Cell phones usage efficiency

April 2nd, 2009

KPI Name: Cell Phone Balanced Scorecard Metrics

Related KPIs: Customer Relationship, Call-Center, Help Desk, Interactive Voice Response, Customer Profitability, Customer Profiling, Customer Value, Customer Conversion, Customer Loyalty, Internet Access, VOIP

Customers also viewed: Personal Productivity

Sample reports:

Some reports were generated with Balanced Scorecard Designer for the Cell Phone Balanced Scorecard Metrics KPI to show both – Balanced Scorecard Designer functionality and a part of KPI content:

Balanced Scorecard Designer Screenshot:

Cell

The Balanced Scorecard Designer software was used to create this KPI.

Description by authors:

There are number of reasons which force companies to provide corporate cell phones or network connections to their employees, which include better tracking, improved coordination, cost savings, etc. With KPIs these companies are able to judge the efficacy of the cell phone schemes used by them with ease. Cell Phone KPIs for user companies are basically configured under four parameters- cost savings, customization, operation and control, and lastly employee tracking.

Cost Savings Perspective shows the level of savings made by the companies with the use of corporate mobile networks. It consists of KPIs like % dip in internal phone costs, % dip in external or distant phone expenses, % savings in bulk purchase of cell-phones connections and % reduction in internet networking costs for employees.

Customization Perspective takes into consideration KPIs like customization level of corporate mobile network schemes, % rise in discounts on corporate employee mobile schemes, number of value added features enjoyed and rise in cheaper tariff plans.

Operation and Control Perspective talks about KPIs such as improvement in Connectivity Level on same mobile network, staff optimization level, control level over mobile usage and spending policies and security level adequacy.

Employee Tracking Perspective shows the effectiveness of mobile networks in enhancing employee tracking. It comprises of KPIs like improvement in employee tracking, rise in employee efficiency, employee coordination level and rise in employee safety.

KPI in Excel – Screenshot:

This is the actual scorecard with Cell Phone Indicators and performance indicators.

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VOIP Balanced Scorecard KPI

March 31st, 2009

KPI Name: VOIP Balanced Scorecard Metrics

Related KPIs: Customer Relationship, Call-Center, Help Desk, Interactive Voice Response, Customer Profitability, Customer Profiling, Customer Value, Customer Conversion, Customer Loyalty, Cell Phone, Internet Access

Customers also viewed: Personal Productivity

Sample reports:

Some reports were generated with Balanced Scorecard Designer for the VOIP Balanced Scorecard Metrics KPI to show both – Balanced Scorecard Designer functionality and a part of KPI content:

Balanced Scorecard Designer Screenshot:

VOIP

The Balanced Scorecard Designer software was used to create this KPI.

Description by authors:

Since its inception, VOIP service has earned the attention of both small businesses and enterprises and has certainly surpassed the traditional communication techniques in many ways. From excellent network connection service to huge amount of cost savings, VOIP service offers great benefits to the users. One can easily arrange the KPIs for VOIP users under four perspectives- network quality, cost savings, VOIP service efficiency and customer service.

Network Quality Perspective helps in measuring the quality of network connection offered by the VOIP service provider. It takes into account KPIs such as connection success rate, reduction in connection delay, network efficiency ratio and call setup time.

Cost Savings Perspective talks about the KPIs in the form of % reduction in phone costs,
% reduction in bandwidth costs, % dip in personnel costs used for handling call operations and savings in infrastructure and maintenance redundancies.

VOIP Service Efficiency Perspective comprises of KPIs such as % of calls with one or more DSQ Event, % of time segments when the call quality was inappropriate, % of calls with listening/conversational quality less than desired and security level score.

Customer Service Perspective can be used to judge the level of customer service related to the VOIP service. It consists of KPI like average service response time, % reduction in network problems resolution time, number of associated features provided by the VOIP service provider and service access level.
KPI in Excel – Screenshot:

This is the actual scorecard with VOIP Measures and performance indicators.

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Strategy map for call center

March 25th, 2009

The version 3.0 of BSC Designer now supports strategy maps, e.g. the visualization function, which will help to convert key performance indicators into the strategy map. In this way it is possible to create and share visual map of indicators for call center.

