This Presentation was prepared & shared by me as a Guest Speaker at a Conference on 'Customer Experience and Service Quality Excellence', organised by Gripel (www.gripel.com), on 27 and 28 May 2011.

1. Leadership Strategies
For High Performance Contact Centres

2. Live Experiences
• Lack of Personal Accountability
• Boring IVRs
• Redundant Technology
• Customer’s Opportunity Lost
• INEFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP

3. *Source:
Some Important Facts •NASSCOM(National Association of Software
and Services Company)
• Call Centre Outlook
►10.3 percent of all customer interactions can only be properly resolved by taking them outside the contact
center and need support from other departments across the enterprise
►More than 95. 4 million contacts a day require assistance from someone outside the contact center,
which is approximately 238 million minutes each day that contact center personnel spend asking for help or
transferring calls
►If a contact center can reduce the time per call by even one minute by fine-tuning or changing the
process for leveraging a knowledge worker that could mean contact centers could reduce their cost per call by
$2.013. When multiplying this across all of the calls handled by contact centers on a daily basis, this could add up
to a very substantial cost savings
►Attrition levels as high as 30% p.a, ranges between 30% - 40% in Australia and Asia Pacific
►Absence runs between 7% - 10% p.a**
►Call Centre Industry Involves high level of „Emotional Labour‟ and hence People Engagement in non-
negotiable
►The outlook for fiscal year 2010-2011 (NASSCOM) states that India's IT-BPO exports are estimated to grow by
13 to 15%, whereas domestic IT-BPO is expected to gain by 15 to 17% during the fiscal year of 2011
►The strengthening economy is expected to drive India's domestic spend to over $70 billion US in fiscal
year 2011, and increase the size of the workforce by almost a quarter of a million
► Chairman Rajendra Pawar (NASSCOM) was recently quoted as saying, “We are coming back to growth
levels seen prior to the slowdown and in the near term we see lot of headroom to catapult this growth”

4. Why Contact Centres Fail?
 Lack of Empowerment and Decision
making at Lower Levels
 Hygiene Factors ignored–
Attendance, Absenteeism and Training
 Company only believes in Sales
Mantra
 Short-sightedness in Technology
Trends
 Leadership believes in ‘Following’
than ‘Leading’

5. 10 Years +- Horizon
S.No Criteria - 10 Years + 10 Years
1 Growth Rate By 20% each year By 65% each year
2 Technology Basic – Traditional PBX, Advanced – Unified
Distributed Components Communication
3 Mode of WLL phones, Emails, Virtual, Homecentres
Communication Paper
4 Employee Minimal Highly Important
Engagement
5 Customers Didn‟t Care Too Much Compare Services and
Move on
6 Stakeholders Outsourced or Off Moving Shores
shored
7 Leadership Strategy Strategizing was Strategy is the „KEY‟ to
important SUCCESS

6. Ten Indispensable Leadership Strategies

7. 10 ‘I’ Commandments
1. Get the Strategizing BASICS right
2. Work with the RIGHT Technology
3. Manage Operations Efficiently
4. DEFINE KRAs that Matter to People and not Organization
alone
5. ADOPT Quality as a non compromising tool
6. CAPTURE Customer, People, Stakeholder and Competition
voice and Take Corrective actions
7. Cost Centre to Revenue Centre – Do it with Caution !
8. REVIEW your decision of maintaining In-house/ off shored
/outsourced Contact Centre
9. DEVELOP Internal Champions to Lead the Team
10.Follow the ICE Approach

8. Commandment One:
Get the BASICS right

9. Get the BASICS Right !
“We only did what was asked of us.” – Attitude and Excuse
Example of a Contact Centre that Failed for non intervention and investigation by
Mid-level managers
Seven important tasks every LEADER must perform:
1. Be a part of formulating company‟s mission statement, its philosophy and long
term goals
2. Conduct an analysis that reflects company’s internal conditions and capabilities
3. Assess company‟s external and internal environment, including competition,
economic, social, political, technological, Industry and operations
4. Analyze the company‟s options by matching its resources with external
environment
5. Develop annual objectives and short term strategies that are compatible with the
selected set of long-term objectives and grand strategies
6. Implement the strategic choices by means of allocated budgets in which the
matching of tasks, people, structures, technologies, and reward systems is
emphasized
7. Evaluate the success of strategic process as an input for future decision making

10. Commandment Two:
Work with the Right Technology

11. Working with Right Technology
Self Service for Customers or Self Destruction ?
Human Interface Vs. Automated IVR. What is good ?
Be Tech – Savvy
Explore the Technology Market for Call Centre Solutions:
• VOIP Web – Based Interactions
• Web Based Self Service / Remote Access to Customer’s Computer
• Voice Based Training and Performance Management
• Home shoring and Homed Based CTI
• Predictive Dialer
• Debt Collection Software
• IVR with AI – Voice Recognition – Text to Speech
• Viewscast – Real Time Customer Feedback
• Cloud Based Solutions
• Virtual Assistance
- Unified Solutions: Technology that Improves your processes, Makes life
simple for a customer and Empowers employees !

