CIAC-Certified Strategic Leader Spotlight
	By Mellody Lewis, CCSL Call Center Operations Manager AMS Direct

CIAC Certification has many benefits to us as contact center professionals. The obvious advantage is increased knowledge of the contact center environment and the value this contributes to the organization as a whole. In addition, going through the certification process established a path for the entire management team’s professional development.

My personal experience has proven to be an excellent tool to mentor and encourage my staff to actively seek further professional development. I am proud to have been a part of this in-depth program and am confident I will continue to experience the benefits throughout my career. My goal is to be an example to my team as well as others in the contact center industry. Being relatively new to the contact center industry - with only 4 years of experience - it was important to be involved in a comprehensive, industry-sanctioned program. CIAC-Certified Strategic Leader was my solution.

“Having Edcor managers become CIAC-Certified has significantly improved their ability to proactively contribute to our organization’s big picture strategy, as well as better manage their day-to-day responsibilities. The broad scope of competence obtained through the preparation for and completion of CIAC Certification testing is the equivalent of several years contact center experience.”

John McBride
Vice President, Edcor

Edcor provides Fortune 1000 corporations with outsourced contact center services to manage customer and employee care, corporate and continuing education, compliance and certification projects, and reimbursement processing through its state-of-the-art three hundred seat contact center. To ensure the highest quality of service and performance, Edcor has committed to CIAC Certification for its entire management staff.

	It’s All About Customer-Centricity – A Rallying Cry for the Customer Care and Support Profession!
	By Mike Trotter Executive Director The Center for Customer Driven Quality

CIAC promotes professional excellence in the customer care and support professions. I share CIAC’s passion for excellence. The fact that you are reading this newsletter implies that you, also, are attracted to this goal. To achieve excellence it is important that our focus is broader than just the effective and efficient operation of our centers.

Having spent more years than I wish to admit in the world of customer care and support, I am convinced that the key to greater profit and growth for most companies is Customer-Centricity. I am still surprised that so many executives continue to focus on service levels, average talk times and abandoned rates to grade their customer access performance. The reality is that every enterprise communicates directly with customers at lots of points that are not obvious from looking at an organizational chart. Each of these countless ‘miscellaneous’ contacts is an opportunity to increase the value of the enterprise. Many are ignored. Taking a holistic view of the enterprise and its customers is what Customer-Centricity is all about. I believe it is a sure fire way for a firm to achieve long-term, sustainable financial success.

We customer care professionals have been at the forefront of the evolution of the technologies, management practices and metrics enabling Customer-Centricity. Many of us work for firms that are truly in touch with their customers. Unfortunately many of us do not. Even worse, many businesses do not understand the value customer care professionals can bring to their organization. It is time for us to challenge our enterprises to rethink and redesign their business processes, putting customers at the center. In the 1980s and 1990s business enterprises focused on Total Quality Management (TQM). Today, firms that haven’t embraced TQM don’t survive. In the early 21st century, Customer-Centricity should be the rallying cry, and we are the professionals who can make it happen in our organizations.

An organization’s primary focus can be determined by looking at the issues getting its executives’ time and attention, the capabilities they are investing in, and the metrics they consider to be the key to success. There are five centricities. Which one of the centricities listed below best characterizes your enterprise?

Firms that are really customer-centric share nine characteristics. Customer-Centric enterprises:

I have just touched the surface of Customer-Centricity in this article. If you would like more information or to provide feedback to this article, email me at trotterm@cfs.purdue.edu.

	A View from the Outside Defining External Call Center Performance Metrics
	By Penny Reynolds Founding Partner The Call Center School

The long-term success of any organization, and particularly a service organization such as a call center, depends upon continuous improvement. Most call centers have numerous measures of individual, team, and overall call center performance. However, the key to continuous improvement also involves listening to customers to learn how effective the organization is meeting their needs.

Understanding customer perceptions of your organization’s performance can only be accomplished through a systematic customer surveying process. It is important for the call center to perform its own surveys in order to understand the perceptions of customers related specifically to call center transactions. Many organizations perform regular customer satisfaction surveys, but these surveys focus on products, pricing, and a variety of other concerns with the call center experience sometimes buried in the overall questions and scope of the survey. To truly evaluate how effectively the call center is serving customers and representing the organization, it is crucial to do customer surveys solely focused on the call center experience.

Types of Surveys
There are several different types of surveys that an organization might do. These three types of surveys are:

Customer Survey Steps
Regardless of the type of survey to be performed, there are five basic steps to be followed in performing customer surveys. These steps are:

Project Planning
Every call center survey should start with a statement of purpose. This statement should outline the motivation for the survey, the target audience, the needed results, and what actions will be taken with the results. The statement of purpose should be simple, but detailed enough to serve as a “beacon” to keep the project focused and moving forward.

