Call Center Model - An in-depth look at call center strategy

Defining the business strategy is the foundation of a successful call center.  Strategy is necessary for defining the processes and choosing the technology, which in turn guide the human resources policies and facilities decisions.  Whether you are starting, expanding or optimizing an existing center, strategy is absolutely critical to how your call center will contribute to the "big picture" objectives of the organization, and to assure that you will stay competitive in the marketplace.  

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The Contact Center Model, shown in Figure 1, illustrates the importance of strategy in the overall health and success of a call center.  To learn more about the Contact Center Model, see Module 1 of this tutorial series.

Prosci Call Center Model

Figure 1  - Prosci's Contact Center Model


Evaluating your current strategy

Is your call center making the best possible contribution to the success of your organization?  Evaluating call center strategy is not just for new centers.  All call centers must continually reassess their business strategy to stay competitive in the marketplace. 

To get you started, take this short assessment below.  For each statement, rank your call center on a 1-5 scale, with 5 being the highest score and 1 being the lowest score.

Call center strategy assessment

  1. Our call center's strategy is defined and aligned with our organization's overall business strategy.
    (1  2  3  4  5)
     
  2. Our call center mission and vision statements are defined and well-communicated to all call center employees.
    (1  2  3  4  5)
     
  3. The needs and expectations of our customers are understood and updated over time based on data from customers.
    (1  2  3  4  5)
     
  4. The performance goals and objectives of our call center are defined and clearly communicated.
    (1  2  3  4  5)
     
  5. Our overall contact center strategy is revisited and updated on a regular basis (at least yearly).
    (1  2  3  4  5)
     

Total your score for this short assessment.  This score will give you an overall indicator of the "health" of your call center strategy:

Score Rating
21-25 Excellent
16-20 Good
11-15 Fair
6-10 Poor
5 Failing


Updating your call center strategy

Based on your score from the assessment above, you may find it necessary to reexamine and update your call center strategy.  This section will focus on how to update your center's strategy to align with where your organization, industry and competition are headed in the future.

There are two key steps to successfully updating your strategy:

  1. Reevaluate key elements of current strategy
  2. Use change management to successfully implement updates with employees

1.  Reevaluate key elements of current strategy

The key elements are fundamental to updating strategy in your call center and include the following:

Strategy Element

 Description


Mission statement

 A mission statement succinctly identifies the end result of your efforts, and it functions as a "sanity check" to ensure that all work and planning support the vision.  It provides employees at all levels with a quick reminder of what your organization is all about.


Know your customer

 You cannot meet the needs of your customers if you do not know who they are.  This may sound obvious, but a surprising number of contact centers do not have a good handle on their customers.  You must understand exactly who your actual and target audiences are, their relationship with your organization, their likes, dislikes and expectations in order to deliver the highest level of customer service and retain them as customers. This information can become outdated in a short period of time, so you should frequently update the data.


Learn about the competition

 Always keep an eye on your competition.  Your customers have relationships with a variety of businesses and will likely compare their experiences with your contact center to every other customer service experience they have ever had.  Just like your customers, this group is always changing and needs to be continually monitored.


Customer contact strategy

 A customer contact strategy defines the desired customer experience and how the contact center fits with the organization's overall process of serving customers.  It is a high-level description of the call center that can be read by anyone in the organization to learn about who you are, what you will be doing and how to relate to the operation as a whole.


Measures and goals

 Define what success means to your organization. If you fail to do so, you won't know it when you get there.  Establishing goals and assessing performance is an ongoing process that defines how well your center is doing over time.


Sourcing options

 How you provide the people and technology to run your call center can be referred to as "sourcing" options.  There may be very good reasons to choose another organization to provide or manage some elements of your call center.


Budget

 Budgetary planning is crucial to help scope your call center project and make decisions and tradeoffs. How you choose to build your budget or utilize your current budget will influence your options for staffing, facilities and technology.

The Call Center Planning and Design Toolkit contains a Master Planning Guide to lead you through the process of reassessing your strategy.  It will help you identify the areas for improvement, and it gives you detailed steps on how to evaluate each identified area. 
 

2.  Use change management to successfully implement updates with employees

Change management will be an important factor in your success when making changes to your current call center strategy.  Be sure to share with employees why the change is taking place, the risk of not changing and what the changes will mean to them personally.  Educating your agents is important because it makes the transition easier for all those involved.  Always remember to involve agents in the change process.  No change in your call center should ever leave the agents behind, and their buy-in and involvement are essential to the successful implementation of your new or updated strategy. 


Summary

This tutorial focused on the important components of call center business strategy and how to reevaluate and update your center's strategy to align with where your organization is headed in the future.

The  Call Center Planning and Design Toolkit provides step-by-step instructions, templates and checklists for developing your own specific Contact Center Model - including your strategy, processes, technology, human resources and facilities. The toolkit was developed by industry leaders in the Call Center field, Vanguard Communications and Prosci. The toolkit provides:

  • a comprehensive planning checklist and design guidelines for successfully setting up a new call center or redesigning your existing call center
  • the approach and tools to help you create a contact center strategy and manage the implementation effectively

Find out more about the Planning and Design Toolkit by visiting the webpage, emailing callcenters@prosci.com or by calling 970-203-9332 to speak with an analyst.

Recommended Resources:

Call Center Planning and Design Toolkit
A comprehensive guide to call center strategy, planning and design; an excellent resource for new contact center start-ups, existing call center improvement and future planning with detailed templates and planning roadmaps.

Controlling the Cost of Call Center Operations Toolkit
Provides a systematic approach to reducing your call center costs. With this toolkit, you will critically examine multiple channels for reducing expense. The outcome is a set of identified and prioritized cost saving initiatives that are most suited for your contact center.

Call Center Measurement Toolkit
How to measure and improve call center performance; an excellent guide to developing a performance measurement system with concrete recommendations for improving call center performance.  With an entire section dedicated to measuring, benchmarking and improving cost per contact, this toolkit is your step-by-step guide for cost metrics.

Call Center Best Practices - Operations Edition
Benchmarking report - Over 240 call centers from around the world share how they have improved service quality, productivity and customer satisfaction. This report shares cost benchmarking data from several industries, including average hourly cost per agent, average cost per contact, average annual manager salary and many other valuable statistics.

Motivating Call Center Agents Toolkit
A comprehensive guide specifically designed to increase productivity and motivate agents.  Discover what truly motivates your agents to do their best work with easy-to-follow steps that guide you through the principles of motivation and how to overcome the agent-manager disconnect. Interactive assessments are included that allow you to find the root cause of low agent productivity and reduce your turnover rate. 

Quality Monitoring Toolkit
A complete and in-depth guide to implement or improve a quality monitoring (call monitoring) program.

Complete Call Center Series
Save 30% off the list price when you purchase the complete call center business performance series!

Call Center Business Performance Packages
Find a call center package to meet your needs and save 20-25% off the list price!

 

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