Call Center from birth to death
Not so long ago, I worked in one of the major call centers in Ukraine, which is engaged in outsourcing. This call center serves companies of different profiles (Internet and TV providers, online stores, mobile operators, embassies, etc.), as well as engaged in small temporary marketing projects. And just saying goodbye to this office, I came across an article about the launch of "IBM Watson" to replace a live operator. Honestly, I was skeptical. And now I will explain why.
The article contains the figures of 270 million unresolved issues, and I can tell you that most of the unresolved issues will not be solved because of the inability to solve them. Also, fabulous 6 and more minutes for searching for information are indicated, in which not a single operating operator will believe, in real life during this time you can not only find the required information, but also smoke and drink coffee.
I think it will be interesting for you to find out the structure, the system of work and how the call center earns on the basis of outsourcing (the situation in the call centers is a bit different and you will understand why). I will explain to you the reason for your waiting, braking about the voice menu (* 1, * 2, and you have a drum phone), why there are stupid operators, or why you are forced to distort the cable again and restart the computer. Everything has an explanation.
')
Everything in order
A large company of Internet and TV services, let's call it “Two in One”, provides its services to a huge number of subscribers in almost all regional centers of the country and, according to statistics, about 5% of all this number need different types of assistance every month. Initially, it opens its KC, but due to the load on the main line of business, “Two in One” quickly realizes that it cannot cope on its own and at a run they are looking for a contractor for whom they can dump their problem here too:
A) “Two in One” money has a lot of money;
B) such a car of customers that for any outsource KC will be a holiday.
And our “Two in One” arranges a tender between the KC, where everyone promises a lot and in the end wins our KC, promised the most and did not know what he promised.
At this point, the life cycle of the project begins from its birth to death. Birth and becoming are the best times for the operator, the RFP is good, there is still no particular monitoring system (hence the wait after “I will clarify the information” for 5 or more minutes to go for a smoke). And while our project rises on its feet, our KC is euphoric, and “Two in One” in parallel creates a controlling body for KC (subscribers complain about the incompetence of employees and generally KC from the company asks much, and there are more and more unresolved questions). And here begins one after the other to come new rules and requirements, “Two in One” recalls that you can also spend money on CC and make money on it since not all subscribers have two services, but only one.
And what we have as a result before the flourishing of the project:
1) rapid expansion of the state (recruitment is carried out by announcement)
2) staff training on the same rules and algorithms for two weeks + adaptation, but having come up with an adaptation, the new operator will face real life and new rules and another month for real adaptation (hence the stupid operators, but they are not to blame)
3) retraining operators from service technicians and techies to salespeople, and then the operator will be obliged to push something, be it the Internet or a new tariff or some fashionable feature, for the reason that the lack of this offer will hit the RFP.
4) Reduction of everything that is only related to time (talk time, pause time, which leads to the necessary efficiency of the employee, but in turn can lead to idle times between calls, and no one except the operators loves them, CCs do not pay for idle times, and the operator for the time in the login gets).
5) In addition to expanding the staff, a large staff turnover, plus over9000 new information, new algorithms of work and interaction with other services and in addition a couple of surprises from “Two in One” the day about which the operator learns from the subscriber and tears the hair on his head in search of an answer, which is not yet a database of information.
Our KC hardly digests all this, finally it establishes the system of interaction with “Two in One”, works at the maximum of the operator’s efforts and collects the profit corresponding to the efforts, as if everything is in a raspberry, everyone is satisfied, but it will not last long.
And we come to the heyday of the project, it is typical:
1) The number of operators becomes stable, there is the main backbone of already highly professional specialists in service and sales, who quickly help the board to adapt to beginners.
2) Everyone works on a salary, all participants get a profit: “Two in One” - new customers, CC - for correct service and product sales, the operator gets for hours, sales, talk time and quality.
3) The subscribers also feel this moment, they call back less on unresolved issues, the competence affects, the average operator’s rating from the subscriber increases. Separate individuals who are always ill remain, they are the ones who endure the operator’s brain the most and hit the wallet, and of course the “grandmothers”. When the project is in its heyday, these “grandmothers” will soon destroy it.