Strategy Map for Call Center

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Guidelines to Managing Call Center Performance during Recession

March 21st, 2009

Tough times call for using smart, sensible measures, and managing call center performance during recession periods calls for a renewed focus on measuring performance and employee retention.

The financial crisis threatens everyone, from companies big and small to their clients and consumers. Tough economic times mean cutbacks on almost every scale, from huge layoffs from companies that have suddenly seen record lows, to holding back on spending at the consumer level. For these reasons and more, managers have to come up with strategies in managing call center performance during recession. Those who fail to adapt to the challenging times will see their companies and organizations fail to survive the crisis.

The first thing to realize is that everyone, to some extent, will be worried about the possible effects of the financial downturn on the company and on them, personally. It would be a wise management decision to try and maintain or even boost morale, if at all possible. Hence, management should work closely with the human resources department in order to present a calm, unified front, as well as open communication channels with employees. This would also suggest that celebrations and award giving ceremonies, even if they should be somewhat less grand than they were in better times, should still not be canceled entirely. The company should project a feeling of determination to go on and continue to perform well, despite external circumstances.

Now, empty pronouncements without any real plans backing them up may help in the short term, but are sure to harm the company in the long term. Thus, before sending off any memorandums or messages through the company, management should be sure that the information they contain are up to date and relevant. There should be an underlying business plan for weathering the recession that the management has agreed upon and revised extensively. At the same time, this business plan should take good communication with the employees into account.

Essentially, times of crisis are times for the organization to slim down and focus on its core, on its best people. It becomes more important than ever to be able to measure performance in order to ensure that you are doing your best to keep your best people. In hard times, job mobility can actually increase as employees begin to reconsider their employment. Bad news or even just rumors, if left unchecked, can cause employees to migrate to other employers. The focus on communication as mentioned above will be the best measure to counteract this. If employees are aware that management and the other higher ups of the company are doing their best to control the effects of the recession on the company, they will have higher morale and confidence. They will be much less likely to jump ship, and more likely to stay with the organization.

Managing call center performance during recession, apart from these more general considerations, should also ensure a steady stream of real-time data. This performance data from the employees will provide important criteria in the case layoffs become unavoidable. Keep the top performers happy, and if you have to let go of any people, make sure that only the lowest performers go.

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Good Reasons behind Managing Call Center Metrics during Recession

March 1st, 2009

Managing call center metrics during recession periods should be given primary importance, because they provide valuable data on which to base decisions on the fly.

Managing call center metrics during recession periods may seem of secondary importance, but in fact, it is extremely necessary in order for a call center to minimize losses. Economic downturns usually trigger companies to go all out and try to cut expenses as much as possible. This is more often than not accomplished via such measures as budget cuts, bonus and salary cuts, employee layoffs, and other equally drastic steps. What companies should realize is that a longer term perspective should still be adopted, even in the face of very turbulent short terms.

Metrics are key parameters that serve to allow managers to get an idea of how particular aspects of a process or organization are performing. In the case of call centers, some metrics include average handling time, or the time that it takes for an agent to wrap up a query, and customer satisfaction ratios. These metrics are important strategic tools, as they allow managers to keep track of employee and department performance accurately. For example, the effects of training, salary raises, and other actions should be reflected eventually in these metrics.

During times of recession, it becomes more important than ever to keep a close eye on call center metrics. One big reason for this is so that management will be able to rein in cost cutting when it begins to have too big an impact on performance. Call center performance relies on a number of different factors, with morale being one of them. Salary cuts and termination of coworkers will presumably have a negative effect on morale, leading eventually to decreased performance. Not to mention the loss of manpower that terminating employees would result in.

All in all, managers should always be aware of the effects of their decisions on call center performance, and even more so during periods of financial recession. Decisions made during recessions tend to involve even more risk than usual, apart from usually having to be made quickly. These represent crucial turning points for the company, during which every bit of data available to base the decision on would help immensely. Call center metrics become much more valuable in crunch times such as recessions, and they should be paid as much attention as possible. Objective data, with the proper analysis, will prove invaluable to managers devising strategies and tactics for coping with financial developments such as recessions.

