FISMA Role and Responsibilities

The assignment of roles and responsibilities for information security within the federal government was clarified or reiterated within FISMA to cover policy, procurement, standards, and incident response. Although FISMA was the last major legislative framework, over the years the foundation has been built upon by a series of Executive Orders, directives, policies, regulations, standards and guidelines. Within FISMA, several specific roles were identified: 

• Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

• National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

• Federal Agencies:

• Head of Agency or equivalent.

• Chief Information Officer (CIO).

• Senior Agency Information Security Officer (SAISO).

• Secretary of Defense (SecDef).

• Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). 

Introduction to FISMA

The Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) was signed into law on December 17, 2002 as part of the E-Government Act of 2002 (Public Law 107-347). FISMA permanently reauthorized the framework laid out in the Government Information Security Reform Act (GISRA) of 2000, which expired in November 2002. FISMA is divided into multiple sections, each of which will be briefly described in this section.  

Purpose

FISMA was built upon several existing federal laws designed to ensure the security of federal information and information systems. These federal laws include the Computer Security Act of 1987 (Public Law 100-35), Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (Public Law 104-13), and Information Technology Management Reform Act of 1996 (i.e., Clinger-Cohen Act, Public Law 104-106, Division E). The purpose of FISMA, as outlined in Section 3541, is covered in six major objectives

1. Establishment of a framework for ensuring the effectiveness of security controls; 

2. Development of mechanisms for effective government-wide management and oversight of security-related risks; 

3. Development and maintenance of a minimum set of required security controls; 

4. Improvement of oversight of information security programs; 

5. Utilization of commercially developed information security products for protecting critical information infrastructures; and 

6. Selection of commercially developed information security solutions should be left to individual federal agencies. 

CRM Integration Capability/API/Web services

Making an analogy, a dialer is a machine gun of calls, and the CRM database is the ammo depot. Therefore it is important to make sure that the correct agent is calling the list of names or leads that are most appropriate to his or her skills or location as fast as possible. This is the reason why one of the fundamental questions to ask when specifying a dialer solution is if the organization requires the integration of the dialer solution with an existing or future CRM.

It is important to know if the dialer system comes with a list or lead-management database (or integration with an existing one is required) and offers an API or Web services capability to easily move data in and out as required.  

Therefore, when writing the RFP, it is crucial to make sure that all requirements linked with the integration with the support application are very well defined. In addition to clearly stating your needs, you must ask the potential vendors about their experience integrating their products with other clients and ask for references (and, of course, check those references). 

Conventional Dialers (power-dialers)

Conventional dialers (also known as power-dialers or autodialers) execute the basic function of dialing at a constant rate and transferring the call to a human attendant. The dialer device can also perform several other tasks, such as announcing verbal messages, leaving messages on answering machines, or transmitting digital data (like SMS messages). There are typically three types of power-dialers:  

• Conventional 

• Voice-message dialer 

• Click-to-call dialer  

Conventional: This type of dialer executes the basic functions of dialing from a list and transferring the call to a human attendant. In addition, these devices usually can monitor the dialed numbers and change them to seamlessly provide services such as least-cost routing. 

Voice-message dialer: This type of dialer is basically a conventional dialer that automatically dials a list of numbers and detects a live answer or fax/answering machine and plays a prerecorded voice message at the appropriate time. This is often called a voice-messaging dialer, or voice-message broadcasting. It completely automates the dialing process and is able to play a prerecorded message to hundreds or thousands of people in a short period of time. 

Click-to-call dialer: The agent sets the pace, and the function is minimal. This dialer provides very little leverage in that all it does is save the time to dial the phone number from a list. 

Preparing a Dialer Specification (RFP)

It is important to understand your specific needs in order to prepare an adequate RFP that guarantees you get what you need for the right price. Therefore, you need to define your dialing requirements, and based on them, identify the right technology and ideal contracting strategy. Only after that can you search for the adequate vendor. In other words, you can write the RFP only after you have defined your goals clearly. It is advisable to use a systems approach that encompasses: 

Analysis→ Design→ Implementation→ Evaluation  

When writing the RFP, you should be aware that vendors sometimes package their products and services in such a way as to make it difficult to make an easy comparison. For example, some hosted-dialer companies charge by the minute, others separate their charges by dialer port and local/long distance or VoIP minutes, and so on. In addition, vendors usually combine features and functions differently. Some charge more but include more functions, others break out and charge for each individual module or feature. The RFP is your instrument to define what you need and how you want to pay for it (trying to force some sort of the standardization in the proposals). It also helps to avoid paying for unnecessary features or functions. 

Dialing Rate Asynchrony

When there is an asynchrony between the dial rate and the available agents, you have a situation with two possible outcomes:  

1) There are more live parties on call attempts than there are agents available. 

2) There are more agents available than there are live parties on call attempts.  

Usually, when you have a situation like that, both situations occur intermittently.  

If we have more live parties on call attempts than there are agents available to take those calls, the dialer will disconnect or delay distribution of calls that cannot be distributed to an agent. This is known as a silent call or a nuisance call. The called party hears only silence when the predictive dialer does not at least play a recorded message. 

The experience for the clients who receive a silent call can be very unsatisfactory when we have an appreciable period of silence before a call is routed to a sales representative. This annoys people and also gives them a chance to hang up. A high rang-up/dropped calls rate is a clear indicator of asynchrony between the dial rate and the availability of agents. This is a big problem and we should be aware of the following facts:  

1) A very small percentage of the mailings are actual clients, and reaching them and then having no way to treat them is very disappointing from the company perspective. 

2) The client gets upset for getting a silent call. 

3) These calls have a cost which, depending on the hang-up rate, can be very significant. 

Some countries even regulate the number of silent calls that a company can make within a certain time frame. A good reference point on this problem is that a maximum of 3 percent of the calls, measured as a percentage of live calls made, may be dropped. More than that, and you may have a problem.  

In some countries there are regulations defining the need for a mandatory abandon message to be played when no agents are available and there is an obligation to inform the caller ID.  

