In its most basic form, an outsourcing engagement would actually last a period of years. During that period, a contract is established between the client and the outsourcer so that the terms, conditions, and stipulations would be set for the whole period early on. The SLA or the Service Level Agreement is then established. This agreement is important to establish accurate measurement concerning the relationship between the outsourcer and the client. Basically, what is being measured here is the relationship between the two parties, whether it is still working or not and how well it is working.

The SLA is very essential for any outsourcing endeavor. The agreement itself defines the very boundaries of the outsourcing project, especially when it comes to the services and the functions that the outsourcer provides the client. The delegation of work is also an important aspect in the SLA, as well as the quality of the services and products delivered, otherwise known as the deliverables in the equation. However, the SLA must be very well defined, to ensure that the appropriate expectations would be set for both sides of the agreement. This way, there would also be appropriate provision of targets for both sides, especially when it comes to measuring performance accurately.

The very essence of the SLA is actually in the performance metrics that it employs. These metrics are used in measuring the outsourcer’s performance, more specifically, in checking if the outsourcer is still providing the service that it originally promised. This is the role of performance metrics for the whole of the outsourcing agreement. Here are a few guidelines that you might want to keep in mind when choosing and implementing SLA metrics.

Your SLA metrics should be able to measure the appropriate characteristics accurately. This is needed in ensuring that the client is consistently receiving the service level that is required of the outsourcer or the service provider. This is also needed to ensure that the outsourcer is able to achieve a profitability level that is acceptable.

Your SLA metrics should also be collected very easily. However, this does not mean that you should go with sources that are not detailed in nature. You still have to go for detailed metrics. Just make sure that you do not incur too much overhead expenses in collecting these metrics.

Lastly, SLA metrics should be in line with performance that is both attainable and reasonable. All possible commitments should be tied to these levels. This way, it would be easier for you to differentiate the rotten from the bunch. When bad service is differentiated from good service, then the outsourcer is given a fair enough opportunity towards the satisfaction of the client. With these support outsourcing metrics, outsourcing will surely be a breeze.

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When you want to optimize the performance of your help desk in terms of manpower and resources, then effective performance management measures should be implemented. These are the metrics themselves, which are quantifiable measures that gauge the performance of all members of your workforce. What are these performance management measures, you might ask? There are actually a number of these that you should keep in mind. The typical ones include the constant monitoring and evaluation of your agents’ performance, the proper formulation of objectives, the apt training of your agents, and the implementation of an appraisal system, to gauge and recognize which of your agents are performing beyond the required standards of the call center. To determine all of these, KPIs or key performance indicators should be implemented.

How important are KPIs, you might ask. Well, these are very important. Picture the many calls that a call center receives every single workday. What do you think can assist agents in gauging just what calls should receive top priority? And what about how these calls should be processed? The implementation of KPIs will greatly assist any call center here. Still, you should remember to choose only relevant KPIs to include as metrics. When you are tempted to include as many KPIs as possible, do not give in to this temptation. This would just make the analysis and interpretation of data all the more confusing. Thus, choose only the significant ones. This way, you are sure to have metrics that will measure what you want to measure.

Of course, these KPIs should also be in line with the goals and objectives that your company has prescribed during its very foundation. This way, the present performance of the help desk and all other departments in the company will be clearly determined.

For the most part, here are some KPIs that are currently used by help desks all over the world: call cost, customer satisfaction, first call resolution, overall call center performance, and agent efficiency. Call cost pertains to the costs entailed for each call that is received by the help desk. Customer satisfaction is measured through the conduction of Customer Satisfaction, or CSAT, surveys. First call resolution is the agent’s ability to resolve the customer’s issue within that first call made and received. Agent efficiency pertains to the abilities of the individual help desk agents. And overall call center performance pertains to all of the aspects that are in play towards the overall success of the call center itself. These are just some of the help desk outsourcing metrics that you just might want to use, should you be the proprietor of a certain call center.

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These indicators are actually used for the evaluation of the call center’s present performance when placed against corporate goals and objectives. In laymen’s terms, these measures can show you how the call center is currently performing, especially when you compare this performance to the goals and objectives that were set upon its foundation.

