Customer Operations Performance Management FAQs

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What is performance management?
What is Customer Operations Performance Management (COPM)?
What are the typical benefits, ROI and time to payback?
Who within the organization is affected and benefits from COPM?
How is PM different than my existing reporting system, home grown score cards, or business intelligence systems?
Where does the data come from? What type of data is it?
What are examples of successful COPM projects?
What is Merced Performance Suite?

What is performance management?

Performance management is the process of systematically using data for business improvement. Performance management works by integrating data from disparate sources, distributing highly personalized information to every employee in the operation, empowering individuals to make better fact-based decisions, and then taking the best action to drive results. The application of performance management in customer facing and servicing functions can be highly effective in increasing customer loyalty and revenue, as well as in reducing costs.

What is Customer Operations Performance Management (COPM)?

Customer Operations Performance Management is the practice of leveraging performance management technology and change management processes in customer servicing and selling environments. Because these operations are often people intensive, such as contact centers, field service, back-office and other functions, behavior change and culture transformation are the drivers of sales and efficiency gains. By empowering every employee with actionable information, individuals can make better fact-based decisions guiding their daily activities. By automating key administrative activities, front-line managers are able to become more effective and efficient, having more time and better information to coach and develop their teams. And finally, with a complete view of performance, executives are able to identify emerging trends and take action more rapidly.

COPM is characterized by 3 things:

1. Data integration from all sources in the operation
2. Scalability and features to report accurately on a dynamic hierarchy
3. Performance data delivered to every employee in the organization with the means to take action and change behavior

What are the typical benefits, ROI and time to payback?

Customer Operations Performance Management helps organizations uncover and fix performance shortcomings. COPM initiatives deliver high ROI for operations and see a typical time-to-pay-back of 6-9 months. These results are achieved by unleashing 4 major opportunities:

1. Increased Front-Line Employee Productivity and Revenue Generation
Driven by:

• Increased self-correction through frequent viewing of performance data
• Increased coaching time and effectiveness of Supervisors
• More effective variable pay and incentive programs
• Increased sharing of best practices from top employees to developing teammates
• Retention of staff as a result of transparent objectives and improved supervisory management

2. Increased Supervisor Effectiveness and Efficiency
Driven by:

• Reduction in administrative activities, such as data gathering for coaching or performance appraisals
• More efficient and impactful employee coaching due to availability of individual performance data and historical coaching and training context
• Manager and director transparency into Supervisor performance and effectiveness

3. Improved Analyst Performance
Driven by:

• Substantial time savings due to automated data integration and cleansing
• Business-driving insight resulting from focus on analytic tasks vs. repetitive report generating tasks
• Improved strategic decision making process stemming from - "one version of the truth"
• Identification of and focus on true business drivers and metrics - not just data that is easy to access
• Reduced errors and rework

4. Greater Executive Impact from Culture Change
Driven by:

• More fact-based, data-driven decisions; a culture of accountability
• Focus on the meaning, rather than the accuracy, of the data
• Performance-based environment without subjectivity or perception of management bias
• Transparency into performance of the business, across all roles and departments

Who within the organization is affected and benefits from COPM?

One of the defining characteristics of Customer Operations Performance Management is that every employee, irrespective of his or her role or level, has access to timely and relevant data about their performance. As a result:

• Front-line employees are able to improve their performance by increasing self-correction with frequent viewing of performance data.
• Supervisors are better equipped to coach their agents with immediate access to agent performance data and a reduction in rote administrative activities, such as gathering dispersed employee performance data.
• Executives have access to high level operational performance data that enables them to match employee and team goals to larger operational objectives.

How is PM different than my existing reporting system, home grown score cards, or business intelligence systems?

Performance Management is a separate class of application from reporting and business, intelligence, focusing on business and performance improvement throughout the operation. Built with domain specific features, performance management delivers critical capabilities for managing customer operations.

3 key differences between Customer Operations Performance Management applications and reporting tools include:

1. COPM is for all users
2. COPM integrates action features to drive behavior change
3. COPM is built for the specific challenges of a customer operations environment.

Where does the data come from? What type of data is it?

Customer Operations Performance Management tools consolidate data from across an operation's many disparate sources, creating "one version of the truth." COPM does more than aggregate production systems data, it also originates data on critical processes such as coaching and recognition through integrated workflow. By combining operational data with process information, operations are able to establish and enforce manager level best practices for the first time. Additionally, by rewarding key behaviors while identifying and addressing performance improvement opportunities, organizations are able to create a culture of continuous improvement within their operations.

What are examples of successful COPM projects?

Merced Systems customer operations have experienced significant business improvements in 4 general areas:

• Sales
• Efficiency
• Effectiveness
• Customer Experience

To learn more about customer success stories, click here.

What is Merced Performance Suite?

Merced Performance Suite v3.0 is an advanced, fully integrated performance management application designed from the ground up to turn customer operations into higher performing, data-driven organizations. By integrating data from disparate sources, delivering advanced reports and analytics throughout the organization and providing personalized dashboards to every employee, Merced Performance Suite v3.0 increases accountability while establishing a culture of continuous improvement. With category-leading workflow and process improvement tools, Merced Performance Suite v3.0 automates critical managerial activities, which guide and drive specific employee behaviors. Built for customer servicing functions, Merced Performance Suite is optimized for high impact and low cost of ownership for customer operations performance management initiatives.