Unlocking Your Call Center Potential

Call centers are critical to the success of newspaper circulation and classified advertising enterprises. Yet, a recent survey reveals that few publishers have undertaken serious efforts to gauge the effectiveness of these important operations.

This special report, Unlocking Your Call Center Potential, was developed by the NAA Newspaper Processes and Technology Committee in an effort to determine ways to increase productivity, reduce costs and improve customer service at call centers. A team of committee members who have technical and line responsibilities for circulation and classified in-bound call centers conducted the research.

The team developed a survey on call centers, which was sent to NAA member newspapers. This report summarizes the results of the survey and presents four case studies of successful operations. It is designed to be used by those involved with circulation and classified call centers.

BENCHMARKING CALL CENTER PERFORMANCE

The goal of the team was to lay the groundwork to allow newspapers to benchmark their individual performance against industry leaders.

Former Xerox CEO David Kearns once described benchmarking as "the continuous process of measuring products, services, and practices against the toughest competitors or those companies recognized as industry leaders." In the past two decades the definition of benchmarking has grown in scope and focus. Benchmarking today refers generally to the activity of comparing yourself against others. It is the ongoing search for best practices that produce superior performance when adapted and implemented in one's own organization.

The aims of any benchmarking project are to identify key performance measurements and to set goals for the performance measurements. Record, or benchmark, the key areas before altering the method to measure the current performance. Apply the best practices to improve performance and then benchmark again to measure the effects of best practices on the performance. Compare the results to the goals previously set. This cycle may be repeated as often as desired.

Benchmarking call center performance includes the following steps:
Identify key inbound call center performance measures.
Set goals for the performance measures.
Benchmark "before" to measure current performance.
Apply best practices to hopefully improve current performance.
Benchmark "after" to measure effects of best practices on the performance. Compare findings to the goals set in step 2.
Cycle through steps 4 and 5 as often as desired. As new best practices are applied, be sure to benchmark again to compare the results to the goal.

KEY PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENTS

The key inbound call center performance measures include the following:
Call Center Service Levels (Department-wide)

Average speed of answer (ASA)
Percentage of abandoned calls
Customer satisfaction index


Agent productivity (Individual)

Calls handled per agent
Available time (talk or idle time, waiting for a call)
Average handling time (talk time and after-call work)
Additional classified agent measurements include the number of ads per hour and the error rate on those ads.


Costs

Direct labor cost (including benefits) per call
Total cost per call

Keep in mind that these measurements are a balance of points 1, 2, and 3. You can do exceptionally well on the first two points and spend a fortune if you do not consider point 3. A cost/benefit analysis to achieve your optimum balance is always a good idea.

To determine how the industry is performing in some of the key measurement areas -- average speed of answer, abandoned rate, calls per employee per hour, and number of calls answered -- the team developed a survey that was sent to 1,512 newspapers. Classified call centers returned 219 surveys and circulation call centers returned 243.

Of those responding, only 135 in the classified area and 132 in the circulation area had Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) systems capable of providing key measurement statistics. And of those respondents with ACD systems, 60 percent of the classified call center respondents and 50 percent of circulation respondents either did not have goals set for the key measurements or did not measure them.

Among the relatively small base of those collecting measurement statistics, the results varied greatly. The ranges of the key measurements were as follows for newspapers with circulation of 5,500-245,000:

Classified

Circulation

Average Speed of Answer (ASA)

1-200 seconds

1-180 seconds

Abandoned Rate

0.1-15%

0-20%

Calls/Employee/Hour

3.3-69

3-100

Numbers of Calls Answered

15-2,500

20-6,655

HOW CAN WE IMPROVE?

Overall, the team found the results of the survey disappointing. Many respondents did not know the answers to questions, did not measure performance, or did not have goals established. As a result, the chances of increasing productivity, reducing costs and improving customer service are dubious.

Interviews revealed that successful call center operations combined good management practices with modern technology to achieve results. Call center technology can be used to report real-time conditions, furnish summary reports, provide scheduling forecasts, and to examine individual agent as well as group productivity.