The metrics that you use should be quantifiable in form. After all, how else can you analyze and interpret data that is not quantifiable in form, right? If you were to do this with qualitative data, there is that inevitable risk of being subjective during the process. And where subjectivity is concerned, there will certainly be biases in store for you. With biases surrounding your analysis and interpretation of data, you would surely have a lot of difficulty here. Performance management is indeed a must when you are dealing with the performance of a call center. And the atmosphere of objectivity can only be achieved through the use of performance management measures, or your helpdesk KPIs to be more specific. Remember that interpretation should be based on quantifiable diet, not mere observation, or hearsay. This way, there would be no room for subjectivity at all.

Okay, so just how important are these KPIs for your helpdesk? Imagine the hundreds of calls any call center would receive within a single workday. Although these calls would concern, more or less, the same issues, the degree of importance would be inevitably varied. For instance, the call center handles an ISP or an Internet Service Provider account, like Bellsouth or Verizon. The agents would certainly be handling different issues for the customers. Some would concern billing issues. Others would concern installation services. Now, for billing issues alone, Customer A might be calling to inquire when her payment is due because she misplaced her billing statement. Customer B, on the other hand, might be calling to question the excess charges placed on her account, in spite of the fact that she already had her service terminated. Customer B’s issue would certainly be more serious than that of Customer A, right? With the proper implementation of helpdesk KPIs, Customer B’s call would be routed and given more priority than Customer A. Though this does not mean that Customer A would not be given due attention because her issue will still be entertained as thoroughly as possible. It is just a matter of choosing which issue to prioritize, and when the appropriate KPIs are implemented, then this would be easier for any call center.

Another very important thing to remember when it comes to establishing helpdesk outsourcing KPI is that these quantifiable measures must be in accordance with the goals and objectives of the call center itself. These metrics are used to check how far along a business is from realizing its goals, right? Thus, there should be proper alignment here.

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You may notice the mention of ‘every scorecard’ above. So, there are different scorecards implemented for every call center? Even if they are of the same industry? Yes, such is the case because even if call centers pretty much operate in the same manner, they would still have individual differences that would greatly help in identifying one from another. Thus, there would certainly be different metrics implemented on the scorecards of each of these call centers. Of course, there would still be similarities, since they do belong within the same industry.

However, here are some of the typical call center metrics that make their way onto the scorecards of a number of call centers.

One such metric is blockage. This is actually an accessibility measure that call centers typically use. What this metric does is show the rate at which incoming customers do not have access to the call center at a certain time. This is mostly attributed to the network facilities being inadequate in accommodating all of the incoming calls. This occurs whenever all of the trunks, or the customer service representatives, are currently occupied, thus, they cannot accommodate any more calls. Clearly, call centers should measure this, so that they can come up with certain measures to avoid having to deal with blockage. Customer satisfaction is at stake here.

Another metric that should deserve mention is abandon rate. This is still related to blockage, only that the customers are still able to contact the call center; however, because the reps are still occupied with other calls, then the customers end up abandoning their calls. This is still detrimental to customer satisfaction, as well as to retention and revenue. But for call centers that cater to email services, abandon rate would not be a relevant metric here. Emails are not really discarded, should they not receive prompt response.

One of the most important metrics that should make the call center scorecard is service level. This pertains to the rate of calls that are answered within a specific wait threshold. This metric is very important, since this can be used in measuring the call center’s speed of answer.

These are just some of the metrics that should be included in the call center outsourcing scorecard. The important thing to remember is to choose metrics that are relevant to your purpose. Employing many metrics would only defeat the purpose, as this can make analysis and interpretation rather confusing.

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Call centers hire hundreds and thousands of employees to deal with various consumers and their queries. Separate sections are allotted to each of the employee depending on his skills. The whole workplace is connected with a single queued network to trace each and every possible detail regarding consumers and employees.

Call centers can be of various types, depending on need and proliferation of the company. Inbound and outbound call centers are the two basic types. Calls made by the consumers to obtain product related information or report a complain about product malfunctioning is termed as inbound calls, where as calls made by the employees to the consumers to convey them about the latest product details are termed as outbound calls. Hence call centers can work on either work on inbound calls or outbound calls or both. Call centers are very often organized in a multi-tier help desk support system to deal with the consumers more efficiently. As there are various wings and section of a call centers pertaining to various products, hence as an inbound call is entertained by the operator, the call is transferred to the respective wing that can provide adequate support to that particular employee. If it required further more details than the call is forwarded to the second tier and then third tier and so on. Mostly the third tier consists of highly skilled and trained engineers or developers that can surely sort out the product related issue.

