When it comes to meeting and exceeding your customers' expectations, measuring and improving First Contact Resolution in tandem with Service Levels and Response Times definitely hits the ball out of the park. If you can pick up that call or chat quickly and resolve the issue the first time, your customer will think they have died and gone to heaven. (Doesn't say much about the typical customer's expectation of the support center does it?)

In earlier posts I talked about First Call Resolution (FCR) as a very important metric to measure for customer satisfaction and service quality. Another metric that also makes an impact on customer satisfaction is the Service Level of the support center.

There is no hard and fast benchmark that describe what your service level or response time should be. The target is determined by each support center based on a number of factors such as budget, business goals, channel, and customer expectation.

An example might be  "80% of calls answered within 30 seconds". And while that makes sense for incoming calls, the service level for email, chat, and other channels must be firmly based on what the customer expects of that channel. Expectations for email response may run to a few hours.

This is called keeping service levels in parity across channels. The numerical target will not be the same for all channels, but all channels must have a target and must be measured to get a true idea of the service level of the support center.

If multiple call centers are active and a combined service level is needed, a weighted average is the simplest method of tracking.

Call Center #1 handled 400 calls with a service level of 92%.
Call Center #2 handled 600 calls with a service level of 88%.

Call Center#1: 400 X .92 = 368
Call Center#2: 600 X .88 = 528

 Totals: 1000 = 896

896/1000 = .896 (89.6%)

Many resources treat Service Level and Response Time as the same metric. At least one source,   Brad Cleveland in Call Center Magazine, differentiates Response Time from Service Level. Cleveland offers this definition of Response Time:

"Response Time is a related objective for contacts that don't have to be handled at a specific time: customer email messages, or scheduled out-bound calls."

It is measured as:

Cleveland feels it is important to distinguish between the two for accurate base staff calculations for each category of contact.

Service Levels are typically reported from the ACD routing system or a workforce management system. Response Times may come from other routing systems such as email response management, web servers, or other source.

That wraps up another typical call center metric. Are there any specific requests for what to tackle next? 

Well, it looks like Helpstream has breathed its last. And it seems to have left some customers with very little time to identify a new solution.

I would invite everyone to check out our products here at PhaseWare, Inc. to see if we are a good fit for you. 

If not, a great alternative resource is Capterra.

This is a rough time for those of you who depended on this product but we at PhaseWare want nothing more than for you to be taken care of. If our product doesn't fit, Capterra most certainly will help you find a product that will.

Good luck and thank you from Team PhaseWare.

Contact center, call center, help desk—all of these terms are used by companies when they tell their customers who to call if something about the product goes wrong; so does that mean that those terms are synonyms?  Many would think so. They are tightly interconnected but they refer to different things.

Contact Centers

A contact center is the umbrella under which everything else is nestled.  It utilizes an incoming/outgoing system of customer connection.  An important part of multichannel support, a contact center uses call centers to manage incoming inquiries and messages, while also incorporating e-mail newsletters and support, live chat, snail mail, and other forms of customer interaction. 

Companies often use contact centers as the basis of customer relationship management (CRM). Contact centers are also called customer interaction centers or e-contact centers.  Often specialized software is used to store contact information, route information to other people or departments, track contacts, and gather data.

Call Centers

A call center, on the other hand, is the branch of a contact center that deals only with incoming and outgoing phone calls.  A business may have separate call centers focused strictly on incoming calls or outgoing calls.  The incoming calls can include customers needing help with the company’s product and other inquiries, while outgoing calls often consist of follow-up surveys.  Call centers can be located anywhere, so companies often outsource their call centers to a managed services business to help them save costs. 

Outsourcing a United States call center overseas seemed to be a less expensive alternative to local support, but there were some shortcomings with that approach that have caused companies to pull their call centers back to the U.S. One of the problems was accented English that the customer had difficulty understanding.  This is one reason why many customers prefer online customer service outlets and help desks.

Help Desks

Help desks, although similar to a call center, is typically an internal IT support desk geared toward supporting a company’s other employees with their technical issues.  This can include everything from password resets and issues with a single desk-top computer to network problems and updates for the various software packages in use.

