Scorecards and dashboards present a tremendous opportunity to focus everyone in the contact center on what truly matters to the business. In the best case, the technology and associated processes operate like a nervous system, sensing and reporting key information about the current environment and stimulating coordinated action by all affected parts. In the worst case, they fire off the wrong responses, overwhelm the receptors with too much information, fail to warn of impending danger, or some combination of all three. There’s no doubt about it: It makes good sense to give thoughtful consideration to the design, presentation, and use of this technology.
Here are some suggestions for optimizing your scorecard and dashboard technology and its application in the center.
FIRST: Develop a metrics strategy tailored to your primary business objectives such as revenue generation, cost control/efficiency, or relationship building. Identify a few targeted KPIs that have particular relevance to your objectives. Measure staff productivity across all media and the efficacy of customer-facing technologies such as IVR. Distinguish between metrics with specific targets and those to simply monitor for trends and anomalies. Finally, define who gets what, with what frequency, and through which media. A good strategy provides the focus and alignment everyone needs to do their part.
SECOND: Choose the right data from the right sources to create a balanced view of the center’s performance, along with each individual’s contribution to the collective. Paint a comprehensive picture, but don’t inundate the viewers with too much information.
THIRD: Take time to educate the team on the metrics strategy and how it relates to the center’s business objectives. Communicate how and why the metrics were chosen, what they mean to the center and the individual, and how they’ll be used to monitor and enhance the team’s performance.
FINALLY: Create business processes to specify who does what under what circumstances with information provided on scorecards. Address real-time operational protocols to meet critical metrics such as service level. Provide opportunities for feedback, coaching, and personal development to help individuals raise their skills and competencies. Note trends and root causes that affect the whole organization and engage the training, IT, and process optimization folks to launch performance improvement initiatives. Use results to recognize individual and team successes.