If you have more agents available than there are live parties on call attempts, you will have agents idle, which reduces your productivity.  

Therefore, it is important to keep in mind that the asynchrony causes problems in both ways. If your predictive dialer is not able to adjust the dial rate properly, you will have moments in which you will have more calls than agents (silent calls and hang-ups/dropped calls) and moments with more agents than calls (low productivity and idle agents).  

It is worth mentioning an aspect, which, although operational, tends to have a big impact in the dialers’ productivity: if you mix databases of numbers already used several times (in which the concentration of bad numbers tends to be higher) and new databases in the same campaign, the results tend to be worse than if you keep them separated. 

How a Predictive Dialer Works

In a conventional dialer system, if you have a hundred agents working on it, for example, the dialer will dial a number of calls sometimes crudely based on the phone line to agent ratio—let’s say two to one. This means that for each available agent, the system will dial the phone numbers of two potential customers. The dialing ratio doesn’t change.  

In a predictive-dialer system, the dialer will monitor each call and determine the outcome of the call. The system will immediately strip out any unproductive results, such as busy calls (these are usually queued for automatic redial), no answers, and invalid numbers, verify the number of agents available and the typical call duration, and adjust the dial rate. 

Some predictive dialers incorporate also fax/answering machine detection, which tries to determine if a live person or a machine picked up the call. Today, most dialers have some sort of recognition feature; however, be aware that tuning the device to the public network is the key to making it work properly.  

The adjustment of the dial rate is necessary because if not enough calls are made ahead, agents will sit idle, whereas if there are too many calls made and there are not enough agents to handle them, then the call is typically dropped. A predictive dialer system will adjust the dial rate appropriately to avoid both situations.  

An advanced predictive dialer determines and uses many operating characteristics that it learns during the calling campaign and adjusts automatically to the pattern of an ongoing campaign. Examples of such statistics include call-connection rates (both current and average for recent past days by hour of the day), average agent connection time, and geographic location dialed. It uses these statistics continually to make sophisticated predictions so as to minimize agent idle time while controlling occurrences of nuisance calls (and consequently dropped calls), which are answered calls without the immediate availability of an agent. An advanced predictive dialer can readily maintain the ratio of nuisance calls to answered calls at less than a fraction of 1 percent while still dialing ahead. However, this level of performance may require a sufficiently large critical mass of agents. Conversely, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain a high talk-time percentage with a lower number of agents without increasing dropped calls. 

Autodialers versus Predictive Dialers

Power-dialers are usually best suitable to business-to-business (B2B) applications, in which more ability from the sales agent is required to navigate receptionists, auto attendants, and voice-mail systems. No current dialer technology is able to navigate the multiple options of a voice menu in a business environment without the guidance of a live representative.  

Differently from the predictive dialer, a power-dialer automates the dialing functions in a very simple way by just dialing sequentially a list of numbers. Here we may differentiate power-dialers from a solution widely known as preview: the term “preview” usually refers to a solution in which each user commands the dialing process—almost as a speed-dialing process. The power-dialer, on the other hand, generates the calls independently of the user command and has a ratio of number of user versus number of trunks other than 1:1.  

Talk time and total call attempts are not quite as high as a predictive dialer; however, if you deploy a power-dialer in a B2B or multiple calls B2C environment and associate it with guided-voice messaging technology and a CRM or lead management database, the power-dialer shows its full potential.  

Power-dialers are best suitable for telesales, inside-sales, or outside-sales organizations in which the sales process is more complex and requires multiple calls for closure. It is also optimal for organizations that invest heavily in their lead sources and can’t afford to abandon a single call with the resulting negative perception from the person at the other end. This translates to all B2B environments and specific B2C call centers that invest in high-value leads.  

Predictive dialers, on the other hand, are the best alternative when volume of calls and time on the phone are the main requirements. The predictive algorithm requires a group of agents large enough to be able to effectively leverage the “predictive” effect with multiple lines. The group of agents concurrently logged must be at least twenty to thirty. If this is the case, there are case studies where predictive dialers are able to keep agents productively talking on the phone from forty-seven to fifty-two minutes of an hour.  

Predictive dialers are specifically designed for business-to-consumer applications because they require short and consistent lengths of calls and direct-dial phone numbers. They are best when used in a one-call close type of telemarketing, short surveys, or prequalification of consumers. They are not designed to navigate the phone systems, auto attendants, or receptionists of a business environment. The predictive dialers are not suitable for a B2B environment, and even in a B2C environment it is not advisable to deploy predictive dialers for expensive or valuable leads. 

Predictive dialers should not be used with leads that require multiple attempts to ensure contact. They are best for single-script, telemarketing operations and are rarely effective in telesales or inside-sales organizations that require a multiple-call or complex sale. 

Call Center Predictive Dialers

An evolved form of automated dialer are called predictive dialers. In addition to automatically dialing a list of phone numbers for customers or prospective customers, as traditional dialers do, the predictive dialers execute two sets of activities, which increase enormously the productivity of the dialing process: 

1) Screens out no-answers, busy signals, standard information tones (SITs), and fax/answering machines, only sending calls that reach a live person to a sales agent. Here it is interesting to note that to be able to screen such things it is necessary to have a fine tuning between the public network signalling and the device. That means lengthy installation times and a very high level of sensitivity in any shift of trunks and operators. 

2) Using intelligent algorithms, these devices can detect when an agent is wrapping up a call; they’ll then begin dialing the next number and send the call to that agent as soon as a dialer reaches a live voice on the other end. These algorithms are also capable of detecting the number of available telephone lines, available operators, and average length of each call. Therefore, these devices predict the dialing rate in order to match it with the number of available agents. 

While the basic autodialer merely automatically dials telephone numbers for call-center agents who are idle or waiting for a call, the predictive dialer uses a variety of algorithms to predict both the availability of agents and called-party answers, adjusting the calling rate to the number of agents it predicts will be available when the calls it places are expected to be answered.  

