Contact Center Usability Consulting

Unlock greater value from call center operations

Are you looking for ways to improve agent performance? Do your agents complain that current tools don't support them?

User Centric has been assisting call center organizations since the early 1990's. We turn performance and behavioral data into redesigned interfaces that help enhance the responsiveness and quality of your customer service.

We understand the pressures faced by your enterprise.

By applying behavioral data to agent interfaces, we can help you enhance contact center usability:

• Reduce costs and headcount Improve the interface to decrease time on task and errors.
• Increase sales attempts Reduce non-value added activities in the interface to help agents focus on selling.
• Keep motivation and retention high, keep turnover low Increase relevance of the interface to help agents be more productive, less frustrated, and more satisfied with their jobs.
• Retain revenue Eliminate the need for agents to perform manual math calculations or look up customer-related data in too many locations.
• Improve customer satisfaction Revise the interface of tools to increase agent effectiveness and service numbers.

Our approach

We recognize that call centers are complex operations. We will work onsite with you to evaluate your agents' use of tools. We will partner with you to devise practical solutions.

In some cases, the root cause of an issue might not be immediately evident. You may have specific business goals, but be unsure of how you can achieve them in the user interface of agent tools. Drawing on our past experience, our experts will work with you to understand the core issues, then offer insights into possible ways to address problems.

Our background in human behavior -- not technology or marketing -- sets us apart. We employ state-of-the-art user research methods, expert observations, and pragmatic design skills. In some cases, we can even employ eye tracking to identify what agents are paying attention to.

Typical activities

User Centric takes a holistic view of call center operations. We recognize that changing one thing often triggers changes in other places. We offer a variety of customized services for call centers:

• Conduct user research

  We spend time in call centers to discover how tools support (or do not support) the primary functions of the center.

  • We observe agents at work.
  • We interview agents.
  • We hold small discussion groups with floor supervisors and trainers.

• Analyze user productivity and sales

  Based on your metrics, our observations, and discussions, we ask:

  • How are agents motivated?
  • Where are they spending their time?
  • How can we improve agents' actions to work to the benefit of the business and achieve their goals?

• Examine existing tools

  Our experts can examine the entire customer value chain, and offer guidance on how to optimize all tools.

  • Agent tools: We carefully examine the tools used by agents, identifying opportunities to improve them.
  • Customer-facing tools: Sometimes problems lie not in agent tools but in customer self-service tools. A poorly designed IVR can result in inefficient use of agent effort by misdirecting calls.

• Design a user interface that works in the agent workspace

  We help design tools that achieve your business goals and help your agents to be more productive.

  • We very skilled at designing high-volume complex transactional user interfaces. Many design firms do not have the background to do this. We do.
  • We practice the state-of-the-art in information and application design.
  • We leverage this to create the best experience possible for your agents and customers.
  • We carefully consider error reduction in all of our designs. A poorly designed interface can create errors down the line (e.g., increased truck rolls), with a very high cost to the business.

Our track record at contact center usability consulting

We understand how people work. We have experience building outstanding tools. Our experts have visited dozens of centers, logged countless hours as observers on call center floors, and designed applications for call centers in many industries, including:

• Communications
• Cable
• Financial
• Insurance
• Technology

If you have questions, please feel free to contact us for answers. We would be happy to discuss your challenges and how we can help you achieve your business goals.