No software? What to track

Not every central station can afford Verint’s or another company’s call tracking and station management software. Here, Kevin Hardester, who runs Interface’s central station, and James Griggs and Steve Walker, who are responsible for tracking Stanley’s central station operator performance, suggest what’s most important to keep track of when it comes to operator evaluations. Hardester: “A lot of people look for high or low numbers, they’re not looking for average. But you want everyone on the same level, which will mean the workload is being handled evenly. And if you have someone doing a ton of alarms you need to audit them the same way you audit someone doing very few. If your reporting features are limited, you have to decide what you need to measure. One of the axioms of leadership is to concentrate your forces ... Establish a need and measure that. Why is it taking so long for people to get to calls? Focus on listening to in-bound calls.” Griggs: “First and foremost in our center is attendance. We’re depending on people to be here and be here on time. Second, I would look at their phone time. Who is aggressive in taking calls and handling alarm, what’s their time available vs. time unavailable? And we can’t really quantify customer care, but our next piece that we measure is the volume of customer complaints we receive collectively for a team.” Walker: “Basic productivity is really important. You want to have the ability to make an objective decision to compare an employee with their peers. Being able to count the number of calls they take and the alarms they handle is important, but you have to have different expectations for different shifts. Someone on the night shift might not have the ability to show their productivity the way someone on the day shift can. That’s going to be an important distinction to draw.”