A Better Allocation Of Resources

A Better Allocation Of Resources
Planning your call center's technology budget requires an emphasis on raising productivity, rather than just lowering costs.

How do you budget technology for your call center?
Chances are that if you hear this inquiry from a vendor, it's a loaded question.
For example, a vendor might pose a question about budgeting with the intent to convince you that the configuration of its product will reduce recurring costs of specific modular components. The vendor may also want to demonstrate that although there are upfront costs of implementing its product in the short term, the license fees and recurring costs of maintaining the product over time are lower than those of the vendor's competitors.
A genuine discussion about call center budgeting has to emphasize people, rather than technology alone, because most of a call center's budget goes to staffing. The allocation of a large percentage of a budget to staffing isn't a unique characteristic of call centers. Whether an organization is a company or a country, most of its budget goes to staffing. What makes call centers unique, among other characteristics, is how they select applications of technology, as well as how they train agents and administrators to use these applications.
Let's say a vendor wishes to make the case that it's more cost-effective to implement a suite than to implement a collection of products from several different sources. The vendor could highlight the relative costs of training agents to use multiple products compared to training agents to use modules from one source. The vendor could also point out the potential duplication of efforts from your IT department to administer tools from multiple sources.
Although these arguments seem to refer to people, they really refer to efficiencies an organization can gain from using new technology. And what at first appears to be a discussion about call center budgeting is really a discussion about planning for new applications of technology.
Can Technology Make Agents More Efficient?
One way to think about budgeting is to focus on the per-agent costs of implementing technology. That's one of several approaches we consider in a Webcast from last fall, Strategic Innovations: Is Your Budgeting Complete Enough? A Workshop Guide to Allocating Your Center's IP Transition Resources.
The premise of this Webcast is that as call centers migrate to Internet protocol (IP) networks, they may not recognize all the budgetary implications of this move. This Webcast outlines key costs and benefits that call centers need to consider when they decide to direct their communication with customers over IP networks.
The reason per-agent costs are important components of your budget is that they can be difficult to predict. If your goal is to lower per-agent costs, a good place to start is not by cutting the number of agents you employ, but rather by increasing the efficiency and scope of the tools agents use.
That's the approach Joe Outlaw, principal analyst with the research firm, Current Analysis, and David Fuller, managing director of strategic consulting with Indianapolis-based Interactive Intelligence, describe in the Webcast.
They recommend bringing together multiple applications, like those that enable agents to view screen pops that contain information about customers, as well as those that let agents respond to customers' online inquiries, within one suite. For those who have followed call center technology during the last decade, these arguments may sound familiar, but they continue to be important.
Given the ubiquity of high-speed Internet service, it's now apparent to businesses and consumers alike that it's more efficient to use a single IP network for communication, such as calls, email messages and live text messages, than to segregate calls on a separate network. A single multimedia routing system allows agents to organize communication, whether by phone or online, around customers rather than around a particular medium of communication.
When you consolidate phone and computer networks, you also consolidate phone and computer applications. Screen pops are among the best illustrations of the notion that new technologies can drive savings by enabling people to accomplish more in less time. Screen pops make calls more efficient, not because they make calls shorter, but rather because they reduce how much unproductive time agents spend on asking customers to identify themselves.
Deploying a single suite, say Fuller and Outlaw, results in more than a reduction in per-agent costs; it brings about a gain in efficiency for the entire call center. That's because one suite typically requires only a single administrative module, including a single component for generating reports. What's more, Fuller and Outlaw propose, call centers can lower staffing costs by implementing suites that combine multiple functions, such as the ability to route, monitor and schedule agents' interactions with customers. The reason, they explain, is that call centers require fewer system administrators to be responsible for one suite than they need to manage multiple systems that each perform different functions.
It's important to be clear about what we mean by administration. Certain operations, like scheduling and monitoring, work best under the guidance of dedicated, accountable supervisors. Schedules matter because they impact how agents organize their time, and evaluations matter because they impact agents' careers. When Outlaw and Fuller speak about saving on administrative costs, they refer to reducing the number of applications that your IT department manages; they're not suggesting that advances in technology eliminate the need for supervision.
The distinction between supervision and administration is significant because it is by reducing the need for administration and other types of overhead that call centers can save money. For instance, the use of onscreen soft phones for handling calls, instead of phone sets for each agent, cuts down on overhead by reducing the amount of equipment your IT department has to support.
For some types of call centers, advances of technology allow for even more sweeping reductions in overhead. By communicating with customers over IP networks, call centers open up the number of possible locations for agents. Fuller cites the example of at-home agents, who, by working from where they live, enable their employers to lower real estate costs.
With that said, the goal of deploying technology, or the decision to bring at-home agents on staff, need not be limited to cutting costs. As Fuller explains, the technology that makes it possible for call centers to employ at-home agents has the added benefit of allowing call centers to attract a more productive workforce.
"At-home agents have been proven to have a lower attrition rate [and] seem to function at a higher productivity level in many cases because these are people who have a higher education level as well," he says.
To know whether your approach to budgeting makes sense, it's not enough to calculate how much overhead you need to cut. The larger aim is to identify what areas of your call center you can improve.
"It's important as you go through your analysis to be sure that you have a baseline," says Outlaw. "The thing that's nice about call centers is that there's an enormous amount of data collected and tracked in terms of cost and performance."
As we explain in our next issue, one way to boost performance, in addition to deploying more efficient means of communication, is to recognize what motivates agents. Understanding incentives, like implementing technology, enables you to introduce efficiencies by applying the best possible resources -- in this case, human rather than physical - to fulfill your company's commitments to customers. Proper budgeting also entails selecting the most appropriate indicators of performance (see Greg Levin's article, "Measuring the Things that Matter," in this issue). If your budgeting process emphasizes opportunities to improve your communication with customers in ways that matter to your company, then you have a great chance of getting the most from the resources you have.
Webcast on Budgeting
To view and listen to the Webcast guide to budgeting that we mention in this article, point your Web browser to Call Center Magazine's website, www.callcentermagazine.com, and click on the link on the upper left side of the Web page that reads Webcast Archives.
This link will take you to a list of archived Webcasts. Scroll down to, and click on, the link to the Webcast titled "Strategic Innovations: Is Your Budgeting Complete Enough? A Workshop Guide to Allocating Your Center's IP Transition Resources." The link will take you to a Web page from where you can register for the Webcast.
After you register, you'll be able to view and listen to the Webcast. Keep in mind that you don't need to call a phone number. Because the Webcast streams sound over the Internet, you'll hear the recorded tutorial by turning on your computer speakers.