Call Center Model Tutorial Series

Centerserve is happy to offer our Planning and Design toolkit  at 10% off the list price during the Call Center Model Tutorial Series, click here to take advantage of the discounted price

The first step towards delivering world-class customer service in today’s environment is to separate the different components that contribute to a successful call center. Module 1 introduced the Contact Center Model, which breaks the call center into its five key components – Strategy, Processes, Technology, Human Resources and Facilities.

Modules 2-6 will examine each of these components separately. The final module, Module 7, will address the project planning and change management needed to make the most of your contact centers. Each component comes from Centerserve's Planning and Design Toolkit. The Call Center Model acts as a basis for ensuring cost effective, strategically aligned, world-class customer service.  Click here to reexamine Module 1 or Module 2.

Process overview

Defining your contact center processes is the second component related to developing a world-class contact center. This process section defines how you will react to customer contacts (external triggers) and operational decisions (internal triggers). There are three main considerations in the process section:

• defining the processes
• measuring process performance

Defining processes- Internal and external

Generally, there are two main classifications of processes that must be defined: external and internal.

External processes
define how you interact with customers or suppliers that are outside of your organization.

Internal processes
define how your contact center approaches operational issues like workforce management or quality monitoring. You will need to define both sets of processes separately.

To define external process activities:

Begin by identifying contact activities or triggering events - why will customers be contacting your center? Place an order? Request product information? Get technical support?

To define internal process activities:

Internal processes require a different approach when identifying each process. They will be based on your call center operational model. Suggestions for processes that should be documented include:
call monitoring or quality monitoring (including the feedback process to agents)

• performance measurement and reporting

• workforce management and scheduling

• budgeting

• hiring and new employee orientation

• coaching and performance evaluations

• training

• system maintenance

• disaster recovery

Each of these processes should be documented as shown in the examples above.

When starting a new contact center, you will be defining these processes from scratch based on your contact center strategy. If you are examining your current performance and looking to make radical or incremental improvements, these processes are a key starting point. The Planning and Design Toolkit provides step-by-step processes for identifying all of the contact center processes above and includes alternative approaches, pros and cons, a complete planning roadmap and checklists to ensure that each process is addressed.

Measuring process performance

Once you have defined your processes, you will need to decide how you will measure them going forward. Certain processes may not need to be measured because they define procedures that are not often used (OA&M, administrative policies, etc.). However many of the processes you defined will be key in evaluating your contact center's operations, and measuring them will give you insights into how you are performing.

We recommend the Call Center Measurement Toolkit for complete guidelines on performance measurement including benchmarking results. These measures will help you adapt your staffing and contact center systems to meet the needs of the business and your customers. The process for gathering data and using it wisely is shown below.

Guidelines for measuring performance