Everything in our KC is good, we solve all the questions of subscribers, we connect everyone, we get money, and the profit math is quite simple. The revenue of a CC consists of payment for each received call from the accounting for each operator (we consider it’s conditional - each operator works an hour, at this time must receive N calls with M duration over which they don’t pay, the minimum pause between them, and all operators must be loaded) + profits from the connection of new services - fines (this is a pitfall for the operator, as I have already written, only downtime is beneficial for operators and if KC does not control the load on operators during downtime, roughly speaking does not disguise unnecessary operators, “Two in One "finishes it with a ruble, and during the time in the slope, the operator smokes and does not receive money, this is such a stone. The second option is a penalty for the CC did not cope with the anticipated load, that is, did not bring the required number of operators to shift) - fines for incorrect interaction and gross errors of operators - fines for failure to comply with the plans. With this revenue, according to an intricate formula in which the devil himself breaks the leg, KC calculates the hourly rate for each operator and multiplies by the operator’s hours of operation and penalizes the operator for everything that is possible (good if he leaves, it is easy to replace).
Let's return to the life of our project. As they say, all good things come to an end and here is no exception. Suppose the team’s professionalism reached a peak and the operators of their army resolved most of the questions to 5% of disgruntled subscribers and they no longer need to call a hundred times, have already sold so much that you watch and sell something, and what remains with us: private service issues, accidents, which, fortunately, subscribers are decreasing in their mass, “inadequate” and grandmothers. And the operator has a plan, sell so much, sit out so much, reduce the duration of the conversation. And in fact, the operator, together with the KC, is at a dead end, there is a plan, but there is no physical ability to fulfill it, it lasts for a couple of months until our project is unscrewed as it can, but ultimately the situation becomes critical, at this point it will add to Criticality can not skillful crisis management, which no one is taught and do not know how to use it.
And so, we have a stage of stagnation of the project:
1) Heads of supervisors and supervisors are flying, sometimes for unknown reasons, the same inept crisis of management.
2) Competitors are on the heels who, by hook or by crook, increase their level of sales (did you think “Two in One” has one zoo with monkeys?), Which in turn leads to the fact that our project takes work and transfers it to a competitor (at the expense of truth and not truth, I think many people have come across such that they called you, they said that since you are a special client and “blah blah” we will connect you to a super mega share, and then after a while you will disconnect something for suddenly appeared debt, you call in KC and carry out the brain operat ru, who is trying to explain the words to you, that they say yes, there was an action and it ended and now the regular tariff and in truth they threw you and did not agree that the action itself does not turn off, and the CC operator tells you the truth, it’s written like that on the screen and not he or his colleague connected the action, but just a competitor increasing his sales, and the operator will not sell you a disgruntled subscriber, although he will tell everything according to the canons and the charter and this is another drawback to the operator's efficiency)
3) Lost cookies. There is nothing to comment on. There is an article with which I absolutely agree.
4) Termination of a set of new operators and the reduction of existing ones. As a result of reduced workload, sales and number of calls. The project even in the busiest days does not have the ability to cut off the load by the operators.
5) Sweet stuff called training and increased control. As if the problem is that people do not want to sell or do not know how. Trainings are almost weekly, but their effect tends to zero. Joy for the operator - an hour at the training = an hour of work.
6) For those who were kept on a sinking ship, there are additional weekends.
In stages of stagnation, everything looks like this, one could still mention wage delays, by using the same salary to raise additional funds through overnight loans, but this is a different story.
So the project is approaching its closure by offering operators a choice between other sites or dismissal and what the collective irresponsibility of the head leads to, the administration also migrates to another project and our project closes and the entire subscriber base moves to more nimble and promising competitors as well. Ultimately, the patient is dead.
And the official KC will always be alive, but it can only be accessed by cunning means or being a legal entity for example. And they earn there more than outsourcing operators because the money is not pre-cut CC, and without gray schemes go to the operator.
And oddly enough, but all of this is the reason for the greed of our customer and our KC, which is baffled by overvalued plans and is not able to realistically assess their abilities and timely warn the imminent crisis with preventive measures or at least logically constructed management.
And for those who read up to this line of sweet candy insider information: -D
I would be grateful for comments and recommendations, next time I will write about stress resistance.
Ps I started with the theme of IBM Watson, there is a dialogue for reflection, it is interesting that the machine then responded, because the operator will cope with the help of sharpness, and the machine does not have it.
Grandmother (B)
Operator (O)
The article contains the figures of 270 million unresolved issues, and I can tell you that most of the unresolved issues will not be solved because of the inability to solve them. Also, fabulous 6 and more minutes for searching for information are indicated, in which not a single operating operator will believe, in real life during this time you can not only find the required information, but also smoke and drink coffee.
I think it will be interesting for you to find out the structure, the system of work and how the call center earns on the basis of outsourcing (the situation in the call centers is a bit different and you will understand why). I will explain to you the reason for your waiting, braking about the voice menu (* 1, * 2, and you have a drum phone), why there are stupid operators, or why you are forced to distort the cable again and restart the computer. Everything has an explanation.