A complete business plan to weather a downturn in the economy should include, therefore, a comprehensive plan for keeping up the monitoring of performance through metrics. Past and present performance should be used as benchmarks for determining the acceptable extent and percentages of drops expected to be experienced during the recession. Using these estimates, budget cuts and other cost cutting measures should be carefully limited. Managing call center metrics during recession will act as a barometer to help managers ensure that the company’s performance is not suffering too much because of cost-effectiveness measures. This will minimize losses and maximize the chance of making it through.

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Controlling Call Center Metrics during Recession is Important to Survival

February 9th, 2009

Economic crises can hit hard, and controlling call center metrics during recession periods can mean the difference between going under and making it through with acceptable losses.

Financial crises will not hit everyone equally, of course; but in the end, practically everyone will feel some sort of effect from economic downturns. The news will continually be filled with companies and organizations experiencing difficulties and enacting desperate measures to try and stay afloat. Carefully monitoring and controlling call center metrics during recession periods will prove to be a crucial part of any strategy in coming through the crisis with minimal losses.

This is because companies should still be focused on providing the best products and services that they can, despite the times changing unavoidably for the worse. Clients and customers will be sure to appreciate your organization’s devotion to quality and service all the more during times of crisis. This means that paying attention to organizational performance, making use of call center metrics, for instance, should be continued and even intensified.

In fact, real time data regarding employee performance should ideally be readily accessible by Human Resources as well as management. This is because this data will be useful for accurately gauging current performance and efficiency levels, and this, in turn, will be essential to making the right decisions. Decisions regarding employee retention, attrition, and termination should be made on these objective bases, depending on their performance, rather than randomly or on subjective bases.

The top performers should be taken good care of, and all realistic measures should be taken to ensure that they stay with the company. It has been observed that in difficult economic times, it is the best people with the most qualifications who are most likely to jump ship and try their luck with other employers. This becomes especially likely when they are made to feel as if the management is not doing enough to help avoid the harmful effects of the crisis. Hence, communication lines should be opened, at least to the top performers, to ensure that they are updated on the latest developments in the company. This will help foster a feeling of belonging and solidarity, making it less likely for them to want to leave.

The lowest performers, on the other hand, should be the prime candidates for termination, should worse come to worst and layoffs become inevitable. The slackers, the agents with the highest average handling times and lowest customer satisfaction ratios, for instance, may prove to be liabilities in periods of financial and economic difficulties. In some cases, human resources can still apply its various techniques and training methods to help the slowest employees catch up. However, tough times will call for some tough decisions, and when it comes to that, HR should be able to call on metrics and data on which to base their choices.

Apart from trying to minimize costs and expenses in general, during financial downturns, companies should focus more on intensively managing their people. By controlling call center metrics during recession and thus having a good, accurate, knowledge of employee performance; managers would have firm ground from which to make appropriate plans and decisions.

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Ways to Measure Call Center Performance

January 20th, 2009

There are a number of ways to measure call center performance, but a few should be enough to give you the most useful results.

Call centers are becoming very important to the operations of many companies. Call centers provide them the ability to connect with customers more effectively and efficiently and allow them to focus more on developing products that consumers will find useful. Ultimately, the most accurate way to measure call center performance is to relate it to how well call center services contribute to improvement in terms of company sales and product quality. However, this is largely dependent on the way companies analyze and utilize call center generated data.

For a call center, the process of measuring performance can be a bit complicated since as a separate company, it has its own performance measures. These measures, however, must be flexible enough to accommodate the expected outputs of clients. And call centers may be servicing a couple or more clients at any given time.

Depending on the requirements of client companies or accounts, call centers employ several performance measures common to the industry. They can employ average talk time (ATT), average handling time (AHT), percentage of resolved issues, service level, cost-per-call, abandon rate, customer satisfaction, and delay time, which refer to the time spent by customers waiting for call center representative to pick up their calls.

These different measures make it easier to assess the performance of the center itself, although other measures are needed to come up with a complete and more reliable assessment of performance. Favorable results in the evaluation of these measures do not automatically mean success; they must contribute to the operations of the client’s accounts. The number of measures employed also does not matter much –, what is more important is the relevance of said measures. A few will do the trick as long as they have the ability to capture performance levels accurately and effectively.

