Key Performance Metrics for an Outbound Call Center in India

Some time back, we started our discussion with data points for an Inbound call center in India. We highlighted what has been our experience across customers for an Inbound Call Center - http://blog.cloudagent.in/2013/03/key-data-points-to-consider-while.html

In this article today, we will discuss our experiences with Outbound Call Centers and Key performance Metrics you can look at before deciding on your Outbound Process.We will compare Outbound Dialing between a Manual Process  and an Automated Dialer.

Manual Dialing :An Agent types a customer number and manually dials a call to a customer.

Automated Dialer: Data of customers to be dialed is uploaded via an Excel sheet or with an integration to the dialer API. Dialer automatically dials the customer calls when the agent is free.

Stats for Manual Dialing:

When Agents have dialed Manually, it is found that they are achieving a success rate of 55% connected calls. Also, they are spending almost 20% time wrapping the call which means that the outbound processes need more data inputs than a regular process and hence agents need more time to wrap the calls. Agent Utilization is roughly around 30% excluding the regular process activity.

Stats for Automated Dialing: 

Interestingly, even automated dialer gives almost the same amount of success rate in terms of connected calls. Agent Utilization is significantly higher at 68%. When using a dialer, agents are found to dispose the calls faster thus reducing the Wrap up time duration. ( comparison was made in the same outbound process )

Conclusions:

Automated dialer scores significantly higher in terms of agent utilization.

But depending on the Outbound process, customers have often chosen Manual Dialing like when agent has to scrutinize the case before dialing to that customer. Though the above stats give an idea on the agent efficiency you can achieve using a tool , depending on how your process flow is ( which is the superseding factor) the choice can tilt in favor of Manual dialing even though efficiency is lower than automated dialing.

Key Data points to consider while setting up a call center in India

This article is intended for all those business users who are intending to set up a Contact Center and want to make objective decisions based on data. The data presented here is based on our experience of serving 150+ customers on our Cloud based Virtual Contact Center in India - http://cloudagent.in 

If you are looking at factors to consider on whether you need a Call Center at all in the first place, you can read our blog - http://blog.cloudagent.in/2013/02/does-your-business-need-contact-center.html

By the time you finish reading this article, you should be able to calculate and decide on the number of agents required or number of PRI lines required or number of calls you can handle using a certain number of agents etc.

Based on our observation we have given averages across verticals ( We are lucky to be serving customers across 20+ verticals, for case studies - http://ozonetel.com/casestudies.php). The key parameters that have been considered are efficiency of handling calls (% answered calls), Pickup times, Total handling time per day of an agent , wrapup times etc.

For an Inbound Contact Center, our observations are as given below: 

Wrap up Time is the time agent spends after the call on writing additional information etc about the call.

Call Handling time is Agents Talk Time + Wrap Up Time .

The conclusions you can draw based on this data is that a business requires its agents to work on its process as well along with taking the calls - hence agent utilization will not be more than 30-40% max. for an inbound contact center. So handling customer calls is only part of the contact center executives job. It is very important that you know what percentage of your agents time will go attending calls and what % is required to work in the process updating customer data - be it orders, deliveries or leads.

Based on this data, you should be able to estimate what are your call center needs. For example, if you need to receive 1500 calls with a success rate of 90% ( answer 90% of 1500 calls -1350), with an average duration of 3 minutes per call, agent utilization rates of 40% and total agent login time of 480 mins ( 8 hours) - You will need 21 agents approximately. With the same data but utilization of only 30%  - you will need 28 agents.  
To ensure that you can calculate your call center needs, we have given here a basic calculator which will tell you the number of agents required or number of calls you can handle for a given set of agents etc. You can access this calculator here - http://ozonetel.com/app/calculator.php

Please do note that this is a basic calculator and does not consider queue times  etc. If you are a real pro, then simply google for a Erlang calculator and use one of the numerous calculators given on the web. In our next article, we will definitely provide our version of an advanced calculator.

Cloud Contact Center Implementation for a leading Grocery e-tailer in India

The aim of every business will/should be to provide an excellent experience to their customers in every medium of communication with them and also ensure that it is unified across the channels - be it calls or email  etc. 

We will showcase how one of our customers, a leading grocery e-tailer in India has achieved this using Ozonetel's Cloud Agent product (http://cloudagent.in - The first & only Contact center product on the Cloud in India). 

The customer service department was facing a challenge in integrating Email support tickets, Call support tickets and their order management system info. which needs to be accessed by them during their numerous interactions with the calling customers. To ensure a high quality customer service, they needed a solution which could route calls, emails to agents and at the same time also integrate with a CRM which could store all the above data. We at Ozonetel, could easily identify the integration points with the CRM & Cloud Agent and implemented a solution in a very short span of time. The end result was a unified communications suite which was integrated with the CRM and the business was able to improve their customer service tremendously.

The results were mind boggling - a 50% increase in customer satisfaction ( This was measured based on number of customer complaints). Also the management was able to get a deep dive view of the entire customer service, thus enabling their decision making with objective data. 

Now, the customer has expanded to 2 more cities with the same system and no changes required. They are running a multi city contact center with a unified view across cities on how their business communications are functioning.

For a detailed case study, please download from - http://ozonetel.com/casestudies.php . Select the document as 'Grocery'

The 360 degree support experience on the cloud

In this world of real time support expected by the customers, it is imperative that your support desk is enabled with the right tools. Given the various advantages of cloud which are being realized, it makes sense to move your support desk on to the cloud completely. To add one more feather in the cap, now cloud agent  can be integrated with Freshdesk as well. To know more, here's the link on how you can do that -  http://blog.kookoo.in/2012/09/mashing-up-freshdesk-with-kookoo-for.html . As you know, Cloud Agent is powered by KooKoo platform - http://kookoo.in and hence all that is given in the blog is possible with cloud agent as well.

When running a support system call center, we will need an IVR, a call center software and after call processing.
1. IVR: Cloudagent integrate well with KooKoo. Using KooKoo, you can build complex IVRs to provide proper treatment to your callers. The IVR can be deeply integrated with your systems to provide contextual information to caller.

2. Call Center: Cloudagent is the worlds first call center on the cloud. The state of the art agent toolbar, coupled with nifty features like screenpops, agent scripts etc allow the agent to handle the call with all the details of the caller presented to him.

3. After call processing: Once a call is finished, the disposition screen is presented and disposition reports are also available. There is also a well defined API support to push the call details into your CRM at the end of every call.

As you know, cloud agent is well integrated with various API's to any third party CRM systems and hence it is only a matter of choice now on how you want to integrate your voice support with the various options available for the CRM systems.To know more, you can contact us at sales@cloudagent.in or directly call us on 1800 200 0820.