Read our Customer Reach Newsletter – January 2010 (pdf-1.2mb)

Customer Reach provides news and views of the contact center industry. It is sent to more than 11,000 senior contact center executives, like yourself [...]]]> In the January 2010 issue:

• EQ drives Agent-level Performance
• Is Social Media A Fundamental Shift for Customer Service?
• IQPC Call Center Summit- Review
• Inside TRG
• Case Study
• Classifieds
• Testimonials

Read our Customer Reach Newsletter – January 2010 (pdf-1.2mb)

Customer Reach provides news and views of the contact center industry. It is sent to more than 11,000 senior contact center executives, like yourself around the globe. Please feel free to forward this newsletter to any colleagues you feel would appreciate it.

Let us know what you think of this issue and your thoughts and suggestions on how we can improve. You can reach us by email: ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com or jcockerill@thetaylorreachgroup.com, we would love to here from you.

Thank you for your patronage!

Customer Reach – Newsletter Archive

Let’s deal with some of the well known tactical reasons for a engaging a consultant. In our experience the most common reason for hiring a call/contact [...]]]> So why do companies and organizations hire consultants? While intended as a rhetorical question, I can hear some readers repeat the question out loud and in earnest…”Really, why would you!”

Let’s deal with some of the well known tactical reasons for a engaging a consultant. In our experience the most common reason for hiring a call/contact center consultant is to gain knowledge or a skill set that is not present in the client organization. This is often related to sub sets of call/contact center knowledge.

Some centers require knowledge that can only be distilled through many years of operational expertise in call and contact center operations or simply by someone who has made far more mistakes than they have. Of course, not all engagements relate to esoteric knowledge, a number of organizations need help with the basics. In both scenarios the consultant is engaged to add a talent or skill.

Some centers have veteran call and contact center experts in place; the challenge for these organizations is not that they don’t have the skill or knowledge internally. But rather that the resources that possess the knowledge are tied up on critical projects until well into the next decade. In this scenario the consultant represents additional bandwidth or bench strength.

The second use of consultants is to drive change in an organization. All organizations develop constituencies that work well or not together. People and groups become wedded to ideas, concepts, solutions, processes and the method of thinking about problems they face. Consultants can bring fresh ideas, experiences and approaches to all sorts of challenges in and around the contact center. Astute managers employ consultants to create opportunities for change where before there was only inertia or stalemate.

Finally there is the “I’m a nice guy” engagement. This is where the consultant is retained solely to communicate or execute bad news. Beware the consultant who arrives with an axe, chainsaw or even a small paring knife. Their job is to cut and/or to recommend who should be cut. Often the client may already have their list, which they share with the consultant. All the while they plead that this is to be an objective process. Yes this is a bit distasteful, but it does happen. The use of the consultant in the ‘role of the call center chainsaw massacre’ distances and separates the executives from the decision.

Often consultants are employed just so the executive in charge has ‘plausible deniability’. Then they to can join with their subordinates in damning the consultants. If you blame the consultants, then ownership for the distasteful decision is defused to the collective “them” from the “us”. Of course this is not just true of cuts and headcount reduction, but in all areas. A fast way to test if an idea or concept has ‘legs’ is to have the consultant present the idea. Then wait for the reaction. If positive, then management can jump on board. If negative, you can join or listen to the chorus of ‘Boos’. This has been called the Pioneer Process as the consultant is the pioneer…and you can always tell who the pioneers are…the ones with arrows in their back. This approach protects a managers’ political capital within an organization allowing them to be the parent of good ideas or brilliant at firing consultants with poor ideas and approaches. Both ways management wins and heroes are created.

Before hiring any consultant look at your organization; plum the depth of your internal call/contact center knowledge. Do a serious assessment of the knowledge and experience your contact center organization possesses. For each critical role look at your incumbent and ask yourself this question…”if this was my $6 million dollar budget I would hand it to person X and feel…” Fill in the blanks. If your answer is: “Terrified, petrified, afraid, concerned or similar then give yourself 1 point. If you said you would be: “Confident, Comfortable, Eager and Excited (and the latter is not just the meds talking), give yourself 3 points. If you said “Confident, Comfortable, Eager and Excited (and it was the meds talking) give yourself 2 points. And lastly if you said “Confident, Comfortable, Eager and Excited”, but know that the initiative is doomed and you are only saying this because you have invested heavily in the competitors stock then give yourself 10 points, because you will make so much money you won’t need this job.

If you have no answer because you can’t identify anyone in a critical role in the contact center, then you are clearly well on the path to senior management and need not trifle with the little people in the contact center. But for the rest of us who have not just potentially incurred the wrath of the SEC, your answer will provide insight into the role a consultant could fulfill. Of course, the higher the score, the less you are likely to need an external consultant.

While I have written about and potentially offended and derided those consultants whose primary experience lies within a corporate captive center, and then those who came from the vendors’ world, there is a place for all three camps. Those with corporate, captive center experience can be very comfortable in larger bureaucratic organizations with decision cycles that are more deliberate. These consultants though may be unaccustomed to dealing with floor and line staff and issues where speed to decision is critical.

