Does anyone know much about sales metrics in a call center?

[darkrose50]

I need to figure out how to suggest math to measure for good and bad behavior.

Basically the metrics that my company is using right now are not at all well-rounded (and are harmful).

Sales/Calls = conversion (like a batting average) . . . This number is really the only number that is being used.

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Problem A

Transferring folks does not count as a call. So many folks just transfer every call, and never hang-up.

You can also transfer a call that is not a sale to another agent of queue and (a) "take" the turn of another agent, and (b) ruin their conversion (batting average).

There are no metrics to detect if someone is sabotaging another agent.

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Problem B

It also takes 5-45 minutes longer to fill out the form for tax credits. This form can save a customer hundreds or even over a thousand in MONTHLY premium tax credits. So people just try to sell without checking for tax credits. As a result kids are going without food, homes are being foreclosed on, bankruptcy's, divorces, and just misery is being spread.

The form for a tax credit is so buggy and annoying that that agents often just transfer to the government as it is not worth the time to fix. In order to change one thing, you need to go ALL THE WAY to the beginning, and click though EVERY answer again. Then there is also often a lag factor.

There are no metrics to detect if someone is sabotaging a customers life.

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Problem C
We can make our own interface for this government application. This may save us aggravation.

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Problem D

Agents can "sell" a policy that was already sold by emailing a customer and telling them to fill-out an application, and send it back. Without getting too much into it . . . under the most egregious circumstances, it will just waist some time, create some work for someone, send out confusing letters to the customer, and will likely be ignored. The worst case scenario someone could end up cancelling their tax credits due to ignorance or trusting the agent.

[Manga Shoggoth]

Oh joy. Metrics. I had to deal with these when we did ISO9000...

Goodhart's law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".

Probably preaching to the converted, I know. Too many metrics are set up because they can be measured, rather than because they have any particular meaning or accuracy. Then, once a metric is set up, people will find ways to game it (as is alreacy happening in your system by the sound of it).

Finally, you really need more than one metric.

The first question is really, what can you measure? It looks like you can measure:

• Sales
• Number of Calls
• Elapsed time (I assume)

Can you also measure transfers and call pickups? A high number of transfers or pickups might indicate an issue.

If possible, I would suggest measuring the following might help with what you have:

• Sales per elapsed time (per day/week/month, pro-rata for part-timers). This will give an indication of the sales being made without tieing it to call volumes.
• Number of (distinct) calls per elapsed time. If you can't detect pickups and transfers this may give an indication of who is playing games with transfers and pickups.

[darkrose50]

I am not sure what is possible and what is not, but I am betting that we can detect unusual behavior, and look into it as potential bad behavior.

Negative behaviors to test for:
[1] Transfer sabotage (transferring a non-sales call to another agent to knock them out of turn order)
[2] Stealth transferring (to inflate conversion and/or avoid logging a call as “end(ed)”)
[3] Fizzle Sales or bouncing sales (not sales, but look like sales . . . a little complicated, mainly I am thinking paper applications for folks that are on-market)
[4] Merciless efficiency (not offering tax credits to save time)
[5] Off-X to off-X (not sales, but look like sales . . . selling off-market X when the customer has off-market-X . . . something that we are not supposed to do)

[Manga Shoggoth]

Well, my second suggestion would hopefully help pick up on [1] and [2], especially if you can differentiate between sales and non-sales.

The thing you need to avoid is having a single metric made up of different things that you are interested in. Single metrics are very seductive to management (who love their dashboards...).

Sales/Calls looks like it gives you a rough indicator of efficiency, but using sales/calls is not a good summary metric as you can't tell what part of the figure is due to sales, and what part of the metric is due to calls.

So, with the Sales/Calls metric:

• Someone with a poor Sales rate but an artifically low call rate would appear to be better than they are
• Someone with a high sales rate and an artifically high call rate would look worse than they are.

If the metrics are split (using sales/time and calls/time) then it is clear who is doing better on sales, and it is clear where calls are being artifically inflated or lowered.