Technology can also support the customers by automating routine transactions, allowing around-the-clock account look-ups/transactions, and providing an alternative to waiting in queue. It can speed up the relaying of trouble reports to field personnel for problem resolution, and minimize human intervention. It can hasten the verification of credit and speed up transactions overall. And call center technology can help organize valuable database information that can be used throughout the organization.

Call center management practices can also be improved to increase productivity, reduce costs and improve customer service. However, each call center must make the effort to benchmark current performance by identifying and measuring key areas that affect performance.

Performance can be improved without necessarily spending a lot of money. For example, a site's ACD vendor can help train call center employees, and call center employees can visit other well-run call centers. These ideas and others are further described in the next section.

There are also opportunities to implement technologies that often result in a strong return on investment by increasing agent productivity, reducing transaction time and telephone costs, automating routine transactions, and offering expanded services to the customers. Some examples are voice response units, automated attendants, and computer/telephony integration capabilities. These are also described in the sections that follow.

BEST PRACTICES

While the results of the survey were disappointing in some respects, they did reveal a number of ideas to greatly improve call center performance. These suggestions include ideas that can be implemented for little or no money, as well as ideas for those who wish to make a greater investment.

Ideas for Improvement Without Spending A Lot
Ongoing training of managers and supervisors. Learn the basics of call center management. Improve your knowledge by reading what others are doing in non-newspaper industries. This can be accomplished by subscribing to free call center trade publications. If you have existing call center tools, maximize their effectiveness by getting vendor training on your in-house Call Management System. Profile screening of potential agents/employees. Test potential classified agents on their ability to sell. Test potential circulation agents on their ability to handle irate customers. Proper customer service agent training. Use your most successful agents to train new agents and replicate proven skills. Supervisors should monitor trainee and existing agent calls on a regular basis to constantly hone technique. Agent contests. Make the job interesting and even a little competitive to combat complacency. Reduce agent turnover. Through proper training and a challenging environment, you give your agents the tools they need to succeed and as a result, you reduce turnover. A contented and professional agent can turn around even the most irate of customers. Provide pleasing physical work space. Review layout and design of workstations. Noise level and color scheme should be taken into consideration. Reduce work-related injuries. Utilize ergonomically correct workstations and headsets. Call Center Management. A daily review of call management reports will aid in good forecasting and proper manpower scheduling. The art of call center management is to build a call center for the busy hours through proper cost/benefit analysis. Utilize both full-time and part-time employees. Augment full-time staff with part-time help to properly handle peak load customers. Consider related compensation issues, ancillary cost issues, the benefits of scheduling, and your customer. Team playing. Supervisors should assist agents during busy times. Provide agent feedback. Utilize wall lights, wall displays, or display phones to inform agents of the number of callers in the queue. Shave call-handling time. Use procedural audits and information system reviews to eliminate non value-added functions that lengthen call-handling time. Conduct focused work groups. Handling customer calls should be an agent's highest priority. Processes and tasks that detract from customer calls should be deferred if being performed at the expense of customers. Evaluate current ACD groupings. In the case of classified, should agents handle both transient and dedicated classified calls? Should calls overflow to message centers during busy times? How you organize your ACD(s) affects skills-based performance and job enrichment. ACDs can be organized to apply the 80/20 rule to handle calls (less granular) or on the other extreme to provide and expert agent (more granular). Ensure proper trunking. Generally, a good rule for properly trunking a call center is to have 1.5 trunks into your ACD for every one agent you have handling incoming calls. Consider the "thirty-second" rule (Cost/benefit analysis of ASA). An ASA (average speed of answer) of 30 seconds is acceptable to most customers. With an ASA of less than 30 seconds, you pay the extra cost to provide customers with a level of call handling which does not leave them more satisfied. Providing customers with zero wait-time requires a high operational cost without a real benefit to customers. However, if customers are forced to wait for lengths of time much greater than 30 seconds they will become dissatisfied with the wait. ACD queue messaging/announcements. Use these capabilities to notify customers of problems such as late press runs. This will take the pressure off your call center agents. But be aware this will impact your abandoned rate statistics. Schedule callback procedures. When the call center/ACD is swamped, return non-deadline calls during a slow period. Establish after-hour call coverage. Use voice mail or answering machines to provide 24-hour-a-day call coverage. Monitor after-hour call volume to determine best hours of operation and compare with existing actual hours of operation to see if an adjustment is necessary. 800/888 number issues. Consider the use of 800/888 number service outside your free calling zone (especially for classified). Block local exchanges from 800 number access to avoid unnecessary telecommunications costs. Disaster recovery planning. Most often, disaster planning is the last thing on one's mind until the unthinkable happens. Contingency planning should be well documented and easily accessible. Cost/benefit analysis is very much applicable as you assess the risk to your operation.