Similarly who better to deal with vendors, than someone who has been on their side of the table and know the parlour tricks and points of vulnerability? Who better to spot a ringer than a ringer? In the words of Pogo “I have met the enemy and he are we”.

How to go about hiring a “call center consultant”?
The internet is a great resource and a quick Google search can help you narrow down the field of candidates to 32,000,000. Bing with its highly touted ability to narrow searches with pin-point accuracy gives us a far more manageable count of 9,070,000 matches. While both of these searches are helpful, we may wish to drill down further. A search on LinkedIn identifies 423 results, but balloons to 132,000 with the quotes removed. In spite of these findings, you may also want to look at industry groups such as the ATA or CCNG. Regardless of how you build your candidate list, be sure you ask for referrals and check references. You also want to understand the potential ‘fit’. Have they done the same work before, in the same vertical, for a center of the same size and maturity?

Interview the consultants, not just the head of the firm but the folks you will actually be working with. Ask the tough questions…what you would do in this situation or that situation. Try to get some insight into their personality and ask yourself: Can I work with this person? Would I like to work with this person? All other things being equal; you want someone you will enjoy working with. For some it is important to have a sense of humor: (Because, of course, if you don’t have a sense of humor, it’s just not funny).

Regardless of credentials, some buyers will only purchase from large behemoth consulting firms. This is the “no one gets fired for buying IBM” mental model and while big might be comfortable you must remember that many are selling their pyramid. By this I mean you meet the senior staff until you buy. Then spend the majority of their assignment trying to figure out where they went and who all those twenty somethings IROC’s (Interchangeables Right Out of College) are and why they are embedding themselves in your organization. Often it is a critical element of their business model. This can be worse than the guest that won’t leave as the tentacles spread out from your contact center. Out, out damn spot.

You also need to understand how the consultant will price and quote your project. Time and Materials, can sound like a safe way to go, but combined with a vague Scope of Work and it can be a license to print money. Fixed price project costing is a better approach for most clients.

A fixed price combined with a robust Scope of Work, controls costs better and prevents you from finding call center consultants roaming the halls of your offices six months from now, muttering something about scope change and the fact that they need a new watch. The fixed price, fixed scope model also allows for easier calculation of the project ROI. This is one of the reasons that some firms like ours can offer an ROI guarantee.

When should you hire a call center consultant?
Only when you can identify what you need to get done- you should have a robust scope of work in mind, have confirmed that you cannot complete this task employing existing resources or don’t want to try to complete this with existing resources and get palpitations at the thought. You should also have the budget or be confident that you could get the project funded with an appropriate Return on Investment.

Consultants are people too, well at least most of us are. Regardless of where we came from we are all products of our experiences. Understanding your needs you are better equipped to select a consultant with the best chance of success. Good Luck!

Call Center and Customer Service consultancy Grows Again- Industry Veteran – Deborah MacAskill Joins Taylor Reach

Toronto- Mr. Colin Taylor, The Chairman and CEO of The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. today announced that the Toronto based Call/Contact and Customer Service Consultancy has added Ms Deborah MacAskill to its’ team of consultants. “Deb adds more [...]]]>

Toronto- Mr. Colin Taylor, The Chairman and CEO of The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. today announced that the Toronto based Call/Contact and Customer Service Consultancy has added Ms Deborah MacAskill to its’ team of consultants. “Deb adds more depth to the team. With twenty years of call center experience she provides the kind of hands-on center management expertise our clients expect from TRG”, said Taylor.

“Deborah has a successful track record building and operating some of the most admired customer service and operations centers”

Prior to joining The Taylor Reach Group, she was Vice President Operations at Sutherland Global Services, a contact center/BPO outsource agency. She was responsible for operating 4 outsourced customer support contact centers. Deb also worked for other outsourcers including Teletech, ICT Group and Resolve (formerly Watts Communications). At Resolve as Director, Atlantic Operations Deb oversaw three centers. Deb’s career began at Bell and included a period at Register.com.

In the course of her career Deb has had hands on exposure to every facet of call and contact center operations. Deborah studied business at St Mary’s University

Deb joins a company that has been growing at a rapid rate. The key to the company’s’ growth according to Mr. Taylor is “offering strategic and tactical consulting based upon years of proven experience, that delivers superior and breakthrough results for our clients. We only employ people who are experts because our clients expect nothing less. Our staff’s in-depth knowledge, proven results, and all together more than 150 years of call center operational management experience resonates well with our customers, and in turn delivered superior results to our shareholders”. In fact TRG is so confident in their capabilities that they back their work with an ROI guarantee. Says Taylor, “When we make a recommendation and our clients ask us to implement we guarantee a 300% Return on Investment. In four years offering this, we have yet to pay against this guarantee.”

“TRG has recently signed recent new agreements with clients in the retail and service industries”, Taylor said.

About The Taylor Reach Group, Inc.

With two offices in North America and one in Australia, The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. (TRG) is one of the leading mid sized Call/Contact Center and Customer Service consultancies. This award winning company founded in 2003 by Colin Taylor today boasts a stable of Fortune 1000 companies. The consulting staff at TRG each possesses more than 20 years of Call/Contact Center, Customer Service and Customer Satisfaction experience in delivering effective and significant benefits from Operational Innovation.

