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‌Student Training Manual‌

Welcome to the COPC® High Performance Management Techniques OnDemand student manual! Whether you're new to contact center management or seeking to refine your skills, this manual is your essential companion on the HPMT OnDemand journey to becoming a successful manager. Please note that this manual is meant to provide you with key learnings but also is a way for you to take notes based on what you are learning. You can use this Student Manual when you take the exam, but your ownership of adding notes will help you on the exam as well as back at work.

In today's fast-paced contact center environment, effective operational management is key to achieving outstanding results. This course equips managers with the expertise needed to measure, monitor, and enhance performance across all aspects of operations. From improving efficiency to elevating the customer experience and boosting employee engagement, our curriculum is designed to empower you to drive organizational success.

Recognizing the challenges of implementing comprehensive manager training programs, we offer a convenient solution. Our OnDemand training program provides unlimited access to comprehensive resources, allowing you to learn at your own pace, anytime, and anywhere. Prepare to embark on a transformative journey that will not only enhance your managerial capabilities but also position you as a confident leader ready to tackle the challenges of the modern contact center landscape. Let's begin unlocking the keys to high-performance management together!

Contents

Student Training Manual 2

1. Introduction 6

   Overview 6

   High Performance 6

   Management Techniques 6

   COPC 6

   COPC CX Standard 6

   Customer Experience 6

   Key Terms 6

   Service Journey 7

   Service Quality and Cost 8

   The Industry Challenge 8

   Understanding Business Success Drivers 8

   Knowledge Check: Introduction 8

2. Recruiting, Hiring, & Training 9

   Define the Minimum Requirements (MinReqs) 9

   Recruit & Hire Staff 9

   Knowledge Check: Designing Jobs and Recruiting 9

   Train Staff 0

   Training Master Plan Content Recommendations 0

   Verification 0

   Knowledge Check: Training 12

3. Attrition Management 13

   Impact of Attrition 13

   Measuring Attrition 13

   Formula for Annualized Attrition 14

   Potential Causes of Attrition 14

   Knowledge Check: Attrition 15

4. Managing by Metrics 16

   CUIKA 16

   Collected 16

   Usable 16

   Integrity: 16

   Known 16

   Lead to Action 16

   Using Data to Manage Metrics 16

   R-squared (R2) 16

   Knowledge Check: Managing by Metrics 17

5. Channel Metrics and Management & Real Time Transactions 18

   Type of Transactions 18

   Key Process Metrics 18

   Knowledge Check 18

   Real Time Transactions 19

   Inbound Phone Metrics-Speed of Answer 19

   Abandonment Rate Benchmarks: 19

   Shared Queue Environments 20

   Knowledge Check 20

   Self-Service 20

   Self-Service Metrics 20

   Chat (real time chat) also called synchronous chat 21

   Metrics Unique to Chat 21

6. Channel Metrics and Management: Deferred Transactions 22

   Deferred Transaction Metrics 22

   Backlog 22

7. Customer Feedback 24

   Sources of Customer Feedback (all of which you can use) 24

   Understanding Key Drivers 24

   Satisfiers, Dissatisfiers and Delighters 24

   Measuring Customer Experience 25

8. Quality Management 26

   Purposes of a Quality Program 26

   Business Level Improvement Focus 27

   COPC Benchmarks for Critical Accuracy 27

   Form Design 28

   Define Errors by Criticality 28

   Don’t Guess – Use a Key Driver Survey to determine Form Design 28

   Sampling 28

   Guidelines for Sampling 28

   Sampling Approaches 29

   Calibration 29

   Calibration Stakeholders 29

   Quality Analysis and Action 29

   Knowledge Check: Quality Management 30

9. Cost & Efficiency 31

Profitability = Revenue – Cost 31

Cost Per Transaction 31

Metrics 31

Efficiency 31

Knowledge Check: Cost and Efficiency 31

1. Process Control & Performance Improvement 33

   Variance Significance Factor (VSF) 33

   Outliers and Sigma 33

   Structured Problem-Solving Approach 34

   Knowledge Check: Process Control and Performance Improvement 34

2. Absenteeism 35

   Measuring Absenteeism 35

   Reporting Absenteeism 35

   Key Factors to consider in setting an Absenteeism Target 35

   Knowledge Check: Absenteeism 35

3. WFM Planning 35

   Forecasting 36

   Demand Requirements 38

   Scheduling 40

   Over-Under Charts & Actions 40

4. Real Time Operational Management (RTM) 41

   Adherence 41

   Daily Review & Planning Sessions 41

5. Agent Coaching & Action Planning 44

How many transactions should supervisors monitor? 44

Taking Action / Action Planning 45

Agent Coaching 46

COPC Five-Step Coaching Process 47

1. ‌Introduction‌

   ‌Overview‌

   Successful organizations prioritize improving the customer experience, delivering superior service, and ensuring high quality across their operations. By focusing on these objectives, they strive to reduce costs while simultaneously generating more revenue. Generating more revenue, while reducing costs helps organizations to improve profit from both sides.

   In this course, we will learn proven best practices and techniques you can implement immediately to drive high performance in your contact centers and CX Operations. This will include sharing best practices and COPC’s benchmarks, where benchmarks are appropriate.

   What do we mean by:

   ‌High Performance
   ‌Management Techniques

   • Improve Customer Experience

   • Deliver better Availability/Service

   • Accomplish Better Quality

   • Achieve Lower Cost

   • Generate Higher Sales

   • Sound operational management approaches

   • Things you can do that lead to high performance

   • They work today and every day

     • Not just academic ideas

   • COPC has seen them work

     ‌COPC‌

     COPC, a leading global consultancy, is committed to shaping meaningful customer experiences and maximizing business success. With an extensive track record, we have conducted thousands of CX Operational Reviews spanning over 70 countries. Our expertise extends across various sectors, including contact centers, retail, and face-to-face service environments, as well as automated and self-service channels. Through our holistic approach, we help organizations optimize their operations to deliver exceptional customer experiences and drive sustainable growth.

     ‌COPC CX Standard‌

     COPC Inc. began with the creation of the COPC Customer Service Provider (CSP) Standard, now known as the COPC Customer Experience (CX) Standard. The founders of COPC Inc., along with other call center industry leaders, saw a need for structured processes and measurements to ensure operations delivered consistently high performance. This group developed what is now called the COPC CX Standard—originally a comprehensive performance management system for call centers but now encompasses all customer experience operations.

     ‌Customer Experience‌

     Companies that prioritize customer experience reap numerous rewards including enhanced brand equity, heightened customer loyalty, increased revenue, and reduced operational costs. This strategic focus enables organizations to strengthen their market position, foster stronger relationships with customers, drive sales growth, and optimize efficiency, leading to sustainable business success.

     ‌Key Terms‌

     The following terms are key terms used in the training and provide context of their meaning.

     
     

     

     
     

     Key Customer-Related Processes (KCRPs) = Processes that are critical to the ability to deliver high performance levels to customers for the products and services it offers

     Key Support Processes (KSPs) = Processes necessary to enable the Key Customer Related Processes to meet targeted levels (e.g., forecasting, scheduling, recruiting, training, quality, real time management, etc.)

     Key Customer-Related Jobs (KCR jobs) = Positions that either directly perform or manage staff performing KCRPs. Besides floor management, KCR jobs include those that deliver agent training, recruiting, QA evaluators, WFM, or content management.

