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.

Top 5 Must Have / Essential features to start a Call Center

We have been interacting with 1000's of SME's in the industry and quite often the customers are unaware of what features are a must have in a Call Center solution and also what each of it means. This article in our blog post tries to explain the Top 5 Must Have Features in a Call Center solution without which no technology/software can claim that they have a solution for your call center.

Top 5 Must Haves:

1. ACD (Automatic Call Distribution)/Queue Management: In Simple terms ACD  is a feature which ensures that any Inbound or Outbound call is connected to the Right Idle/Free Agent. It is a very important and basic feature which connects the customer Faster and also ensures that all agents get approximately equal amount of work distribution - Could be number of calls in a sales organization, could be talk time in a support organization. Queue Management allows you to manage your call flow into the contact center efficiently. Click Here for more. 
2. CTI ( Computer Telephony Integration): CTI connects the ACD to the client CMS/CRM. The primary function of a CTI is to give the screen pop of the caller information ( in case they are an existing customer) or give a Add customer page in case of a unidentified caller number. This saves the agent from wasting time looking up customer information and it acts as a major productivity tool for  the Call Center. Also, it ensures customer is not aggravated from repeating information to the agent since the POP shows this info.
3. Live Monitoring Systems/Dashboards: The primary/ basic setup in a contact center is there is a team which handles calls and there is a Team Lead/Supervisor who manages & monitors them. Live Monitoring is a basic feature which provides necessary tools to the contact center supervisor in monitoring agents status ( whether they are free, on a break or busy talking to a customer) and if necessary allows the supervisor to use Call Barge in Features like  Snoop the call - To listen to the call without being heard or do a Call Whisper - where you can tell the agent on what to talk or Barge In - where in you get into a conference with the agent and customer.
4. Dialers/API Integrations: Though the traditional view point is dialer is something which is used in a sales centric Call Center, modern day implementations include auto call backs to Unanswered calls, Auto dialer for converting leads coming from Aggregators like Just Dial etc. Though Dialers are a must, the system is still not so easy to integrate without API's or a strong IVR platform. Though traditional contact center players do provide integrations, Check if your Contact Center technology provider works with API's for IVR and Dialer Integrations ( We at http://cloudagent.in do provide these).
5. Audio recordings: This is the most sought after feature by almost all Contact Centers. They are a must in many Contact Centers where regulatory norms prescribe 100% recordings and storage of over an year. Based on your Organizational Information Retention Policies, You might need to store longer than this. However, almost 90% of contact centers use audio recordings for agent performance reviews than anything else.

Next time when someone approaches you and says they are providing a call center solution, do check if they provide these basic features. Though a good reporting structure is a good to have ( probably 6th most important feature), you can run ops with out reporting but not without the above 5 features. Hence , this is our choice of the Top 5 Must Haves in a Call Center.

About Us:

We at http://cloudagent.in provide our customers all these features to our customers. If interested ,you can reach us at sales@cloudagent.in or call us on our toll free at 1800 200 0820.