The Art of Measurement
To support the pursuit of excellence in managing our business processes, we adhere to a rigorous measurement process containing significant operational drivers designed to improve efficiency and effectiveness. The resulting continuous improvement in operational performance provides significant cost savings for our clients. These measurements are defined as KPIs (Key Performance Indicators - typically internal measurements) and SLAs (Service Level Agreements - typically contracted requirements with clients).
Key Performance Indicators
KPIs highlight activities associated with handling a transaction on behalf of our clients. The measurements range from conducting specific phone calls or email interactions to handling client cases over a specific number of days. Measurable elements include average talk time, average after-contact work, average handle time, abandonment rate, occupancy or utilization measurements, quality measurements, customer satisfaction scores and adherence to assigned schedules. All are designed to drive performance within the contact centers.
When handling phone calls, we apply a workforce management team to ensure that the contact center is managed efficiently. This group typically monitors agent activity and helps to deliver skilled resources to incoming contacts as soon as possible.
We also use several measurements aligned with outbound calling efforts in conjunction with sophisticated dialing technologies. Elements such as dials per hour, contacts per hour and other sample management contact measurements are handled in this way.
Online customers are served through carefully calibrated interaction systems that enable Morley personnel to provide information during webchats or social media engagements. Individual knowledge agents are measured on the number of interactions conducted and the session quality with regard to content. Associates manage multiple interactions simultaneously as our contact management system tracks the productivity of our resources. Interactions with new customers are of special interest as we provide a positive interaction in this type of information-sharing environment.
In addition, specific qualitative measurements are in place to measure the sentiment of online customers through a thorough analysis of the written interactions. Through this effort, we can provide attractive customer care experiences as well as significant market share from customers who are less likely to use traditional, phone-based customer care solutions.
From a case management perspective, we track cases through a workflow management system that provides queue-based cycle time measurements and aging statistics, with alerts produced when cases exceed desired timing thresholds within the process.
Service Level Agreements
This set of objectives is generally tied to specific client-contracted engagements and can include items such as average speed of answer performance targets and abandonment rate attainment. Other SLAs generally include IT system up time and general performance levels in terms of handling phone calls or email messages.
Service Level Agreements are also broader in scope than Key Performance Indicators. As a result, it is not uncommon for KPIs to be established to drive performance based upon contracted SLAs.