[Chen]

The merciless efficiency part is probably against the company’s interest so that one seems unlikely to be fixed/monitored.

Are the other ones actual problems or just theoretical ones? Are there a sufficient volume of them that its worth changing the system for?

[veti]

Keep in mind that the company's interest is not the same as its customers' interests. The customer gains from getting tax credits, but how do they benefit the company?

If you want management to take that issue seriously, you need to put together a case for tax credits being good for the company. I don't know what you are selling, but typically that case would look at customer retention/repeat business, or whatever you call it.

Repeat customers are the best kind, because it's much easier to handle and sell to them. If your proportion of repeat customers is lower than your competitors', then your cost per sale will be proportionately higher. Research that, find some numbers, and figure out how much you could save by losing fewer customers.

That's the kind of calculation that might make management think again about customer satisfaction. Only then will they be ready to take issues like tax credits and transferred calls seriously.

[Chen]

Im pretty sure this is insurance sales which means customer satisfaction has to be pretty low to get people to consider changing with all the hassle that comes with it.

[Peelee]

There are no metrics to detect if someone is sabotaging another agent.

Why do you think they care about that?

There are no metrics to detect if someone is sabotaging a customers life.

Or that?

This may save us aggravation.

Or that?

it will just waist some time, create some work for someone, send out confusing letters to the customer, and will likely be ignored. The worst case scenario someone could end up cancelling their tax credits due to ignorance or trusting the agent.

None of these things sound like "unprofitable for the company." Seems to me they think their metrics are fine because they're just looking at them in a different way than you are.

[Tvtyrant]

Why do you think they care about that?

Or that?

Or that?

None of these things sound like "unprofitable for the company." Seems to me they think their metrics are fine because they're just looking at them in a different way than you are.

Having a poor work environment or a poor reputation with customers is actively detrimental to a company. It might take a while to show, but eventually it will lead to customers moving to rivals and the best employees as well.

[veti]

Having a poor work environment or a poor reputation with customers is actively detrimental to a company. It might take a while to show, but eventually it will lead to customers moving to rivals and the best employees as well.

Yeah, but that "eventually" covers a lot of ground. As Keynes said, "in the long run we are all dead". If management is focused on surviving the next quarter or even year, they don't have much capacity left to think about "eventually".

I have just enough experience supporting management to sympathise with them.

When I see a manager who obsesses over one or two metrics and ignores everything else,. my first thought is that they are woefully under trained and don't know how to ask for the help they need. That type of manager is common to the point of ubiquity in some businesses. If you want them to improve, you have to train them yourself.

Which isn't easy. You need to nurture enough confidence in them that they feel they can afford to try something new, and enough humility to seek advice. You need to guide them to see both the need for change, and the practical possibility of making it. And - most important - you have to do all this without them realising what you're doing. And you will get no thanks or recognition for any of it.

The alternative, of course, is to try to replace them. But then you're just becoming another threat to them, of the sort that they're already convinced you are anyway, so that means playing the same sordid game with them on their own terms. Still, it's easier, and - if you can handle the pressure yourself - more rewarding than trying to train them.

[Peelee]

Having a poor work environment or a poor reputation with customers is actively detrimental to a company. It might take a while to show, but eventually it will lead to customers moving to rivals and the best employees as well.

Ah, I see you're unfamiliar with the "rather a dime today than a dollar tomorrow" management style, where they get while the gettin's good.

[Seerow]

Problem A

Transferring folks does not count as a call. So many folks just transfer every call, and never hang-up.

You can also transfer a call that is not a sale to another agent of queue and (a) "take" the turn of another agent, and (b) ruin their conversion (batting average).

There are no metrics to detect if someone is sabotaging another agent.

Do you not have any sort of quality monitoring in place at your call center? This is the sort of thing that any call center I've worked in would pick up on with random quality monitorings.