')
Everything in order
A large company of Internet and TV services, let's call it “Two in One”, provides its services to a huge number of subscribers in almost all regional centers of the country and, according to statistics, about 5% of all this number need different types of assistance every month. Initially, it opens its KC, but due to the load on the main line of business, “Two in One” quickly realizes that it cannot cope on its own and at a run they are looking for a contractor for whom they can dump their problem here too:
A) “Two in One” money has a lot of money;
B) such a car of customers that for any outsource KC will be a holiday.
And our “Two in One” arranges a tender between the KC, where everyone promises a lot and in the end wins our KC, promised the most and did not know what he promised.
At this point, the life cycle of the project begins from its birth to death. Birth and becoming are the best times for the operator, the RFP is good, there is still no particular monitoring system (hence the wait after “I will clarify the information” for 5 or more minutes to go for a smoke). And while our project rises on its feet, our KC is euphoric, and “Two in One” in parallel creates a controlling body for KC (subscribers complain about the incompetence of employees and generally KC from the company asks much, and there are more and more unresolved questions). And here begins one after the other to come new rules and requirements, “Two in One” recalls that you can also spend money on CC and make money on it since not all subscribers have two services, but only one.
And what we have as a result before the flourishing of the project:
1) rapid expansion of the state (recruitment is carried out by announcement)
2) staff training on the same rules and algorithms for two weeks + adaptation, but having come up with an adaptation, the new operator will face real life and new rules and another month for real adaptation (hence the stupid operators, but they are not to blame)
3) retraining operators from service technicians and techies to salespeople, and then the operator will be obliged to push something, be it the Internet or a new tariff or some fashionable feature, for the reason that the lack of this offer will hit the RFP.
4) Reduction of everything that is only related to time (talk time, pause time, which leads to the necessary efficiency of the employee, but in turn can lead to idle times between calls, and no one except the operators loves them, CCs do not pay for idle times, and the operator for the time in the login gets).
5) In addition to expanding the staff, a large staff turnover, plus over9000 new information, new algorithms of work and interaction with other services and in addition a couple of surprises from “Two in One” the day about which the operator learns from the subscriber and tears the hair on his head in search of an answer, which is not yet a database of information.
Our KC hardly digests all this, finally it establishes the system of interaction with “Two in One”, works at the maximum of the operator’s efforts and collects the profit corresponding to the efforts, as if everything is in a raspberry, everyone is satisfied, but it will not last long.
And we come to the heyday of the project, it is typical:
1) The number of operators becomes stable, there is the main backbone of already highly professional specialists in service and sales, who quickly help the board to adapt to beginners.
2) Everyone works on a salary, all participants get a profit: “Two in One” - new customers, CC - for correct service and product sales, the operator gets for hours, sales, talk time and quality.
3) The subscribers also feel this moment, they call back less on unresolved issues, the competence affects, the average operator’s rating from the subscriber increases. Separate individuals who are always ill remain, they are the ones who endure the operator’s brain the most and hit the wallet, and of course the “grandmothers”. When the project is in its heyday, these “grandmothers” will soon destroy it.
Everything in our KC is good, we solve all the questions of subscribers, we connect everyone, we get money, and the profit math is quite simple. The revenue of a CC consists of payment for each received call from the accounting for each operator (we consider it’s conditional - each operator works an hour, at this time must receive N calls with M duration over which they don’t pay, the minimum pause between them, and all operators must be loaded) + profits from the connection of new services - fines (this is a pitfall for the operator, as I have already written, only downtime is beneficial for operators and if KC does not control the load on operators during downtime, roughly speaking does not disguise unnecessary operators, “Two in One "finishes it with a ruble, and during the time in the slope, the operator smokes and does not receive money, this is such a stone. The second option is a penalty for the CC did not cope with the anticipated load, that is, did not bring the required number of operators to shift) - fines for incorrect interaction and gross errors of operators - fines for failure to comply with the plans. With this revenue, according to an intricate formula in which the devil himself breaks the leg, KC calculates the hourly rate for each operator and multiplies by the operator’s hours of operation and penalizes the operator for everything that is possible (good if he leaves, it is easy to replace).
