Performance Management and Real Time Reporting in the call center. The advantages of using Performance Management instead of Real Time Reporting for managers and senior managment.

1. Performance Management
for
Call Center excellence!
The primary objective of Performance Management is to improve overall efficiency in the business and
call center. Utilizing dynamic performance management reports business leaders may effectively
monitor the performance and decision making of the stakeholders. Leaders then may make adjustments
to their strategies to assist the business in achieving their stated goals.
Improved FCR and CSat ratings due to quality decision making.
Higher customer satisfaction therefore increased loyalty, customer retention, and
revenues
Lower Costs due to effective operations
Increase agent productivity on average by 7%
Higher levels of IVR self service effectiveness up to 12% has been recorded
Abandonment rate drop by as much as 8%
Real Time Reporting aims to improve the behavior of the agent and team leaders so they are able to
achieve their goals. Reporting to these stakeholders includes such real time information as Average
Handle Time, Abandonment Rate, FCR and schedule adherence. These metrics are what a majority of
call center managers look to improve.
Performance Management differs from Real Time reporting by targeting more historical data. Real Time
Reporting focuses on the events of the moment or at most for the day while performance management
focuses on longer term such as for the week, month, quarter or year. Trends are more accurate and
reveal themselves over a longer period of time. Statistics for any call center at any point in time can be
fantastic or terrible depending on the time slice reviewed. Therefore by reviewing more historical data
a truer picture of the call center begins to emerge.
Real time and historical metrics are created by the business to measure the call center, agents, team
leaders and managers. These stakeholders have stated goals that they are required to meet, however,
without information on their performance, agents cannot make adjustments to their behavior, schedule

2. adherence goes unchecked, IVR settings are not managed or other variances continue to exist. Metrics
and adjustments are the two key elements to effective performance management.
Setting metrics, on the surface seems easy to accomplish yet many call centers do not focus on the right
metrics. To find out more about the metrics that matter contact Spectrum. Secondly the reporting
must contain the proper summary and granular data for the business to make adjustments to
stakeholder behavior and goals. A brief look at some of the key attributes to an effective web based
report:
Sample - Daily Summary Report
Automatically generated for the stakeholders
Color coded threshold and variance violations
Drill down and across for additional details
Web based for easy access from any browser
Automatically generated reports sound simple and something any call center manager or business can
perform. When the daily workload and crisis occur these types of reports are the first thing that gets left
behind and not created. The amount of time a person can spend on creating these reports can be
substantial and therefore costly to the organization. Automating these reports will provide the business
with actionable information when it is most needed, during the busiest times and when a crisis is
occuring.
Threshold violations are the first elements in a report that the business is looking to find. A threshold
violation is when an agent, group or call center has exceeded it goals for a particular KPI. These
violations occur on a interval and daily basis and need to be reviewed for patterns or behavior problems.
For example if the number of abandoned calls is exceeded for the week there could be a number of
reasons for this including poor schedule adherence, new product release, new desktop tools, special
offers, etc. It is the responsibility of the manager to review these violations, spot training issues and
make adjustments to correct the behavior problem.
Calls InQueue Calls InQueue- Goal Variance
14 10 +4
This is an example of threshold violation that the agent and call center manager will
work together to correct. To performance management this type of daily threshold
exceptions is expected.
Goals and targets are rarely met exactly as planned by the business. There is a level of variance that any
business or call center will expect and accept. If the variance exceeds this stated (or most probably
unstated) variance then it is a variance threshold. These types of exceptions most often occur in the
area of sales, product support trouble tickets, product or service cancellations, FCR and CSat ratings.

3. When a variance threshold has occurred the business must attend to the problem area quickly to
resolve the problem. Lack of problem resolution can cost the business substantial revenue, drive up
costs, lower employee satisfaction and create an undesireble reputation for the business. Variance
exceptions are a tremendously large subject that is beyond the scope of this document.
Sales Revenue Sales Revenue Sales Revenue
Week Week Goal Week Variance
$551,375 $615,000 $63,625
In this example a business manager is looking at a key metrics that has exceeded the variance threshold
and requires special attention. If the week revenue was closer to the goal, let’s say within $5,000 the
manager probably would not consider that to be a large enough variance to be a concern. However,
using trending a manager may find the target value is always missed which would be of concern. This
type of trend analysis is possible with performance management.
Drill down and across to see details that are not on the summary or consolidated report are necessary
for the stakeholders to truly understand their metrics. A summary is an ideal way of seeing the health of
the business in 30 seconds or less. After that a more granular approach is required and that is where
the drilling down and across come in. Access to the data is required for this level of granularity. If the
data is not accessible or cannot be created using the performance management software than the
details are not available. The number of layers that data can be accessed is entirely up to the amount of
relevant data that is available and the level of detail desired by the business.
Group 101
Service Level
63%
Drill Down
Group 101 Agents Service Level
Debbie McLerran 78%
Bill Boone 55%
Anna Black 56%
Drill Across
Agent Calls Offerred Calls Answered Service Level
Bill Boone 20 11 55%
This is a simple example of drilling down to determine which agent(s) are causing the threshold violation
and then drilling across on one agent to determine what is happening with that agent. Furhter analysis

4. may reveal this agent is new to the position, needs additional training, is covering for another agent or is
just having a rough day.
Web based reports make the summary and details accessible from any browser and not requiring a
third party product to run or view the reports. As long as access is provided to the stakeholders they will
be able to access the reports and monitor the performance of the call center.
Performance Management focuses on the business or the overall call center. The data that is reviewed
is more historical with a view to some real time statistics when required. Threshold and variance
violations are key to being able to spot problems and trends and provide corrective training for the
agents most affected. Performance Management will increase business productivity and revenue and
reduce operating costs.
Contact Spectrum today to learn how Performance Management will improve your overall Call Center
Efficiencies and reduce operation costs.