At least one center I've been in has an anonymous report function as well. So if one person cold transfers a customer back into the queue, and the person receiving that call figures it out, they can report it. There's a small team that researches the reports to determine who is doing the internal transferring and forwards them a warning. It eventually leads to write-ups/termination if the same behavioral issue persists.

Problem B

It also takes 5-45 minutes longer to fill out the form for tax credits. This form can save a customer hundreds or even over a thousand in MONTHLY premium tax credits. So people just try to sell without checking for tax credits. As a result kids are going without food, homes are being foreclosed on, bankruptcy's, divorces, and just misery is being spread.

The form for a tax credit is so buggy and annoying that that agents often just transfer to the government as it is not worth the time to fix. In order to change one thing, you need to go ALL THE WAY to the beginning, and click though EVERY answer again. Then there is also often a lag factor.

There are no metrics to detect if someone is sabotaging a customers life.

Does the business lose out if using those tax credits? Or just the agent's time? If just the agent's time, is there a way to detect/filter out whether tax credits have been applied?

You can make a sale with tax credits count as a bigger sale for the purpose of metrics, giving them an incentive to push it. Say you have a 1000 dollar sale with a 300 dollar tax credit, count it as a 1300 dollar sale instead (adjust numbers as appropriate to make the incentive meaningful to employees)

Problem D

Agents can "sell" a policy that was already sold by emailing a customer and telling them to fill-out an application, and send it back. Without getting too much into it . . . under the most egregious circumstances, it will just waist some time, create some work for someone, send out confusing letters to the customer, and will likely be ignored. The worst case scenario someone could end up cancelling their tax credits due to ignorance or trusting the agent.

Yeah this goes back to quality monitoring/reporting. The more likely you make it that bad behaviors will be caught and punished, the less common those behaviors become.

[Tvtyrant]

Ah, I see you're unfamiliar with the "rather a dime today than a dollar tomorrow" management style, where they get while the gettin's good.

Isn't that better a dollar tomorrow then a dime today?

But yeah, I'm familiar. Bad metrics are one of the major issues though, two of the corporate jobs I have had worked by trying to fill metrics that people in all levels of management admitted didn't actually amount to profit.

[Peelee]

Isn't that better a dollar tomorrow then a dime today?

Yes, the dollar tomorrow is better than the dime today, that's the point. It's shortsighted and just grabbing what they can while they can because they don't care about tomorrow, that's someone else's problem, they got their dime today.

[darkrose50]

We get paid per sale. We have a limited time to get the most amount to sales. So folks are keen on getting the most amount of sales during the 6-weeks of annual enrollment.

Speed is also key as we have contests. So if you avoid the time consuming tax-credit application, then you are much more likely win the contests.

I am a bit surprised at this behavior to tell you the truth. The notion that someone would choose to cost others hundreds of dollars per month, and give themselves comparatively much less is simply shocking. I had more than one customer upset over not being told about the tax-credits last year. One qualified for $600 per month this year. That blows my mind. In this example a $7,200 loss over the year for someone to save 5-40 minutes of time. I am flabbergasted.

[Chen]

I am a bit surprised at this behavior to tell you the truth. The notion that someone would choose to cost others hundreds of dollars per month, and give themselves comparatively much less is simply shocking. I had more than one customer upset over not being told about the tax-credits last year. One qualified for $600 per month this year. That blows my mind. In this example a $7,200 loss over the year for someone to save 5-40 minutes of time. I am flabbergasted.

People are selfish. That said, are you mandated to talk to the customer about these tax credits? Do they provide anything to the company itself? I can see how the company wouldn't care if they get their money either way.

[GloatingSwine]

Why do you think they care about that?

Or that?

Or that?

None of these things sound like "unprofitable for the company." Seems to me they think their metrics are fine because they're just looking at them in a different way than you are.

They’re all behaviours that increase the time it takes to successfully process a customer and that makes the cost per call of running the call centre higher.

Transferring calls you are supposed to deal with but don’t want to because they would make your stats look bad would get you dismissed where I work (call avoidance).