     Service = Speed

     • Speed of answer, or speed of response (human assisted channels)

     • Speed of access / system availability (digital assisted channels)

       Quality = Accuracy

     • Accuracy of response

     • Issue resolution

     • Reasonable handle time

     • Other things the customer thinks are important

     From the Customer’s perspective, Quality is even more important than service speed

     with some limited incredibly time sensitive exceptions

     ‌Service Journey‌

     The end-to-end path taken by a customer, interacting with any combination of company support channels and resources required to resolve a customer request or need. The fact is that customer experience is most influenced by you solving their issue. Solving their issue with the least amount of effort on the customer’s part creates a better service journey.

     Service journey is end-to-end resolution and may include multiple interactions or only a few. It is rarely just one interaction.

     And it’s important to note that, because there can be so many interactions to solve one issue, satisfactory touchpoints may not add up to a satisfactory customer journey. To succeed today, companies must begin

     
     

     to focus their efforts on understanding and improving the entire Service Journey, which includes understanding how each touchpoint relates to the entire journey

     ‌Service Quality and Cost‌

     Contact centers exist to serve as centralized hubs for handling customer inquiries, support requests, and interactions across various communication channels. They play a crucial role in facilitating efficient and effective communication between businesses and their customers.

     By consolidating customer interactions into a single platform, contact centers streamline operations, improve responsiveness, and enhance the overall customer experience. These centers enable organizations to provide timely assistance, resolve issues promptly, and build stronger relationships with their clientele.

     
     

     Additionally, contact centers serve as valuable resources for collecting customer feedback, gathering data insights, and identifying opportunities for process improvement and product innovation.

     Overall, contact centers exist to ensure that customers receive the support and assistance they need, ultimately contributing to higher satisfaction levels and greater loyalty towards the brand.

     ‌The Industry Challenge‌

     The age-old industry challenge then for contact center management is conducting many key things at the same time, like:

     1. Make customer satisfaction go up, while we also

     2. Make quality and service go up, while we also

     3. Make sales go up, while we also,

     4. Make sure costs are reduced, or at the very least, are not too high

        Most people that we talk to initially think these objectives cannot be met at the same time, that you have to choose a couple, or at the very least that trade-offs need to be made. COPC can tell you that, time and time again, we’ve seen contact centers achieve all of these objectives at the same time

        ‌Understanding Business Success Drivers‌

        Underlying the COPC standard CX is demonstrated evidence that (if done well) an organization can deliver higher quality customer service, which can increase sales, while improving efficiencies, which can reduce costs. When you increase sales (revenue) and reduce costs, you improve profitability.

        
        

        • Service: Speed of response or resolution

        • Quality: Accuracy of response or resolution

        • Sales & Revenue: Impacted by quality & customer satisfaction

        • Costs: Driven by process and efficiency improvement

        • Profitability: Driven by revenue and costs

     ‌Knowledge Check: Introduction‌

     1. What sort of Standard is the COPC Standard?

        1. Quality Framework

        2. Performance Management Framework

        3. Revenue Standard

     2. What is a KCRP?

        1. Key Customer Related Process

        2. Key Component Risk Process

        3. Key Component Revenue Process

     3. Give an example of a Key Support Process (KSP)

        1. Inbound calls

        2. Escalations

        3. Training

     4. Give 3 examples of an KCR-job

        1. Agent

        2. Team Leader

        3. Trainer

        4. Scheduler

     5. What are the goals of the COPC methodology

        1. Increase Quality/Service/Revenue

        2. Increase Profit

        3. Decrease Costs

        4. All of the above

     
     

2. ‌Recruiting, Hiring, & Training‌

   A key part of a highly performing organization is the staff. To get the best staff, the start is recruiting, hiring, and training is important.

   1. Define the minimum requirements for skills and knowledge needed for a role

   2. Recruit and hire staff who possess those minimum requirements

   3. Train any additional knowledge and skills listed in the minimum requirements

   ‌Define the Minimum Requirements (MinReqs)‌

   These are skills, knowledge, or abilities that an employee must know and be able to perform before they become operational in their job.

   MinReqs can be categorized as those that need to be demonstrated prior to hire (such as personality traits or proficiency in a skill) vs. those that will be trained (such as your company procedures) MinReqs must be demonstrated prior to becoming operational. Some MinReqs may be both, such as hiring somebody with the skill listening and understanding needs, but then training them on understanding the specific needs that your customers or clients may have.

   MinReq Template Example

   

   ‌Recruit & Hire Staff‌

   After the minimum requirements have been identified, it’s time to look for employees that meet those requirements.

   Recruiting Metrics

   There are generally two metrics for recruiting related specifically to frontline hiring and they are:

   1. Recruiting On Time: This may be a metric such as the percentage of staffing request headcount filled by the target date. In this case the COPC benchmark for OnTime Recruitment is >=90%

   2. Recruiting Quality

   
   

   

   ‌Knowledge Check: Designing Jobs and Recruiting‌

   1. With respect to minimum skills, which of the following statements are true (select the two that are correct):

      1. Must be clearly defined and documented

      2. Must be verifiable

      3. Must include nice-to-have skills

      4. Must be agreed to by majority vote

   2. Minimum skills must be defined for following job roles (select the three that apply):

      1. Agents

      2. Recruiter

      3. Trainer

      4. MIS staff

   3. Minimum skills and minimum requirements to hire mean the same thing:

      1. True

      2. False

         ‌Train Staff‌

   4. Minimum hiring requirements do not apply to internal transfers:

      1. True

      2. False

   5. Minimum hiring requirements are defined as:

      1. Skills and Knowledge that the employee must be able to do and/or know before they can perform their job

      2. Skills and Knowledge that the employee must possess that a person must have to be hired for the position

   6. Metrics used to gauge recruitment include: (select the two that apply):

      1. Fulfillment Ratio

      2. Recruitment On-Time

      3. Recruitment Quality

      4. Training Quality

   Once the staff have been hired, it’s important to train any additional skills that were identified in the MinReqs for the role. This also includes existing employees when new training courses are completed.

   ‌Training Master Plan Content Recommendations‌

   
   

   

   
   

   COPC® Best Practice

   Ensure you have, use, and update a Training Master Plan built based on the minimum requirements you’ve set.

   ‌Verification‌

   Throughout this process, it is important to verify that the employees have the knowledge and skills set forth by the minimum requirements. Verification should occur four times throughout the process:

   1. Prior to hire (by Hiring team)

   2. Prior to allowing staff to perform the job (by Training team)

   3. When changes occur in program, procedures, systems, etc. (by Operations)

   4. At least annually; a best practice is an ongoing function of side by sides (by Training or Operations)

   
   

   

   
   

   

   
   

   

   
   

   

   
   

   COPC® Benchmark

   Training Quality: Percent of new hires passing scorecard 30-days post training > 90%; Be sure to include metrics that the agent can control (e.g., AHT, Agent CSAT)

   
   

   COPC® Best Practice

   Analyze training at a process level and agent level Don’t let AHT be your only guide! It’s easy to track, but not useful for determining effective performance

   ‌Knowledge Check: Training‌

   
   

   1. Which of the following is generally not a part of training master plan:

      1. Setting or Methodology

      2. Personnel authorized to provide the training

      3. Performance in recruitment tests

      4. Specific skills or knowledge

   2. It is required to identify minimum skills to be trained before making training master plan:

      1. True

      2. False

   3. High performance benchmark for training quality is:

      1. >80%

      2. >85%

      3. >90%

      4. >95%

   4. Floor management and support roles (e.g. Team Leader, QA, Trainer etc.) do not require training:

      1. True

      2. False

   5. When should advisor minimum skills be verified (select all that apply)?

      1. Prior to hire

      2. Prior to allowing staff to perform the job

      3. Annually

      4. When changes occur in program, procedures, systems, etc.

   6. It is a good practice to have one verification method to verify all skills:

      1. True

      2. False

   
   

3. ‌Attrition Management‌

   Voluntary or involuntary staff separation, i.e., when someone leaves a position for which there will need to be a replacement. This may be a separation from the company, or movement to another role (and the prior role needs replacement).

