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BirdsEye View

 It was a pleasure to finally be able to attend an in-person forum with Anat and the other call center managers this past month in beautiful Charleston, NC. As always, I took a lot of best demonstrated practices away from the group that will help better my team. One thing I noticed when we were all talking about metrics, was that everyone had a different service level goal they were aiming for. Some expected to answer 85% of their calls in 30 seconds, others were shooting for 80% in 90 seconds, and one ambitious call center was looking to answer 90% in 10 seconds. This raised the question, “how do we know what the right service level is and how important is it to the desired customer experience”?

In my experience, chasing service level is not as important as some may think because it’s not a drivable performance-variation metric. Service level is a desired outcome that is impacted by many factors, including both quality and efficiency of calls, customer experience, staffing levels, and call volume. In other words, an associate could be doing a fantastic job managing their calls but an unexpected spike in call volume will reduce the service level at no fault of their own. At that point, if the associates are on the phone when they are supposed to be, solving customer problems effectively and efficiently, while being delightful, then there is no performance management solution other than to add more bodies to take calls in an effort to manipulate a number that your customers don’t know or care about.

At Bangor Savings Bank, we focus on improving our daily behaviors and activities (what’s under our direct control) to achieve desired outcomes. Activities are WHAT we do and behaviors are HOW we do it. We look for a balance among customer experience and efficiency.

For our call center, the behaviors and activities we focus on are:

• Associate Readiness – are the associates on the phone when they are supposed to be on the phone
  • Goal – 80% or higher
• Call Efficiency – are the associates delivering solutions efficiently 
  • Goal – Talk Time 4:00 minutes or less
• Customer Experience – how do our customers feel about their interaction with us
  • Goal – Net Promotor Score 70 or higher

The outcomes we review at the end of the month include:

• Service Level – the percentage of calls answered in a certain amount of time
  • Target – answer 80% of calls in 90 seconds
• Occupancy – are we staffed appropriately based on call volume
  • Target – 75%-85%...Under 75% and we were overstaffed, over 85% and we were understaffed.
• Average Speed of Answer – average length of time customers waited in the queue for an associate
  • Target – 60 seconds or less
• Abandon Rate – the percent of customers who got sick of waiting and hung up before reaching an associate
  • Target – less than 10% but higher than 5%

Again, we seek a balance approach that will be true to our brand promise while incorporating efficiency expectations.

At the end of the month, if the goals we set out for behaviors and activities are achieved but we aren’t where we want to be with outcomes like service level, then we know it is not a performance management issue and need to dig deeper into our staffing levels and/or the outcome targets we are looking to hit. 

The principles that guide our approach with behaviors and activities are:

• Make it simple
• Make it achievable
• Make it controllable
• Make it balanced
• Align our goals with corporate goals and our brand promise
• Focus on leading behaviors that bring about desired outcomes

This is why each bank will have different performance metrics and activities expectations.  Our brand promise, staffing levels and customer expectations are all different.  The leading behaviors we are looking for should align with the specific corporate goals, and those vary widely even among banks who look at “service” as a differentiator.