One Size Does Not Fit All -

Using Science to Set Service Levels

December 10, 2008

© 2008 Convergys Corporation. All rights reserved. Confidential and Proprietary.

Convergys Proprietary
 The State of Service Levels

Speaker Biographies

Michael R. Cholak, Vice President Global

Consulting Services, Convergys Corporation

Stephen Loynd, Program Manager for

Contact Center Services Research for IDC

Steven Weston, Director of Global Consulting,

Convergys Corporation

© 2008 Convergys Corporation. All rights reserved. Confidential and Proprietary.

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 Customer Care Services:
A Brief Market Overview
Economic Forces Influencing the market:

ƒ Trigger events

ƒ Consumer Stress

ƒ Currency Fluctuation

ƒ In-sourced Model under Stress

ƒ An Increasingly Multi-Polar World

© 2008 Convergys Corporation. All rights reserved. Confidential and Proprietary.

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 Market Trend:
A Development of an Optimum Customer Experience Model

Why has it become so important?

ƒ Expansion of customer care related service providers

ƒ Includes not only providers of “traditional” labor-based services but also

providers that are leveraging new “host-based” service models

ƒ Both becoming or are expected to become significant providers of

services and options for customers

ƒ Amid all this “noise” it is essential to understand and optimize the contact
center and the customer experience

ƒ Find quality amid the quantity of options

ƒ Contact centers are data rich – The challenge is making data actionable.

© 2008 Convergys Corporation. All rights reserved. Confidential and Proprietary.

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 The State of Service Levels

Actionable Analytics
What does it mean?

“Contact-Driven Optimization” leverages

intelligence from customer contacts to improve the
overall customer experience and the overall
business effectiveness
How so?
ƒ Improves processes upstream from the contact center, unproductive calls
decrease
ƒ Measures the effectiveness of an enterprise through the “eyes of the
Customer”
ƒ Vertically-focused metrics allow clients to benchmark against others in
their vertical.

© 2008 Convergys Corporation. All rights reserved. Confidential and Proprietary.

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 The State of Service Levels

ƒ Today’s Standard
ƒ 80/20 Rule – common approach to strive for 80% of calls to be
answered in 20 seconds or less
ƒ Old “one size fits all” approach is de facto industry standard for
lack of better guidelines

ƒ Gold Standard
ƒ Standards set based on customer feedback
ƒ Certain industry/call center organizations reward or “certify” call
centers that hit these targets

© 2008 Convergys Corporation. All rights reserved. Confidential and Proprietary.

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 New Industry Standard
Using Customer Feedback to Set Service Level

Eliminate the guesswork around customer experience

management … ask — and answer — your tough questions.

How would
changing staffing How can we optimize
levels impact my service levels to
customer ratings? balance labor costs,
customer satisfaction
and abandon rates?

How much does

time in queue
impact the call
experience?

© 2008 Convergys Corporation. All rights reserved. Confidential and Proprietary.

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 What It Looks Like
Where Science Meets Service
The Convergys approach is a scientific, data-driven set of calibration analyses
used to explore optimal service levels.

10 4.5
Overall Tech
ASA
Linear (ASA)
9 4.0
Linear (Overall Tech)

8 3.5

Average Speed of Answer (In Minutes)

7 3.0
Calibration Analysis

Overall Tech Support

6 2.5

5 2.0

4 1.5

Speed of
3 1.0

2 0.5

Answer 1
4/1 4/8 4/15 4/22 5/2 5/9 5/16 5/23 6/5 6/12 6/19 6/26 7/5 7/12 7/19 7/26 8/2 8/9 8/16 8/23 8/30
0.0

Ability to Provide Information

Knowledge and Competence

Overall
Satisfaction

Professionalism and Courtesy

Desire to Resolve Key:

“Voice of Strong Relationship
Moderate Relationship
Customer” Time to Reach
Weak relationship
(-) Negative relationship

Technique involves merging post-transaction feedback data (i.e.,

customer survey) with service level data (i.e., speed of answer).

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 Best Practice
Enabling Calibration Analysis

Best practice requires both a valid survey as well as

access to switch data.

Ask the Talk to the Get the right Do the right

right survey right people switch data analyses
questions

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 The Challenge Example
Low Speed of Answer = High Customer Satisfaction
At times, there is only a very weak correlation between
speed of answer and customer satisfaction scores.

No change in
satisfaction

Without measuring the “voice of the customer,” you may go

down the wrong path to process improvement.

© 2008 Convergys Corporation. All rights reserved. Confidential and Proprietary.

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 Analyzing the Experience
What’s Really Important
Our data have shown that experience drivers vary.

The Agent The Process The Issue

ƒ Technical Skills ƒ Call Handling ƒ Resolution
ƒ Understanding issue ƒ Handle time targets ƒ 1st time call vs. 2+ calls
ƒ Familiarity with solution ƒ Hold practices ƒ Customer vs. center
ƒ Access to resources ƒ Transfer/escalation resolution
ƒ Less important: Pausing ƒ Less important: Queue ƒ Less Important: Who
during call time resolves

ƒ Emotional Intelligence ƒ Policies & Treatments

ƒ Empathy ƒ Quality assurance
ƒ Listening ƒ Call routing
ƒ Desire to resolve ƒ Training
ƒ Less important: Forced ƒ Less important: Scope of
personalization support

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 Example 1
Air Carrier
Drivers other than queue time had greater impact on
satisfaction performance.

