Best-in-class call centers: Scorecards for success
 

How does your call center stack up?  The first step toward delivering world-class customer service in today's environment is to separate the different components that contribute to a successful call center and evaluate your performance in each area.  This series will focus on the Contact Center Model, which breaks the call center into its five key components - Strategy, Processes, Technology, Human Resources and Facilities.  Each section will include a short scorecard to evaluate your current call center performance. Module 1: The Contact Center Model Module 2: Strategy Module 3: Processes Module 4: Technology Module 5: Human Resources Module 6: Facilities		If you don't see the penguin, it's not Centerserve.
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Module 1: The Contact Center Model

This tutorial will explain the Contact Center Model and provide a basis for evaluating your call center as the tutorial series progresses through each main area.

Background

Call centers today look much different than they did 10 years ago.

Customers now utilize a variety of media to contact your organization, including the internet, email, interactive voice response, text chat, etc. Customers demand service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – with no exceptions. They also expect a greater number of services and more complex options from your contact center. Technology plays a more critical role in the delivery of service. Telecom innovations add even more decisions; technology must be part of the overall goals and objectives of the call center. Current economic conditions impact human resource policies and overall business spending decisions.

All in all, the contact centers are being stretched by increasing demands from customers, more complex systems and escalating pressures to control bottom line costs while providing superior customer service. Managers need a way to untangle the web that is today’s call center.

The Contact Center Model

The Contact Center Model is a high-level framework for thinking about the five main areas of a world-class contact center. In the contact center model, there are five main areas as shown in the figure below:

Prosci's Contact Center Model

Each of the five elements is important by itself, but is interdependent on all of the others.  Defining the business strategy is the basis for defining the processes and choosing the technology.  Human resource policies require input from the processes and the technology, and all three will guide facilities selection and design.  Together they create a call center model that can be used to improve or redesign your contact center operations.

Elements of the Contact Center Model

The following chart provides a brief description of each of the five Contact Center Model elements.  The following tutorials in this series will further examine each area and provide scorecards to evaluate your call center's performance.
 

Recommended resources:

This tutorial provided information from Prosci's Call Center Planning and Design Toolkit.  This toolkit can be used for starting or reengineering call center operations for improved performance.  More information on this and other call center products can be found in our Bookstore.