By using a dialer to filter out these unproductive calls and to spare the agent from having to wait (adjusting the dial rate), call centers can improve productivity enormously. Agents can now spend on average around 80 percent of their time talking to customers and only about 20 percent of their time waiting for the next call.  

Compared with the conventional dialer (known in some countries as autodialer or power-dialer), predictive dialers have shown increases in talk time from twenty minutes in the hour to almost fifty (25 percent to 85 percent). However, predictive dialers are more suitable for low-quality mailings and large numbers of agents, and we should be aware that an unexpectedly high contact rate can overwhelm the system, leading to a high rate of call abandonment. We should be aware that the ability to identify bad numbers, answering machines, and fax machines isn’t what defines a predictive dialer—sophisticated power-dialers may do those things also—but rather it is the ability to use this information, plus the average duration and available agents, to adjust the dial rate.  

In operational terms, we have to understand that before running a campaign, the call list data (this is usually called a mailing or campaign), is loaded into the dialer. Then, the dialing process starts, and statistics are kept about what is happening. Most predictive dialers generate reports that indicate call attempts and unsuccessful calls by type. Unsuccessful calls are often analyzed to determine if the number called needs to be called back later or needs special treatment, such as a manual or autodialed call by an agent to listen to an answering-machine message.  Some companies adopt the practice of what is called “cleaning the mailing,” which consists of using dedicated dialers to call the numbers very quickly. The call duration is just enough to check if the number is valid (whatever the reason) and separate it from the mailing. Only after performing this cleaning are the separated numbers loaded in production dialers. Usually, the devices used for cleaning the mailing lists are connected to service providers whose charging granularity doesn’t exceed 18s as the minimum time charged per call, regardless of the real duration of the call. This practice maximizes the productivity because it allows the separation of the different kinds of situations in a more dedicated form. As examples, fax machines may receive a predefined fax message, and answering machines may receive a prerecorded message. Of course, it could be done by the same dialer in the first place, but very often infrastructures are not uniformly built and, depending on the situation, this strategy may be very useful

Call Center Dialers

The outbound operations usually are extremely challenging for telecom managers. These are the kind of operations in which just keeping the lights on is not enough, and usually the difference between a good installation and a bad one can make a huge difference in terms of productivity and influence directly the company’s bottom line.  

The deployment of devices called diallers (British English) or dialers (American English) designed to automatically dial telephone numbers, can generate significative productivity gains. However, you should not have the delusion that just buying the devices generates the productivity gains by default. The telecom manager has to understand that the productivity gains come from a well-balanced combination of three factors:  

• Well-chosen equipment 

• A good installation and proper configuration 

• A good management of the tool in the day-by-day operations  

Dialers are crucial tools for outbound call centers, because they free the agents of the work of dialing and make it possible for them to concentrate their effort in actually talking with the clients. If badly implemented, dialers may produce lackluster results and increase operational costs.  

In addition to the basic function of dialing and transferring the call for an human attendant, the dialer device can also perform several other tasks, such as announce verbal messages (called a robocall in the United States) or transmit digital data (like SMS messages).  

In addition, these devices usually can verify the dialed numbers and change them to seamlessly provide services that otherwise require lengthy access codes to be dialed.  Typically, a dialer can automatically insert and modify the numbers depending on the time of day, country, or area code dialed, allowing also the selection of the service providers who offer the best rates.

For example, a dialer could be programmed to use one service provider for international calls and another for mobile calls. These processes are known as prefix insertion and least-cost routing.  

Although most dialers can execute the least-cost routing, it is interesting to note that in large installations it may not be ideal to do so because that usually means the number of trunks (T1/E1) supported by each dialer box may not be enough for all dialing circumstances.

For example, if in a particular moment you have lots of fix-to-mobile calls, the number of mobile trunks available in each box may not be enough. This is the reason why it usually makes more sense to pool the trunks groups in a large voice switch and do the routing from there.  

Dialer systems are commonly used by telemarketing organizations involved in B2C (business-to-consumer) calling, because it allows their sales representatives to have much more customer contact time. Market-survey companies and debt-collection services that need to contact and personally speak to a lot of people by telephone may also use dialers.  

More commonly, dialers are now being used as a quick and easy way to automate all types of calls that would otherwise be made manually by a call center, such as welcome calls for new customers, customer service call backs, appointment confirmations/reminders, or even for the automation of large numbers of ad hoc calls that might need to take place (such as by a taxi company or a parcel-delivery service). The basic idea behind the device is that if a person were to sit down and manually dial one thousand people, a large percentage of these calls will not result in contact with someone at the other end. 

Out of one thousand calls made, typically only about 25 to 35 percent would actually connect to a live person. Of the rest, a large number (often 40 to 60 percent) won’t be answered at all, around 10 percent might be answering machines, faxes, modems, or other electronic devices, around 5 percent of numbers would be busy, and the rest will result in network errors or be identified as invalid numbers. For call centers that need to make large numbers of outbound calls, this represents a big problem. Typically, in manual-dialing environments, any given agent will spend around 90 percent of his or her time listening to the phone ring, waiting to talk to someone, or dealing with invalid numbers, or answering machines, and only about 10 percent of the time actually doing what they are really there to do.  

The benefit of dialers in general is that they can make many more calls in a much shorter period of time than an agent manually dialing each phone number. If the dialer encounters a busy signal or no answer, it will schedule itself to dial the number again later without human intervention. The system can also keep track of an entire campaign’s progress in real time—which would be nearly impossible if attempted manually. 

Call Center Billing Auditing

Billing auditing is the process of verifying carefully in the bill if what was charged by the service provider was what was agreed to in the contract. This verification includes the recalculation of each call and the verification of every item charged in the bill.  

Typically, most organizations don’t do the complete recalculation of all calls every month; usually they do that only for the ones in which big discrepancies between what was identified by the billing system and what was actually charged were spotted.  