12. Video
Unified Communication

13. Commandment Three:
Manage Operations Efficiently

14. Manage Operations Efficiently
Five Steps to Setting Up Effective Operations
Ongoing
Hire Right Train Right Performance
Management
Succession
Retrain
Plan
Uncompromising Aspects:
 Skip Levels by Managers and Regular Interaction with the Employees
 Daily Huddles
 360 Degree Feedbacks
 Weekly Performance Report
 Monthly – Quarterly – Yearly Appraisals
 Quality Audit / Monitoring Team
 Workforce Management Team
 MIS Team

15. Manage Operations
Efficiently
De - Risking Your Process

16. Commandment Four:
Define KRAs That Matter To People

17. Define KRAs that Matter
Relationship between KRAs, Incentives, Employee Motivation:
Y = f(x) + x1 + x2 + ……….
KRA = f(Incentives) + Employee Motivation
Rule of Incentive:
H H
Volume
M Volume M
L L
L M H L M H
Profit
Profit
Hygiene Matters - Monetary Promotional Incentive Attached
Incentives Attached

18. Define KRAs that Matter
Relationship between KRAs, Incentives, Employee Motivation:
Y = f(x) + x1 + x2 + ……….
KRA = f(Incentives) + Employee Motivation
Rule of Incentive (contd): Freakonomics:
H
Incentives can be damaging if
Volume designed inappropriately
M
What are the triggers and
L
What are you trying to achieve?
L M H
Very Often, we fail to
Profit measure the effectiveness
Self Motivated Team - derived out of existing incentive
Herzberg’s Motivation Factors system

19. Commandment Five:
Adopting Quality as a Non Compromising Tool

20. Adopting Quality as a Non
Compromising Tool
- How effectively are we monitoring our Quality aspect? Are our QA’s efficient?
- Assess issues like-
- Calibration
- Quality form reflects customer expectations
- Quality form sets standards for the service we wish to provide
- Is something more needed apart from generic Quality team and to survive
in today’s competitive environment?
- Research shows that tools like Six Sigma and Lean management has
helped various companies achieve the following:
- Yield Improvement
- Productivity enhancement
- TAT reduction
- Reduction in wastes / defects
- Improved Customer satisfaction

21. Adopting Quality as a Non
Compromising Tool
Criteria Six Sigma Lean
Principle Reduce Variation Remove Waste
Defect Reduction Focuses on producing Focuses on elimination of
99.99966% defect free waste and creating value
products for customers
Steps Involved 1. Define 1. Identify Value
2. Measure 2. Identify Value Stream
3. Analyze 3. Flow
4. Improve 4. Pull
5. Control 5. Perfection
Focus Problem Focused Flow Focused
Primary effect Stable Process Output Improved TAT

22. Commandment Six:
Capture and Work on All Voices

23. Capture and Work on All Voices
Do we only assess the Voice Of Customer?
Important Components of a Survey:
Customer
Competitors
SURVEY Process
COMPONENTS
Stakeholders

24. Identifying Vendors for CSAT
For some industries,
Surveys reducing customer
What to look for in Vendors: defections by just
►Take Customer Satisfaction measurement to the next
5% can double
level profits – ‘Harvard
►Identify your competitive advantage Business Review’.
►Understand best practice and superior performance
►Take a strategic look at your industry and / or region
►Efficiencies / competencies
►Weak Points
►Pinpoint the most important drivers of service
delight
►Know the link between satisfaction and operational
aspects of the call centre

25. Commandment Seven:
Convert from Cost Centre to Revenue Centre

26. Cost to Revenue Centre
GE CASE STUDY – Successful Revenue Center !
Cross Selling Up Selling
Tie Ups with
Outbound
Other
Sales
Vendors
Process
Improvements

27. Cost to Revenue Centre-
Be Cautious !
Caution Statements:
Persistent Outbound Impact –
Ø Wrong Timings
Ǿ No Research of Customer Background
Ǿ Lack Of Training
Ǿ Sell and Forget
Ǿ Intruding into Customer’s Privacy
Make the Most when the Customer Calls You !

28. Commandment Eight:
Review Your Decisions

29. Ongoing Review
Every Year do the following checks:
• Is the Contact Centre Model Sustainable?
CHECK
• Can the Cost be Reduced?
CHECK
• Does it help us achieve us mission
statement?
CHECK

30. Commandment Nine:
Develop Internal Champions

31. Employee Engagement
 The ‘HELP’ Factor
Level of Work
Health Meter = Engagement Loyalty Performance

32. Employee Engagement
1. Measure the strength of the relationship between Work Aspects,
Employee Engagement, Loyalty and Performance for individual
employees as well as the whole centre.
2. Identify areas of low performance compared to industry
benchmarks.
3. Through multiple regression analysis derive the significant drivers
of Engagement, Loyalty and Performance.
4. Recommend key areas to focus on to improve employee
Engagement, Loyalty and Performance at individual and centre
level.

33. Commandment Ten:
Follow the ICE Approach

34. ICE Approach
1. Internal
1. Incremental
Stakeholders
Innovation
2. External
2. Continuous
Vendors
Improvement
Innovation Coordination 3. Customers
3. Breakthrough
4. Suppliers
Innovation
5. Competitors
Engagement
1. Engagement by Top
management
2. Employee contribution in
Change management

35. Video
Future Contact Centres