IACCM Forum

I would start by defining the processes that the contractor is obligated to perform. This will separate dependencies, outside of their control. When you have done this, you need to benchmark the data. What are reasonable performance measures - you need the contractor to help you to do this, with objective head on your shoulders of course. This is very fact specific. Consider bonus as well as malus - why should the contractor agree to credits; is it the case that it is this regime or you will take the contract away? What does the contractor say; have they agreed in principle?

Ultimately when you add up the cost to do all of the above, does it represent value i.e. savings?

If no, don`t do it.

It's not clear, based on the original question, whether this advice is "presales" or it's literally something provided on a not-for-profit basis. Based on your position, however, I believe that the latter is the case.  I think that you should start this entire project by itemizing the "problems" experienced last year, such as poor customer satisfaction surveys, hang ups, escalations to supervisors, etc.  These are all common indicators of quality in the most basic contact center functions. Do you actually have this data or is the negative experience more anecdotal?

If your part of the organization is concerned with sellilng the government-funded energy saving solutions, then you need a specific set of metrics for your vendor. 

If you are more concerned about the quality of the advice than the placement of products in the homes, then your focus will be materially different from the sales perspective.  You would need to  consider the overall "CSAT" (customer satisfaction) metrics mentioned above and then attempt to develop metrics specific to accuracy of information. In that case, you might be better off putting in place a call monitoring practice and being more involved in setting up the scripts for the contact center staff.  If you don't have something concrete by which to measure the effectiveness of the presentation (such as a sale), it will be more difficult to get to the substance of the calls. 

Thanks for the responses. The advice offered is impartial advice pre-sales on the various routes into the market. The contractors who currently deliver the service are commercial organisations who bid for these contracts. The centres will not refer to specific contractors just advice householders of the offers available in the market and offer them a variety of options.

Their advice centres headline KPI’s will be based on volume of calls generated through P.R campaigns and the C02 saved through the installations that proceed as a result of the advice. I had initially thought we could request bidders to supply open book accounts when submitting tenders with a view to identifying their profit margins. The service credits would then be linked to the contractor’s profit margin with higher performance being rewarded with higher profit. I am aware of the risk that bidders will just build that profit margin in elsewhere in their submitted prices. In terms of performance management through call monitoring etc. this has been put in place and is proving effective and all referrals routes have descriptive wizards that advisors utilise through the central CRM system when taking calls.  

I think the idea of using a bonus system could work well and encourage higher performance although budgets are extremely tight with very high targets set with the governments Green Deal starting in October. It would be great to hear from anyone who has used service credits effectively or unsuccessfully.

Thanks for the responses. The advice offered is impartial advice pre-sales on the various routes into the market. The contractors who currently deliver the service are commercial organisations who bid for these contracts. The centres will not refer to specific contractors just advice householders of the offers available in the market and offer them a variety of options.

Their advice centres headline KPI’s will be based on volume of calls generated through P.R campaigns and the C02 saved through the installations that proceed as a result of the advice. I had initially thought we could request bidders to supply open book accounts when submitting tenders with a view to identifying their profit margins. The service credits would then be linked to the contractor’s profit margin with higher performance being rewarded with higher profit. I am aware of the risk that bidders will just build that profit margin in elsewhere in their submitted prices. In terms of performance management through call monitoring etc. this has been put in place and is proving effective and all referrals routes have descriptive wizards that advisors utilise through the central CRM system when taking calls.  

I think the idea of using a bonus system could work well and encourage higher performance although budgets are extremely tight with very high targets set with the governments Green Deal starting in October. It would be great to hear from anyone who has used service credits effectively or unsuccessfully.

I'm a little concerned that you are trying to accomplish some advanced monitoring before handling the basics. The most fundamental measurement of ANY outsourced contact center vendor is the number of calls actually answered relative to those that come in. Secondarily, you might use a CSAT survey at the end of the call to measure their satisfaction with the advice given. The aspect of CO2 saved will be a little harder. If I worked for the contact center vendors, I would tell you to pound salt, as we say here in America, before I would sign up to something not within the control of my contact center agents. If you want to measure the effectiveness of the advice, you could ask the callers who actually take the CSAT survey which solution they intend to explore. That's about the limit of what I would accept in their position. 

It sounds to me like you are trying to kill multiple birds with a single stone. In order to measure the effectiveness of your services overall, on a net basis, you do need to have the succesful bidders report to you what they install. This has little to do with the contact center vendors.  I think that bidders are likely to comply with this request, since your organization is making the referral. Then you can compare the "degredation" between the cheerily optimistic survey takers (bent on saving the planet at any cost) relative to what they actually install in their homes. I would expect to see some of them adopting less expensive solutions after they receive various bids.

Then, if the degredation rate proves to be higher than expected, you can perform an analysis on why this is the case.   

Hi Edward,

Thanks again for your feedback. The advice centres also have further arms to their contracts which includes more specific KPI's with regards to engaging with business, private landlords, local authorities, individuals in fuel poverty etc. They are not just call centres that you would call to amend your phone bill. They are skilled staff who are aware of the numerous schemes and routes into the complex energy efficiency market. Contractors are expected to be proactive within their relative areas through PR and events to increase call volumes and drive forward the governments’ energy efficiency targets through different schemes.

The issue is a few of the contractors have been extremely proactive in carrying out this work and have exceeded nearly all targets. One contractor has been a lot less proactive and has essentially answered the calls that came into the centre and not a lot else. Due to the chief executive of the contractor in question having various political ties it has been quite a challenge to enforce anything against the current contractor without having a wider knock on effect on my organisation as a whole. I am in the process of re-tendering the service as a whole and I am looking for something to include in the new contracts that avoids this scenario repeating itself. Mt original thoughts were that this could be achieved by offering financial rewards for contractors meeting and exceeding targets and penalties for those that don’t.

Regards

Just some basic thoughts here to start you off:

1) Keep things simple (don't overcomplicate matters)

2) Have clear measurement points

3) Keep only to three or four measures (any more gets confusing and loses focus)

4) Beware of the behaviours that you will invite - some vendors will focus on those SLAs alone at the expense of other areas of the service (think NHS in the UK)

5) SLAs will only mean that you will incentivise the vendor by paying 90%+ of the value for the service so it will not change fundamental problems

I hope that these thoughts help.