Nevertheless, verifying the bills is a necessity in a large call center. Verification identifies charge discrepancies and enables the organization to get the due reimbursement for overcharging from the PTT providers. Experience shows that savings between 5 percent and 12 percent are usually attainable through regular auditing of the bills. Considering the expenditures with telecom of large call centers, 5 percent can mean an enormous amount of money, and therefore auditing the bills usually is worth the effort.  

Here it is interesting to mention that when we say verify the bills most people think about re-calculating the value charged for the calls. Although this is no doubt an important part of the verification, there are several other things that should be checked:  

• Verification whether the charges are associated to trunks that actually belong to the organization 

• Verification if there are undue charges for installation or trunk subscription 

• Verification if there are penalties for late payment unduly charged 

• Verification if there are charges for not achieving the minimum-committed volume  

Whether the charges are associated to trunks that actually belong to the organization should be verified. Although it may seem a bit obvious, the first and basic verification (very often not executed) is to check if the bill belongs to the organization, and the resource is actually being used. It is not uncommon to receive bills that don’t belong to the organization or previously belonged but the resource was cancelled or deactivated. In large operations with several sites (sometimes in different countries), just to be able to check if the bills belong to the organization and verify if the amount charged is compatible with the historical value is in itself a difficult task.  

Verification if there are undue charges for installation or trunk subscription is a very common problem. That includes all sorts of charges ranging from installations fees to trunks subscriptions and special services. Those charges sometimes are a large percentage of the bill and their verification is far from easy.  

Verification is necessary if there are penalties or interest for late payment unduly charged. Such charges very often are wrongly calculated and don’t correspond to what was defined in the contract. The bill verifier has to check if the penalties and interest are due and if they were rightly calculated as defined in the contract.  

Verification if there are charges for not achieving the minimum-committed volume is important to verify if there are charges for not achieving the minimum-committed volume and if these charges were properly calculated as defined in the contract. Usually, the difference between what was committed and what was actually used has to be paid in full.  

These kinds of problems very often provoke more overcharges than the mistakes in the calculation of the calls. Besides the direct financial gains, auditing the bills enables the evaluation of many other important aspects linked with the management of a large call-center operation: 

• Identifying the delicate balancing act between the minimum volume commitment and tariffs 

• Identifying volume and duration of the calls, which is crucial to negotiate charging granularity 

• Identifying the point at which least-cost route configuration in the PBXs needs adjustment due to changes in tariffs 

• Knowing when it becomes feasible to have a private-voice network (interest of traffic concentrated in some specific area code) 

• Accurately calculating the number of trunks and circuits (capacity planning)  

Analyzing the voice bills enables accurate answers to all these questions, and the telecom manager should be aware that the analysis of a telecom bill is much more than just checking the tariffs. It is also about verifying the traffic and comparing the current prices against available alternatives.  

The process of verifying the bill usually follows these steps:  

• Verify if the bill and the resources belong to the organization. 

• Verify if the value charged is compatible with the historical value. 

• Verify if the minimum-committed volume was achieved (if not, recalculate the penalty and check if it was rightly charged). 

• Verify if there is any penalty and interest for late payment being charged. 

• Verify if the charging period is correct and if there is any additional fee being charged for unsolicited services, such as installation or subscription. 

• Identify resources not in use, such as trunks without any calls.  

After verifying these basic items, you should check the calls, recalculating the value and checking the traffic interest:  

• Verify from and to where each call was made. 

• Identify the area codes from and to each call. 

• Verify how much each call is supposed to cost, based on the organization’s specific contract, and identify the discrepancies. 

• Identify if the taxes were properly applied. 

• Verify if there are calls charged outside of the admissible charging period.  

When auditing telephone bills, it is important to consider that this procedure is effective only when there is a process in place to define how and when the organization will be reimbursed. Contracts must have dispute clauses, and, ideally, the contracts in place should foresee that. If errors were spotted in the bills before the payment due date, the organization can notify the service provider and pay only what was considered due. The values over which there is disagreement must be discussed jointly. If the charges prove to be right, the organization pays the service provider without penalties for delaying the payment (interest is due).  

The organization musts define a formal process through which all invoice disputes are treated. The process needs a definition of time frames for each party involved and should mirror the dispute resolution clauses of individual contracts or master agreements. Typically, the whole process of disputing a bill from identification to solution should not exceed three months.  

The SLA must consider that the invoice payment doesn’t imply acceptance of the charged values. Ideally, the organization should have at least one year to audit the values charged, and the SLA should foresee that. If the errors identified exceed 5 percent of the total value of the bills, the service providers must reimburse the organization for the costs involved in auditing the bills. This is a considerable cost and a good mechanism for keeping service providers accurate.  

The organization must define clearly the time after which charges are not acceptable (in some countries it is defined by law). For example, services provided more than six months ago should not be charged.  

The organization must schedule regular meetings with the service provider invoice team. Such meetings should be forums to discuss problems with the invoices and items added, changed, and cancelled.  

The organization should try to define standardized invoice cycles and guarantee that all invoices are due on the same day; this simplifies the billing and payment process.  

Of course, all these recommendations depend on negotiation at the contract stage and arguably these points belong in the negotiations chapter. However, these clauses only become meaningful if actual billing verification is done; without it you will have no recourse or knowledge of billing errors. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF STRONG MANAGEMENT

Brech identifies the role of management as encompassing four main elements:

1. Planning – determining the broad lines for carrying out operations, preparing methods by which they are carried out and setting standards of performance.
2. Control – checking actual performance against standards to ensure satisfactory progress and performance, and recording as a guide to possible future operations.
3. Coordination – balancing and maintaining the team by ensuring a suitable division of work and seeing that tasks are performed in harmony.
4. Motivation – or inspiring morale. Getting members of the team to work effectively, to give loyalty to the group and to the task, to carry out their tasks properly, and to play an effective part in the activities of the organization.