   This is different than how many human resource groups consider attrition, which typically would be counted only “if somebody leaves the company.”

   But from the customer’s perspective, it does not matter if it is good attrition, bad attrition, voluntary attrition, involuntary attrition, promotion, lateral transfer, or even a demotion. It’s all attrition if we have to re-recruit, re-hire, train, and on-board someone to full levels of production and quality.

   

   ‌Impact of Attrition‌

   First, customer impact. When staffing is insufficient, customers suffer. Due to difficulty reaching someone to resolve an issue, service levels drop. As staff work through the volume and backlog, often with more inexperienced staff, service quality declines. This ruins customer satisfaction.

   Business impact comes second. Attrition affects costs because the company must recruit, hire, and train staff to replace those who leave to maintain customer support. You may also incur overtime and labor/support costs to make up for the lack of resources to handle peak volume.

   Finishing with staff. Surprise attrition overburdens remaining staff and operations. Workload and backlog will rise. Filling the attrition gaps causes stress and frustration. A high attrition rate hurts even tenured agents.

   ‌Measuring Attrition‌

   It is important that attrition is measured and managed well.

   To measure well, you have to define what attrition means in the operation, and it’s often not the corporate view of “Attrition is when somebody leaves the company”

   You also need to define a health target for attrition because healthy attrition, such as people being promoted, or losing somebody who really wasn’t working out could be good for the company. But unhealthy attrition, losing good performers is not beneficial. So, including and, indeed, segmenting the types of attrition is a very beneficial practice.

   
   

   High attrition has a negative impact on the ability to deliver on desired service levels, quality, and customer satisfaction – this has a domino effect, damaging sales and revenue, productivity, and ultimately company profits.

   As with all metrics, it’s not enough to measure the metric, you need to use that information to make management decisions and take actions from it. Defining the causes is important. Ensuring you define and use the triggers at which attrition levels require rehiring is important.

   And to manage attrition, it cannot be understated, that COPC recommends a focus on employee engagement, particularly at the customer-facing level. Your customers meet either engaged and eager employees, or employees who don’t really like their job. And it shines through and impacts your brand. High employee engagement, which results in low attrition, has the potential to impact your brand in all the right ways.

   
   

   COPC® Best Practice

   Calculate attrition on an annualized basis to understand the full impact of each month. Annualized Attrition measures the impact of staff turnover on service and cost.

   
   

   ‌Formula for Annualized Attrition‌

   For a month time period:

   (Voluntary + Involuntary (that requires replacement) ÷ starting headcount = A% A% x 12 months = Annualized Attrition

   
   

   Large Teams: Use Annualized Monthly metric to see seasonality impact

   Smaller Teams: Use Annualized YTD metric to smooth out big swings in data due to small size

   
   

   COPC® Best Practice

   Measure Recruiting Quality based on the percent of staff which successfully complete new-hire training (Graduate to Production) from original requested staff

   
   

   COPC® Best Practice

   Ensure key stakeholders are knowledgeable and take decisive action to manage and improve attrition

   
   

   COPC® Best Practice

   Calculate the true costs of attrition in order to make the right decisions

   ‌Potential Causes of Attrition‌

   • Onboarding Experience with Recruiting and/or Training

   • Relationship with Manager/Team Leader: managerial skills, lack of feedback, staff well-being, annoying policies or practices forced upon frontline

   • Growth & Development: Whether they have the availability to learn and grow skills, receive praise and recognition when they do well, and have opportunities to move up for career goals and/or higher compensation needs

   • Work at Home: whether they can or cannot and how important that may be to them

   • Fair Pay for their geography, the ability for pay to grow more quickly, or merit increases or lack thereof

   
   

   

   
   

   Establishing a Target is key to measuring and managing Attrition. Setting attrition targets based on local, regional, or national benchmarks is not a good practice.

   
   

   Instead: The most relevant attrition targets are established based on what the business can sustain:

   1. without negatively affecting customer satisfaction and

   2. without drastic impacts on cost

   A smart practice is to calculate correctly where you are today and set a target to bring attrition down to a newly identified target based on what the business can sustain without negatively impacting CSAT

   
   

   ‌Knowledge Check: Attrition‌

   1. Attrition calculation must include (check all that apply). Assume backfill is required in each case:

      1. Voluntary separations

      2. Involuntary separations

      3. Staff employed by recruiting/staffing firm

      4. Staff promotions

      5. Temporary staff leaving before end date

   2. Attrition calculations must exclude (check the three that apply):

      1. Positions that will not be replaced

      2. Staff reductions and layoffs

      3. Movement to other programs (backfill required)

      4. Temporary staff released after completing the assignment

         
         

   3. Attrition should be reported as an annualized percentage:

      − True

      − False

   4. Attrition should be tracked separately for each KCR job role:

      − True

      − False

   5. Operations owns attrition performance 100% once a new hire passes to operations

   − True

   − False

   
   

4. ‌Managing by Metrics‌

   ‌CUIKA‌

   CUIKA is a systematic way to evaluate performance data and use that data to manage the operation.

   ‌Collected: Data is gathered; data is complete

   ‌Usable: Targets are clearly identified; Targets are set based on high performing benchmarks where appropriate; Trends are discernable; Data is presented effectively

   ‌Integrity: Integrity is about the reliability of data.

   • Relevant: reflects intended measures

   • Objective: unbiased collection method

   • Accurate: numerically correct, not misleading

   • Representative: reflects full data population (representative sample data)

     
     

     ‌Known: Known and understood by appropriate staff; Includes statistical validity of sampled data

     ‌Lead to Action: Actions are taken if results do not meet targets; Performance improved and is sustained because of those actions

     Service bands, or defined ranges of acceptable performance, make a lot of sense in contact centers for several reasons, especially when compared to always striving for top-tier performance on every metric. This is especially true on metrics where you don’t want to be too low in performance (usually because this negatively impacts the customer), nor too high (because it negatively impacts costs). Generally speaking, this is true for all service metrics.

     Service level would be one example of a service metric where you want a targeted service band vs a static target. Low service level means customers are waiting too long. But, service level running too high, means the company is spending more money than is necessary to keep customers from being dissatisfied. In short, the service band represents the “sweet spot” at which you want the performance to land throughout the day. Other service-related metrics also apply, such as AHT. While we think of low AHT as “good for the business” it isn’t if the reason we are lowering AHT is by cutting transactions short to get there. This very much negatively impacts customers. Other metrics, such as quality, efficiency, and so on do not lend themselves to a range, but service metrics often do.

     
     

     ‌Using Data to Manage Metrics‌

     Obviously using data to manage performance in the operation is vital – that’s the point of this entire module.

     All of the data that you are using, whether you know it or not will impact and link to one another.

     It’s why you have to be working on the most critical things to drive the outputs your company needs

     In fact, it is a best practice to use operational data analysis so that you can accurately evaluate and drive performance.

     
     

     COPC® Best Practice

     Use operational data analysis in order to accurately evaluate and drive performance

     
     

     ‌R-squared (R2)‌

     
     

     

     R2 (coefficient of determination), tells us if a trend line (any type) “fits” well. This allows us to predict or know whether we should rely on the trend line.