As you can see, there is a distinct difference between a contact center, a call center, and a help desk even though they all have over-lapping qualities.  A contact center is a must-have for every company, but instead of just being a call center, be flexible and offer your customer more options by having email, live chat, and other interactive media as part your contact center repertoire. 

Does anyone have different definitions for these terms? Do you call your contact center something different? We would love to hear from you. Leave a comment so we can find out what everyone thinks.

Awhile back I wrote a post with definitions of a service desk, a help desk, and a support desk. I wonder if those definitions have held up?

What do you think?

You Say Service Desk, I Say Help Desk; Don't Call the Whole Thing Off!

I really want to hear from you. It is important for me to know how people look at these terms, what the terms mean to them.

Thanks!

If you have been watching the news lately, you have undoubtedly seen the report of Tiger Woods' auto accident. Due to the nature of the accident and the actions taken by his wife, rumors immediately began circulating (well with the internet, it's more like spiralling out of control) about his marital relationship and his well being.

As a high profile sports celebrity, he should expect this sort of thing. He should also have a publicist who knows how to manage the social media and the world of internet sharing. Instead, he has placed some rather cryptic statements on his website as well as refused to speak with investigating officers...not a requirement by law but looking evasive to the public.

He is doing what some businesses do who find themselves being made notorious on the social sites and choose to:

(a) ignore it and hope it will go away

(b) throw out trite statements about any problems being handled according to policy

(c) send out messages that might have worked if they hadn't waited a week before issuing them.

(d) all of the above.

So, Businesses Who Have Not Decided What To Do About Negative Reviews and Publicity, you need to put together a plan that makes your activities transparent to the public as much as possible. Don't send out vague missives that can be misinterpreted or that sound patently false; be specific. Acknowledge the problem, if there is one, say how it is going to be corrected, and then do it. And say all of this in the appropriate venue as soon as you can, that venue being the social media that carried the negative comments.

Without transparency, there is no trust. Without trust, a customer will be unlikely to do business with you. There are simply too many other companies who do what you do and make what you make. Customer support, customer service, help desk, call it what you will, is going to separate you from the pack if done well.

Right now I would say Tiger has sliced into the rough. And he is unlikely to get a mulligan.

This time of the year is always so festive. We all get to be kids again, unashamedly dressing up like various characters and creatures, humorous and fearsome alike. Then, we get to join the millions of excited costumed children, teenagers, and college students who go door to door screaming, "Trick-or-Treat!" which usually comes out "trickertreat."

We all focus on the treat part, thinking of it as more of a demand instead of focusing on the literal translation of the phrase. The door-knockers want something sweet, something good to eat. Customers who use self-service forums and communities are the same way.

They come to the forum expecting to find good answers and polite responses to their posts; yet so often, they get the "trick" instead of the "treat." They end up suffering mistreatment at the hands of other users which inevitably chases away that customer not only from the forum, but from the company as well.

How can this be prevented?

Moderation.

The term moderation in the forum world does not mean to refrain from doing something to excess. Instead, it is the enforcement of good behavior in a forum, because, unfortunately, no matter the age of individuals, some still need a babysitter. Therefore, the moderator of a forum is basically a forum babysitter ensuring that all the users behave themselves.

A good moderator is fair across the board, keeping the peace between the users, and is unafraid to make the difficult decisions such as whether or not to delete a comment or if a user needs to be banned from the forum. To maintain a cordial and cooperative atmosphere in their self-service forum, a wise company will hire such a guard...er, moderator for their forum gates to keep the proper, high level of customer service for their patrons. Which we all know is the key to gaining and retaining customers.

Good moderators are also good facilitators. They are able to encourage conversation in a positive manner, answer questions, and pose new topics for discussion which helps the company stay one step ahead of the customer to ensure that every question is answered before it is even asked. Having the answer to an unasked question is very convenient for customers. Then when they do have that question the answer is already in front of them. They do not waste any time or effort searching high and low for a solution or on hold listening to screeches and scratches that are supposed to be music.