Brech’s four main elements are a satisfactory starting point to understand the role of management; however, the success of management relies upon the accuracy in which the above four elements are executed. Drucker emphasizes this point when he defines the differences between effectiveness and efficiency. ‘Effectiveness is the foundation of success – efficiency is concerned with doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things.’ A good manager can plan, lead, coordinate and control work efficiently but a great manager will understand the effectiveness of the work that is being done and how that effectiveness influences the customer’s perception of the service.

The quality of management within an organization significantly influences the culture of the organization. Schein maintained that the major factors influencing an organization’s culture are:

• what leaders pay attention to, measure and control on a regular basis;
• how leaders react to critical incidents and organizational crises;
• observed criteria by which leaders allocate scarce resources;
• deliberate role modelling, teaching and coaching by leaders;
• observed criteria by which leaders allocate rewards and status;
• observed criteria by which leaders, recruit, select, promote, etc.

What is the one noun which links all of Schein’s findings together? The answer is ‘leader’.

Of course by the term ‘leaders’ in call centres we are referring to managers, those who have significant influence over the work of trainers, agents, planners and recruitment. Some theorists argue that leadership and management are two completely different roles. Kotter for example argues, ‘Management is about coping with complexity. . . Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change.’ However, in a call centre leadership and management are intertwined; they should not be separated. Call centre managers have to have a vision about how they feel the call centre should work to meet the organizational objectives and they have to deal with the complexity of making those visions a reality. In this chapter we are not going to separate the roles of leadership and management as they are both equally important.

Schein identifies that the conscious and unconscious behaviours of managers determine the organization’s culture. Therefore, the greatest influencing factor in any organization is the behaviour of its managers. This works on all levels. Of course senior managers and directors have the greatest influence but team leaders and functional managers such as those running call centres exert significant influence on the culture, productivity and wellbeing of the call centre.

The importance of management and its relationship to development was reinforced further in a study by International Survey Research, which reported that levels of employee commitment in the UK are significantly lower than in most of the world’s major economies. This lack of commitment is resulting in a lack of competitive advantage for the UK in relation to other global giants. The study conducted by ISR stated that the four most important factors in determining the commitment levels of a workforce are closely linked to the quality of support and ability to do their role. The four key factors are:

1. employees’ assessment of the quality of their company’s leadership;
2. employees’ evaluation of the development opportunities their organization provides;
3. employees’ judgement as to whether they are sufficiently empowered and trained to carry out their work effectively;
4. employees’ ratings of the people management skills of their immediate supervisor.

If we examine the above findings we see two of the main factors are related to leadership and management skills (1 and 4) and the remaining two are linked to training and development (2 and 3). If we link all four factors together we come to the assumption that instilling learning within the organization, in particular management development, is pivotal in the productivity and success of the individual companies and the wider economy.

For call centres this is fundamental. It is common knowledge that the majority of call centres believe their staff commitment levels are too low, resulting in high turnover. The objective of the traditional call centre production model is to maximize volume and minimize costs, and high turnover is acceptable, even encouraged. The work organization is designed to minimize skill requirements, discretion and job cycle time, thus ensuring turnover of staff is not critical to the overall objective. However, in the modern call centre, this mass production model is obsolete. The integrity, discretion and knowledge required to do the role results in the time taken for a new agent to become proficient as anywhere between six and 26 weeks. A modern call centre cannot operate efficiently and effectively with high sickness absence rates and high turnover as a result of low staff commitment. If organizations are to compete on quality and customer loyalty as well as price, the investment in management practices that maximize the skills and abilities of the work force must become a priority.

Call Center Management is not simple

A whole industry has been established around the idea of simplifying management. To read some of the literature produced by motivation coaches and solutions providers we can assume management is easy and if managers do not find it easy they are doing something wrong. Those involved in management development must first of all understand the complexities of management in order to define what exactly the development needs are. Perhaps the most realistic definitions of management are those that admit that it’s a complex and messy job:

Managerial work across all levels. . . is characterized by pace, brevity, variety and fragmentation. . . It is hectic and fragmented, requiring the ability to shi continuously from relationship to relationship, from topic to topic, from problem to problem. 

Management relates to all activities of the organization and is undertaken at all levels of the organization. Management is not a separate, discrete function. It cannot be departmentalized or scrutinized. An organization cannot have a department of management in the same way it can have a department for other functions, such as production, marketing, accounting, or personnel. 

So the first conclusions we can make about management is that it is far from simplistic, it can cover everything and it effects everyone and to a greater or lesser degree we all need to be able to manage. What we also know is that in call centres there are managers. These are the people who have a greater responsibility for coordinating the work of others as well as their own. They are the ones responsible for the workforce planning, performance measurement, motivating employees and ensuring agents have the information to actually resolve customer queries.

The International Customer Management Institute (ICMI), a US-based call centre consultancy service, defines call centre management as, ‘the art of having the right number of properly skilled people and supporting resources in place at the right times to handle an accurately forecasted workload, at service level and with quality’. This definition of call centre management is weighted towards the responsibilities of workforce planning; what can be described as the management of the tangible aspects of the organization, ensuring the department is running efficiently. However, as we know this is only one aspect of management; it fails to recognize that management in practice involves coping with contradictory demands, pressures and politics. The call centre is a great example of contradictory demands and call centre managers have to manage the constant tension between the sometimes opposing goals of service efficiency and customer service effectiveness.

The majority of a call centre manager’s work is not spent on workforce planning; in fact a significant proportion of this type of work is undertaken by specialists with the assistance of automated so ware planning tools. The majority of a manager’s time is spent on ensuring the intangible assets of the call centre, such as, knowledge, capabilities, group dynamics and culture are effectively being utilized to improve the effectiveness of the service to the customer. The ICMI definition of call centre management fails to recognize motivation.

Management Development in Call Centres

WHAT IS MANAGEMENT?