     R2 ranges from 0 to 1.

     An R2 of 1.0 is a perfect fit

     
     

     COPC® Best Practice

     We can also use R2 to determine the “best fit” which helps us to predict more accurately

     
     

     ‌Knowledge Check: Managing by Metrics‌

     1. What does the “C” of CUIKA represent?

        1. Collected

        2. Collaboration

        3. Communication

     2. Which are the correct statements related to “U” Usable?

        1. Targets are clearly identified

        2. Targets are set based on high performing benchmarks where appropriate

        3. Targets are 100%

     3. Which of the following are typical “C” Collected issues?

        1. Target is too lenient

        2. Data is missing for a period

        3. A required metric isn’t listed

     4. Generally, for which type of metrics does a band “lower and higher specification limits) make sense?

        1. Service

        2. Quality

        3. Customer Satisfaction

        4. None of the above

     
     

5. ‌Channel Metrics and Management & Real Time Transactions‌

   Metrics gauge the overall effectiveness of customer service teams. Most customer support organizations use metrics to measure performance, employee productivity, and other activities that lead to increased customer satisfaction. Customer service managers monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) to track how effectively and efficiently a customer support solution achieves business goals.

   The types of channels offered have evolved over time, from single channel to multiple channel to omni-channel. The vast majority of companies today offer multiple channels. But performing well on channels is a bigger issue than the number of channels.

   ‌Type of Transactions‌

   It is important to understand the difference between Real Time and Deferred transactions because they must be measured and managed differently to achieve customer expectations

   

   
   

   Real-time and deferred transactions are managed differently and performance on these transactions is measured differently.

   ‌Key Process Metrics‌

   1. Service: How responsive (fast) are we to customer interactions?

   2. Quality: How accurately do we handle customer interactions?

   3. Efficiency: How cost-effective are we?

   4. Customer Satisfaction: How satisfied are our customers with their experiences?

   5. Revenue: How much revenue do we receive from handling interactions?

   ‌Knowledge Check:‌

   1. Human assisted transactions fall into one of two categories:                         and

                         .

      
      

   2. True or False? It is important to understand the difference between Real Time and Deferred transactions because they must be measured and managed differently to achieve customer expectations.

      
      

   3. True or False? Most companies are omni-channel.

      
      

   4. Is chat meant to be a real time or a deferred transaction?

      
      

   5. Is self-service expected to be a real time or a deferred transaction?

      
      

   6. Is email a real time or a deferred transaction?

      
      

   7. True or False? Organizations should base their channel choices on several factors, but one of the most important factors is that chosen channels are capable of solving the issue.

   
   

   ‌Real Time Transactions‌

   These are transactions where the customer is actively engaged during the queue time. The customer determines when to contact the company and the company usually has seconds to minutes to reply. Examples include inbound phone, self-service, and live chat.

   ‌Inbound Phone Metrics-Speed of Answer:‌

   1. Service Level (SL): Percentage of calls or chats offered to live queue answered by a live agent within targeted answer threshold

   2. Abandonment Rate: Percentage of transactions offered to live queue abandoned before answered by a live agent

   3. Average Speed of Answer (ASA): Average amount of time customers wait in live queue before being answered by a live agent

      
      

      COPC® Best Practice

      Use correlations to set targets in order of diminishing preferences

      
      

      COPC® Best Practice

      Evaluate ASA performance by showing the distribution and then make decisions on next steps

      ‌Abandonment Rate Benchmarks:‌

      < 5% Abandon in Customer Service Queues

      < 5% Abandon in Technical Support

      < 2-3% Abandon in Sales Queues

      
      

      COPC® Best Practice

      All abandonment thresholds should be set to zero

      
      

      

      
      

      Service Level is the predominant target, and we have a best practice tip for you in measuring service level that can lead to much better understanding of performance and then the actions that are taken and that’s this: don’t

      
      

      have a discrete target for Service Level where everything lower than say 80% is in the red, and everything higher is “in the green”

      
      

      COPC® Best Practice

      Measuring SL should be done at the interval level and not daily level

      
      

      COPC® Best Practice

      High-Performing Operations use a SL band target and also a percentage of prime intervals met Service Level metric

      ‌Shared Queue Environments‌

      Shared queue environments are scenarios in which we take real time assisted transactions like inbound phone calls or chat– and distribute them to different locations or groups – we can’t hold those individual groups accountable for service level.

      If you have a shared queue environment to distribute calls or chats among suppliers or locations, the service level and abandonment rate metrics are not appropriate at the supplier or site level – they are only appropriate at the overall or “network” level.

      So how do you measure service at the site level in a shared environment? You don’t really, but instead we hold sites accountable for delivering what is typically called “Schedule Attainment” which represents delivering the correct number of staff logged in and ready to handle transactions – by interval that usually WFM, or perhaps the VMO has required of each location.

      ‌Knowledge Check:‌

      1. Phone Service Level begins to be measured when:

         1. The customer finishes dialing

         2. The customer connects to the IVR

         3. The customer call is dropped into the live queue

      2. True or false: In a shared queue environment, Service Level and Abandonment Rate are measured for each site servicing the queue

         1. True

         2. False

      3. If Service Level is based on calls offered, then what is Average Speed of Answer based on?

         
         

         

      4. If a Service Level target was 75% in 20 seconds, is the Average Speed of Answer target 20 seconds?

         1. Why or why not?                                               

      5. The better way to measure Service Level for a month is:

         1. Average service level by day for the month to end up with the monthly service level

         2. Determine the percentage of intervals within the month that are within the targeted service level band

   ‌Self-Service‌

   There's a saying in our industry that the best service is not needing service at all. But major changes are happening in channel usage and preferences globally. One of those changes is that self-service is the next best thing to not needing service.

   In fact, more than 90% of customers expect organizations to provide a self-service option.

   ‌Self-Service Metrics‌

   1. Completion Rate: Percent of interactions initiated in self-service channel in which the customer task is completed

   2. Abandonment Rate: Percent of interactions initiated in self-service channel disconnected by the customer prior to completion of the task

   3. Customer Exit Rate: Percent of transactions initiated in self-service channel in which the customer requests to be transferred to a different channel

      
      

   4. Transfer Rate: Percent of transactions initiated in self-service channel in which the self-service system transfers the customer to a different channel due to a recognized inability to complete the task

   
   

   ‌Chat (real time chat) also called synchronous chat‌

   There are different ways for an organization to approach chat. Proactive chat targets a website visitor and uses visual cues and/or coordinated sound effects to invite live chat. The chat invitation should not offend, irritate, or deter customers from exploring your website or app.

   In reactive live chat, customer service agents respond to inquiries. Reactive live chat requires customers to request assistance. Also, chats can be either synchronous (i.e., live and restricted to one session) versus asynchronous (i.e., deferred and can be revisited).

   ‌Metrics Unique to Chat‌

   

   
   

   

   Concurrency is a value representing the number of transactions being simultaneously handled by an agent Average Chat Length (ACL) would be all the chats added up divided by the total number of chats

   
   

   Answer: 1.88 Average Chat Concurrency

   
   

6. ‌Channel Metrics and Management: Deferred Transactions‌

   With deferred transactions, the customer is not actively engaged during queue times such as emails.

   In deferred transactions, the customer may have decided when to contact the company initially, but the company is in complete control of when and how quickly they will process the transactions.

   
   

   • For deferred transactions, handle time is usually measured in hours or days.

   • Deferred transactions that are waiting to be processed are termed backlog.

   • Deferred transactions are both measured and managed differently than real time transactions.