Call center agents don’t always have their physical presence in the work place, rather various agents’ work from their home with the use of internet technologies. These remote agents are hired as per their performance and technical skills. Owing to a sudden increase in need of employees, some temporary agents are also hired who are being paid for the time they spend in workplace. Now days, virtual call centers are also in action. These are the small call centers situated at different locations and are connected through a common platform on internet.

Key-performance indicator, KPI is the latest technology that are broadly is use by these call centers. They provide some financial or non financial metrics that enables a collective measurement of overall growth of a business organization. A balanced scorecard is made as per the performance index of the employee, which helps in assessing the overall work efficiency. Various other technologies like, automatic call distribution management, agent performance analyst, average handle time, automatic number identification , also helps in achieving the targeted growth of a company.

Various wings and sections of customer service representatives is appointed in a call center, each of which pertaining to a particular product of the company. The employee has to deal with each and every queries put on by the consumer regarding the performance and functionality of the product. Call center is an extensive open help desk where each call center agents are provided with computer, head-set and telephone, connected to the main telecom switch of the company. Each of the computers can either be independently operated or worked on under a common computer network including main frame computer and local area network. All the voice and data pathways are linked through a computer telephony integration which keeps a track record of all the incoming and outgoing calls from the office.

Main motive of call centers is to interact with the customers and deal with all the utility regarding the catalogue firms and customer support for software and hardware products of the company. Some of the call centers even work on offshore business and deal with the consumers abroad. Some companies even operate a call center office to carry on the internal functions more specifically and smoothly within the nation. Those call centers may either be in the form of help desk or a sales support.

A call center can be viewed as a operational network in the form of Que. This queuing network is so assumed with same type of customers and statically identical servers arranged in a Queue form of network. This queuing theory is the key to the over all work force planning and management. A track record of the entire performance index is measured with the help of this queuing network. How many calls can a employee attend, frequency of call rates, efficiency of the employee to sort out with the queries are few of the work flow sections which has to be managed through this queuing network.

Queuing model also works on the qualitative and quantitative insight of the company. Based on the performance index of queuing model it could be decided that the call center should be more qualitative driven or the quantitative driven. The one which could be more beneficial for the company is chosen. Queuing model can also be used for planning and operating skill- based routing of calls. Based on the multi-type customers and multi talent skilled professionals the work force can accordingly be distributed.

A scorecard of the performance of each and every employee is maintained under the queue model network of the call centers. An operational research on shift- structure of the employee, forecasting of calls and the detailed analysis of customers impatience is maintained with this queuing network of call center.

A call center is very often operated in an open work place with number of employees working together 24/7 in shifts to provide all time support to consumer world-wide. Calls from consumers and clients from all over the world are being entertained through these employees. Outgoing call is also being made for telemarketing, clientele and debt collection. There are several wings in call centers, each of which is imparted with a specific task. A section is defined for collective handling of e-mails, fax, letters and other hard-copies of important documents. Depending on the product range of the company, number of sections are defined and being operated by the trained employee. Those employee are first imparted with in-depth knowledge of all the good and bad aspects of the product he is about to deal with. Customers may put on variety of questions which they have to sort out with patience.

Each of the computers installed in a call center can either be independently operated or may work under a common computer network, including mainframes, microcomputers and LANs. Hence all the computers have a common pathway so as to maintain a collective track record of all the customer details and respective performance of the employees. Computer network are interconnected by star topology or sometime bus topology as per the requirement. Voice data and the pathways are linked through new technology, termed as computer telephony integration.

Most of the call centers do maintain a key performance indicator (KPI) as a financial or non financial metrics to measure overall progress rate of the company. The overall management of the business is traced and conclusive result is taken out with this key performance indicator. The present state and the prescribed course of action is accurately being judged by this key performance indicator.

Call centers are centralized to enhance company’s performance and cut the extra costs due to unnecessary work flow. A streamlines and uniform services is provided to consumers of the company. Latest computer technology is installed to monitor quality control and performance activities of the workers. Many call centers do adopt workforce management software that generates an automated schedule to meet an anticipated staffing level needs. As per the software, a scorecard is maintained that guides through a proper work flow in every section depending on the wrap-up time, average call duration, number of calls in queue etc. A close view to the consumers with different languages other than English is also given importance by hiring employee with variable language skill

It is not easy managing a call center at all. A lot of people assume that it is easy to manage a call center, but it is not at all. This is because there are so many factors to consider here. However, it is very important to find effective ways and means to manage your call center, to ensure and facilitate its growth and success. So, how do you see your call center? How is its performance? If you have difficulty answering this question, then you should consider employing performance based call center management. This way, you can keep track of the performance of your call center representatives, to ensure quality service and growth for the establishment itself.

