Balanced Scorecard implementation is quite a complex process, especially if the world famous strategic management tool is used in one of company’s departments. A call center is an inseparable part of any company, especially the one that sells products or services. When a company adopts a strategy and makes an action plan, it has to make sure that all business units work like one single whole. Sure, various departments may have different goals, but all of them should aim at implementation of strategic goals.
How a call center affects customers
A call center is not an exception. This business unit has own specific tasks and goals that have to be agreed with the company goals and strategy. BSC implementation is a call center can be very helpful. But at the same time, negative BSC experience shows, that once the system is not applied properly it never yields positive results. A call center may pursue its own goals, like increasing the number of handled calls or introduction of new services to customers. But each and every goal should contribute to the company strategy. In other words, one should give an answer – how implementation of a particular call center goal will contribute to implementation of company strategy.
Optimization of call center performance improves company financial results
When it concerns call center BSC one needs to remember that customer satisfaction and reasonable expenses are key success factors for any customer support service or a call center. That is why all key performance indicators should center around them. For this reason it is very important to select the right KPIs. The right key performance indicators will not only correctly demonstrate call center progress on the way to implementation of goals, but will also show how these goals are related to company strategy.
A special team that will be in charge of BSC implementation in a call center should first determine critical success factors. What makes an effective call center? Of course, the key goal is to keep calling customers satisfied. At the same time, customer satisfaction is not the only measure to be evaluated.
Call center operators, especially inexperienced ones, often focus on secondary things. Of course, such indicators as time in queue and communication etiquette are extremely important but they do not solve a key problem – customer’s questions need to be answered and problems need to be solved. If a call center operator fails to answer customer’s questions nothing helps to retain such a customer. Call center BSC has a certain set of KPIs which are individually selected for each company.