The recent decade saw a sharp increase in the number of call center. Business goes online which means that millions of people from all over the world can easily purchase products or services form a company located in a distant country. International payment and delivery services make it easy to buy any products. However, customers usually have questions and problems with the products/services they acquired. Besides, post sale support is one of the ways to improve customer loyalty. The aim of every company is to have a many regular customers as possible since regular customers are steady source of income.
Benefits of improving indicators
A call center is perhaps the most important department in this sense. Yes, products are developed in other business unit while sales, marketing and advertising departments do everything possible to sell as much as possible. However, once a person becomes a customer (or even before) a call center operator is the person who represent a company for him/her and the only person who can solve a problem or answer a question. For this reason excellent performance of a call center is a number one concern for every business owner or manager.
Part of the BSC implementation process
Balanced Scorecard is perhaps the most widely used performance evaluation system in various business areas, including phone and email support. BSC is extremely effective and at the same time simple to understand. Basically, this is a number of measures divided between 4 categories. However, a call center (like any other) BSC is more than that. It is bound to become a true philosophy for a company.
When implementing a call center BSC, managers should always remember that whatever they do, they do it for customers. The fact that a call center is a customer oriented business unit affect the implementation of Balanced Scorecard in it.
Since a call center is dependent on work of lots of business units, its own goals and strategies should be aligned with objectives and missions of other departments and company in general. This is perhaps the most common mistake, especially if the BSC is implemented in a call center only.
Choice of KPIs (key performance indicators) is another significant elements in the BSC implementation process. In a call center, all indicators should demonstrate impact of the chosen measures on performance of a call center and company in general. For example, even the best call center performance may contradict company goals.