Satisfaction by Service Level

0 sec 1-20 sec 21-60 sec 61+ sec

Speed of Answer (sec)

% of Respondents Queue Time Satisfaction Overall Satisfaction

Despite a drop in queue time satisfaction, there is no change in

overall satisfaction — indicating factors other than ASA drive scores.

© 2008 Convergys Corporation. All rights reserved. Confidential and Proprietary.

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 Example 2
Transportation Provider
Some call types are more sensitive to delays than others.
Call Reason 1 Call Reason 2

<10 sec 11-15 sec 16-20 sec 21-60 sec 60+ sec <10 sec 11-15 sec 16-20 sec 21-60 sec 60+ sec

Speed of Answer (sec) Speed of Answer (sec)

% of Respondents Time to speak to agent % of Respondents Time to speak to agent

Call Reason 3 All Calls

<10 sec 11-15 sec 16-20 sec 21-60 sec 60+ sec <10 sec 11-15 sec 16-20 sec 21-60 sec 60+ sec

Speed of Answer (sec) Speed of Answer (sec)

% of Respondents Time to speak to agent % of Respondents Time to speak to agent

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 Example 3
Technical Help Desk
As speed of answer parameters relaxed, there was no
change in satisfaction scores.

10 4.5
Overall Tech
ASA
Linear (ASA)
9 4.0
Linear (Overall Tech)

8 3.5

Average Speed of Answer (In Minutes)

No change in
satisfaction
7 3.0
Overall Tech Support

6 2.5

5 2.0

4 1.5

Speed of answer
3 1.0 increases

2 0.5

1 0.0
4/1 4/8 4/15 4/22 5/2 5/9 5/16 5/23 6/5 6/12 6/19 6/26 7/5 7/12 7/19 7/26 8/2 8/9 8/16 8/23 8/30

© 2008 Convergys Corporation. All rights reserved. Confidential and Proprietary.

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 Advanced Considerations
It’s Not As Simple As It May Seem
When calibrating service level with customer feedback,
several key factors must be considered.

ƒ Company and market events can drive “peaks” and “valleys”

in call volumes — which can be the root of decreased
satisfaction … not a missed service level

ƒ Customer records should be matched on a one-to-one basis,

if possible — a challenge in many operational environments

ƒ Calibration, or sensitivity, analyses require data variability —

so for programs with very high performance, sensitivity will
be low

ƒ Monitor abandon rates as an additional data element — as

they often increase with longer queue times.

© 2008 Convergys Corporation. All rights reserved. Confidential and Proprietary.

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 The Rules of Engagement
Effectively (Re)Setting Service Level
The old rules no longer apply.

ƒ Often, other factors are more important

ƒ Agent skills, issue resolution

ƒ The “80/20 Rule” is no guarantee

ƒ Know thy customer … and market
Return on
ƒ Leverage sensitivity analysis
Investment
ƒ Scientific approach to staffing

ƒ Don’t over-invest in staffing

ƒ Re-setting service level targets requires an effective
workforce management strategy

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 Operationalizing Service Levels
Workforce Management Takes an Active Role

Modify staffing
Determine and scheduling Communication Tracking
appropriate model of new goals impact of
service level parameters to and staffing service level
target reflect new impacts change
goals

Workforce Management has multiple responsibilities related to

changing service level targets.

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 Operationalizing Service Levels
Full Time Equivalent (FTE) Requirements

Figures shown are based on weekly call volume of 687k and

AHT of 343 seconds. Required hours were determined by
Erlang calculations. Actual results may vary based on
specific contact center environment and modeling should be
performed with simulation software if available.

80% in 20 80% in 30 80% in 45 80% in 60 80% in 90 80% in 120

Weekly Hours Required

Increasing service level targets decreases overall requirement. This example

shows how changing the SL target corresponds with decreased numbers of
required hours.

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 Operationalizing Service Levels
Blended Agents Reduce Overall Need

Service Agents Sales Agents

1000 calls per hour
300 second AHT
Requires 90 FTE
+ 700 calls per hour
500 second AHT
Requires 106 FTE

Blended Agents
1700 calls per hour
382 second AHT
Requires 190 FTE

Two queues addressed separately require 196 FTE but if the two
queues are staffed by multi-skilled agents the overall requirement
is reduced to 190 FTE

© 2008 Convergys Corporation. All rights reserved. Confidential and Proprietary.

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 Operationalizing Service Levels
Validation and Communication are Key

• Validate demand forecasts

• Validate supply forecasts

• Validate staffing model

• Determine release strategy

© 2008 Convergys Corporation. All rights reserved. Confidential and Proprietary.

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 The State of Service Levels

Q&A

Michael R. Cholak, Vice President of Global

Consulting Services, Convergys Corporation
mike.cholak@convergys.com

Stephen Loynd, Program Manager for

Contact Center Services Research for IDC
sloynd@idc.com

Steven Weston, Director of Global Consulting

Services, Convergys Corporation
steven.weston@convergys.com

© 2008 Convergys Corporation. All rights reserved. Confidential and Proprietary.

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