Personality Mapping: Contact Center

Technology in the 21st Century

Historic technology base

• Telecommunications link• PBX / ACD / IVR / Voice Recording• CTI / Reporting / Cloud Routing• CRM• Recruiting / Training Software• Workforce Management• CSAT Scoring

Historic technology view

• Target the “average” customer

• Target the “average” agent

• No acknowledgment of customer personality

• No acknowledgement of agent personality

• Bias towards “standardized” interaction

• Train agents to talk the same way

• Train agents to follow a tight process flow

• Discourage agent individuality and nuance

What’s missing?

• Purchase behavior

• Customer satisfaction

• Handle time

• First call resolution

• All are heavily influenced by the alignment of personalities between agent and customer

Why?

• Only one reason: computational power

• 5 years ago personality mapping would have required supercomputer-class power

• Today personality mapping can be accomplished with high-end server hardware

• We have always known that getting the personalities right makes a difference, but have never known how to line them up in real time

Personality Mapping

• Agent data collected through an initial agent survey

• Customer data sourced in real time from databases that are indexed based on caller ID

• Neural networks trained to identify patterns of personality-matching success in historical data

• System establishes optimal pairing of agents with callers after skills based routing process

• System both selects agents and selects callers

Typical business impact

• Revenues rise by 10 – 20%

• Handle time compresses by 5 – 10%

• First call resolution increases by 5 – 10%

• Customer satisfaction jumps

Example corporate impact• Large US ILEC

• $100 billion in revenues• 25% flow through call center - $25 billion• 40% gross margin - $10 billion through call centers

• Personality mapping impact• Increased call center sales by 13%• $1.3 billion / year impact to pretax profitability• Increased customer satisfaction• Increased agent satisfaction

• “Single smartest thing in the last decade” - CEO

Outsourcer impact

• Example: US telecoms company

• $15bn in revenues

• 40% flow through call centers = $6 billion

• 15% enhancement = $900 million

• 50% GM = $450 million PBT impact to client

• Technology provider share at 25% = >$100mm/year

• Outsourcer share at 25% = >$25mm/year

Effectiveness intuitions

• Will personality make a difference?• Are there significant differences in agent performance?• Are a range of outcomes possible?• Is there room for improvement?• Consumer facing application?

• Or not?• Do all agents do about the same?• Do all calls essentially end with the same outcome?• Is handle time already extremely low?• Are we already near 100% sales conversion

Prominent verticals

• Financial services• Telecommunications• Travel and Hospitality• Retail• Collections

• Large scale consumer-facing call center operations

Thank you