Another step in planning a customer survey will be to identify the required resources. Outline any facilities that will be needed, along with any special equipment or tools to perform the study. Personnel will also be defined at this point by assembling a cross-functional project team. Members of this team should include a project manager who will oversee the project and perhaps do most of the work, along with those that will be involved in questionnaire design, implementation, and analysis. It is desirable to enlist a project sponsor or champion who is a member of senior management to ensure resources will be allocated to the project as needed. This project team may also include select customers, as well as supporting departments and outside partners or vendors that may assist in the project.

Every survey project should begin with planning a budget for the project. The budget should include such items as staff salaries, computer hardware/software, postal or telephone fees for survey implementation, training, incentives for participants, and perhaps survey software tools.
A project schedule should be defined that outlines how long each phase of the project will take and what milestones are dependent upon other tasks being completed first. The phases to be outlined in the schedule include project planning, questionnaire design and development, questionnaire review, survey administration, data analysis, and reporting.

The final stage in the planning process is content development. This step is sometimes referred to as “the survey before the survey” and is used to ensure all critical issues and concerns are indeed being covered in the actual questionnaire. This initial survey can take the form of one-on-one interviews with individuals, or can be accomplished in a focus group setting. It is important to include individuals or companies in this pre-survey process who will willingly bring out issues and concerns. These initial surveys should be done until no new issues surface, so that all potential customer concerns are addressed in the survey instrument.

Instrument Development
In developing the actual survey instrument or questionnaire, it is important to start with an idea of what information is needed in the final report and work backwards. Designing the questionnaire will be an iterative process and ample time should be allowed to get it right. Three categories of questions are typically included in a survey, including ones that address service delivery attributes, demographic variables, and customer attitudes toward the call center and the organization.
When writing the actual questions, it is important to consider phrasing to avoid loaded or leading questions, and to avoid jargon and ambiguous wording. Questionnaire design is critical so that customers will not just take the time to complete the survey, but will be able to complete it correctly.
Each survey instrument should include an introduction that explains who should complete the survey, how much time it should take, how to respond to questions, what to do when finished, and what the deadline is for participation. Critical terminology should be defined at the beginning and sequencing instructions should be given, whether given verbally in a telephone interview, or displayed legibly in a written survey.

Another crucial design element is the type of data to be used. Some questions may be unstructured and require a textual response, while other questions may be structured in a multiple-choice format, or in a rating scale of some sort.

Survey Administration
There are various ways to administer a customer satisfaction survey. Traditional paper-based mail surveys have declined in popularity in recent years due to their low response rates and availability of faster means of communications. A high percentage of call centers utilize telephone surveys, conducted either by in-house staff or by a third-party specialist. Electronic surveys via e-mail and the Web are also growing in number. The variety of administration methods that can be used, along with their relative advantages and disadvantages is provided in matrix form below:

Another key decision in the survey administration process will be the sampling procedure. The organization should consider its customer population and determine whether a census is needed or whether a representative sample will be used. If a sample is to be used, correct sampling procedures should be employed in order to arrive at a precise and accurate conclusion. The sample size will depend upon the number of responses needed as well as the expected response rate from the participants. The number of needed responses will depend upon the desired accuracy and precision of the survey, with the amount of accuracy needed being dependent upon the amount of variation in the sample.

Once the sample size and sampling procedure has been determined, a pre-survey notification should go out, either via traditional letter or by email. This notification should explain why the survey is being done, how the survey will benefit the participant, how results will be communicated, and what, if any, incentives are provided for participation. Upon conclusion of this notification, the actual survey is distributed.

Data analysis
Once the survey has been distributed and responses gathered, the next step in the survey process is to analyze the results. Analysis will vary depending upon whether the questions were purely statistical in nature, or where unstructured textual responses will be received. The data will typically be analyzed to determine averages or other means of central tendency. The data will also be analyzed to determine how the responses are distributed. It is important to not only look at the average responses or scores, but also to look at the dispersion of results from low to high. Statistical analysis (beyond the scope of this book) should be employed to arrive at meaningful conclusions from all the data gathered in the survey process.

Reporting and Action
The purpose of doing a customer survey is to determine how effectively customer needs are being met. Once the data has been analyzed, the next step is to report the survey results to relevant parties, and also to act upon results of the study to improve the service process and strengthen relationships with customers. Actions might include follow-up research or root cause analysis, immediate service actions, or continuous process improvement initiatives.

More Information
Want to learn more about the process of doing customer surveys? We highly recommend
Customer Surveying by Dr. Fred Van Bennekom and the Survey Research Handbook by Pamela Alrech and Robert Settle. Both provide excellent, step-by-step instructions on how to develop, implement, and fine-tune customer surveys for your business improvement process.

