The following is from the Reindeer Races article published in the EOD today.


The target for the call answer rate comes as a shock to me. Missing 15% of all calls is an acceptable standard?
I also think the target for "keeping the longest call wait below 10 mins" needs some explanation.

And could you explain how anyone can attain over 110% performance? Maximum performance is total performance which is 100%. If you can do better than total performance then you're measuring the performance conservatively.

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I was amazed that they put this out in the Open, must have a weird sense of humour bound to incense a lot of the Punters.  I am sure I saw this a couple of days ago

As I used to have targets when I worked some of the answers are fairly obvious
There is a nominal call answer rate which agents are supposed to achieve - handling the specified number of calls per hour. Under that and other agents pick them up - nothing to do with calls being missed just a bit longer wait in the queue.
Ensuring that all calls are answered within 10 minutes - the longest wait in the queue for customers
There will be an overall performance metric/target - achieving 100% is meeting the target whereas attaining over 110% performance for the week is exceeding the target for the week.

Target performance = 100 apples.

Target to attain = 110%

Target = 110 apples

therefore target performance = 110 apples

but target to attain is 110%, so target is 121 apples.....

I assume you are being deliberately argumentative but I will rise to it 
A target is defined as 100 apples and that is for all teams.
Achievement of 110 apples (110%) is rewarded.
It is only where a company is too mean to pay a bonus that they keep moving the targets.
Let us take a more usual example.
In an employee is expected to pack 100 crates per day as a standard and exceeding the target will generate a bonus with the bonus increasing by how much the target is exceeded up to a maximum limit.
This is what is being done but in the form of a freindly competition between employees

Sorry chaps,

Had to move this thread to Gen because it really wasn't a rant or a rave about plusnet products and services.

Cheers

CB

Assuming it's the targets rather than the semantics being questioned (in which case the rant forum was probably reasonable), the thing to bear in mind is that a fair few punters will call us and then hang up for one reason or another before we've had half a chance to answer. I know myself that I've called callcentres to ask things and the second I'm waiting the problem has gone away or I've found the answer I was looking for somewhere else. With my bank, if they are busy and don't answer within a few seconds I just call back later. That's why no callcentre can achieve a call answer rate that is 100% (although some probably get close, I doubt it in residential ISP land!).

In any day in the CSC we have many peaks and troughs and the idea is to balance them out efficiently. We could improve our targets certainly, but the reality is that thew extra staff needed to achieve that would require us to increase subscriptions in order to pay for it. We don't hide the fact that we'd prefer people to raise tickets too, and we're proud of the job we do with support generally especially when you compare us against even the most reputable competitors. Also, a firm aim never to make a customer wait more than 10 minutes isn't the same as that being an average or the norm. The idea is that when we get to 10 minutes we know that's a problem and we make sure there is a mechanism in place to re-allocate staff from other work when there is a risk of us exceeding that target.

As I say, running a residential broadband helpdesk for products that don't start with a lot of margin to play with isn't an easy task. We've nothing to hide and if you want to know more then I'm only too happy to tell you about why we work in the way we do.

Regards,

Ian

Thank you for the comprehensive explanations, Ian. I still think 10 minutes to answer a call is a very high maximum target. In my own mind, if a caller has to wait more than three minutes then there is already a problem. That aside, you have addressed all the other concerns I raised and answered the questions I posed thoroughly. We will just have to agree that our expectations of what is an acceptable length of time to be listening to muzak will differ.

 

If this thread isn't Plusnet related then I don't know what is. 

Sorry Phil.. I was going by the actual wording on the Sub forum area:


It's hard knowing what to do for the best sometimes.. you win some, you lose some, and as it wasn't actually a rant or a rave, I figured that it was better off here my friend.

I'm pretty sure no one at Plusnet would disagree that 10 minutes is a long time to wait as a maximum. Of course, the average is much much lower but when things get busy the time can creep up and we need a trigger that tells us to drop everything else and jump on calls. All that would happen if we changed that is that there would be something in another area that had to give for us to maintain the call target.

Ian