Contact center performance management revealed

Donna Fluss, President of DMG Consulting LLC tells us why – once you’ve installed CCPM, you’ll never look back.

CCPM is a qualitative tool for performance evaluation that removes subjectivity and ambiguity, and provides a timely and balanced view of a department. Although you might only have come across the term recently, in terms of concept, it is not new. DMG Consulting LLC has just published the comprehensive, 230 page 2007 Contact Center Performance Management Report. Donna Fluss from the group explains further: “If you want a brief history - corporate performance management (CPM) has been around for at least 24 years, and is predominantly used by financial groups as a tool for senior management. When CPM first came out it took a bit of time before the enterprise appreciated the value and benefits provided by the application. Now the same thing is happening in the contact center market.”

But what is CCPM? Fluss goes on to explain that it “is not simply a fancy way of reporting. It takes feeds from as many contact center systems as you want, the computer telephony integration, interactive voice response, CRM application, speech system, speech analytic system: there are close to 50 different systems in total. On top of that it will take feeds from external applications, like a profitability system, a lifetime value system, any external application at all. It brings that information together and uses it for the benefit of the organization.”

At the most fundamental level, CCPM provides scorecards and dashboards: for agents, for teams, for the contact center, for a site, for the overall environment, for sales activity, marketing activity, for the enterprise overall. So in that respect, says Fluss, it is very flexible. “It is a tool that allows the contact center to align its goals with those of the enterprise, and it does that by removing subjectivity from the picture. It is not simply reporting on steroids: it is a sophisticated management tool that helps the contact center align and deliver to enterprise goals.”

The marketplace for these kinds of solutions can be broken down into the following categories. There are reporting vendors: Business Objects, Cognos, Hyperion, SPSS. There are CPM vendors: Oracle and SAP. Then there are CCPM vendors: Aim Technology, Aspect Software, Enkata, Merced Systems, Nice Systems, Verint Systems, Witness Systems. The report published by DMG Consulting concentrates, importantly, “on the CCPM vendors. All of the vendors within the different categories have the capability of building a CCPM solution, but the vendors who fell into the CCPM category come with a tremendous amount of out-of-box knowledge, and a solution dedicated to the contact center. You get a lot of the integrations, pre-developed reports, and domain expertise from the company about contact center capability. If you work with the other vendors, while ultimately you can build all of those things you will be starting from a very different point than if you start with a CCPM vendor. CCPM vendors are dedicated to the CCPM marketplace and know it well. Our entire report is dedicated to those vendors.”

CCPM is most appropriate for large and complex contact centers, so this includes most financial services companies, banks, brokerages, insurance companies, and so on. But is it really an application worth investing in? “A standard practice for each report we do is to put in anywhere from 1000 to 3000 hours of primary research. As part of our methodology we always check references. With the exception of one, everybody we spoke with about CCPM said they would never operate a contact center again without CCPM. This was the most satisfied group of users that we have ever spoken to.”

This might seem impressive, but surely this research isn’t done blindly? “You might well ask,” says Fluss, “and of course, we always ask the vendors first. But you must remember that we repeat this practice for every report we do, and we have never heard this kind of reference group before. In general, there are always issues or problems of some kind, but not with this group. Across the board for CCPM, the comments were very impressive in regard to the satisfaction. That does not mean there was no room for improvement with these applications, of course there was. But the users were saying the value and benefit to them in using the CCPM application was extremely high.”

If this is the case then, why has the adoption rate for CCPM been so low thus far? For one thing, the vendors themselves have not been clear about the value proposition of these applications. “We have an emerging group of vendors who have been highly conservative in their marketing strategy,” explains Fluss. “We expect that to change in 2007. As people begin to appreciate the tremendous benefit and value of these applications, they will start to open their pocketbooks to these services. My knowledge of the field is fairly comprehensive, as I have spent 24 years in this field, 14 with financial services. I have worked with and in many contact centers in many industries. CCPM will be extremely beneficial to highly complex or multi-site contact centers.”

As well as unclear messages from vendors on the value of their products, there is fundamental confusion amongst potential end users about what CCPM applications actually do. “Again, as well as the fact that the vendors have not done a good job in communicating the benefits and value proposition of CCPM, you have the problem that there is no standard definition of CCPM. When we asked each vendor what they thought CCPM was, they all had very different definitions. Generally, when you ask about an application – say CRM, for example - there is a standard definition, and then each vendor has a differentiation. But with CCPM there is no standard, so people simply don’t know what they’re buying. This is a sign of an emerging market that needs to establish itself, which is what I expect to happen in 2007. Our 2007 Contact Center Performance Management Report provides a basic definition, and whether that sticks or not isn’t relevant, it’s just something for people to bat around. Of course each application should be differentiated, but there have got to be some core fundamental components that all users understand.”

So, while researching the report, did anything surprising or unexpected appear? “Well, the reason I was able to do the market growth numbers was because two years ago I knew I would be covering this market this year, so I counted how many of these applications were in the market. I tracked the number of applications and I waited until the market was more established. So I put out numbers saying that there has been a 430 percent growth.

“What is also striking is the penetration rate of 1.03 percent in North America – that’s a real penetration rate. Clearly there is a tremendous opportunity for the vendors, but equally and just as importantly, there is an opportunity for the contact center managers to invest in a tool that will make their jobs easier and help align the goals of the contact center with the goals of the enterprise. Contact centers seem like these boring places where all people do is answer questions. Even worse, they are perceived as cost centers: people wonder about the overall value, because billions of dollars are spent on these operating departments every year. There is a revolution going on in the contact center market, and within the next five to ten years this is going to change significantly: right now they are mostly cost centers, in five to ten years they will be one of the most important revenue generating departments within the enterprise.”

The steps to make that happen have already started. Contact centers interact with customers more than any other part of the enterprise, as it is their function day in, day out. When customers call, they tell the contact center what they want and how they want it. “Customers talk about new ideas, what they want to buy, upsell and crossell,” explains Fluss. “So there are tremendous opportunities that are limited by our ability as agents to process that information. We have new tools coming - speech analytics for example, tools that will help structure and use what our customers are saying to us in real-time. CPM plays a role in understanding and analyzing financial activity, and sales activity: in other places it’s used widely. As contact centers migrate from their reactive cost-oriented operating environment to pro-active, revenue-generating significant contributors to our enterprises, CCPM will be critical in helping these operating environments manage themselves.

“The timing is really right for this application but it will take CCPM a few years. The projections we have for the market look positive: in 2007 we expect the market to grow by 27.5 percent, in 2008 by 25 percent. The numbers look good, but you must remember that if there is a small base. But it is moving in the right direction. If it follows the same maturation scale as CPM it will pick up speed over the next few years. Once it picks up speed, nothing will stop it.”

Donna Fluss Biography

Donna Fluss is the founder and President of DMG Consulting LLC, a firm specializing in contact centers and real-time analytics. Ms. Fluss is a recognized thought leader and innovator in CRM, contact center and real-time analytics. For over 23 years, she has helped end users build world-class differentiated contact centers and vendors develop high-value solutions for the market. She is the author of the recently published book, The Real-Time Contact Center, and many leading industry reports, including the 2007 Contact Center Performance Management Report, the Speech Analytics Market Report, and the annual Quality Management/Liability Recording Product and Market Report.

For more information about the 2007 Contact Center Performance Management Report, visit www.dmgconsult.com or contact Deborah Navarra at 516-628-1098 or deborah.navarra@dmgconsult.com