Future modules will be released as they are created. SUBSCRIBE on YouTube and turn notifications on so you don’t miss the next one!Welcome everyone. I’m Jeff Rumburg, Managing Partner of MetricNet.In Metrics Essentials for Contact Center Professionals, my goal is to teach you everything you need to know, to leverage metrics for success in your contact center.Today, we are going to discuss the relationship between process maturity, and contact center performance. This is critically important because process is what drives your performance. They are two sides of the same coin. And without improving your processes, it is unlikely that your performance will improve.As part of every contact center benchmark, MetricNet conducts a comprehensive process maturity assessment. This assessment is based on empirical data gathered by MetricNet over thousands of contact center benchmarks.Any time we benchmark a contact center with world-class performance, we simply ask ourselves, what does it have in common with other world-class contact centers? What are the common best practices in strategy, human resources, contact handling processes, technology, performance measurement, and stakeholder communication? What we discovered is that there was remarkable consistency among these world-class contact centers. We documented their practices in these six areas, and continuously refine and update the model based on the best demonstrated practices in the industry.We have defined 56 best practices that are common to the world-class contact centers in the industry. As you can see here, there are 6 best practices for contact center strategy, 13 best practices for human resources, 12 for contact handling processes, 6 in technology, 11 for performance measurement and reporting, and 8 best practices for stakeholder communication.When conducting a benchmark we assign a maturity ranking to each best practice. For each of the 56 industry best practices, we will assign a maturity ranking from 1, meaning least mature, to 5, meaning most mature. Although these rankings are subjective, they do provide a great deal of insight into the maturity of a contact center, and they allow us to identify the best practices that need to be adopted, adapted, or matured to achieve world-class performance.Let’s take a look at these rankings for human resources best practices for a world-class contact center that MetricNet benchmarked. The 13 best practices are listed in the wide column on the left. In the center column we have the maturity rankings, from 1 to 5, for each best practice. And in the far right column we have the industry average rankings for each best practice.You can see very quickly that this contact center has very mature human resource practices. Their average score, shown in the green bar at the bottom, is 4.65. That’s an excellent score. The peer group average score for these best practices is only 2.65.Here is a summary of how this contact center scored in each of the six process areas that make up the best practices model. The dark blue bars are the scores for Company XYZ, while the light blue bars are the industry averages. In each of the six areas, Company XYZ performed significantly better than the industry average. Their average score was between 4 and 5 in all but one area. Their weakest score was in Stakeholder Communication, but even here they scored better than the industry average.When we normalize the overall process assessment scores, and put them on a scale of 0 to 100%, here is what the distribution looks like. A score of 75% or greater indicates world-class performance. Only five contact centers, out of more than 100 contact centers shown on this chart, have achieved a score above 75%. That’s how rare it is to find world-class performance in this industry.The average score on this chart is only 40.6%, and is designated by the red dashed line that goes horizontally across the chart. The world-class score, 75%, is designated by the green dashed line that also goes horizontally across the chart.At least a couple of times now, you have heard me say that Process Drives Performance. And that is the central idea of this chart. If we take the data points from the prior page and plot them against their respective balanced scores, this is the pattern of data we get. Each blue diamond is a data point that represents the process assessment score on the x-axis, and the balanced score on the y-axis, for the contact centers that are represented here.You can see a clear correlation in the data. It has an upward slope to it. Meaning, that as the process assessment score increases, you would expect to see an increase in a contact center’s balanced score. Moreover, we know that this is not just a spurious correlation. It’s also a cause-and-effect relationship. X, input, independent variable, drives Y, output, dependent variable. Input drives output. This is enormously enlightening because you have infinite control over the x-axis. Meaning that you can mature your processes all day long. No one can stop you from doing that. And as your processes mature, you will achieve successively higher scores on the x-axis, which in turn will lead to higher scores on the y-axis, your balanced score. There may be some lag time between your process improvements and increases in your balanced score. But the relationship is a mathematical certainty. Improvements in your process maturity, the x-axis, will inevitably lead to improvements in your balanced score, the y-axis.The mantra that we use at MetricNet is, Up, and to the Right. That’s what the green arrow signifies here. It’s a way of illustrating that as you improve your process maturity on the x-axis, your balanced score on the y-axis will also improve.This concludes Module 7 of our metrics course. I would invite you to join me for Module 8, where we will discuss driving accountability using the Agent Balanced Scorecard.I want to thank you for joining me today. I’m Jeff Rumburg, Managing Partner of MetricNet.
