Handle Time Reduction !!!!!!

For all you folks, Who are convinced about the fact that a BPO job is just about talking English, Wearing Denim and having fun, Let this post be an eye opener. A tech support job for the North American segment, is a tough as being a US envoy for India - Pakistan Dialogues, Especially if you are supporting a product which is a proclaimed loser in the market.

Handle time or Time to Resolve is a metric in any tech support centre, there are processes where handle time is the only metric. Customer yelling at the top of his voice, Operations team poking you every five minutes to finish the call, SME giving you suggestions ( which would have been tried in another OS which he supported ), Team leader showing his face as if you are doing a crime by extending the call, The tech support agent is definitely on a sticky wicket.

Now the million dollar question comes up inside the conference room. How do we reduce the handle time ??????. Here we go, speculations, Half cooked suggestions, Assumptions, Everything other than a solution pops in. People from Manufacturing Industry ( Six Sigma Experts ) would walk in with Laptops and Slides, with projects run on highly unstable processes, Will claim that its cause of high hold time, Lack of on call documentation, Less tenure that the AHT is high. ( As if we don't know.) The senior manager who would have walked in with a Hotel Background who has never handled a tech support call or would never understand the technicalities will pass on sermons about reducing the handle time. The operations team who really know what has to be done, either would not be listened to or would never be consulted about the problem.

Ideas must move from the floor to the conference room and decisions from the conference room to the floor. Here Ideas, Solutions and Decisions, everything is done within the four walls. What I would say with my tenure is , " Hire the right people ". Hiring a undergrad for a high end tech support process is like asking IM Vijayan to play in EPL. Train them right, don't hire them for a Credit Card selling process and then pull them into tech support cause they speak well. Communication skills are good , but in a tech support environment the guy must talk to the customer about technicalities not about the last move he watched or the date with his Girl Friend. Retain people, Loosing people every six months will leave your Handle time problem Unaddressed. Train people on technicalities, not just on the product ie If your an ISP train him on networking basics, not just " Ping " " Ipconfig " and "Power cycle ". Teach them fishing, don't give them a fish to eat. Listen to their calls, Increase the sampling plan initially, Let the quality team not be the " Transaction Monitoring Team ", Let them know what the product is, Let them be capable of giving inputs on the product as well. Let the on floor training be done by agents on calls, Train them on Top Call Generators, Let them try the steps they ask the customer to do.

Let's not push AHT to the agents, Let's push probing skills, Let's push typing speed, Let's talk about technicalities, Let's not give them scripts, Instead lets give them scenarios, Lets talk about tools and their usage, Lets empower them to get there rather use our power and drag them there !!!!!!!!!