Recent research from SQM Group provides statistical support for the importance of first contact resolution (FCR) on Agent satisfaction and retention. As Agents are the most important and the most expensive asset in the contact center, managers must continually address issues of low satisfaction that can lead to agent turnover. The costs of defection go beyond recruiting and training, to the negative impact on poor FCR on customer satisfaction.
Agent satisfaction currently stands at 31%, the lowest level in years. In a recent study by ICMI and TalentKeepers, the third most common cited reason for these poor agent attitudes, behind pay and opportunity, is repetitive work. Recruiting and training costs run an average of US$6,400 per replaced agent; and at 30% annual turnover, that can be a substantial cost to operations. First Contact Resolution averages 68%, with the 32% remainder reflecting repeat calls that have largely unnecessary added expense.
There are several traditional initiatives that every center should undertake to control the trend in agent dissatisfaction:
• Automating repetitive transactions
• Seamlessly transitioning calls from self service and agent service
• Enabling CTI screen pop of customer information and call requirements
• Leveraging skills based routing to match call requirements to the best available agent
• Developing escalation policies to ensure issue resolution
These well known approaches can be augmented with new technology options and good management practices under three broad areas for improvement: Call Handling Efficiency, Agent Utilization Effectiveness, and Access to Resources.
Call Handling Efficiency: Since repetitive work is a real driver in Agent dissatisfaction, many simple repetitive calls have begun to be automated by best in class contact centers. But while web based self-service use increases, customers still use the phone considerably more. Many organizations find themselves supporting two distinct self service environments. With use of new open standards tools, enterprises can develop a single Voice Portal and Web Portal application that enables self-service for both channels for half the IT investment. Furthermore when a transaction cannot be fully completed in the portal, integration with the routing engine can facilitate a CTI screen pop of the CRM application for the customer with the reason for the contact conveyed as well.
Agent Utilization Effectiveness: Eliminating repetitive questions to the caller allows the agent to quickly address the point of any contact. This automating of the repetitive parts of every transaction can ease the tedium many agents struggle with, while ensuring customers get a consistent initial experience. Routing contacts based on requirements to Agents with the right skills further improves the chance of a successful resolution. An agent that has the tools to satisfy the customer and does so regularly is more satisfied himself.
Access to Resources: Improving agent realtime access to peers, supervisors, and experts across the enterprise fills in the last gap to resolution. Training and reference manuals are no substitute for a human expert to an agent who has a question to answer in realtime. That’s why the research indicates that while management might think the on-line manuals are used 63% of the time, agents are using their peers 44% of the time. Contacts are already escalated beyond the contact center 25% of the time for urgent, sensitive, or critical interactions. Enabling and streamlining this human-to-human process becomes critically important. Leveraging Unified Communications capabilities between the Contact Center and enterprise experts adds value, control and feedback to this already pervasive process.
Agents with the highest FCR are among the most satisfied and every step above drives and improves first contact resolution. Improving FCR in this way addresses those direct and indirect costs of agent turnover.
The technologies to support the practices described above exist today. They include VXML based Voice Portals, Call Processing and Self Service applications that resolve queries, access databases, and seamlessly pass data to contact center applications on agents desktops. Skills based routing algorithms get the contacts to the best available agents and Unified Communications features provide presence and collaboration capabilities between agents, their peers, supervisors, and enterprise experts in realtime. All these need to be implemented appropriately in each contact centers unique business environment, but the returns are substantial. Look for an upcoming June whitepaper and Webinar from Siemens and SQM Group providing more detail on this topic and exploring the primary research of SQM Group from which most of the above statistics were derived.