Assessing an existing center takes us on a thorough review of each of the major components of the center. These major component areas are vision, process, people, technology, and reporting. Looking at the chart below you will see the impact on your center (down the right of the boxes) if any of the major components are ignored.

Vision includes all of those goals and objectives that the call center strives to achieve. But more importantly it goes straight to the commitment and support provided to the call center by senior executives within the enterprise. We review this area by interviewing key decision makers and managers within the call center's parent organization to determine the level of support the call center has garnered to propell it towards the achievement of its goals and objectives.

60% - 70% of the costs in any call center are wrapped up in people. People are the components that make your call center most effective. Their motivations, management, evaluations, career path potential, training, skills and effectiveness are all areas that we review while assessing your center.

That work you do to complete the contact ensure a satisfactory call is involved in Process. Inefficient process bogs down a call center and causes costs to go up and service levels to go down. After call work as well as all call related and non-call related activity is reviewed to find those opportunities for improvement.

Technology is what is touted most by the trade journals today as being necessary to achieve the highest service levels. Technology, is a necessary tool that is indeed necessary to achieve your objectives, but it should only be applied in those areas where improvement is needed in effectiveness or efficiency. Applying technology for the sake of technology will do nothing more than increase costs. Understanding the capability of the existing technology starts us on our review.

Reporting is that component which is often forgotten or at least minimally applied. Reporting, in the least should be able to provide that detail information necessary to operate the center and demonstrate how well or how poorly the center is doing in the achievement of its objectives. At the most, reporting can be developed and applied to provide everyone in the enterprise with information that will help them to make more effective business decisions. Reporting is a major component without which leaves us "in the dark" about performance levels of the center, its people; and how well, or poorly, the center is supporting the enterprise in the achievement of its business plan.

These components are reviewed by way of objective statistical review, interviews, observations and discussion with center employees, managers, and executives within the enterprise.

Solution Development
Once we understand our clients business plan, and we have reviewed and have developed an understanding of the existing technology, we are able to create a distinct picture of the current center, its goals objectives, strengths, weaknesses, technical capabilities, people potential, measure of efficiency through process support and definition, level and suitability of reporting, we are then able to create a recommended path toward center improvement that will be in full support of the enterprises business plan. This recommended path will travel along a timeline that will include and action plan and an estimate of costs and benefits of those recommendations.

The Deliverable
The outcome of our efforts produce a report that will be a document suitable to be presented at the executive level and include:

1. A review of the current environment and its current levels of performance
2. Current performance versus objectives
3. Definition of the GAP between current performance and corporate objectives in dollars.
4. Recommendations of specific actions need to be taken in order for the center to move from current performance to a level that will be in full support of objectives.
5. Estimates of costs, benefits, calculation of ROI, and a timeline of activity required to achieve recommended benefits.

Contact us for more information on our call center assessment process.