors

3. Customers

4. Suppliers

5. Competitors

1. Engagement by Top

management

2. Employee contribution in

Change management

VideoFuture Contact Centres