In the end, the whole of the matter is that if you want a good, effective, and efficient self-service forum for your business, you need a moderator.

If you don't have one, get one. Before it's too late.........

In the last post,  we took a look at Stephen R. Covey's 7 Habits and applied the first habit, Be Proactive, to the processes of customer support. Now we move on to the next habit.

Habit #2: Begin with the end in mind

How many times have you started a project at your company without completely defining what was supposed to be accomplished at the end?   Maybe several projects are floating around aimlessly because nobody knows when they are done.

The same is true when determining the need for a technology solution, such as customer support software. Many customer support organizations simply jump into a software evaluation before determining whether or why they need it and what their requirements are. Business goals for an initiative have not been defined.  There has been no effort to determine what metrics will tell them if the project was a success.

As they say, if you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there. What they don't say is how much money and energy is spent meandering around those many roads.

For the customer support organization begin with the end in mind may start with mission statements, goals, road maps, and metrics. The road map (beginning) could cover the next five years and contain detailed milestones leading to the final goal. It should be updated to stay in step with the business goals, and it should be shared with the team implementing the transition. The three primary objectives of the road map (the end you have in mind)  are:

• increased customer satisfaction
• reduced customer attrition
• reduced service cost per customer

Each objective must be well defined and be independently measurable.

Goals are great things. They tell you when you have accomplished something. But how are you going to make your goal if it is too vague or unmeasurable....something like "providing better customer service". How will you measure that? What metric will tell you that the goal has been accomplished? In addition, there is no real link from that goal to the business benefit of accomplishing that goal. Kind of winning the battle but losing the war, or, the operation was a success but the patient died. The end goal of business benefit is not realized using undefined goals that defy proper measurement and will not contribute to a business goal.

The road map (where you begin) requires signposts and driving directions to get to the end you had in mind.  If those signposts are found and the directions followed the results will be in line with the company's overall strategic goal. It may not guarantee success, but when you and your team do succeed, after much hard work, there will be benefits gained that may have fallen by the wayside.

Takeaways

• A clear mission statement backed by well-defined goals is the hallmark of an effective  customer support organization and is key to a consistent customer experience.
• A long term plan must be created before investing in any new tool or initiative. Smart help desks begin with a detailed blueprint and add channels and tools one by one, according to those plans.

Have you ever been assigned a project but not told the goals? Or maybe the goals don't seem to have anything to do with helping the business. How did you handle that?

Tell us any beginnings where the end was kept in mind. We want to know you succeeded.

I bet when you first set up your website, you were careful to follow all the advice and search engine optimization (SEO), especially determining keywords for your pages.

Or maybe you had a website and decided to do some SEO because when it was first created figuring out keywords wasn't on your radar.

But did you know that SEO isn't a one time exercise? It is iterative and ongoing. This means that every SEO activity must be analyzed to see if it is still getting results, including all those keywords that gave you such a headache to decide on. Now, this doesn't mean that you have to be tweaking your site everyday to get the perfect keywords. In fact, if you keep fiddling with it, it will be hard to collect data that will tell you how those keywords are doing.

If you didn't collect data before you chose your current keywords, that's OK. Collect it now, so when you change things you will have some sort of baseline to measure against. And once you change things leave the site alone long enough to see results; resist the urge to nudge things around because they don't seem perfect to you yet.

What should you find out about those keywords? Well, the following metrics can help:

• Which keywords are being used to find your site
• How many visits per month your current keywords have
• Where you are ranking for each keyword

If the keywords you chose aren't bringing traffic to your site, then your prospective customers are not looking for you with those words. If the current keywords have very low rates of visits per month, then the amount of traffic you need will not be brought in. If you rank low in the standings for a keyword, this means you will not show up on the first page of Google when your prospects do their search, and where most people stop looking.

What to do, what to do? Figuring out these things was difficult the first time. Well, here are some places to find out what keywords and phrases you should use or find out that, Hey!, your site is doing great as it is.