Let's return to the life of our project. As they say, all good things come to an end and here is no exception. Suppose the team’s professionalism reached a peak and the operators of their army resolved most of the questions to 5% of disgruntled subscribers and they no longer need to call a hundred times, have already sold so much that you watch and sell something, and what remains with us: private service issues, accidents, which, fortunately, subscribers are decreasing in their mass, “inadequate” and grandmothers. And the operator has a plan, sell so much, sit out so much, reduce the duration of the conversation. And in fact, the operator, together with the KC, is at a dead end, there is a plan, but there is no physical ability to fulfill it, it lasts for a couple of months until our project is unscrewed as it can, but ultimately the situation becomes critical, at this point it will add to Criticality can not skillful crisis management, which no one is taught and do not know how to use it.
And so, we have a stage of stagnation of the project:
1) Heads of supervisors and supervisors are flying, sometimes for unknown reasons, the same inept crisis of management.
2) Competitors are on the heels who, by hook or by crook, increase their level of sales (did you think “Two in One” has one zoo with monkeys?), Which in turn leads to the fact that our project takes work and transfers it to a competitor (at the expense of truth and not truth, I think many people have come across such that they called you, they said that since you are a special client and “blah blah” we will connect you to a super mega share, and then after a while you will disconnect something for suddenly appeared debt, you call in KC and carry out the brain operat ru, who is trying to explain the words to you, that they say yes, there was an action and it ended and now the regular tariff and in truth they threw you and did not agree that the action itself does not turn off, and the CC operator tells you the truth, it’s written like that on the screen and not he or his colleague connected the action, but just a competitor increasing his sales, and the operator will not sell you a disgruntled subscriber, although he will tell everything according to the canons and the charter and this is another drawback to the operator's efficiency)
3) Lost cookies. There is nothing to comment on. There is an article with which I absolutely agree.
4) Termination of a set of new operators and the reduction of existing ones. As a result of reduced workload, sales and number of calls. The project even in the busiest days does not have the ability to cut off the load by the operators.
5) Sweet stuff called training and increased control. As if the problem is that people do not want to sell or do not know how. Trainings are almost weekly, but their effect tends to zero. Joy for the operator - an hour at the training = an hour of work.
6) For those who were kept on a sinking ship, there are additional weekends.
In stages of stagnation, everything looks like this, one could still mention wage delays, by using the same salary to raise additional funds through overnight loans, but this is a different story.
So the project is approaching its closure by offering operators a choice between other sites or dismissal and what the collective irresponsibility of the head leads to, the administration also migrates to another project and our project closes and the entire subscriber base moves to more nimble and promising competitors as well. Ultimately, the patient is dead.
And the official KC will always be alive, but it can only be accessed by cunning means or being a legal entity for example. And they earn there more than outsourcing operators because the money is not pre-cut CC, and without gray schemes go to the operator.
And oddly enough, but all of this is the reason for the greed of our customer and our KC, which is baffled by overvalued plans and is not able to realistically assess their abilities and timely warn the imminent crisis with preventive measures or at least logically constructed management.
And for those who read up to this line of sweet candy insider information: -D
- If you want to quickly get to any operator by calling any call center, select the menu “connect service”, most often it is * 1.
- For the development of paranoia and in support of Comrade Snowden. Yes, all calls are recorded, not only are they stored, some are also processed. But processing is carried out to control the operator or find out the reasons for the repeated treatment.
- The answer is why the operator causes the cable to distort or reboot the equipment. Thanks to House for the phrase “Everybody is lying” and the subscribers too. Especially, those who consider themselves gurus, and in fact most of the pseudogur. Algorithms for those issues are developed for a long time and scrupulously, taking into account the experience and technical experience of the company, and they all begin with a reboot and check connections in any technology (for example, do not believe how a modem reacts to a modem on a simple cable twist).
- If the operator says that you have an accident, it means an accident, why, what and how he does not know in 99%, unless the rare master left a sensible answer. And when she closes, he also does not know and do not call the eldest, he also does not know.
- You will never get someone's number or a really decisive manager. Want someone older title road to the contact center.
- Do not call from 22:45 to 24:00, until 23:00 you will be drained, until 24:00 you will wait a long time for an answer, only night operators remain at this time, and the influx at this time is still evening.
- And the most important disappointment - the operator does not have a magic button that includes everything as soon as you call :-P
I would be grateful for comments and recommendations, next time I will write about stress resistance.
Ps I started with the theme of IBM Watson, there is a dialogue for reflection, it is interesting that the machine then responded, because the operator will cope with the help of sharpness, and the machine does not have it.
Grandmother (B)
Operator (O)
- (B) Hallo Hallo (scream in the phone)
- (O) Yes, I am listening to you!
- (B) Nothing works for me !!!
- (O) what's not working for you?
- (B) Nothing works !!!
- (A) What's your tv not working?
- (B) I Zhe said nothing works !!!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/183842/
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