If the telephony report really can’t tell that you’re making internal transfers then it’s super terrible (or apparently doesn’t count you as having received/made a call unless you hang it up). Our system can log the number of transfers an agent (or team or ops group) has made broken down by what line they came in on and display them as a percentage of the calls received on that line. (It’s a pretty much off the shelf Avaya system).

It really sounds like you need a decent business intelligence department and leadership with half a clue about efficiently running a call centre.

[darkrose50]

[1] My supervisor says that I am the hardest worker that she knows.
[2] I worked 90-hours one week.
[3] Per the metric I was doing terrible, and I was benched.
[4] I was PISSED beyond PISSED and seriously considered quitting on the spot.
[5] I attempted to explain how conversion was higher between 7:00 AM and 4:00 PM. This is no secret and it is WIDLY known that sales are better during this time. So . . . working FIFTY hours of overtime . . . FIFTY F-ING HOURS . . . my scores were bad. I was like "yeah what did you think was going to happen, this is common sense" just look at conversion by hour.
[6] They do not measure ANYTHING. It blew my mind at the lack of math being done.
[7] I lost my mind. Called the system incompetent. I then proclaimed that I would CRUSH whomever came up with this system that told me that I was doing a bad job and would definitively, without question, prove there incompetence. I mean this would be like shooting fish in a barrel.


Since then I have calmed down a bit. I am still a little upset. My ego is bruised. This math is largely what our performance reviews are based on. I am frankly tired of the lack of math used in general over the years. This being placed at the bottom of the inbound call list the 1-week (our busiest week) could have cost me ~$500 to ~$1,000.

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I was offered an interview for a job that I think might pay $20,000 more per year. I am a bit scared and I am a bit excited.

[GloatingSwine]

Are you private sector or government (including contractor)?

Because the level of waste that sounds like it's going on there is apocalyptic. Like if you can't measure agent behaviour basically at all and there are known ways to dodge work, it's inevitable that work will be dodged.

[Peelee]

Are you private sector or government (including contractor)?

Because the level of waste that sounds like it's going on there is apocalyptic. Like if you can't measure agent behaviour basically at all and there are known ways to dodge work, it's inevitable that work will be dodged.

From posting history, should be private sector, and also commission-based. Which means work-dodgers dodge at their own expense. And also means working harder does not equate to being a better worker.

[GloatingSwine]

Although this thread makes it sound like the incentive/commission is conversion rate based, but using a system that doesn't actually know when an agent has taken a call (because they only see the call on close not on start) and doesn't know when they've transferred it internally and doesn't account for those cases in the conversion rate.

So the work dodgers aren't doing it at their own expense if they're using internal transfers to deflect calls that will hurt their conversion rate, they're actually being incentivised to not do their jobs properly to chase conversion rate instead, increasing the time and cost to deal with some customers in order to deal with others that reward them better.

So the business is paying an incentive out to people who are actively harming productivity because they've naively assumed conversion rate is good without looking at the ways it could be fiddled.

Which all seems baffling to me. I work with contact centre metrics on a day to day basis and that lack of information available to performance management just seems amazing.

[Chen]

There is of course also the possibility that other metrics are in place and the company doesnt want people to be aware of them. It would imply they fire the people who abuse it if it comes down to that though.

[darkrose50]

I work for a company with growing pains. We quadrupled in size last year. I am in a small department. My team works for a client. The client is woefully incompetent (it cannot be all of them, it is a billion dollar company). Whomever set up the contract at my company had the idea that multitasking was efficiency . . . basically he was incompetent too . . . or did not care about the incompetent client.

Our managers, are great managers, don't get me wrong . . . they are all promoted from the sales-force.

The lack of metrics, and the sheer wonkiness of not knowing what the numbers mean is painful. I have been working on a list of behavior to test for, and I am up to 7 things. This is not even my job, and I have 7 things . . . 6-more than the person who's job this is. Really more than 7-things, but the other things are so super common-sense that taking credit for them would be pathetic.