Capital Intensive Projects
Integrated call center systems. The use of Computer/Telephone Integration (CTI), Automatic Number Identification (ANI), Dialed Number Identification Service (DNIS), and "screen pop" all employ a "shave and save" strategy. By shaving call seconds, you can cut call length and save dollars by utilizing fewer agents in your call center.
Voice response units (VRUs). As a front-end tool, the VRU can handle simple, repetitive transactions. By doing so, you can reduce the number of agents necessary to support the call center. Consider using focus groups in your community to evaluate the acceptability of the technology. Additionally, VRUs have the added benefit of providing customers with 24-hour access to limited system functions.
Scheduling and forecasting call management tools. These systems take historical data from call management systems one step further by providing guidance in forecasting caller demand and scheduling of agents.
Optimize circulation operations in the back end. Modular hardware/software enhancements, such as a VRU or alphanumeric pagers for district managers, can be used to resolve customer complaints. In either case, these systems can cut redelivery times substantially.
Outbound VRUs. VRUs as an outbound tool can be used to verify starts and redelivery. This can be done in an entirely automated fashion.
Automated attendants. Use automated attendants to get customers to the right ACD queue.

CASE STUDIES

To further study practices among successful call centers, the team conducted a number of follow-up interviews with managers of both classified and circulation centers. The interviews follow.

I. The Asbury Park Press, Neptune, NJ

Chris Burrough, Telephone Sales Manager

What are you doing successfully that you would like to share?

Have run marketing campaigns in the newspaper, with pictures of the staff, what the hours of operation are, deadline information and requesting callers to have their credit cards ready. Have run merchandise coupons every Wednesday consistently, not as filler. Receive 250-300 responses per week. Sell straight classified into special editions and also give special incentives. Voice Personals, by Datemaker, have been placed in the TMC product using a 900 number and have brought in $10,000 per month.

What have you done that has not had the impact you expected?

Cash in advance had no impact to the call center but impacted the bottom line.

What gains has technology realized?

Online copy of the paper and Internet access has increased revenue. Charging $1.25 for an ad. AdStar, a remote classified entry system, is used by 2,237 customers. 60% are local realtors and we have been able to eliminate one person.

How did you set your ACD goals?

We used the industry standard as relayed in conferences and journals.

What are your measurements for customer satisfaction and how do you measure it?

We mail a survey card to contract advertisers each year with no postage required. Will then call people with low responses to gather additional information and make changes based upon the input received. For example, assign a primary representative, conduct an on-site visit, or offer a contract rate. We do not mail to private party but we are building a database. We provide "energy/candy jar" on the desk of the rep who receives a compliment from an advertiser.

II. The Huntsville Times/News, Huntsville, AL

Jim Hollenbeck, Classified Advertising Manager

What are you doing successfully that you would like to share?

We keep the staff aware of lost call statistics and how they affect the department. We set a weekly goal of 5 percent. If that goal is hit, we have a special day and a party. We bring in lunch or treats or something to recognize the effort. We share a daily report of lost calls with the staff. Two years ago the call center representatives were not aware of lost calls. The department lost call average was in the twenties. As we focused attention on lost calls and what they meant to the customer and the company the rate steadily decreased. We also do some of the basic things. We make sure the telephone sales representatives stagger their breaks. We use the individual telephone sales reports in their evaluation to make sure everyone is working at a good speed.

We stress customer service. We are bringing the McDonald Classified two-day training program in this fall. We also use a lot of contests and try to keep it interesting. We are also purchasing a new telephone system. Currently, we do not have a different telephone line for kills. With the new telephone system we will have automated attendant and will be able to use it to kill ads. We are getting the newer system for better reporting, so we can do more analysis. It will also have automated attendant and more ports. The current phone system does not allow us to change the message that customers hear while they are waiting. The new system will also allow us to change it more easily. We plan to then use the messages to promote special sales we might have going on.

