Getting Skills RightSue HarkreaderSr Director, Strategic Business Consulting

Doctors for patients, Janitors for cleaning

• We make intraday skill changes to keep up with the work volume

• Our agent career path requires moving into management

• We have trouble meeting service levels

• We have too many transfers

• We don’t achieve First Contact Resolution

• We treat voice agents differently than agents for other channels

Poll: What’s true for you in your current state?

Skill Definitions

Routing

Teams Reporting

People

Process: Look through multiple lenses to define skills

• Who is it?

• What do they need?

Use Case

• Who can serve what?

• Why?

Map to Resource • Who can serve

in a pinch?

• Maintain doctor vs janitor

Identify Alternates

Step 1: Routing Lens

Ideal Outcome: Work Characteristics Resource Profile

Routing Lens: Example Use Case

Harkreader HousingMortgage LOB

1. Gold customer is paying off a mortgage through a webform.

2. Caller is asking for reduction in fees for late payment (again).

3. Unknown website visitor is asking about mortgage rates.

Use Case: Define work characteristics.

Customer Segment

• Gold, Silver, Bronze

• Nuisance

• Prospect

• New Customer

Journey location

• First contact

• Continuing conversation

Value of the work

• Revenue

• Relationship

• Urgent situation

Complexity of the work

• Could be self served

• Compliance Risk

• Multiple steps

• Common request

Work characteristics that may impact routing choice

Routing Lens: Map contact to target agents

Service Type Relevant Contact Details Target Agents Acceptable Agents

Pay Off (gold customer not matter) Mortgage Payment Group B2B

Late Payment 3rd+ request Re-Fi Group Mortgage Payment Group

Rate Inquiry Unknown visitor Sales

What I usually see is a link to team names. It’s a reasonable start.

Service Type Relevant Contact Details Target Agents Acceptable Agents

Pay Off (gold customer not matter) Pay Off >= Medium Pay Off >= Low

Late Payment 3rd+ request ReFi >= High + Payment Terms >= Low

Payment Terms >= Medium

Rate Inquiry Unknown visitor Sales >= High Sales

Want to get to skills and proficiencies.

Definition of a skill

Reflects training, achievement, education and/or talent of the agent to

Can do “X” Also Has “X” Has Achieved “X”

Capabilities Attributes (soft) Credentials

• Products • Escalation • License

• Services • Retention • Certification

• Sales • Sales Closure • Association

• Languages • Cross/Up-sell • Membership

• Channels • Geographic • Diploma

• Specialized • Subject Matter Expertise • Compliance

• Empathy

• Affinity

• Authorization

How accomplished is an agent with each skill they acquire?

Definition of Proficiency

Low = 3 Medium = 6 High = 9

Good Enough Good Great

Low = 3 Medium = 6 High = 9

Good Great Best

Low = 3 Medium = 6 High = 9

Novice Experienced Expert

Groups vs Skills

Service Type Relevant Contact Details Target Agents Acceptable Agents

Pay Off (gold customer not matter) Mortgage Payment Group B2B

Late Payment 3rd+ request Re-Fi Group Mortgage Payment Group

Rate Inquiry Unknown visitor Sales

• Training:• Finalize paper work to pay off a

mortgage.

• Ability to adjust payment terms per policy.

• Ability to position a re-finance discussion.

• Ability to sell.

• Alternates:• Have the same skills, but

different proficiency.

• Have minimum required skills.

• Segmentation:• New/Unknown Best

Routing Lens: Map to target SKILLS

Service Type Relevant Contact Details Target Agents Acceptable Agents

Pay Off (gold customer not matter) Pay Off >= Medium Pay Off >= Low

Late Payment 3rd+ request ReFi >= High + Payment Terms >= Low

Payment Terms >= Medium

Rate Inquiry Unknown visitor Sales >= High Sales

• What do they do?

• How are they trained?

Brainstorm Team Abilities

• What could they do?

• What’s their history?

Is it complete?• What should be

combined?

• Make proficiency simple, consistent

Normalize

Step 2: Team Lens

Team Skills Proficiencies

Mortgage Team New MortgagePay Off Payment TermsGeneral Inquiry

Trainee, Good, Best

B2B Sell Mortgage

Re-Fi Team Re-FiPayment Terms (some have this, but not administered)New MortgagePay OffSalesGeneral Inquiry

Sales General InquirySales

New, Low, Medium, High

Team Lens: Brainstorm and Complete

A little chaotic is OK.