I lost conversion (batting average) for working overtime . . . when they wanted people to work overtime. Basically there are less SALES calls at night when the client closes shop, and more non-sales calls. BUT this is not factored in . . . because why would you use math to inform decisions?

It is just oversimplified, and as a result one month my last NINE sales turns were taken up by dental sales calls . . . it was descided that dental did not count . . . so even though I sold dental . . . the calls counted against me . . . because why use math?

[veti]

I can see two possibilities. One, which was my first thought, is that your management are terribly under trained and sticking like glue to what they know. They may have been fine salespeople, but management is an entirely different skill set. A variation on this theory is that your immediate managers aren't that bad, but *their* bosses are, and they're motivated to act like this.

The other possibility is that they're lying to you. They simply don't have the budget to pay bonuses and raises and whatnot, or they're keeping it for themselves, and to cover up for it they're finding whatever faults they can in each employee's performance, and using that as a pretext for holding them down. In the long term this is stupid because it pisses off their best employees, but they wouldn't be the first to make that tradeoff for slightly better figures this year.

[AMFV]

I work for a company with growing pains. We quadrupled in size last year. I am in a small department. My team works for a client. The client is woefully incompetent (it cannot be all of them, it is a billion dollar company). Whomever set up the contract at my company had the idea that multitasking was efficiency . . . basically he was incompetent too . . . or did not care about the incompetent client.

They don't care about the client, they don't care about you. The metrics and "bonuses" are just to get you afraid enough that you'll work harder or incentivized enough that you'll work harder. Places like call centers don't actually want you incentivized only afraid.

The other possibility is that they're lying to you. They simply don't have the budget to pay bonuses and raises and whatnot, or they're keeping it for themselves, and to cover up for it they're finding whatever faults they can in each employee's performance, and using that as a pretext for holding them down. In the long term this is stupid because it pisses off their best employees, but they wouldn't be the first to make that tradeoff for slightly better figures this year.

And it makes people nice and afraid and gives them a paper trail when they want to lay people off.

[darkrose50]

The company has growing pains. Doubling or quadrupling in size every year is hard. I think that we are 2,000 employees (at least the part of the company that I am in). With 10,000 people in the US turning 65 every day, and going on Medicare, there is a lot of money to be made. The company received a $500,000,000 investment from an investment firm 2-3 years ago. The company almost received (another?) $1,500,000,000 but it seems to have fallen though.

The company opened up two offices in two other time zones. I would imagine one-per-US-time-zone is the goal. They also opened other offices (I think one in Europe, and they bought a group plan insurance agency, and a life insurance agency). The company has growing pains. Doubling or quadrupling in size every year is hard. Inefficiency can be overlooked when money is fast and easy, and apparently it just may be fast and easy. Or it is acceptable to have inefficiency with such growing pains. Also my unit and/or campaign could just be overlooked.

We keep getting new managers with new ideas. I do not think any of them really look into analyzing the calls (just the people, using interpersonal skills). I would want to know what phone number each call came from, what day and time the call came in, how long the call was, how the call was ended (transferred externally, transferred internally, or ended) and what percentage of those were sales by timeframe (such as by day or by hour). I would like to know what percentage of sales were by phone and what percentage were by email. I would like to know the percentage of sales with tax credits and without tax credits. The list could go on and on.

Basically I would like to know how things work, so that I can see if something is broken, or if something needs tuning. I want to see what agents have behaviors that are outliers, and investigate them for good or for bad behaviors. Increase and teach the good behaviors, and reduce or warn against the bad behaviors. Agents need a set of statistical scores like baseball players have. Not everything measured needs to be used for reviews. It seems to be a common idea that if something is measured, then it should be used to grade folks . . . as in there is no reason to measure something that you don't grade folks on.

I know that we have statisticians here someplace, but I think that they are not looking at my department and/or business unit (at least not enough to give any input to management). I think that all the focus is likely going towards Medicare, where the bulk of money to be made is. I would like them to give input to management so that they can better guide quality control, and reduce improper behavior.