What have you done that has not had the impact expected?

Nothing really.

What gains has technology realized?

We are getting voice mail for private-party telephone sales representatives. It will include automated attendant. Commercial and display representatives already have it and it works well.

How did you set your ACD goals?

We use the "industry standard, " what we've read and seen around. Our goal is 10 seconds for ASA (average speed of answer). We find people hang up right around the 34-second mark. Our goal is 4-5 per cent lost calls.

What are your measurements for customer satisfaction and how do you measure it?

We do not do anything specific or formal.

III. The Daily Hampshire Gazette, Northampton, Massachusetts

Dennis Skoglund, Circulation Director

The Daily Hampshire Gazette is an afternoon newspaper in western Massachusetts. Its circulation call center handles incoming service calls and places outbound telemarketing and verification calls, primarily in the early evening hours between 6:30 and 8:30. Draw changes are also handled after the call center's busy inbound hours that peak between 3:00 and 3:30 p.m.

Circulation Director Dennis Skoglund believes the center's success was achieved by following "the basics." He noted that his paper's circulation is small (22,000+). Skoglund is not planning to implement any advanced call center technology in the near future, nor does he appear to be in a hurry to do so. Rather, he emphasizes utilization of Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) statistics.

The most significant impact on the call center's ability to reduce lost calls and caller delays came from realigning staff schedules to coincide with incoming call patterns. Information on number of calls at various times of day and days of the week is extracted from ACD reports.

The call center is open 11 hours a day. He was able to maximize staff coverage by restructuring the department and staggering start times on the half-hour. Re-scheduling staff and delaying tasks until after peak calling hours allowed staff to handle call volume at the times customers typically call. The call center adapted its routine to the habits of customers, rather than the other way around.

When he first came to the department around seven years ago, Skoglund gathered and analyzed the ACD statistics as a way of assessing the operation and plotting improvements. He has since assigned a staff supervisor to review the statistics daily, weekly and monthly. Assigning analysis and review of the statistics to a specific supervisor makes it a top priority.

The Circulation Department focuses on four or five key ACD statistics, including two categories of abandoned calls (before a department programmable time threshold and after). Although the abandoned calls can be evaluated separately, they are all counted as lost calls. This may skew the statistics slightly, but the call center is still maintaining an abandoned rate of only four to five percent.

To establish goals, Skoglund considered three factors:

The department's own past track record.
A general business-acceptable range provided by the ACD vendor at the time of system installation (late 1980s).
Published reports within the industry.

Skoglund said the call center has not experienced any unexpected impact from the use of technology. The keys to success, he said, are setting goals, going back to the basics, and placing a lot of attention on service. He also praised a corporate practice in which company executives call customers back in the evenings, a practice he said reflects a customer-oriented culture. He said it is advantageous when such a culture starts at the top and works its way down.

The department puts particular emphasis on service. The call center was redesigned around customer contact. In addition to handling incoming calls, agents call back all starts on the first day, call back all errors on the next day, call all paid-in-advance customers (PIAs) when their subscription is about to expire, call back all stops, and participate in telemarketing campaigns.

The agents are empowered to offer the product for up to two weeks free in order to satisfy a customer or win a customer back. This gives the agents not only a tool, but a feeling of authority ¡ª they have the power to act.

Skoglund is also beginning to pay more attention to telemarketing. He is looking forward to receiving information from a company that supplies "new move-in" information in the western Massachusetts region. With no discounting of the product, the churn rate has stayed fairly low, but appears to increase in relation to telemarketing campaigns.

To augment its print product, the Gazette is promoting its audiotex line and is planning an October launch for a Web page. Another improvement has come in a physical redesign of the circulation department. Rather than being off in a corner as before, the customer service agents have been placed at the front counter where walk-in customers find them readily accessible.

The newspaper also emphasizes the role of circulation district managers. District managers follow up errors in person with the customers. They receive monthly incentives that tie back to the number of complaints that their districts receive through the call center. They also participate in setting performance goals which are measured through the phone calls. They are required to manually track carrier complaints. While the complaints are also available from computer-generated reports, the exercise of manual tracking keeps the district managers close to the activity in their areas.