     ‌Deferred Transaction Metrics‌

     Cycle Time: End-to-end transaction time (from customer’s point of view), usually measured in hours or days

     
     

     

     
     

     On Time Performance: % of transactions completed within Cycle Time Target (e.g., 95% emails are responded to with the 24-hour target)

     
     

     

     
     

     COPC® Benchmark

     High performance centers consistently achieve a 95% On Time to the cycle time target for large volumes of deferred transactions; and should be gathered based on 100% of the transactions (e.g., don’t discount those that are older)

     
     

     

     ‌Backlog‌

     Transactions waiting to be processed are called “backlog”. There are two types: not late backlog and late backlog (based on the targeted cycle time).

     
     

     

     
     

     There could be many reasons why well-intentioned people might not work FIFO, but for this program we will only review what COPC considers the top three reasons.

     First, the organization or the agent might decide to work on the easiest transactions first. They will take the shortest amount of time thus reducing the number of pieces in backlog.

     The next is they might work on the higher value transactions first thinking that will provide the best solution for the company as it will bring in the most value.

     Sometimes some members of a group are working FIFO, but others are not, which means the organization is not working FIFO.

     
     

     

     
     

     COPC® Benchmark

     Backlog: 24 hours or 1 cycle late, whichever is shorter

     
     

7. ‌Customer Feedback‌

   
   

   COPC® Best Practice

   Customer feedback should be the basis of our design of products, policies, processes, channels and technology

   • We need to understand feedback from customers on all of our channels.

   • We need to understand customer satisfaction and get their feedback on each touchpoint and entire service journeys.

   • We use this information to understand customers' perspectives on our products, services, support, policies, processes and how we handle their requests.

   • We want to ensure all these meet our customers’ requirements and, when we’re measuring how well we’re doing, we’re measuring how well we perform on what’s IMPORTANT to our customers.

     ‌Sources of Customer Feedback (all of which you can use)‌

   • Survey Analysis

   • Verbatim Analysis

   • Complaint Analysis

   • Front Line Feedback

   • Contact Reason Analysis

   • Social Media

   • Monitored Transactions

   • Churn/Loss Reasons

     
     

     ‌Understanding Key Drivers‌

   • There are many components of a customer experience that will have an impact on satisfaction

   • Some matter more than others - some are key to driving the experience

   • We call those the Key Drivers of Satisfaction

   • Key drivers drive satisfaction higher

   • Key drivers, if not present or done well, will drive dissatisfaction higher

   • Some components, not expected but delivered, can delight a customer

   • It is important to know that which is interesting vs that which is key

     

     ‌Satisfiers, Dissatisfiers and Delighters‌

     Satisfiers behave as you might intuitively think as performance improves, customer satisfaction improves – the better you perform, the more satisfied customers are.

     However, dissatisfiers start at neutral and they can only go down. A minimum level of performance is expected but going beyond this minimal level doesn’t improve satisfaction. An example is courtesy. Customers expect a minimum level of politeness, but being overly polite doesn’t increase satisfaction. However, impoliteness will result in dissatisfaction. That's why they're called dissatisfiers. By the way, DISSATISIFIERS are the drivers you want to work on first if not meeting the target, but you have to ensure that you only improve them to the point that the minimum expectation is met.

     Delighters are extras that can happily surprise but often do not make up for a lack of satisfaction. They are more often the "wow" factor. It can be

     an unexpected discount. However, “yesterday's delighter” like free shipping can become expected and dissatisfying if not present. Delighters are not what you target.

     
     

     ‌Measuring Customer Experience‌

     Measure customer satisfaction as a journey. It’s okay to also measure at the transactional (phone call, chat) level, but you should look at the entire customer journey because that is their true experience.

     There were 3 ways specifically mentioned to measure satisfaction and they were:

     1. Customer Satisfaction Survey: Traditional method of gathering quantitative customer feedback. This may focus on overall customer satisfaction or have questions about satisfaction with attributes that are most closely correlated with overall satisfaction. This is the best way to measure transactions and we recommend using a 5-point scale with a neutral mid-point.

     2. Customer Effort Score (CES): Asks customers to indicate the level of effort required to resolve their issue. The foundational assumption is that the issue was resolved, which may not be the case. CES can be a good cross-channel and/or service journey question. While this gives you “a score” the caution is that it does not allow you to dig into the details like CSAT does.

     3. Net Promoter Score (NPS): Customers are asked how likely they are to recommend the brand to a friend on a scale of 0-10, (11-point scale) NPS was meant to measure customers' loyalty to a company and not contact center transactions. Studies have demonstrated that using NPS on a transaction basis has a poor correlation with customer loyalty and satisfaction.

     Population Size: total number of customers Sample Size: number of surveys received

     Historical Proportion Defective (HPD): how consistent the results have been

     
     

     COPC® Best Practice

     For CSAT scales, use a 5-point scale with a neutral midpoint to measure customer experience.

     

     Satisfaction, also referred to as “Top Two Box (TTB)” using a 5-point scale with a neutral midpoint.

     TTB are those who chose a four or five on that scale.

     
     

     Dissatisfaction is often referred to as “Bottom Box” because it is those who scored a 1 out of 5. Some also refer to this as the Churn rate because it means customers are very dissatisfied and likely to leave.

     
     

     COPC® CSAT Benchmarks

     • Top Box (Loyalty): >/=60%

     • Top Two Box (CSAT): >/=85%

     • Bottom Box (DSAT/Churn): </=5%

     
     

8. ‌Quality Management‌

   Quality in a contact center might mean something different for a customer vs the business view. However, there will also be a combined view as indicated in the image below.

   
   

   

   
   

   ‌Purposes of a Quality Program

   
   

   

   • Produce results aligned with CSAT and other business measures

   • Provide data that is a predictor of CSAT, allowing for a proactive approach to address issues

   • Capture error root causes, providing operations/ business with actionable data to make improvements

   • Deliver value by providing valuable business intelligence about the customer's journey

   • Accurately measure quality from 3 perspectives – the customer, the business, and compliance

   • Empower the quality team to contribute to overall results efficiently and effectively

     
     

     Quality is a measure of the business, relative to customers’ needs, business requirements, and compliance obligations. In this context, quality is not a measure of individual performance. It is about obtaining accurate views of performance and data to address issues at the overall business level.

     Transaction monitoring is just one way to measure quality, mostly in assisted channels. It’s also used to measure and manage individual performance.

     So, quality is the overall measure of the business. Transaction monitoring is just one way to measure performance and manage individual performance.

     ‌Business Level Improvement Focus‌

     The primary purpose of the quality process is to provide business-level feedback. High performance organizations focus on business level improvement. While agent performance is important, they focus on systemic changes to the organization that can create a better customer experience.

     Business level feedback: We want to understand what policies or procedures, what processes are getting in the way of resolving issues or delivering a good experience to customers.

     Business intelligence: This is about learning about our customers, including their buying habits and feedback.

     
     

     COPC® Best Practice

     Companies should take the customer’s perspective rather than the agent’s perspective.

     
     

     COPC® Best Practice

     A quality monitoring program serves as an invaluable listening post for understanding the pulse of the business.

     
     

     ‌COPC Benchmarks for Critical Accuracy‌

     

     
     

     ‌Form Design‌

     ‌Define Errors by Criticality‌

   • Critical errors: causes the entire transaction to fail quality monitoring

   • Non-Critical errors: does not cause entire transaction to fail

     
     

     COPC® Best Practice

     Start with Critical Errors

     
     

     

     
     

     ‌Don’t Guess – Use a Key Driver Survey to determine Form Design‌

     We often get the question “what are the key drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, but the truth is, with the exception of issue resolution which is true about 100% of the time, you really need to do a well-designed key driver survey of your own customers, and then the proper multiple regression analyses to determine what exactly to have on your quality form in order to provide actionable data – which is the goal.

