Many Contact Centers use metrics of averages to base decisions, i.e.:
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Average handle time (AHT)
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Average cost-per-contact (ACC)
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Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
Averages have their place in management decision-making, but they cannot be overly relied upon.
From the Harvard Business Review article, The Flaw of Averages:
Consider the case of the statistician who drowns while fording a river that he calculates is, on average, three feet deep. If he were alive to tell the tale, he would expound on the “flaw of averages,” which states, simply, that plans based on assumptions about average conditions usually go wrong. This basic but almost always unseen flaw shows up everywhere in business, distorting accounts, undermining forecasts, and dooming apparently well-considered projects to disappointing results.
Playing on this metaphor: in some places, your average, three-foot Contact Center is an inch deep and in other places it is twenty feet deep.
Managing your Contact Center correctly requires a much more sophisticated approach than relying on average metrics.
When Average Metrics Are Useful And When They’re Not
When trying to holistically understand your Contact Center and get a grasp on how well it’s operating, well, yes, average metrics can sometimes be helpful. And maybe for executives that don’t actually manage the Contact Center, but want to be able to correlate its metrics with other sides of the business—such as CSAT to annual revenue— average metrics are fine.
At their best, averages are indicators of decision-making and reactions to one’s environment. Framed in this manner averages can be useful for long-term planning. But averages are the result of decision-making, and should not be the basis for them.
For instance, evaluating agents by average handle time (AHT) to determine whether or not each of them is performing their duties can not only be risky, it can guide you to make terrible decisions because of the false positives and negatives contained in averages – refer back to the “Flaw of Averages” above!
Consider some of the variables that may impact AHT:
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What if you have a group of new hires on the phones?
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What if you have just taken on a new contact channel or queue?
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What if Marketing launched a new promotion without you having time to fully prepare?
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What if you have a brand new technology platform?
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Contact volumes are up (or down) in a particular queue?
Think about what can happen when you manage your agents to AHT.
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Agents go into after-call wrap-up but then jump to a Not Ready state in order to hide the fact they’re still working (or not) – a false positive to AHT.
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Your best agents are probably overworking.
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Your challenged Agents speed through the call with the potential to not complete the customer journey, causing callbacks and dissatisfaction.
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Agents strive to be average, and in response, Managers set goals unattainable for many.
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New agents get stressed trying to hit a mark above their skill level.
Isn’t there a better way?
This is just one example we’ve seen over the last few years when helping Contact Centers get away from just managing to averages and enabling them to see the cost of their decision-making.
Financial Clarity Relieves You Of The Burden Of Averages
Sure, a handful of single metrics based on averages are definitely an easier and more familiar way to manage businesses, but at best it will keep your business results average.
And Contact Centers have relied on average metrics for so long because they don’t have the one thing that other business units use to run their businesses: Financial Clarity.
Financial clarity is when decision-makers have a continuously clear view of the costs of their business decisions down to the individual process and employee. With financial clarity, every choice in a decision can be evaluated based on how it will financially impact the business.
With everyone experiencing the great resignation, and the desire to work remotely, the need to financially see and understand what work is getting done, and what isn’t, is extremely valuable.
One of the key tenets of financial clarity is granularity. At WiserOwl, we give you a precise view of each contact center agent’s use of the money spent on them. Specifically, you can see how well an agent manages the work they are tasked with performing continuously, and this work is translated into its exact dollar value. This information then is rolled up to cover any and all channels, teams, and processes.
It’s this level of financial clarity that relieves everyone of the burden of averages.
At WiserOwl, we believe financial clarity is the most fundamental view of contact center business performance. If you’ve ever wondered why your Contact Centers might be struggling or why agents turnover, there’s a strong probability it’s because you’re managing to averages.
To escape the gravity of being average and reactionary, contact centers must harness the incredible power of true financial clarity.
Chris Lawson is Director of Client Success at WiserOwl LLC and a long time CCNG member and advocate.