Among the different techniques enumerated above, customer satisfaction is perhaps the best when it comes to measuring performance. This is because customer satisfaction is the ultimate objective of any company, including a call center. The levels of customer satisfaction mostly stem from the quality of product or services being offered; thus, it is a good gauge of how well the center is performing or the quality of the clients’ products and services.

Negative customer satisfaction evaluation results tell a lot about the performance of the center and product of the company. Other measurement metrics will be helpful in providing details to the evaluation. Abandon rate, for example, tells how many customers decide to abandon calls they themselves initiated. Clients cannot be expected to wait patiently until somebody picks up their calls. A few of these and you can expect to receive negative feedback from them, and complaints are decidedly clear manifestations of dissatisfaction that does not bode well for the call center as well as its clients. Abandon rates may be caused by long lines of customers calling. It is very important to determine the reasons behind high abandon rates so that solutions can be found and applied.

There are many techniques used to measure call center performance. The number employed is not as important as the quality of metrics utilized to measure the performance.

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Evaluating KPI Models

January 10th, 2009

Various KPI models are available online. These online vendors provide KPI solutions to companies that need an efficient KPI-based system.

An increasing number of companies have decided to use key performance indicators (KPIs) as a means of improving organizational performance and achieving overall goals. While there are various KPI models that companies can choose from, using KPIs does not always mean successful implementation. To ensure success, there is a need to prepare for KPI implementation thoroughly. This would include following all the recommended stages for the integration of these indicators into business processes.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are metrics or measures that are used by organizations to define and measure progress. These are usually incorporated in the different Business Intelligence techniques to evaluate current business processes. When these indicators are monitored in real-time, they become a vital part of a company’s business activity monitoring (BAM). KPIs are also often used to assess or measure certain aspects of business operations that may otherwise be difficult to assign a quantitative value to, like employee or customer satisfaction, leadership development, or service quality. They are likewise often integrated into a company’s strategic plans as exemplified in such management techniques like the Balanced Scorecard approach.

When using KPIs, it is important to keep in mind that they are distinct from performance targets or business goals and aims. The former are designed to function as a monitoring facility that is used to move the organization toward its goals. These indicators are also created to provide proof that performance targets are met. Generally, KPIs are quantitative in nature. That is, they can be expressed in numerical figures. However, some indicators are qualitative, as they are directional and actionable in nature.

In building a KPI-based performance evaluation system, the information infrastructure used by the business should reflect the information crucial to their operations. Moreover, the KPI framework devised should encompass such aspects as the company’s goals and plans, the methods for assessing output quality, facilitating and implementing procedures, as well as employee requirements. When integrating KPIs into a company’s performance evaluation system, it is crucial that relevant indicators be identified by managers. This is something that is not easy to do. After all, with all the seemingly important metrics available, it might be tricky to choose only a few of them. Ideally, the SMART criteria should be used in KPI selection. That is, a KPI should be specific, measurable, achievable, result-oriented, and time-bound.

Organizational success is highly dependent on intelligent KPI. Therefore, it is also essential for companies to use intelligent KPI models or software to measure or analyze these metrics. Having sophisticated technology will provide companies with a more efficient framework in executing multi-level analysis on business processes, profitability, and other metrics that affect organizational performance. Fortunately, a number of KPI model vendors exist online. These online companies offer their clients the technology that will enable the latter to easily plan and define KPIs and integrate those to short-term goals as well as strategic organizational goals. Some of these performance evaluation solutions even recommend certain indicators that are critical for business financial processes, like expense and accounts payable management.

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How KPI Company Research Scorecard can Increase Management Efficiency

December 29th, 2008

KPI company research scorecard must focus on how research can help the company attain its primary goals and objectives.

Balanced scorecards are considered revolutionary management tools when it comes to tracking organizational performance. By supplying measurable details of goals, objectives, plans, and related structures responsible for implementing programs and activities, KPI scorecards are able to keep track and measure the quality of organizational performance. However, the reliability of KPI scorecards is dependent on data from which they are based on. And this reliability can only come from a research program that is continuous as well as accurate. Thus, KPI company research scorecard is an essential tool of management in ensuring that data and information about what is happening within and outside the company is always available for sound decision-making.