[veti]

OK, "growing pains" definitely points to the "incompetent management" hypothesis. If the company has grown that fast, then the managers are not only under trained, they're also trying to make up new structures and processes and rules and controls on the fly. It's a lot of work.

And the feedback loop is very slow. The impact of, for instance, "pissing off your best employees" may take months to show up in the results, and will likely be buried in all the other variables that will have changed by then.

It would take a really exceptional manager to do well in that environment. There might be one of those buried somewhere in those 2000 people, but the statistics are against it.

[darkrose50]

Sorry if I sound so mad. Someone stole my new wireless headset (I won it in a contest), and replaced it with a broken one, all scratched up, and reeking of cigarettes. It drops calls left and right, and I lost at least a day of work. There are security cameras and security is on it. I will likely not be told who did it, and I expect that they will give me a new headset. Sometimes when I get angry I can scare folks, so I need to be careful about that. I was quite livid this morning.

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I am obsessed with efficiency, and I am frustrated that I do not have the authority to implement improvements. We keep getting new managers at all levels. I tell folks about inefficiencies, and either I do not communicate the full extent of the problem and/or they do not understand. Things move slowly.

Last year I wrote a 14-page outline detailing all the things that we need (and the things the client does not provide). The management team was fired. We got a great many things that I asked for. This year we were the #1 campaign (as in we had the most sales per agent and/or the highest conversion). I think that I was part of that reason, because having documents (the written word) to help folks do their jobs is important when my campaign gets ~100 new temporary people every year.

I am a bit insulted that some sales calls that end in non-medical sales, often take sales turns, are not counted, and only hurt your score. Basically there is a dental sales number, it takes your sales turn, and you are marked as failing to get a medical sale. I had 8-9 dental sales at the end of one month that took my turn, only hurt me, cut my bonus in half, and I was literally reviewed as doing a poor job that month. My brain hurts thinking about it. I don't quite understand how this could be a thing.

I am also insulted that working different hours hurts your score, when they wanted people to work as much overtime as possible, and then punished me for it. The busiest time of the year, horrible metrics with a lack of understanding math, told me that I was doing a poor job, and took a great deal amount of money from my pocket. Working 50-extra hours during a time with lots of non-sales will effect ones sales percentage. I bet that I lost perhaps ~$1,000 as a result, and was told "we will be busy, and everyone will get sales". I was literally punished for doing overtime. I am insulted on this fact, but I am also insulted that this was not factored into the measuring and/or factored into the measuring after I pointed it out (this is a well known thing by the way).

They don't track email versus phone sales and because I was taking phone calls (in our job description) and not spending time on emails (not in our job description, but I should have been doing it as it is completely broken in this system) I was told that I was 15-sales behind another agent. It had nothing to do with how well I do on the phone, but I was told that I was doing poorly on the phone. If I am in this position next year, then I will make sure to spend at least an hour a day working on emails (basically those sales are extra credit). I am sick of the lack of measuring things and the lack of knowing what the things they measure are actually measuring.

I also do not do things that we are told that we are not supposed to do. I ended up in 5th place, and likely would be higher if everyone followed the rules. There are so many loop-holes being exploited that it makes me want to cry. Either folks do not care, and/or they do not look, and/or they do not want to look. As a result they tell me that I am doing really well or that I am doing really poorly based on a ill-conceived system of grading skill that fails early and often.

Seriously they take week-by-week scores . . . with random turns taken by (a) rainbows and sunshine or (b) auto-failures that are often bunched-up. Not a 90-day rolling average where the random auto-failures would better averaged out. This would likely be the minimum needed to fix the system (sort of). Roll too many 1's on that D6 n a row, and you are doing your job poorly. Roll too many 6's on that D6 in a row and you are like a god. The thing is that we can measure when you roll a 1 and when you roll a 6. We have the ability to tell when you get a dental sales call from the dental phone number . . . but this is just not measured and/or is not factored in. You could be getting more or less sales turns this week based off of last week's random roulette wheel. Add the loop-holes to this, and the mess just compounds.