Prior to defining the management development practices in call centres it is important to first of all define what exactly is meant by the term ‘management’ and place it in a call centre context. The starting point of any training and development project is identifying the training and development need. For example, the training and development need in an induction course would be for employees to be sufficiently trained in the organization’s systems, products and culture to effectively answer customer queries. In management development this may be slightly more difficult to define and it may involve the identification and development of individuals with the potential to manage departments or functions in the future. In addition, it may be the development of individuals who can supervise people to undertake predefined work processes, and also be the strategic development of individuals who are already in existing management positions.

Those involved in the design of management development should start by asking the following question: ‘What exactly is meant by management within our organization?’ A clear understanding of what is expected from managers within a call centre will allow trainers and educators to assess the management development requirements of the department/organization/individual, plan and design how the need will be met, deliver the required training and then measure the success of it against the previously defined objectives.

‘Management’ and ‘manager’ are generic terms that are interpreted differently from call centre to call centre. In some organizations a team leader responsible for the activities of a collective of call centre agents may be called a manager. In other organizations the term ‘manager’ is specific to the strategic hierarchy at the very top of the organization.

The 1995 edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines management as the ‘professional administration of business concerns’. In essence, the ‘occupational group that organizes and coordinates, and makes decisions about what work is done, how it is done (and) by whom’. In call centres the term ‘manager’ is usually applied to those who oversee the administration and, in large centres, the administration of certain functions such as training, HR and planning will be overseen by functional specialist managers. These management specialists will report directly to an individual who oversees all call centre operations. They may not have the title manager but they will be responsible for the management of the centre. Figure 1 gives a basic overview of a typical call centre departmental structure.

 
Figure 1: A typical call centre organizational chart

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REFLECTION

Call centres have a reputation for having a flat structure with mini-mal promotional and career progression opportunities. However, Figure 1 identifies that there are at least seven call centre roles with management responsibilities. It is worth identifying within your own organizational structure how many actual individuals have a degree of management responsibility. This will help you understand the importance and scope of management within your own centre.

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Peter Drucker (1974) and Charles Handy (1993), two of the most widely acknowledged theorists within the area of management, argue that management cannot be defined and a empts to do so are meaningless. This is largely based upon the idea that management, by nature, is something that permeates throughout organizations to all levels of employment. A number of authors argue that management encompasses so much of an organization that all employees, to a greater or lesser degree, must have the ability to manage. Torrington et al  argue that, ‘Management is not just a job done by people called ”managers”, it is an aspect done by all those who have to cope with the problems and opportunities of organization.’ The repercussions of this for training and development is that in essence everyone has to have an ability to manage, whether it be individuals managing their own workload or their personal development plan, relationships with colleagues or large multi-site call centre operations.

The BBC has an approach to management development that reinforces the idea that management skills are not just required for those with the word ‘manager’ in their job title. A management development information pack from the BBC includes the paragraph:

Fourth and most important, management training is available not simply for line managers, but for anyone with a management component in their job. In practice this means most of us. We all have to manage our time, our priorities, the resources we use, our colleagues and our boss.

We are all managers to a greater or lesser extent as we all have some degree of control over our life and a process within the business in which we are employed. The interdependent nature of the modern working environment means we all call on resources and employees to get the work done. Management therefore is a phenomenon that is pivotal to the complexities of modern day life.

Furthermore, despite the organizational re-engineering, restructuring, mergers and outsourcing, practices that dominated the global business climate in the last decade, the number of managers is actually increasing. A report by the Chartered Management Institute identified that the numbers of managers had substantially increased during previous decades and this was expected to continue

TIPS FOR THE TRAINER | System skills training

• The trainer needs to sit through training as a participant first!
• If it is a new system, use a pilot or test group before training groups of employees.
• The trainer needs to be able to complete the work as an agent.
• You need to have train the trainer and facilitation techniques.
• You need to have very good IT skills.
• You should co-tutor for all sessions at least once, but not all in the same programme.
• The trainer needs to be assessed by an experienced trainer/training manager.
• Conduct an ongoing review of evaluation sheets after each programme.

Trainer tips: don’ts

• Don’t ‘chalk and talk’: they don’t want to be bored, and return to ‘school’.
• Don’t treat participants like children: they are adult learners and you need to use learning methods suited to adult learners.
• Don’t conduct training in isolated sections: integrate the training into other core skills training: customer service, problem solving, etc.
• Don’t share computers: participants should work independently.
• Don’t train on a different version of the live system: to maximize learning, participants must be trained on exactly the same version as the live system.
• Never use ‘live data’: when training, use data that are constructed or ‘dead’ and which is not confidential.

Trainer tips: dos

• Training approach needs to be interactive.
• Trainer first needs to sit through training as a participant.
• Both content and methods should be fun and entertaining.
• Follow the profile of so -skills training.
• Best completed in small ‘bite-size chunks’.
• Allow plenty of time during the sessions to practise skills.
• Conduct a practical test after each key learning stage.
• Build in the time for the participants to understand and reflect on what they have learnt.
• Test the skills learnt as you progress through the programme content.
• Build skills one piece at a time.
• Make available an online or hard copy resource for quick reference post-training.
• Use a ratio of one trainer to eight to 12 participants if possible.
• Devote the largest proportion of time to system skills training.
• It helps if the participants understand the metrics they will be assessed against, so use these when testing skills development during the sessions.
• Maintain one pace during the sessions. Keep the group working together.

THE TRAINING CYCLE | System skills training

In order to adopt a systematic approach to your training it is helpful to use the key stages of the training cycle, and if you follow the cycle in the design and delivery of your training programme, you will create a more effective learning environment.

1. Assessing the participant’s training needs

When dealing with system skills training this is a quite straightforward stage, particularly during induction. Most organizations use customized systems, so a set of very specific learning requirements exist that are the same for all course participants. System skills training o en takes place when a modification to the system occurs or a new product is introduced and this training is essentially the same for all employees.

Once the employee is fully operational on the system, individual training requirements are normally identified through analysis of the metrics used by that department or section. This analysis indicates if training is required to raise the employee’s level of performance. When this occurs, any system skills training should be tailored to that individual’s particular learning requirement, rather than reusing the original system skills training programme. The individual may require refresher training on just one aspect of the system, or may have not understood one element of the system when trained during induction.