In the past, there was discussion about what constituted a complaint, especially when some were found to be lesser misunderstandings. Recently, it was decided that a "complaint is a complaint" no matter how minor. The stricter standard forces district managers to work even harder to maximize their incentives. Nevertheless, complaints per thousand remain low: about 1 in 1,300.

To measure service performance, the Daily Hampshire Gazette contracts with a market research firm from Boston every few years. A portion of the ensuing study examines service levels. The department has earned "exceptional" service ratings in the last three studies.

While not on the cutting edge of call center technology, the Daily Hampshire Gazette has proven it knows the value of ACD statistics and is able to deliver on what it has.

IV. Fort Wayne Newspapers, Fort Wayne, Indiana

Marlene Fritz, CIS Director

The Fort Wayne Newspapers circulation call center handles calls for both the morning and afternoon newspapers.

According to CIS Director Marlene Fritz, one of the keys to the success of the center has been the introduction of interactive voice response (IVR) technology. Many of the simpler calls are handled by the IVR, including routine vacation stops and starts, charge card payments, balance inquiries, missed paper and redelivery requests, and donations of vacation papers to local schools. In one recent week, customer service representatives handled only 183 of 816 vacation-stop transactions.

Customers can select the IVR by staying on the line, or talk with a live agent by dialing "0." The IVR also offers a dispatch function that transmits alpha-numeric pages to district managers.

Fritz said customer acceptance of the IVR was hesitant at first, but customers' trust was earned when their transactions were followed up with a timely and appropriate service response.

While not all customers have been won over, high levels of participation indicate that for many callers, IVR represents the transaction of choice and is preferable to waiting in longer queues during heavy call traffic days ¡ª Sunday and Monday mornings, in particular. IVR also affords around-the-clock transactions, with the exception of guaranteed delivery requests, which must fall within the delivery cycle.

Another benefit of the IVR system is the ability of change announcements ahead of the ACD queue. If there is a delay due to unusual weather, or lack of certain coupons due to holidays, announcements can be readily changed and callers informed. Callers can often hear what they need to know without waiting in line for a live agent.

The IVR system also earned praise from customer service representatives. With fewer routine calls to handle, the agents can dedicate more time to difficult customer calls or clerical tasks. They take advantage of the time by keeping department reports, files and records up to date, and making more customer call-backs. Before IVR, attention to handling incoming calls took precedent over lower-priority clerical tasks and placing calls out to customers. Now there is an opportunity to do it all.

IVR also breaks the monotony of answering a steady stream of calls and reduces the associated stress.

Fritz sees IVR technology as the key to enabling the department to respond more quickly to customers and reducing the abandoned call rate.

While information input by customers is generally valid and readily accepted by the IVR, sometimes the information cannot be processed as entered. This frustrates the customer who has just spent time trying to complete a transaction, only to have to repeat everything anew to a live agent. She said it would be better if information from the attempted transaction were automatically transferred to an agent's screen, so there would be some history available when the customer's call is rolled over.

This also happens if the IVR did not accept a MasterCard or Visa number, or if the customer inputs one wrong digit.

The IVR system was cost-justified by reducing staff hours and improving customer satisfaction levels. The ability of IVR to speed response times and offer more flexible services is seen as a contributing factor in customer retention.

The center follows the goals set by its parent company, Knight Ridder -- 1.5 percent daily abandoned call rate and 30 percent daily calls delayed. A 40-second delay threshold is used for abandoned call statistics. This allows time for callers to ring in, hear the announcement, and opt for IVR or a live agent.

To measure customer satisfaction, the center sends postcards to customers to verify that service has started and that the address for each customer is correct. Customers with no problems (i.e., service has started properly and the address is correct) often fail to return the card. But the cards help to catch those who do experience problems, so the problems can be addressed early.

When service history indicates a pattern of intermittent or irregular delivery, an "SOS" report is created which gives the district manager three days to respond to the customer in person. The district manager is required to report the outcome to the call center. The call center subsequently calls the customer back to verify that the problem has been resolved to his or her satisfaction. An "SOS" message is also generated every time there is a "bad service" stop.