From goals, objectives, plans, strategy formulation, and to determining key performance indicators, research is needed to make sure that these essential management functions are based on concrete realities. It will be unfortunate for a plan to be backed up or based on highly speculative data. Naturally, performance evaluation results from this kind of process will be questionable and will not help the company in identifying where it is or what it has accomplished so far in relation to its stated goals and objectives.

What then should be a company’s KPI scorecard for research? There are two things that research should fulfill for the company. First is making sure that the management knows what is going on in the organization all the time and second, it ensures that external developments are tracked and analyzed. To put it simply, the main task of research is to provide management with the means to become dynamic and flexible. Naturally, management cannot be these things without being provided with reliable and ample data.

Companies, especially the bigger ones, generate a lot of documents every day. These documents contain vital information of the company’s status. It cannot tell what is happening when said documents do not contain the expected data or routed to persons who have no use for them. How then can management assess performance when documents supporting KPIs are absent? It is obvious that the first KPI scorecard of a research agenda in order for it to be considered reliable is its ability to detect limitations of and gaps in the management process.

Sometimes, even the best monitoring system fails to detect problems. This happens when measures are not actually accurate or rely mostly on quantitative data that have no room for argument. A manager can only have one interpretation when presented with data that says workers’ productivity is down or sales are off by 10%, and to blame the workers or sales people when there might be deeper problems that contribute to the dismal figures. These problems can be poor production processes or poor marketing strategies even. Such incomplete information contributes to faulty KPI assessment. This is where research comes in. A KPI company research scorecard, as long as it is clear in what it is supposed to do for the company, is a potent tool for determining existing and emerging problems — enabling management to be always on top of situations.

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Uses of KPI Company Research

December 21st, 2008

Identifying and establishing relevant KPIs is not as simple as it seems; it needs continuous KPI company research.

It is very hard for companies to determine whether or not they are doing well without having identified and established beforehand what KPIs to use in measuring accomplishments. This means, of course, that goals and objectives must be detailed and specific enough for them to be broken down into doable plans with measurable outputs. For managers, the key to integrating into management the structures and mechanisms that will ensure that paths taken are always aligned with goals is having effective key performance indicators. For this, KPI company research is required, as identifying what the company must focus on is not always as easy as it seem.

Management teams of companies in similar businesses would inevitably see markets or opportunities differently. This is because of their differences in terms of resources. Thus, you cannot expect them to employ exactly the same key performance indicators. A start-up would probably focus more on market development via strategies that are very different from what an established player would employ; although, both will have market penetration as one of the essential key performance indicators.

Vital to companies is to be able to base the selected KPIs on actual internal situations they find themselves in. There is no denying that one cannot give what one does not have. This simply means that if goals and objectives are to be achieved, and goals and objectives are general among companies competing for the same market, key performance indicators must focus first on acquiring what one does not have before any substantial gains can be made. What this tells us is that research must be able to describe accurately what a company has now — its strength, weaknesses, and opportunities. Only after determining this, can one be sure what KPIs to employ.

There is one KPI common to all organizations and that is how they respond to external and internal issues. In a constantly evolving business climate, it is imperative for organizations to be always updated on trends that can impact on performance and profitability and adjust plans and the allocation of resources accordingly. Evidently, if one can effectively measure responsiveness to changing scenarios, this must be top among the list of key performance indicators.

The most important asset of organizations is their human resources. This goes without saying that employee performance or productivity is a constant key performance indicator. Employee productivity or performance can be related directly to all other KPIs that organizations employ — revenue, customer satisfaction, product quality, and the like. Thus, the best strategy for companies desiring a dynamic structure is to place human resource development at the top of the list of key performance indicators.

Unfortunately, evaluating employee productivity is not that easy. There are many factors that impact their performance, like workplace environment, inappropriate management policies, job mismatching, salaries and benefits, inadequate training, and many others. All these can affect productivity, which in turn, affects other key performance areas.

What this all boils down to is that productivity, which is the core KPI of any organization, must not be assessed only in terms of quantitative figures, but must be analyzed for underlying causes as well. This, of course, requires institutionalization of continuous KPI company research that starts from its efforts to develop committed and efficient human resources.

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