Leveraging the Balanced Scorecard For Your Call Center

Contributor: Dru Phelps
Posted: 09/29/2009  9:35:00 AM EDT

Share | Rate this Article: (4.8 Stars | 6 Votes)   Thanks for your rating!

Is there a balanced formula that would both "please" the customer and keep score of your business? In a recent interview, a user wanted an easy view to balance their P&L, therefore this unique combination of PL + EASE set forth my model of what you know and how you can improve. First, simply begin to "please" with a basic "balance sheet" of two dimensions. So let’s start there. 

Call Center Profit   

The first dimension is the ultimate goal: to gain resolution or revenue with each customer contact. Profit is akin to the right-side DNA of the brain. When you do the right thing for others, loyalty comes back two-fold. Do you make it easy for those who reach out to you to get an answer? Is your customer better off since they contacted or contracted business with you?

Call Center Liability 

The second side of the coin is cost. Any process you establish has quality points that can add or subtract in time or money. In a systematic way, remove any loss of effort, duplication, anything logical or left-behind. Identify meaningful activities, technologies or operations related to steps of completion. The mantra is to have a lean system where less is actually more. Do you measure for accuracy, consistency and profitability? 

Note: P&L looks at quality and quantity for an internal look at keeping the business in balance. However the report with a two-sided view provides only a baseline to plan and build a strong foundation for your scorecard. 

Please! What brings the P&L to life is the EA-SE at which people can contribute! 

Empowering Call Center Representatives

If your call center representatives sign on to work in your call center, the call center representatives must have felt compelled to give to others and go the extra mile for the mission of the call center. Interview call center representatives for the attitude that portrays your call center’s vision. Train and coach your call center representatives to make balanced decisions, and give them the tools and autonomy to see the job through to completion. Everyone has a stake in the game!

Set self-directed metrics whereby a call center team and individual call center representatives see the contribution to the call center and how it counts. How does call center representative attendance, call center performance, call center innovation, call center resolution, or call center ownership enhance overall goals of the call center? How can every call center representative communicate success?

Call Center Service Excellence

Any experience with the call center can be felt deeply by your customer. Every day, whether you ask for it or not, customers of the call center are keeping score on you by what they see, observe or perceive. Voice of the customer feedback is critical to cross-tabulate profit, liability and empowerment of call center representatives. What service-critical changes in your call center have you made based on customer comments? What extra-value benefits make your services excel that lifted up a customer’s view of the call center?

PL+EASE—it‘s more than a gratuitous word in Customer Service. Someone makes a request of "Please," hopefully ending in "Thank you" for a job well done. To design your Four-Dimension Balanced Scorecard for your call center, what extra questions do you consider before building a tool?

First published on Customer Management IQ.