When George H W Bush used this phrase he was referring to diversity. I think that this phase aptly characterizes the plight of many organizations that struggle with managing their knowledge and information. Knowledge management was fairly straightforward for many years. There was a binder or a manual that was written and developed to [...]]]> By Colin Taylor

When George H W Bush used this phrase he was referring to diversity. I think that this phase aptly characterizes the plight of many organizations that struggle with managing their knowledge and information.
Knowledge management was fairly straightforward for many years. There was a binder or a manual that was written and developed to assist the user in understanding the system, product, procedure, process, or service. When questions arose in the office or in the call center the binder was the oracle of truth. “If its’ in the book it must be right”. Doing it by the book became cliché.

But as the accessibility to and the generation of information grew through the internet and corporate intranets more and more information became available. Updating the hard copy ‘book’ became viewed as a time consuming and unnecessary task as it could be now provided electronically.

Companies began putting their information and knowledge on internal sites (intranets) and externally on their public internet sites. Ownership of these tasks was migrated to webmasters and IT departments whose primary role was to keep the infrastructure and sites functioning. They would put up whatever they were asked to. There was little concern for the content, or currency of the content as it wasn’t their responsibility. As more content, information and knowledge was created more people within the organization were given the right to post and add content. The increased availability and ease of access to this information was a great boon for business. Information and answers could be found and often found quickly and easily.

However problems soon began to crop up. Too much information, duplicated and/or conflicting information began to clutter the virtual ‘book’. The cause: while companies had become very adept at creating, posting and sharing information and knowledge, they hadn’t developed the corollary skills of maintaining, renewing and retiring this same information.

For call and contact centers this could be specifically problematic. Customers could research their question or query and then phone the call center only to get a different answer. For one of our clients ‘Answer Shopping’ became so rampant that over 20% of all inquiries cited different answers the caller had found on their own. The callers often called back repeatedly until they received the answer they were seeking. This client a well known international charity knew they had a problem with knowledge management. They just didn’t know how significant it was.

Research showed that for many important processes there were up to five answers or descriptions of how to complete the procedure. Digging a little deeper TRG discovered that all five had been accurate at one time, although only one was correct today.

This discovery, combined with the cost impact of fielding multiple calls for ‘answer shopping’ clients and the overall confusion that multiple correct answers created prompted the client to start a program with The Taylor Reach Group, Inc (TRG) to build a knowledgebase to identify and categorize all organizational knowledge.

The first step in the process was to identify what was presently available on the intranet, internet and through all other media (hard copy, electronic, forms etc.). This exercise resulted in more than 100,000 knowledge points being identified. A knowledge point being any identifiable piece of information that provided guidance, instruction, document/forms related to a business process or procedure.

The second step was to identify the individuals within the organization who were best qualified to verify each individual knowledge point. This exercise resulted in identifying more than 100 Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) within the organization. This was then taken up to the management level to find who was the ultimate owner of the knowledge point or Subject Matter Owners (SMO’s).

The knowledge management structure that was developed for this client then included:

• Knowledge points: any identifiable piece of information that provided guidance, instruction, document/forms related to a business process or procedure.
• SME: the individual best qualified to confirm, correct and maintain knowledge.
• SMO’s (Subject Matter Owners): The individual who has primary business ownership for the knowledge points and SME’s related to specific knowledge. And who was therefore responsible to the business and approved any changes, additions or deletions.

A rigorous review of all knowledge points with all SME’s was implemented using this structured approach. Each knowledge point was assessed, validated (confirmed to be correct and appropriate), incorrect (where a new knowledge point needs to be created). A timetable was established to create any required new knowledge points and an approval process was established to require SMO sign off on all new knowledge before it could be loaded into the knowledgebase.

All validated knowledge points required a defined review cycle of between 30 days to annual review. Once the review cycle was established the SME would receive an email requesting that they review a specific knowledge point and confirm if the knowledge was: still accurate or required modification or deletion. The SME was further asked to identify when this would be completed. Thirty days after the original email was sent to the SME, the system escalated the review to the SMO, so that they could follow up and ensure that the knowledge was reviewed and changed if required to be corrected.

The last element of imbedding the knowledge management process within the client organization was to modify the position descriptions for each SME and SMO to specifically identify the knowledge that the position was responsible for. This allowed the ability to manage the staff going forward. Once SMO sign off was achieved ‘approved’ knowledge. Each ‘approved’ knowledge point identified was added to the knowledgebase.

This was a significant process that resulted in a more efficient contact center and less confusion on all sides. The knowledge management structure created then allowed the organization to implement technology to provide access and support the dissemination of organizational knowledge.

With a large undertaking such as this one; 100,000 individual knowledge points, over 100 SME’s and 20+ SMO’s, I am often asked how we did it. My response is always the same…”it is just like eating an elephant, you have to do it one bite at a time”.

Let us know what you think of this article, please visit www.thetaylorreachgroup.com or send us an email at info@thetaylorreachgroup.com.