But how exactly can you keep track of the performance of every call center representative comprising your workforce? The answer to this is call center metrics. It is so hard to quantify the performance of every call center representative because there are so many factors to consider here. For instance, just how productive are the representatives at the job? Do they really satisfy the needs of the customers they handle? Do they give quality solutions to the problems presented by the customers? Are they able to come up with these solutions fast? And what about the average handling time? How long does the average phone call last for each representative? Attendance is also another factor to consider here. These are just some of the factors to consider when it comes to developing call center metrics. Surely there are more factors that have not been mentioned yet.

One important thing to remember about developing call center metrics is that less is actually better. Yes, there are many factors to consider; this is a point that has long been established already. However, when a large number of metrics are used to evaluate performance, then there is more room for extraneous factors. These extraneous factors just might make it all the more difficult to get down to the bottom of measuring performance. In fact, it is actually recommended to use just five metrics for your call center balanced scorecard. Most call centers nowadays use more than twenty-five metrics for their scorecard. Imagine how many extraneous factors can tamper with the real information that you should be measuring here! As much as possible, just limit your metrics to five. Choose the ones that are relevant to call center performance at its very core. The five metrics that are strongly recommended include Customer Satisfaction, Call Cost, First Call Resolution, Agent Efficiency or Utilization, and Overall Call Center Performance.

More often than not, you would find that one of the five metrics mentioned would actually be related to other metrics on the list as well. For instance, the metric Customer Satisfaction is actually influenced by a number of factors, which include the other recommended five metrics as well. When you want to quantify customer satisfaction, you would have to look at First Call Resolution, Call Quality, Speed of Answer, and the like. This is another reason why it is better to use only a few metrics when you want to employ performance based call center management. Different call centers in the industry might use different sets of metrics. This is understandable because the metrics here should be in line with corporate goals and objectives. Since these differ, then you can expect the metrics to differ as well.

For the most part, call centers all over the world are indeed earning modest income. The large and stable ones even earn millions of dollars in a single month of operations. The knowledge and experience gained over the years have certainly contributed to the successful operations of these call centers. But then again, experience and knowledge are not the only things these call centers have in common. They also have what is known as a balanced scorecard. Yes, it is indeed easy to improve call center income with balanced scorecard implementation.

Call centers provide customer service for the clients of large companies. These companies are of such magnitude that they cannot handle the provision of customer support of all their clients. Should they strive to handle this on their own, they might end up not giving the quality customer support their clients deserve. This is then the reason why these large companies delegate the task of providing their clients customer support to call centers. The typical call center would then have different accounts to handle, and they would then employ the different departments to handle the different issues the clients would be calling about. Because there are different accounts to handle, then performance here would be measured variedly as well. This can make measuring performance all the more complicated. Thus, there is indeed a need to employ a balanced scorecard to monitor the performance of the call center as a whole. From constant monitoring, there would certainly be improvement in terms of performance. And where there’s enhanced performance, there will definitely be improvement in terms of income as well.

It is actually a bit difficult to develop the key performance indicators or KPIs to be included on the balanced scorecard. This is because the KPIs here have to be in quantifiable form so that they can be measured accurately. Fortunately, in the call center context, there are many factors that are quantifiable, and these can be used as KPIs as well. In fact, these are just some of the performance measures being used by the lot of today’s call centers.

* Average Talk Time (ATT) or mean conversation time

* Average Handling Time (AHT) or mean dealing time

* Service Level (SL%) or number of calls answered during a limited time period

* Delay experienced by customers while waiting in queue

* Percentage of calls bearing resolved issues

* Percentage of calls bearing unresolved issues

* Number of calls handled by representatives per hour

* Customer satisfaction

These are just some of the KPIs that many call centers are using nowadays to measure the performance of the establishments as a whole. The main thing to remember here is that there should be just a limited number of KPIs employed. As tempting as it is to use many KPIs, this is actually not advisable. This is because if you use many KPIs, there would be more room for extraneous variables, which can influence the accuracy of measurement here. Thus, it would be better to use the KPIs that have relevance to the operations of call centers. With just these KPIs, you can then improve call center income with balanced scorecard implementation.