Unfortunately, system skills training is o en used to address deficiencies in an employee’s metrics and fails to address the individual’s actual training needs. It is important, therefore, that you have a discussion with both the individual employee and with the team leader to more closely identify the individual’s specific training needs. Remember, not all performance gaps are the result of a lack of knowledge regarding the system.

2. Designing training

During this stage you are already clear about the training needs of the participants and should use these as the basis for your training objectives for the programme. You need to now consider the techniques that you should use during the training. A key consideration at this stage is the availability of a ‘training version’ of the organization’s system. A training version will allow the trainees to practise in a safe learning environment that is as realistic as possible, while still protecting the organization’s main system and data from any errors or ‘mishaps’ that may occur with trainees practising on a live system and using live data. The choice of training techniques will depend on the training needs of the participants. Due to the nature of system skills training, the key techniques should be a combination of computer-based training, instruction and group discussion.

Each technique has advantages and disadvantages and you need to consider these when you are deciding on which techniques to include. The activities most o en used in system skills training are as follows.

Instruction

You will need to instruct and facilitate the training sessions. However, in using this approach you should remember that a lack of interaction with the participants during the instruction and input stages may result in misunderstanding occurring. Success in using this method relies on a number of key issues including:

• Providing the opportunity for participants to ask questions after each input stage. This will allow clarity to be sought where necessary.
• The length of the input will o en determine the participant’s ability to concentrate. The longer the input, the more likely the participant is to lose concentration. Bite-size learning (Black, 2004) is one way to achieve this by delivering both instruction and practical exercises in small sections.
• You need to sound enthusiastic when delivering instruction if you are to maintain the learner’s interest.
• Speak clearly and vary the tone of your voice throughout each instruction section.

Technology-based training

The majority of your training sessions will involve the participant working on computer-based training systems to simulate the real working environment. You should consider the following:

• Technology-based training needs to be horizontally and vertically integrated into other core components of the training such as customer service training and problem solving skills training. Combine the so -skills training elements (such as customer service and telephone skills) with the system skills training. This will allow you to fully train the employee by simulating real working situations.
• The technology-based training needs to be in sync with the natural customer process. For example, if a new customer is calling to enquire about car insurance, he or she will need to be asked basic questions on name, address, age, car make and model, etc. Importantly, the operating system will need to work in the same way and allow the trainee to enter the data in a logical customer process, as opposed to requiring information such as ‘How did you hear about us?, and ‘Who is your current insurance provider?’ These questions can be asked at a later stage, once the information required for the call is obtained.
• Break the job down into the core skills to build system skills training. For example, using a financial services context, there is no point in teaching a new employee how to process driver and/or car changes to an existing car insurance policy if the trainee does not know the basics of how to provide a new car insurance quote. In this example it is best to show the trainees how to respond to an initial request; how to provide an insurance quote; how to process payment for immediate cover following the quote; how to make amendments to an existing policy; and numerous other logical steps up to and including terminating insurance cover.
• Teach participants the logical steps involved in a call, then practise these steps using the phone and the system, during training. The point here is that the trainees will need to be allowed time to practise the technique of talking with customers, while at the same time operating the system. It is likely that the customer will ask questions or make requests that are not typical/logical during the course of a normal call. The trainees will need sufficient experience and knowledge, therefore, to handle these instances. In certain call centre environments there may also be a requirement to inform the customers about mandatory information, eg if your customers apply for a loan or a credit card, the agents will have to inform the customer about mandatory statements that are required from the Financial Regulator. This must also be practised during the training sessions and its position in the call determined.
• Never use live data for your training sessions. This may be both inappropriate and unethical.
• This training needs to be practice-based, using real examples. For instance, if you are putting up an insurance quote on the system, it would be best to provide the trainees with some basic details that will be required from real customers such as name, address, age, car make and model, etc and get the trainees to enter the data and provide you with the initial insurance quote. Where possible, and at key stages, the trainees should be required to practise what has been learnt.

Group discussion

By building in time for short group discussion sessions (5 to 10 minutes) after each section has been covered, participants can learn from each other. It is important that you structure each of these sessions to ensure that the discussion does not diverge too far from the topic being talked about. These sessions can be particularly useful when held after instruction sections and after practical assessments. You can also gather information from the discussion that can assist you in adapting information you might include in future training sessions, to ensure clarity of instruction and to maximize learning. Building on the previous example you could consider asking the trainees, what is the price of their insurance quote? Where the trainees have different quotes, explore why. It is also possible to explore with the trainees the importance of getting the information right and accurate, as it will impact on the insurance quote provided.

Role plays

These are particularly important learning mechanisms for developing interpersonal skills. Employees can role play with each other, one acting as the customer and the other acting as the employee.

It is useful to record these role plays and allow the participants the opportunity to listen back to their own call and then make suggestions on how they could have improved the call. You can also provide participants with the opportunity to re-enact the same call after their first attempt has been played back to them. This then consolidates the learning from their first attempt.

Video/DVD

Using videos and DVDs can be helpful in showing examples of good and poor practice to a number of people at the same time. Using short discussion sessions after showing an example will also allow you to gauge the level of understanding in the group. There is a tendency to more easily recall what not to do, so those videos/DVDs that emphasize this aspect are particularly useful.

E-learning

This is a general term used to refer to computer-enhanced learning. It has many obvious advantages for conducting system skills training. Additional advantages include increased retention and application to the job, and consistent delivery of content is possible. According to Colvin-Clarke and Mayer (2003) e-learning should promote psychological engagement between the learner and the lesson content, in ways that help learners to select, integrate and retrieve new knowledge.