Team Skills Proficiencies

Mortgage Team Mortgage General Novice, Low, Medium, High

B2B Sell MortgagePay Off

Low, Medium, HighPay Off set to Backup for those who have it

Re-Fi Team Re-FiMortgage GeneralSales

Low, Medium, HighMortgage General set to Backup for those who have it

Sales Sales Novice, Low, Medium, High

Team Lens: Normalize

• Training:• Mortgage could be 1 skill since training is

never divided

• General Inquiry is actually a base skill across the board, remove it.

• Alternates:• B2B has some people with Pay Off. Add

that skill to those agents.

• Segmentation:• Standardize at least for career pathing.

• Use lower proficiency for backup indicator.

• Novice can be used to funnel calls to reinforce skill.

Iterate: Update Routing Version

Service Type Relevant Contact Details Target Agents Acceptable Agents

Pay Off (gold customer not matter) Pay Off >= Medium Pay Off >= Low

Late Payment 3rd+ request ReFi >= High + Payment Terms >= Low

Payment Terms >= Medium

Rate Inquiry Unknown visitor Sales >= High Sales

Service Type Relevant Contact Details Target Agents Acceptable Agents

Pay Off (gold customer not matter) Mortgage General > Backup Mortgage General >= BackupOR Pay Off (any)

Late Payment 3rd+ request ReFi >= High + Mortgage General >= Backup

Mortgage General >= Medium (since repeat caller)

Rate Inquiry Unknown visitor Sales >= High Sales

• What are people held accountable for?

• Consider each level.

Current Success Measures

• If skill map is simple, use attached data for more detailed reporting

Separate Reporting from Skills / Queues • Lend / Borrow can’t

hurt teams.

• Teams only count handling and quality, not service level.

Rationalize Accountabilities

• Outsourcing often needs special skills or routing queues.

• Flag when use backups.

Special Circumstances

Step 3: Reporting Lens

Iterate: Update Routing Version

Service Type Relevant Contact Details Target Agents Acceptable Agents

Mortgage General (Pay Off) (gold customer not matter) Mortgage General > Backup Mortgage General >= BackupOR Pay Off (any)

Late Payment 3rd+ request ReFi >= High + Mortgage General >= Backup

Mortgage General >= Medium (since repeat caller)

Rate Inquiry Unknown visitor Sales >= High Sales

Use Service SubType to show what type of Mortgage Activity

Set “Backup” KVP to “not available”

Set “Frequent Late” to “Yes” for reporting &

for agent

No change in this example, but you may need to make a change.

Career Path

• Increase proficiency

• Increase skills (5 for regular, 12 for stars)

• Increase diversity of work

• Tie to increase pay or reputation

Training and Onboarding

• Subdivide training to check out agents early

• Route contacts to exercise newly acquired skills to reinforce

Keep skills current

• Set or re-check proficiency over time

• Skill assessor tests

• Quality assurance with analytics

• Keep some calls going to backup keep fresh

Step 4: People Lens

• Pre-defined alternates stops the manual chasing of work.

Intraday skill changes, Service level misses

• Skills are agnostic of channel. Voice different than

other channels

• Skills provide measurable difference for your stars.Career path limitations

• Skills match resources to work. Doctors treat patients, janitors clean.Transfer, FCR problems

The value of getting skills right

• Today or Tomorrow• Check out the Customer Success Booth to find services that can help you more

• When you get home• Pull people together to refine your worksheet across routing, teams, reporting,

and people.

Next Steps to Getting Skills Right

Thank you!

Skill Definitions

Routing

Teams Reporting

People

Doctors treat, Janitors clean

Anyone Capable

Map proficiency to

segmentLast agent

Training reinforcement

Dedicated Agent

Some design patterns for agent surplus

Cloudy Day Scenarios: Call Surplus

Service Level Risk

Longest Waiting

Closest match to original

Target

Value of Customer

Value of Service Type

Transfer

Recent History

• Protecting skills: SLA ranges, Reserve capacity

• Limit complexity: 3 – 5 levels of expansion at most

• Protect SLA: consider “wait time” against SLA goals

• Should be for unexpected: rethink WFM planning if always expanding

Target Expansion

• Backup team for everyone: prevents circular backup when paying agents for their clients

• Dedicated backups (concierge): maintains a relationship but can be costly

• Alternative is to use target expansion above

Backups

• Queue contact

• Offer callback for voice

Wait

Cloudy Day Scenarios: Ideal Not Available