As many call center managers have discovered, it is important not to confuse service level with quality of service. It is possible to regularly and continuously meet service-level objectives and at the same time create extra work, have low productivity, and provide a poor quality of service to customers. A narrow focus on service level will not necessarily provide quality. CSRs can have an excellent service level but still make some or all of the following mistakes that may not be reflected in service level because they are content related and not traffic related:
§ Relay the wrong information to callers
§ Make callers upset
§ Fail to accomplish call center objectives
§ Record incorrect information
§ Miss opportunities to capture valuable feedback
Service level is a limited measure of overall call center performance because it indicates only that "not too many callers had to wait longer than a certain number of seconds before reaching a CSR." Unfortunately, service level measurement devices such as those provided in an ACD cannot measure whether callers and the organization achieved their mutual goals. It is important not to play the "numbers" game and to keep the primary objective in mind.
Optimizing service level with quality is an ongoing consideration in every call center. If service level is the only characteristic that is being measured and managed there can be too much emphasis on it. A good service level is an enabler for other important objectives—calls are coming in and being answered so that the organization and callers can achieve their mutual goals: getting information on product or services, selling products, or providing other customer-oriented information.
On the other hand, a poor service level reduces call center productivity. As service deteriorates, more and more callers are likely to complain when calls are finally answered. CSRs will spend valuable time apologizing to callers and will not be able to answer as many calls as the service level deteriorates. Costs will increase and revenues will likely be affected negatively. Other negative situations will also develop. Calls will get longer because CSRs will eventually pace themselves differently. And they will take breaks when they are on calls if they are so busy they cannot take breaks between calls, because the "in-between" time no longer exists. In the longer term, as service level starts to slip and continues to decline, CSRs often try to clear up the queue. If they are not able to do this, they eventually adopt work habits that are detrimental to the call center. Call handling time goes up and employee moral is affected and turnover and burnout increase, along with recruitment and training costs. This is obviously a disastrous spiral for a call center environment.
The impact of a poor service level will ultimately be felt in the quality of service offered. When CSRs are overworked due to constant congestion in the queue, they often become lazy and can also become less "customer-friendly." Callers are telling them about the difficulties they had getting through to the center, and CSRs make more mistakes under these conditions. These mistakes contribute to repeat calls, unnecessary service calls, escalation of calls, and complaints to higher management, callbacks, and so on—all of which drive service level down further, again illustrating that a poor service level is the beginning of a vicious cycle.
Based on this discussion, it is apparent that quality should never be considered as an attribute that is opposite to service level—the two must go together.
The number of staff needed to handle transactions and the schedules should flow from the service-level objective. (see Figure 1) Imagine that the call center receives 50 calls that last an average of three minutes in a half-hour period. If there are only two CSRs answering calls, the delay time for most callers will be long, and abandonment rates will be high. Adding CSRs will reduce delay times. An acceptable rule of thumb is reduce the queue to an acceptable level for both the call center and the callers. The number of CSRs required to provide this degree of service then becomes the service-level target and defines the correct level of resources to meet that target.
Figure 1: Customer inputs to a multimedia call/ contact center.
There are no generally accepted industry standards for service level, but there are several factors, mostly subjective, that affect service level:
§ Value of the call
§ Fully loaded labor costs
§ Trunk costs
§ Caller tolerances
§ An organization's desire to differentiate products or services by level of service provided in the call center
An industry standard would have to be based on all call centers placing the same values on these factors, which would be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. However, some regulated industries have defined service levels. For example, service levels are defined by regulation for cable TV companies in the United States and for telecom call centers in some countries. These levels of service may be regulated through a service-level agreement (SLA). In Canada, Bell Canada service levels are regulated by the CRTC (Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission).
It is reasonable to conclude from the discussion here that the correct service level for a call center, apart from legal regulations, is the one that meets the following conditions:
§ Minimizes expenses
§ Keeps abandonment to an acceptable level
§ Maximizes revenue
§ Meets caller needs and expectations
§ Minimizes agent burnout and errors
§ Is agreed upon and supported by senior management
There are a number of methods for determining service-level objectives, but the following four approaches have been distilled from the collective experience of call center managers:
§ Minimize abandonment
§ Take the middle of the road—follow the crowd
§ Relate to competition
§ Conduct a customer survey
Each approach requires some subjectivity and judgment on the part of management personnel.
No single service level would satisfy all situations affecting how long callers will wait for a CSR to respond. A number of factors influence caller tolerance, including
§ How motivated callers are to reach the call center
§ What substitutes for a telephone call are available
§ The competition's service level
§ The caller's expectations based on past experiences
§ How much time the caller has
§ The conditions at the locations callers are calling from
§ Who is paying for the call
The first approach to choosing a service-level objective essentially involves asking the question, How low can response times go without losing callers? This assumes that a higher level of service means lower abandonment and vice versa; that is, as long as callers don't abandon, service is acceptable. But that is not always the case—abandonment is not static and will fluctuate as the seven factors of caller tolerance change. Abandonment is difficult to forecast, and choosing a service level around abandonment is one of the least desirable ways to establish a service level.
The "middle-of-the-road" method defines service level as percentage of calls answered in so many seconds, for example, 80 percent answered in 20 seconds. The 80/20 objective has been cited in some ACD manuals as an "industry standard." However, it has never been recognized as such, even though many early call centers used it. The 80/20 objective is still fairly common because for many call centers it is a reasonable balance between callers' expectations and the practicality of having enough staff to meet the objective.
Benchmarking the competition
Another popular method for choosing a service level is to benchmark competitors or other similar organizations and then use this information as a starting point. This can be done informally by simply asking for the information or by conducting a formal benchmarking study. Whatever the approach, keep in mind that the results reported and those actually achieved may not reflect the actual situation. Human nature tends to "color" the truth on the positive side, especially when the competition may have access to the responses! Cases have been documented where companies with the same service level objectives—80 percent of calls answered in 30 seconds—achieved very different results.
A more formal way to determine the potential impact of abandonment on overall costs is incremental revenue analysis, a variation of the benchmarking approach. Traditionally, this approach has been used in revenue-generating environments, for example, airline or railway reservation centers and catalog companies, where calls have a measurable value. It is more difficult to use in customer service centers and help desk environments, where the value of calls can only be estimated. In incremental revenue analysis, a cost is attached to abandoned calls and assumptions made as to how many calls would be lost at various service levels. CSRs and trunks are added as long as they produce positive incrementals, either marginal/additional revenue or value, after paying for the initial costs. As long as the assumptions are clearly understood and communicated to management, this approach can be very useful when combined with other approaches.
Customer survey
A fourth method for choosing service level is to conduct a customer survey. This involves analyzing caller tolerance.
It is always a good idea to know what callers expect, but random call arrival means that different callers have different experiences with a call center. Even for a modest service level such as 80 percent answered in 60 seconds, over half the callers will get an immediate answer. Some may still be in the queue for three to five minutes (assuming no overflow or other contingency). This significant range of response times means that many callers in a set would claim that the service level was great, while others would describe it as totally unsatisfactory!
There are variations in customer survey methodology. Some managers take samples of individual callers and then compare the responses to the actual wait times for their calls. Others conduct general customer surveys. These samples indicate that waits of up to 60 to 90 seconds are acceptable to a fair percentage of the callers surveyed.
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