     You don’t have to guess at key drivers, you do a key driver survey. A key driver survey is the best way to figure out what's important to customers. This is a special survey, and it's typically conducted once every 6 to 12 months, depending on how dynamic your business is, because these drivers don't change very often.

     You can evaluate the association between overall customer satisfaction and the items that are key drivers of customer satisfaction.

     If you can’t conduct a key driver survey you can correlate the attributes on your existing Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) survey, but that will limit you to understanding the importance of the attributes on that survey. A key driver survey is broader and tests correlation of many attributes and then those that are most important to customers are the ones you should include in your ongoing survey.

     This is a very specific type of analysis. The good news is comparatively speaking key driver surveying and analysis is not expensive

     ‌Sampling‌

     It’s important to remember that the purpose of quality management is to enable organizations to accurately measure the business in terms of accuracy or defect rate from the customer, business, and compliance perspective. But in order to have data with integrity it is vital to get the sampling approach correct.

     ‌Guidelines for Sampling‌

     1. Determine the number of monthly interactions that should be monitored or checked based on an understanding of statistical implications. of the sample size. This essentially means that you need to make sure you are doing things correctly, so the data is sufficiently precise.

     2. The methodology should be representative and completely unbiased. If you use any specific criteria such as monitoring “X” per agent, it is biased. If you monitor a certain call type, it is biased unless that was a focused study. If you choose transactions to monitor based on a range of handle time, it is biased. These results become worthless for taking correct actions, and certainly give the wrong impressions of what performance is.

        
        

        

     3. Finally, the method in which the monitoring is carried out could impact how representative your sample is. For example, side-by-side monitoring may cause agents handling transactions to behave differently. So, remote monitoring is usually the ideal technique for business-level monitoring as it gives you a truer indication of how those transactions are handled.

        
        

        COPC® Best Practice

        Have a representative sample for both each channel and in each program

        
        

        ‌Sampling Approaches‌

        
        

        Agent Level	Business Level	Focused
        A risk-based sample of transactions to understand individual performance	A sample on specific transaction types within programs	A targeted random monitoring on topical issues
        Used for consistent coaching & feedback	Used to track performance month to month	Focus shifts over time to reflect the current environment
        Completed by TL	Completed by QA	Completed by QA

        ‌Calibration‌

        Calibration is the process of ensuring that quality monitoring is consistent and accurate.

        ‌Calibration Stakeholders‌

        Evaluator: Anyone who is scoring transactions

        Gauge: Someone (or group) who is the expert in the specific line of business being evaluated

        ‌Quality Analysis and Action‌

        When we talk about analysis and action, these are two different steps often performed by two different areas.

        In this context (quality management), analysis is typically done by a reporting and analytics resource usually (but not always) within the quality organization.

        

        The actions are taken by the business or the operation depending on who owns it. But we talk about them together because they are strongly linked or should be.

        If you have fantastic analysis but no one acts on it, there's really no value in it.

        And if we're taking action that is not based on accurate data or solid root cause analysis, then it's not going to be effective either.

        
        

        COPC® Best Practice

        Track performance over time and include precision rates

        
        

        ‌Knowledge Check: Quality Management‌

        1. What are the purposes of a quality program?

           Select all appropriate options

           1. Business Level Feedback

           2. Business Intelligence

           3. Agent Level Feedback

           4. All of these

        2. Which of the following are COPC recommended critical error metrics, Select all appropriate options

           1. Customer Affecting Critical Error

           2. Business Affecting Critical Error

           3. Compliance Critical Error

           4. Technical Error Accuracy

        3. Select the COPC benchmarks that are correctly represented below, Select all appropriate options

           1. Customer Critical Accuracy – 95% (both satisfiers & dissatisfiers)

           2. Business Critical Accuracy – 95%

           3. Compliance Critical Accuracy – 98%

        4. What are the common issues related to Quality Process Execution: Select all appropriate options

           1. Sampling Issues

           2. Calibration Issues

           3. Agent Issues

        5. We typically see two sampling execution issues 1) A biased sampling & 2) Insufficient sample size

           1. True

           2. False

        6. Which of the following has the highest impact on sample size

           1. Population

           2. Historical proportion defective

           3. Precision

        7. What are the two types of calibration we need to ensure for an effective Quality process:

           1. Calibration among Quality Evaluators

           2. Quality Evaluators calibration with customer’s point of view

           3. Quality Evaluators with senior management

        
        

9. ‌Cost & Efficiency‌

‌Profitability = Revenue – Cost‌

Every CX operation should have one or more cost metrics that provide management with the fundamental measure of the cost of interactions.

Metric Examples: cost per service; cost per customer; cost per subscriber; cost per resolution; cost per trouble/ticket

‌Cost Per Transaction‌

This is a common metric that is measured in CX operations. Keep in mind that this metric can increase while overall costs reduce (or vice versa).

‌Metrics‌

Occupancy: Percent of time that agents are engaged in productive work as a percentage of the time they are available to do productive work. The calculation is:

‌Efficiency‌

Efficiency measures are ratios of inputs to outputs. Examples of inputs include Labor, time, etc. Most efficiency metric titles include “something per something”. Meaning the input per the output. AHT is an efficiency metric, though the title doesn’t contain “per”, AHT is really the average handle time PER transaction.

How efficient are we?

In a call center, labor is typically the largest cost, in fact about 70% of the cost. This means your investment is 70% labor, but that doesn’t mean that the efficiencies in technology or processes would not have a tremendous impact on the labor’s ability to be more efficient. Or in other words, these items are not operating in silos.

When we think about how efficient our labor is, we need to think about the following:

• How much of our staff’s time in the center is in a productive state?

• When they are on leave, in training or on break, they are not in a productive state (for example)

Then, when they are in the productive state (taking calls, etc.) how productive are they? The productive hours as a percent of paid hours target can vary greatly based on multiple factors, such as the HR or company policy on the number of public holidays, annual vacations, personal days etc. For this reason, COPC does not have a benchmark to give you that could be considered applicable in most situations.

‌Knowledge Check: Cost and Efficiency‌

1. Efficiency metric examples include (selection all that apply):

   1. Chats per hour

   2. Average Handle Time

   3. Sales conversion speed

2. Utilization is calculated as (Talk + Hold + Wrap + Available) ÷ Paid Work Time

   1. True

   2. False

3. The high-performance benchmark target for Utilization is 86%

   1. True

   2. False

4. If AHT is reduced, then costs are automatically reduced

   1. True

   2. False

5. Occupancy is defined as:

   1. How busy agents are when handling transactions

   2. A measure of how well the center manages the paid time of agents

   3. A measure of how occupied seats are utilized

6. Shrinkage drives utilization up

   1. True

   2. False

‌10 Process Control & Performance Improvement‌

Process control is the act of eliminating unintentional variation to bring your process back under control

1. By observing the process for consistency

2. By analyzing the quantitative outcome of the process

‌Variance Significance Factor (VSF)‌

A COPC created calculations to easily determine the degree of process variation. This will identify if the process variation is excessive or acceptable.

VSF = STDEV x 6 ÷ Average

‌Outliers and Sigma‌

An outlier is a performer who is far away from the average.

An outlier is not “an agent who missed target.”

