by Ross Daniels, Director, Unified Communications Solutions Marketing, Cisco

One of the biggest challenges that customer care organizations face is setting a careful balance between a focus on efficiency and a focus on effectiveness.  Most contact centers tend to put a bit more weight on the efficiency side of the scale, recognizing--correctly-- that top performing contact centers follow strong processes for handling their volume of inbound service requests in a cost- and resource-efficient manner.  These process experts are able to meet or exceed the typical metrics that management specifies.  “Ninety percent of calls answered within ten seconds? No problem.  Reduce Average Handle Time by ten percent?  Absolutely.” 

Of course, a customer care strategy that solely addresses the efficiency side of the equation would go a long way toward destroying customer satisfaction and loyalty.  Leading contact centers recognize that delivering a positive customer experience counts, too.  To succeed on the effectiveness side of the scale, contact centers look at different measurements, such as First Contact Resolution (FCR), retention/conversion/defection rates, and overall customer satisfaction ratings.  Customer care organizations that deliver on the effectiveness scale understand that the current interaction with the customer is only a single event within the total relationship that the customer has with the enterprise.  Recognizing that, these contact centers empower agents to remedy customer problems on the spot (up to a point) and reward agents and managers not only for handling contacts efficiently but also for providing a satisfying customer experience.

The problem we see today, however, is that—despite much rhetoric to the contrary—contact centers are overweighted on efficiency, and customer satisfaction is suffering as a result.  As evidence, consider the Contact Center Benchmark Study, conducted annually by Dimension Data.  Now in its tenth year, the recently-released report contains some troubling statistics.  On nearly all measures of customer satisfaction (i.e. effectiveness), the scores reported by contact center operators reflect a decline over a ten year period.  Shockingly, scores are mostly static or in some cases declining for traditional efficiency measures as well--despite significant technology innovation (emergence of IP, multi-channel, analytics, speech recognition, workforce optimization, etc.) and literally billions of dollars in worldwide spending on these technologies over the last decade.

So, what can this industry do to turn around this situation?  Despite challenges within the industry as a whole, there are a number of leading examples of contact center operators that are putting the customer first and tipping the scales in favor of effectiveness over efficiency.  Consider the case of the Middle Eastern bank that is deploying presence-based routing to direct calls coming into a branch directly to experts within that branch when available, and routing to an appropriate contact center skill group when branch resources are busy.  Or take the example of a major US-based food processor and distributor that has its truck drivers proactively calling into a speech-enabled IVR application to update deliver status in real-time; if a shipment is running late, an account manager is automatically notified and can, in turn, update the customer on the shipment’s expected arrival—turning a possible customer satisfaction issue into a positive, proactive experience.  Finally, follow the example of the clinical laboratory services firm that is taking aim at improving efficiency by utilizing proactive outbound dialing to reach clients with late payments, while using the same technology to notify physician groups of urgent lab results; the former addresses efficiency by increasing agent utilization, while the latter aims at effectiveness and loyalty by providing a differentiated service to the physician group.

While finding the right balance between efficiency and effectiveness is not always easy, the contact center industry for too long has been out of balance--focusing too often on efficiency at the expense of effectiveness that builds long term customer satisfaction.  Contact centers, then, should understand where they fall on the spectrum, consider the missed opportunities by ignoring or only talking about effectiveness, and strive to follow the examples of the leaders mentioned above.  Customers deserve better, and the industry can do better.  But we need to stop talking about it, and just start doing it.