Re-branding the Help Desk and Creating the Value Proposition

As a director of a customer care service center or help desk you accept the reasonability to craft, and then safeguard your organization’s value proposition. Is it best value, best quality, best service? Do you deliver on promises? Do you differentiate from your competition?

Here’s a checklist that I’ve used to help engineer a business process improvement initiative that focused on assessing the status of the helpdesk within the organization, evaluating internal processes, and identifying human resource management opportunities.

Using this checklist as a guide I was able to re-brand the center, re-educate staff on what matters to the client, and impact the real business side of the equation by improving retention and extending the customer-life cycle.

ORGANIZATION

1. Value recognition

• What value does your organization provide to the company?
• How is the call center's impact on customer retention measured?
• Do agents understand the primary goal of your organization? What are other key goals?
• Are your center's goals consistent with the company's objectives?

2. Stakeholder involvement

• Do you communicate regularly with other company departments? .
• Do you have an organizational chart?
• How is the staff organized?
• How are company managers involved in day-to-day operations?
• How does company management ensure that the call center is achieving its goals?

3. Unique functionality

• Which other units have responsibilities similar to yours?
• What customers do you serve

PROCESS

1. Policies and procedures

• Are call-handling policies and procedures documented?

2. Hours

• What are your hours of operation?
• Do they match your customers' needs? How do you know?
• What options do customers have for contacting the center?
• How do customers know how to contact you?
• How many toll-free numbers do you publish and where?
• Do customers always call the right number? If not, why not?

3. Contact management

• Are customer contacts tracked? If so, how?
• Are contacts tracked through provision of services?
• Is contact management automated?

4. Quality focus

• Do you have a quality-monitoring program in place?
• Do you measure agent performance or customer satisfaction?
• How is data collected and reported?
• What action is taken?

5. Performance measures

• Are performance measures established?
• Are the measures linked to customer satisfaction? If not, how do you measure customer satisfaction?
• What are the trends?
• Does an agent quality-monitoring program exist?

6. Call-handling consistency

• Do agents follow procedures consistently? How do you know?
• Are call-handling procedures available online?
• What resources do agents use to handle contacts (manuals, memos, training guides)? How are they updated?
• Do agents have to search through multiple sources to piece together responses to customer queries or requests?

7. Workflow

• What other departments/groups/individuals do your agents rely on for assistance or to fulfill customer requests?
• How do you track fulfillment?

8. Managing call volumes

• Are processes in place to ensure real-time response to changes in call volumes?
• How do you minimize customer wait times?
• What methods do you use to review how many calls are in queue?
• What do you do if calls are waiting?
• Are readerboards visible to agents?
• Are the agents required to react to the readerboards? How?

9. One-call resolution

• Is one-call resolution a goal of your center?
• How do you measure one-call resolution?
• What is your first-call resolution rate? What is the trend?
• Are there any bottlenecks in the current process?
• Do you have any recommendations for these bottlenecks?
• Why are calls transferred? Where are they transferred?
• Are calls transferred on a blind or warm transfer?
• How long do transfers take?
• What percentage of calls is transferred?
• On average, how many times is a caller transferred?

10. Issue escalation

• When are issues escalated?
• Do agents follow special guidelines to ensure issue resolution?
• Are dissatisfied customers referred to a supervisor? Yes.
• Is the goal customer satisfaction?

11. Market intelligence

• Are product and service issues collected and forwarded to the appropriate departments?
• Is customer demographic data collected and forwarded to the appropriate departments?

PEOPLE

1. Hiring profile/compensation policy

• What is your agent recruitment and hiring process?
• Is the agent's job description and profile documented?
• How long do agents/supervisors remain in their positions?
• What is the cost of hiring?
• Is pay performance-based, time-in-title, or pay-for-skills?
• Do you use team-based bonus programs?

2. Training/career path

• What is the training provided to new reps?
• How do you train call management/customer management/call handling techniques?
• How much time do you spend on call management training?
• Do you train customer advocacy?
• How do you reinforce training on the job?
• Do agents have to pass a test to graduate?
• Does each agent have a training plan?
• How do you measure training effectiveness?
• What is the frequency of training classes?
• What is the average size of training classes?
• How long does training take?
• What is the cost of training?
• Do you provide continuation, refresher on-the-job-training?
• Do agents receive software training?
• What career paths exist for reps and supervisors?
• What is the average time in title/position?
• What career development programs exist?
• Is the training staff professional and well-trained?
• Is the staff focused on customer satisfaction and retention goals?

3. Attrition

• Why do agents leave?
• What is the rate of attrition of agents?
• Describe your employee recognition programs.
• What is the policy on full-time vs. part-time employee usage?
• Are agents hourly or salaried?

4. Workforce management

• What system do you use for workforce planning and scheduling?
• Do you measure agent adherence to the schedule? How?
• What percentage of the agent's day is spent on the phone?
• What activities are completed during non-phone time?
• Are the activities done between calls or at specific times?
• How is after-call work measured?
• What is the estimated volume in each channel?
• What is the average percentage of occupancy?

5. Performance standards

• What are the standards against which agents are measured (call length, hold time, adherence to schedule, etc.)?
• Do they know that they are measured against these standards?
• How frequently are agents measured?
• Is there a performance planning and appraisal tool in place and used?
• Does customer satisfaction affect compensation or promotion?
• Do agents understand their role as customer advocates?