A path that can be used to achieve this learning process is the use of practice exercises. Wilcock (2002) believes that one of the strengths of e-learning is its ability to provide instantaneous feedback to learners by means of online tests and quizzes. These exercises are o en referred to as ‘interactions’ in computer learning environments. Based on empirical evidence, Colvin-Clarke and Mayer (2003) recommend four principles for effective practice in e-learning:

Practice Principle 1: interactions should mirror the thinking process and environment of the job. E-learning designers should create transfer-appropriate interactions. These are activities that require learners to respond in similar ways during training as they will on the job. Therefore problem solving skills should be learnt within the context of realistic problem solving situations. For example, a hotel switchboard operator may be asked how to deal with a call from a hotel guest, saying that she has just dropped her ring down the plughole!

Practice Principle 2:critical tasks require more practice. For critical tasks, for example safety consequences, it is vital that the participants are exposed to many different practice elements prior to working with live data. An example here is that for some aspects of financial services, ie obtaining a loan, the call centre agent will be required to read a number of mandatory sentences to the customer. It is important that the agents do this and it is important that the agents practise these statements and the answers to any potential questions they may get asked during the training sessions.

Practice Principle 3: make sure that the practice exercises are specific to the instruction material being covered. There needs to be a match to assist with the transfer of learning.

Practice Principle 4: train learners to self-question by showing examples followed by practice that requires learners to self-question the instructional materials.

It is vital that your system skills training builds knowledge and skills that are needed on the job. This means you must integrate system skills training with other core activities such as so -skills training, eg customer service and reward mechanisms, so that individuals are rewarded for the right performance each time. This point cannot be over-stressed. In call centre environments it is possible to train employees in many different skills, referred to as multi-skilling. This is an important beneficial aspect of training for the employee, as multi-skilling means that you will encourage career progression and achieve retention, an area acknowledged as being problematic for call centres.

During system skills training, multi-skilling is crucial, as agents have to learn how to use the system while at the same time listening to what the customer is saying and how he or she is saying it. They also o en need to ask questions and guide the conversation, all at the same time. This is an exceptionally difficult skill to master, particularly when the line manager may also be measuring the average call duration and telling the individual to reduce the amount of time spent talking to customers. System skills training therefore needs to incorporate the development of multi-skilling, in the classroom environment. While this skill can be one that is a by-product of experience, if it is not initially included in the training programme, it will be more difficult to develop once live.

An additional aspect for inclusion here is the impact of customers buying online. Customers who buy goods and services online on a regular basis are more likely when they place a call with a contact centre to require a greater degree of knowledge and experience from the agents. Calls of this nature may require ‘second level support’ and this increases the amount of system skills training that agents require in order to solve the customer’s problems. The integration of so -skills training, such as problem solving skills, is vital in this type of situation.

3. Evaluating training

Many organizations fail to evaluate training interventions due to the difficulties involved. Evaluation of a training programme is, however, a necessity to gauge the success of the programme. This data collection and evaluation process must be planned as part of the design and development segment of lesson preparation. Otherwise, it is possible to miss an opportunity to collect data needed for the evaluation process.

The most o en used type of evaluation is what is referred to as ‘first level evaluation’. This takes place at the end of the training and focuses on the reaction level. The basic questions that it seeks to answer are: ‘Were the participants pleased with the programme? How did they feel about such things as lesson or course material, the instructors, the facilities used for the class, the methodology, etc?’ Think of reaction level evaluation as measuring your ‘customer satisfaction’. Remember though, that a positive reaction to a lesson does not ensure that a person has learnt anything, but a negative reaction to a lesson almost certainly reduces the chance for learning. There are a number of reasons why measuring reactions is important. First, it provides you with valuable feedback on the training session. Second, it provides quantitative information about the training that can be used for management review. Finally, it provides information on the session that can be used to establish standards for later classes.

In addition, a more complex type of evaluation needs to take place. Evaluation at the learning level is viewed as problematic by many trainers, but it provides vital information for the trainer and is therefore worth the effort. Learning is o en referred to as the extent to which participants change attitudes, improve knowledge, and/or increase skill as a result of a ending a training programme. To effectively evaluate the learning that has taken place, the training must have a specific objective against which evaluation can be undertaken. For example, in a sales environment it will be quite easy to measure the ability of the new agents to achieve targets. In more product and customer service areas, measures such as quality, mystery callers, errors, recalls, etc can all be used to evaluate the training.

It should be possible to obtain data from the system in relation to errors, call length, etc, which are all useful indicators and if tracked over a period of months and weeks should show a gradual improvement in a new call centre agent’s ability. Methods such as mystery callers will be able to determine the agents overall ability to handle the conversation and manage the interaction with the customer. In fact many contact centres record all calls, and these could also be used for evaluation purposes. In addition, it is also possible on most systems for the team leader to listen in on calls and provide feedback and coaching to the agent at a later time in the day.

One of the key ways in which evaluation can be conducted for those individuals who have been targeted for training by their team leader, as a result of quality or quantity metric deficiencies, is to evaluate job performance both before and after the training. Through this comparison any change can be observed and the change attributed to training.

Key points in the design and delivery process

• Delivery needs to be interactive and use participative mechanisms.
• Ensure you have clear objectives for the programme at the start.
• Design needs to follow the logical customer process.
• Ensure employees can use the phone system and give information at the same time.
• Provide information in small chunks with appropriate time allocated, eg if it takes five minutes for a customer to give the information, there is no point in allowing them to take 10 minutes to input the information during training.
• Provide an accompanying manual for both trainer and participant
• – this could be paperless and online.
• Systems training needs to be integrated with telephone skills, customer service skills, and problem solving skills training.
• If using a manual or online tutorial, it will need to have screen shots to illustrate.
• Make sure you are informed of any system changes as they will need to be incorporated in future training sessions.
• Ensure any legal requirements/considerations are included.
• Inform participants of the details of refresher training.
• Begin refresher training with a test to see where any gaps in knowledge or skills exist: your call centre stats or customer feedback should tell you where gaps are.
• Regarding how much detail to go into, work back from what is the objective of the training.
• Employees can role play with each other, one being the customer the other the employee – record these and let the participants listen back to their own call.

We have included below some tips that we hope you will find useful in the design and delivery of system skills training.