Keyword Reports

Take a look at your keyword reports. Do the words or phrases that people are using make sense for your site ( in other parlance, "relevant")? Are they specific enough to draw somewhat qualified traffic without being so narrow nobody can find you with it? Are they too broad and draw too many who weren't looking for what you have?

If you find that the popular keyword that brought people to your site is too broad, like the word "customer", look down the list to see if that word is used in a phrase that narrows the focus. If so, use that phrase instead of the single keyword. This will catch anyone searching on any of the words but will sort out those who were looking for that specific phrase. These are the ones who need your product or service.

Another report to look at is one that tells you how competitive a keyword or phrase is. The more competitive it is, the harder it will be for you to rank highly for it. You can keep pounding away with that very competitive keyword or you can look for keywords that are less competitive yet still bring in traffic. Rank well for a few of these kinds of keywords and the traffic will equal that of one competitive keyword with less work.

Competitors' Websites

Go to your competitors' sites. For each page that has a competing product, go to the menu at the top of your browser and click view. Scroll down and click source (for Internet Explorer) or page source (for Firefox). A lot of words and code will show up.

Look for a tag, a  word or letter surrounded by "<" and ">". Find the one that says "title". These words appear at the top of the browser screen and the title generally has good keywords about the content of that page. Other keywords can be found within the "meta description" tag. The meta keyword tag is not given much authority by the search engines. Someone had to spoil the sandbox for all of us by stuffing the tag with keywords, even those not relevant to the site.

And, of course, you can simply read the content on the competitor website. Some of it may even give you fresh ideas about content and description for your own site. And don't plagiarize, OK? Just look for inspiration.

Keyword Suggestion Tools

There are tools on the web that can help you discover similar words and phrases to those you have already uncovered. It can  help flesh out a keyword list if you are having a tough time coming up with words on your own.

Google the words "keyword tool" and you will get a listing of various tools, including Google's tool as well as one from wordtracker. Both of the mentioned tools are free but Google requires a security captcha for each word or phrase entered.

Well, there are three places to use for keywords to tweak your website. How the keywords are performing for you needs to be monitored; words and phrases go in and out of favor, some words start out with one meaning but over time the meaning changes. And don't forget to re-do the SEO for new products your are launching. you definitely want those to be found.

Happy optimizing!

As we begin the regular flu season and send our children to get their flu shots, the media reminds us that this year is an evolutionary year for the virus thanks to the new strain that is currently circulating through the school systems from primary to university level.  The swine flu strain is basically the same type of influenza that we are all familiar with except multiplied in severity by ten.  In the business world, there is a virus strain that is as bad as swine flu and, in my opinion, is far worse because it tends to circulate farther and faster.  It's called bad press.

The quickest way to catch bad press is through the germ of bad customer service.  Bad customer service is the equivalent of not washing your hands after you sneeze.  You inevitably share the nastiness with everyone and then everyone gets sick.  If one customer gets infected with bad customer service, they share their experience verbally with a minimum of ten people.  Then those ten become infected and the epidemic of bad press spreads, because each of those ten individuals tells another ten of their friends, and so on and so on.  Once upon a time, bad press only spread through verbal word of mouth and when it became widespread enough, it spread by newspaper; not so anymore.

The giants of micro blogging-Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter-allow the spread of any kind of press to touch hundreds at a time.  Just one small negative rant that stays on a Facebook post for two seconds is still logged in the activity history and everyone on that individual's friend list can still see it.  Bad press these days spreads faster than a wild fire through prairie land in a draught on a windy day.  Once bad press gets started, it is impossible to stop it.  The only way to stop it is to make sure it never gets started which means you need to get your customer service in order and provide the customer with exactly what they want and need.  We  simply cannot give our customers a mediocre help desk.  Our customers should leave entirely satisfied every time.  One way to start creating a better customer service department is to get PhaseWare customer service software.  With PhaseWare software, the customer has options and your business can stay organized while keeping overhead costs to a minimum.  So take a look at our software.  We know you'll be as impressed with it as we are proud of it.