On human-assisted processes, you’d want to look at an out-of-control process just using one Sigma from the mean in either direction: so those who are past 34.1% on the low side and 34.1% on the high side. You focus on these first.

If your VSF was quite acceptable you

might still take a look at anybody is 2 Sigma's away. You may not find anybody but sometimes there is just really somebody who is either really low or really high and that needs to be looked at.

‌Structured Problem-Solving Approach‌

1. Define the problem

2. Measure to create quantitative data

3. Analyze data to determine root causes; develop solutions

4. Improve performance by implementing the solutions

5. Control/Monitor and continue to evaluate results

Beware of making hypotheses and accepting them as “fact.” You must verify if hypotheses are true using data analysis. It okay to Identify typical causal factors…. just make sure you don’t rely only on them in lieu of data analysis to prove them.

‌Knowledge Check: Process Control and Performance Improvement‌

1. Understanding variation and reducing it are

   crucial to improving and having a consistent customer experience

   1. True

   2. False

2. A high level of process control is synonymous with (select best answer):

   1. Variation

   2. Distribution

   3. Consistency

   4. Documentation

3. If a metric has an average of 15 and a standard deviation of 3, its Variance Significance Factor (VSF) equals:

   1. 0.7

   2. 1.2

   3. 1.5

   4. 3.0

   5. 5.0

4. The threshold for showing too much variation is:

   1. 0.5

   2. 0.7

   3. 1.0

5. All processes should be documented.

   1. True

   2. False

6. A structured problem-solving approach contains which steps (pick the best answers that apply)

   1. Develops and implements training

   2. Brainstorms to determine root causes

   3. Selects the problem

   4. Defines the problem

   5. Develops and implements solutions

   6. Analyzes data to determine root causes

   7. Monitors and evaluates the results

7. A(n)                 is a proposed explanation made based on limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.

   1. Histogram

   2. Fishbone Analysis

   3. Hypothesis

   4. Root Cause Analysis

8. Hypotheses do not need to be analyzed for us to conclude whether they are a root cause.

   1. True

   2. False

9. In problem solving, relying on assumptions or tribal knowledge leads to (check all that apply):

   1. Wasted time

   2. Wasted effort

   3. Little improvement

   4. Great improvement

   5. Success

‌11 Absenteeism‌

Absenteeism is the number of frontline staff who fail to show or are late for starting the shift or who end shift early. This is for unplanned absences. Planned absences, such as preplanned vacation time where the worker would not be scheduled to work, would not be included in the absenteeism calculation.

‌Measuring Absenteeism‌

Calculation: Hours that were scheduled that were not worked ÷ total hours scheduled

‌Reporting Absenteeism‌

Now that know how to measure absenteeism, it’s important to decide at what level reporting should happen (e.g., site, program, team, staff category, or shift).

Ideally, organizations should capture data in real time or daily. Then, they should report absenteeism in various intervals (e.g., 15- or 30-minute intervals, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually).

Operations should analyze absenteeism performance at least quarterly.

‌Key Factors to consider in setting an Absenteeism Target‌

So how do you set an appropriate target for Absenteeism? The first factor would be costs, such as overtime, recruiting and training hard costs, lost productivity of new hires and other support functions for onboarding. The second key factor is business requirements which will be unique to your organization. These would include goals for sales, revenue, service, quality, and end-user satisfaction. The third factor would be local labor conditions (which will be unique to your site), but often include things such as:

• Availability of Skilled Labor

• Competing Employers

• Wages

• Economic conditions

‌Knowledge Check: Absenteeism‌

1. Absenteeism calculation must include (select all that apply):

   1. Unscheduled shift absences

   2. Staff employed by staffing/recruiting firms

   3. Scheduled absences

   4. Long-term leaves not in schedule

2. Absenteeism calculations must exclude (select all that apply):

   1. Unscheduled shift absences

   2. Scheduled absences

   3. Long-term sick or absences

   4. Shift swaps arranged prior to shift start time

   5. Asking staff to go home due to low volumes

3. Absenteeism should be reported at (select all that apply):

   1. Site Level

   2. Program level

   3. Team level

   4. Shift level

   5. Agent level

‌12 WFM Planning‌

1. Absenteeism analysis must be performed at least:

   1. Weekly

   2. Monthly

   3. Quarterly

2. It is a good practice to combine absenteeism for multiple job roles and report them together

   1. True

   2. False

1. Absenteeism is calculated as:

   1. Days lost as a percentage of days scheduled

   2. Hours lost as a percentage of hours scheduled

   3. Agents not reporting to work as a percentage of total number of agents

2. Absenteeism rates do not vary from region to region

   1. True

   2. False

Workforce Management Planning Stages are the first 3 stages of planning: Forecasting, Demand Requirements and Capacity Planning, and Scheduling. The only stage that is considered “Operational” stage is real time management which is, quite simply, when contacts are actually coming in and in the process of being handled.

‌Forecasting‌

To report accurate forecasting, the organization must know sufficient historical transaction arrival patterns. From a forecasting perspective, it is necessary to identify, consider, and use the arrival pattern of transactions in order to predict the pattern of incoming calls.

The good news is that transaction patterns become relatively predictable over time which means we can plan for and manage them. The most common arrival patterns are:

1. Day of Week

2. Hour of Day, which is commonly done in half-hour intervals, or sometimes 15-minute intervals

3. Week of Month and

4. Month of Year

Shrinkage: Estimated amount of staffed or scheduled productive time that will not be realized because of either planned or unplanned non-productive time.

Examples of Planned Shrinkage include, but may not be limited to breaks, lunch, planned training, vacation, planned meetings, and planned coaching time. Examples of unplanned shrinkage include

Unplanned Shrinkage cannot be scheduled in advance. This includes absenteeism, lack of schedule adherence on the floor, and unplanned attrition (some attrition may be known by the scheduling stage and is therefore not “unplanned”).

Unplanned shrinkage is often forecasted based on historical data

Staffing Forecast Accuracy – Weekly -- The actual required staffing levels vs. forecasted staffing levels

Scheduling Forecast Accuracy – Interval -- The forecasted staff scheduled vs.actual staff required (based on volume, AHT, and shrinkage)

‌Demand Requirements‌

Demand requirements represent the estimated number of resources, by period, required to handle the forecasted transaction minutes

There are 2 key planning models that occur during the Demand Requirements phase and those are the Capacity Plan Model and the Scheduling Plan model.

Notice that there are some similarities on the far right with both plans in that they both incorporate the forecasted AHT or Transactions Handle Time, the forecasted volume, forecasted concurrency in the case of chat transactions, forecasted shrinkage and the targeted Service level for real time transactions, or cycle time for deferred transactions.

‌Scheduling‌

A schedule is the planned staff roster by interval to meet estimated demand requirements. The objective is to ensure the supply of agents by interval equals the demand. There are some pitfalls to scheduling that we want you to avoid, such as having the correct number of agents at a daily level but not in the appropriate intervals to handle the demand arrival pattern for each day.

While it’s logical to think that adding different staffing flexibility such as part time agents, or flex hours is too complex or can lead to higher attrition or other bad outcomes, COPC does not find in data analysis that having greater scheduling flexibility is correlated with absenteeism or attrition. In fact, when done well, it can have a positive impact on the aforementioned, as well as a positive impact on employee engagement. In other words, flexible staffing rules can be good for both the interests of the organization and for employees.

‌Over-Under Charts & Actions‌

Another tool feature is representation of over-under charts and/or over-under tables. Over-under tables/charts in workforce management are used to balance staffing levels with the forecasted call volume.