About the Author….
Penny Reynolds is a Founding Partner of The Call Center School, a Tennessee based consulting and education company. The company provides a wide range of educational offerings for call center professionals, including traditional classroom courses, web-based seminars, self-paced e-learning programs, and call center management books. For more information, email Penny at penny.reynolds@thecallcenterschool.com or call at 615-812-8410.

Learning Solutions To Fit Every Need

CIAC has partnered with the leading providers of contact center training to bring you a variety of options to meet your learning needs for CIAC Certification testing. Classroom, e-Learning, Self-Study, Webinar, Blended, University...whatever the need, a top notch program is available through the CIAC Training Partners. And, because different people have different learning needs, your organization can combine programs and delivery medium to create customized training to fit the unique needs of your center's management team. Want a total solution? Buy both training and certification testing through a CIAC Training Partner.

Click here for a listing of CIAC Certification Training Consortium Partners.

An Interview With Dan Cohen,
Author of "How To Become A Great Call Center Manager."

CIAC recently talked with author Dan Coen about his new book "How to Become a Great Call Center Manager. Here, in a Q&A format, Dan shares his thoughts and insights on some key contact center management issues.

CIAC: Dan, in your latest book “How to Become a Great Call Center Manger, you state that a center’s performance starts with the management team. Can you elaborate on this?

Dan Coen: Every time I go into a call center to meet with the management team, they lament about a lack of employee performance. Yet, a center’s performance begins first and foremost with the management team - not the folks on the telephone. The important questions that need to be answered are “What does the management team do daily to impact employee performance? How well thought out is the management structure, motivation, coaching, training, etc?” The employees in a call center are usually not the responsible party for a center’s lack of performance. It is the managers, directors, supervisors, trainers, etc.

CIAC: You also mentioned in your book that the manager must remove the phrase "I don't have enough time" from his/her thought process. Yet, it seems that those who manage contact centers never have enough hours in a day. What advice do you offer to help managers better manage their time?

Dan Coen: If you don’t have enough time to do the right things in the call center, than what exactly do you have time for? The call center operates the same as any other service organization, such as an airlines, hotel, restaurant, etc. Call center management is a service business. The call center manager provides services to his/her staff. Although call centers may be different, all of the skills and requirements are the same. First, identify exactly what needs to be done in the center to make certain that flights take off on time, the rooms are cleaned, the table is set, etc. Second, breakdown the peripheral duties versus requirements – for example, hotels need towels; airplanes need flight attendants. Third, use all the resources in the organization -- training, IT, HR, operations, etc. - to do a better job of getting the key dynamics right.

CIAC: In your book, you share tips on how to manage agents. What are your top five most important tips?

Dan Coen: First, have a daily game plan prepared before you enter the office. The day before, be certain to plan out tomorrow’s motivation, systems and job duties. Second, measure everything. Know what each person did last week and last year. Chart their growth or lack thereof. Use these measurements to manage and motivate. Third, supervise the supervisors. Focus on the ‘sandwich management’ technique. They should walk the floor, monitor calls, and train. Fourth, create a visual environment of culture. Emphasize people and performance. Your employees are trapped on the telephone, they aren’t going anywhere. Use that captive audience to your advantage through visual messages. Fifth, have fun. Don’t be too serious in the call center - accounting can be serious - the engineering department can be pensive. Call centers, by virtue of the environment, should be a fun place - use that to your advantage.

CIAC: How does your book help to prepare a management professional for CIAC Certification?

Dan Coen: CIAC and I view call center management the same way so reading my book will educate you on many of the standards upon which CIAC Certification testing is based. CIAC Certification addresses areas such as creating and leading teams, managing human resources, leadership practices, etc. This is what my book is all about so use it as a training resource outside the box ideas and practical concepts to help you and your team prepare for CIAC Certification testing.

CIAC: Thank you, Dan. How can readers reach you?

Dan Coen: Call me at 888-835-5326 or email me at DanCoen@CallCenterToday.com. You can also visit my web site at www.CallCenterToday.com.

Dan Coen is President of CallCenterToday.com, a professional services organization that specializes in the human engineering of call centers, their managers, trainers, and operations. For more information, call 888-835-5326, go to www.CallCenterToday.com, or emai MyCallCenter@CallCenterToday.com.

Q. Why is the first contact center industry certification program for managers and executives?

A. Ultimately what makes a center 'great' is its leadership and management team. A common trait among top performing centers is leadership that has vision and multi-disciplinary expertise to link what's important to the center with what's important to the organization and a management team with the specialized know-how to operate the center so that it delivers business results. This kind of leadership and management expertise must be deliberately cultivated. This is where CIAC Certification comes in - it provides the roadmap to raise performance in those mission-critical areas most linked to bottom line results, while providing a framework for continual learning. To sum it up, industry certification was first developed for customer care and support center managers and executives because competent leadership and management is the foundation of a successful center - and because a culture of performance excellence starts at the top.