Hi
I work as a B.D. Mgr for a 3rd party outsourced call centre in Dubai – specialising in banking. Perhaps I can give my thoughts on this?
One way to judge the performance of an operation, is to inquire as to whether it has been audited and benchmarked by a credible industry authority.
For example, my centre is certified with Purdue University, as a “Centre of Excellence”, and, our ratings from the audit, can be viewed by our potential clients.
The criteria employed in the audit included:
New Recruit Training Time
Agent Attendance
Adherence to schedule
Calls taken per Day/ per Agent/ per Shift
60% use of part-time Agents
As far as zero percent abandonment: this drives up your costs, and decreases your Occupancy Rate – you need more agents available (sitting and waiting for calls), more of the time. Economically, not a profitable approach generally.
We usually commit to a 5% abandonment rate over a month period, for our clients, but we are generally able to achieve lower than that.
I can also give you subjective, “informal” measure which may give a clue to a prospective client, as to the level of excellence of a call centre, or, the extent to which the centre places emphasis and seeks excellence all-round:
Try to establish more or less how much they pay their agents (in my view, anything less than Dhs 3,500 per month for a full-timer points to a lesser degree of interest in achieving excellence -they hire cheap, and are preoccupied mainly with costs.)
How many nationalities do they employ?
Also, ask them about what new technologies they employ, and what the names of their vendors are.
A centre that seeks excellence would normally buy “best of brand” or at least, the more well-known brands, as they seek excellence all-round.
No intention to advertise anyone commercially in this forum,(and Moderator, pls delete if any objection to me mentioning these names)-
but you may want to look at CCA Call Centre Association).