These tables/charts help managers determine if there are too many agents ("over") or too few ("under") based on expected demands. This analysis aids in optimizing shift planning, adjusting staffing in real-time, and ensuring operational efficiency while controlling costs and maintaining customer service quality

In general, WFM would focus on fixing understaffing first because this often reduces overstaffing to a more manageable level. You can see some potential actions that can be taken in understaffing on the left-hand side below and why that would also improve overstaffing on the right-hand side.

‌13 Real Time Operational Management (RTM)‌

Real time management is the fourth phase in the workforce management process. This last phase is about acting on planned variance and exceptions which affect the realized level of service.

Often, real time management is thought to be just the function of what might be called a command center. However, this is not the only group that needs to be involved. Operational management must be involved as well.

For example, floor management needs to coordinate with their teams in order to make sure we’re effective in real time management.

What we are trying to convey is that real time management isn't just the job of workforce managers who have “real time management” in their titles. Everyone involved in operations, from frontline management and agents alike, has to be involved too. There should be WFM staff dedicated to real-time management, and they should be supported by floor management. This encompasses daily planning, monitoring the floor and taking action and managing schedule adherence.

Here are activities that COPC recommends that you conduct along with the corresponding data or observations:

‌Adherence‌

Adherence (i.e., sticking to the schedule) must be actively managed based on the schedule, location, and availability. Adherence is also referred to as “time shifted.” This occurs when somebody works the correct number of hours but not necessarily at the correctly scheduled times.

Conformance is another metric, which is the amount of time that was lost due to any last-minute schedule or labor changes. Conformance is referred to as “time lost.” This means that actual time that was scheduled was lost but not planned or approved by WFM. Time lost is often unknown or undermanaged even more so than time shifted

‌Daily Review & Planning Sessions‌

High performing organizations plan and conduct daily or weekly sessions that are to review past performance and plan for future actions to optimize performance.

These sessions are important because they allow organizations to keep track of their performance in real time and adjust accordingly. Management owns the results in the daily sessions and the “agent blame game” is not allowed to enter the daily discussion.

Daily planning can identify trends and be improved, but accuracy and CUIKA must be confirmed before relying on the analyses/root causes.

You have to be careful about who is doing the analysis at these meetings.

Care must take in selecting who analyses in the meetings; someone with knowledge and good analytical skills with their only job “to be accurate and through”

The meeting’s purpose is to really dig down and see what we can do better – not to make daily excuses.

Unplanned events can happen. And they can be within the day, or they can be major such as we saw with Covid- 19 when whole operations globally had to switch quickly to becoming a remote workforce.

Daily reactive management means dealing with unplanned and unexpected events which impact the ability to deliver planned services.

To deal with this your site should have contingency plans in place, but also the operational management should have contingency plans in place also, such as:

If the systems go down, do we stop taking calls all together or do we take names and phone numbers. What do we do operationally to manage our customer’s expectations?

Real time management is just that – it’s real! But it’s owned by the entirety of the operational management and WFM teams to get it right.

‌14 Agent Coaching & Action Planning‌

Agent development (e.g., agent level feedback) is the third and final purpose of a quality management program and should be performed by the agent’s direct manager. While most improvement opportunities exist in the business-level process side – usually 70% or more, that does not mean we want to ignore agent opportunities as they also impact the consistency of the process.

Indeed, in many companies, we are focusing very poorly on the process-level issues, but also, we are not using the agent coaching and action planning process to make a meaningful culture of support and contribution with our agents. This leads to overall poor performance that is the responsibility of management.

The primary purpose of agent-level transaction monitoring is to provide an agent with feedback on both the things they do well and the things they might do differently that will help them to do better. Those who learn to coach well have better performing

teams, and that’s the role of a team leader or supervisor.

‌How many transactions should supervisors monitor?‌

Supervisors are encouraged to establish minimum standards for evaluating agents but should prioritize spending as much time as possible with agents through both remote and side-by-side evaluations to

enhance their performance effectively. Each agent should receive at least one formal coaching evaluation monthly, though more frequent transaction monitoring’s, such as side-by-sides or remote (live or recorded) monitoring with coaching are

needed to strengthen the supervisor-agent performance relationship.

Feedback should be systematic and can be both formal and informal, depending on the situation. It's important for agents to receive consistent and timely feedback so they understand their performance levels and areas of improvement.

Moreover, feedback should not only focus on errors or failed transactions; supervisors should also acknowledge successful transactions. This balanced feedback approach helps maintain agent morale and motivation.

Evaluations should include a mix of remote and in-person methods to cover all types of transactions agents handle, each offering unique benefits. New agents, in particular,

should receive more intensive monitoring—ideally, at least once a week during their first month—to help them quickly adapt to their roles and identify any immediate knowledge gaps.

For agents who consistently make critical errors, more frequent evaluations are necessary, and if there's no improvement, temporarily reassigning them away from critical tasks may be required until their performance issues are resolved.

Another approach that can be used is a risk-based approach. This approach is based on the level of impact that a failure would have on the organization or the customer and the level of agent performance. When we talk about performance, it could be any of the following or more:

• Monitoring performance: Note, be sure on monitoring for quality that you don’t take a “score” out of a few monitoring’s because this is bad math. Do not use or coach to QA scores at an agent level. Rely upon evaluating transactions and providing qualitative (behavioral) feedback unless you have enough scores, usually 250+, for the result to have a sufficient precision rate.

• Customer satisfaction results: Note, the same is true for CSAT that is true for QA. You must ensure you have at least 250+ CSAT instances at an agent level before you rely on an agent score. Some centers get transactional CSAT data that asked about the agent specifically. This is okay if there are at least 250+. What would not be okay is a generalized “Were you satisfied overall?” CSAT survey that has 25 scores at an agent level. This would be unfair because they don’t always impact the overall satisfaction when the customer doesn’t get what they want due to processes, and 25 would be wholly insufficient as a sample size to provide a score.

• Sales metrics

• Handle time

• Transfer or

• Escalation rates

Whatever area of performance, the risk-based approach is an effective way to establish guidelines for transaction monitoring at the agent level. But it is also important that people understand these guidelines are “at a minimum” and not a static number to check the box as if “okay I monitored my agents 4 times each, so I did my job.”

In summary, supervisors should monitor as many transactions as many times as needed per month to ensure continuous improvement in their own team performance, tailoring the frequency and type of feedback to the needs of each agent on their team.

‌Taking Action / Action Planning‌

Taking action at the Agent level requires analysis, research, and investigation. You don't want to just make assumptions. Let’s take critical errors for example. Supervisors should look into whether these are a one off or do they continue to make the same critical error. One should go back at least probably six months to see if this is an on-going issue or a one off.

If this is a habitual issue, then additional evaluations should be conducted. Most importantly, supervisors would need to determine the root cause of those repeated errors, and then follow the prescribed performance improvement process.

‌Agent Coaching‌

Coaching focuses on improving customer experience, performance, and process. It is provided consistently and measured for effectiveness. You can consider coaching continuous on-the-job training for your agents, and also for yourself.

Remember, being involved in your team’s performance is your job so continuous coaching means you show your team members that you care about their performance and how you can help.

The way for any manager to build a coaching culture 1:1 or with their team is to begin with positive intent, make the conversation collaborative and ensure a supportive environment.

COPC recommends that Supervisors have a coaching process that is structured and consistently followed. And for your organization it needs to work. Not just for you but for your frontline teams.

Below is a five-step coaching process that we share which we’ve seen work the world over.

‌COPC Five-Step Coaching Process‌