Module 3 - Benchmarking for
Call Center Success
The Call Center Learning Center is proud to present a tutorial series
focused on performance measurement systems. This three-part tutorial series will pull from Prosci's
research-based toolkits and best practices reports.
Module 1
addressed how to determine what to measure in your center.
Module 2
discussed how to make these measurements. This module will focus
on benchmarking your center's performance.
Key questions for your performance measurement program
Designing and implementing a call center measurement program
requires you to answer three important
questions. If you have a measurement program in
place, these questions will help you make your center more
efficient and improve the effectiveness of the program.
- What
will you measure?
-
How will you make these measurements?
-
Who will you benchmark your performance against?
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Interested in learning more about how to
improve call center performance through benchmarking?
Check out the
Call Center Best Practices Report - Operations Edition, with
data collected from 240 call centers from over 50 countries
around the world. |
Establishing appropriate measures and determining how to conduct the
measurements were covered in the first two modules of the tutorial
series. This tutorial will dive into guidelines and benefits of
benchmarking your call center performance.
Benchmarking call center performance
Benchmarking is an excellent tool to learn new approaches
to your
business and build external focus into your improvement programs.
When done properly, benchmarking creates energy and excitement about
what is possible and is a great motivator for improving your call center.
Applying sound benchmarking practices will ensure that your benchmarking
efforts have a significant and positive impact
on your call center.
Benefits of benchmarking
Benchmarking, when done correctly, can positively impact many areas
of performance measurement and management. The benefits from good
benchmarking practices include:
- Establish benchmarks for comparing your own performance
- Develop an external reference when setting performance goals
- Understand your competitors' position
- Communicate your performance against external benchmarks to your
management team
- Learn about new call center practices and technology
applications
- Improve your call center's overall operation
Key benchmarking guidelines
Benchmarking is the search for best practices among other call
centers, and is often used in the assessment and development of call
center policy, performance measures and objectives. Yet, when done
improperly, benchmarking can impact both you and your call center.
It is essential that you are aware of several
important benchmarking guidelines to follow in this component
of the performance measurement process:
- Adequately define the measures
In some cases, the benchmarking measures are defined, but
participants do not use that exact definition in their call
center or do not understand the differences in how the measures
are defined. The best way to ensure that you are using
accurate and aligned data is to understand the precise
definition of the measures used in the benchmarking study, and
compare "apples to apples" when benchmarking your data with
other companies.
- Ensure adequate sample size
If there are too few participants in the study, then you have to
carefully weigh the conclusions and the applicability to your
call center. This is especially true for statistical
research on call center performance.
- Don't play copycat
It is often tempting to see a successful call center, and then
try to copy it. However, what is most beneficial is to
pick and choose the components of the strategy and processes
that are applicable to your call center's unique needs and
customer demands. Consider benchmarking as one source of
learning - but not the only source.
- Understand the processes behind the
data
Knowing the numbers is only one component of benchmarking.
Understanding the processes used by others reveals how the
measure is being used and how the performance is being achieved.
Benchmarking can provide insights for new methods in your call
center and it is this understanding of new processes and
technology that will yield breakthroughs for your call center.
- No industry standards
There are no "industry standards." If you find one labeled
as such, use it as just another reference point. There are
no official or sanctioned standards for performance measures for
call centers. The competitive marketplace defines the
standard, and that is constantly shifting. What is
important to know is how the results were obtained and use
common sense when applying them to your organization.
- Make your benchmarking initiative
part of a larger improvement program
Benchmarking should be tied to an overall improvement program.
Avoid benchmarking for the sake of benchmarking.
Benchmarking should be focused on your key business issues and
targeted to processes and technology that need improvement.
Applying benchmarking and best practices in your call center
Several benchmarking studies are available that will help you
understand what other call centers are measuring and how they are
performing.
The goals of Prosci's best practices research are to:
-
Enable call center managers to uncover the
most effective management practices,
based on benchmarking research.
-
Identify operational
and technological changes that are having the
greatest impact on customer satisfaction and call center
efficiency.
-
Share the most current performance objectives
and results for call centers by industry.
The data presented in this tutorial can be used by your
call center to ensure that it is moving in the
right direction and benefiting from
the lessons learned by other call
centers. The complete
Call Center Best Practices Report also covers quality monitoring,
training, outsourcing, performance benchmarking, cost data and other
valuable data. |
