Assessment tools or programs are needed to evaluate any organization performance. Where it would be designed to identify all the strong and week areas. In a call center industry an assessment tools will provide experts who have call center knowledge and experience will all the information needed to evaluate his or her call center performance. as it should help in identifying the specific areas that need attention and provide the organization with an expert solution.

Call center assessment could be likened to an executive medical checkup where early detection of any sign of health problem could be addressed and further problem could be prevented. So call centers health is assessed so that early detection of minor inefficiencies could be addressed and corrected. To effectively assess the call center's performance, each area in the operation is specified and reviewed and these are the following:

- Review the call center structure if and whether it supports the vision and mission of the company

- Customer Relations. The customer satisfaction is assessed through survey forms or customer feedbacks.

- Employer ' employee relationships. Satisfied customers are result of good service and good service are result of satisfied employee. The satisfaction levels of employees are gauged.

- Quality assurance and performance. Quality assurance forms and reports are analyzed and study how quality data is applied. The assessment is conducted to take your call center performance to next level.

- Effective coaching and supervision. Observe if coaching sessions are effective.

- Training. Analyze and identify the ways to improve the efficiency of the training program.

- Hiring and Staffing. Find out how the recruitment process is taking place and identify the week areas.

- Staff Utilization. It should answer the question of having the right person on the right position all the time.

- Work Order Management. These would lead to the study of workforce management processes such as:

1. Forecasting methodology

2. Staffing and scheduling

3. Real time management practices

4. Effective workforce management team.

- Process and Information Management. Observe and analyze call ' handling.

Service Level Agreements and Key Performance Indicators. Key Service Indicators of KPI's shows that the SLM is properly functioning. The weak areas must be improved.

- Call Management. The call routing is observed in the following stages Site by site routing rules Menu choices Prioritization of queue Transfer volumes and protocols Skills-based routing rules Technology

- Security Management. Assess the scope of security and disaster recovery (or business continuity) plan and the ability to meet objectives during a crisis.

- Interaction Management. Analyze how effective customer interaction is managed

- Web Self Service. Assess how effective this e- support.

- Contact Center Management. It is the central point of contact with customers. Call Center software and applications are software and tools help improve the initial customer experience and impression. Customers should be given access options and alternatives, streamlining customer transactions and creating a system that would facilitate easy follow ups.

- Analysis And Reporting. How good are our reporting tools and applications? Is the system providing the needed data for analysis?

- Technical. Is the system current and up to date? Are we getting the best out of our systems, and high efficiency on their performance?

The final presentation includes recommendations and risks and input on suggested action plan. All of these is a result of several days of assessment work which is done with in the work area. Assessment identifies and at the same time recommends solution to the problems found.

Copyright (c) 2008 Hani Masgidi