It’s one thing to implement call center wallboards into the call center; it’s another to determine what metrics should be displayed on these boards. A recent Spectrum (News - Alert) Corporation blog explored the two by recounting a recent call center customer visit.

During this visit with the Customer Services Director and a benchmarking company consultant, Spectrum sought to understand what information should be captured and displayed on the call center wallboards.

According to the benchmark consultant, the call center wallboards should capture customer satisfaction ratings, service levels, AHT, ASA, abandoned calls as a percentage and calls waiting in the queue. He suggested that this information would easily motivate agents to perform and meet SLAs and First Call Resolution information was unavailable.

For Spectrum, it didn’t matter what the customer wanted to display, just as long as they wanted the call center wallboards. The company rep was concerned, however, when he realized the amount of data that would be displayed, as well as the agent training that would be necessary to explain the meaning of the metrics captured.

To decide on the best approach, the customer decided to do a test, putting up two types of wallboards designed with different content and according to various agent skill levels. Over time, they discovered that more desktop designs were needed. The customer also took a baseline measurement and measured again four weeks later.

The final results in this call center wallboards trial found that new agents performed at their best with a minimum amount of data. In other words, when agents were told the number of calls in the queue and the oldest call waiting, they performed at top levels.

Likewise, agents at the mid level performed best with just four metrics, including ASA, calls in queue, oldest call waiting and service level. Only a few agents within this group wanted to see more and different metrics.

Highly skilled agents were able to demonstrate the most improvement when they had performance metrics readily available on their desktops. These metrics included occupancy, AHT, abandon rate, service level and call waiting. Some agents within this category were actively asking for more data that would help them to improve their performance on the job.

The lessons learned in this scenario include the fact that not all agents should see the same information on call center wallboards; agents should be given the information that will allow them to perform best for their skill level; as the agent improves, change the desktop to match skill level; some agents want the right tools that work for them and accommodating those request makes sense.

While this particular testing was not perfect, it did identify the best approach to call center wallboards for that environment. It also gave Spectrum the basis for assisting other customers in determining the best approach to wallboard implementations.

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