Moneyball inspiration for contact center leaders.

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In baseball as in business, some of the greatest success stories lie with the individuals that thought outside the box. In the movie Moneyball, we find Billy Beane, the General Manager that famously made the Oakland A’s one of the most cost-efficient and winning teams out there. Beane did not have the large media market dollars to pay for big name players. In order to win, Beane had to learn how to do more with less. For Beane to be successful, it took a different perspective, skill and art than what was being used by all of Major League Baseball at the time. Beane looked at the game from a data-driven perspective and the acquisition of players in a new way. Beane famously said, “Almost like a car salesman, if a guy walks onto the lot and a salesman qualifies him on how he is dressed he may miss out on a hell of a sale. We try to open our mind and say it’s not about perception or what you think you see.”

In baseball, he had old perceptions fighting against him along the way. But Beane never stopped when people told him, “We’ve always done it this way.” or “Everybody else is doing it like this.” Nor did he stray when confronted with history; that managing a baseball team had been done the same way for over 50 years. Beane knew if he continued managing the same way and making the same decisions, he could never turn a losing ball club into a winner.

As you look within your own business and specifically in your call center, are you being courageous against the perceptions and people that refuse to think beyond common practices? Or are you applying analytics to make better decisions like Beane did? I am always amazed with the employee and customer-driven innovations, and customer insights, that are uncovered through call center analytics. Some innovators are applying these insights to improve company profits and competitive advantages, but most sit on the bench.

Many organizations use NetPromoter scores (NPS) in their call centers and report their scores on a regular basis. But for Beane the common collection and reporting process would not be good enough. Beane wanted to apply the information to his decision-making process and in order to do so, he needed to understand what exactly whats causing the increases or decreases in promoters and detractors. He also needed to know the reasons for the indifferent people in the middle. Beane would want to conduct NPS Analytics so he could do more with what he already has, or do more with less.

While it is very common practice to do customer satisfaction surveys or customer experience surveys in call centers, what you should be asking yourself is, “Are you doing it like everyone else?” If you are, then you are not different than everyone else. For Billy Beane and many of you that means you will be a loser in this highly competitive and commoditized world in which we live. If you play that game then you will always loose out to the competitors with larger budgets. It’s a numbers game; are you being smarter with your numbers?

Do you want to learn more about improving NetPromoter performance? This no-charge on-demand webinar shows you the methods used by one call center that resulted in more than a 100% improvement in NPS scores. Get access to this improving NetPromoter webinar here.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Jim Rembach
Jim Rembach is recognized as a Top 50 Thought Leader and CX Influencer. He's a certified Emotional Intelligence practitioner and host of the Fast Leader Show podcast and president of Call Center Coach, the world's only virtual blended learning academy for contact center supervisors and emerging supervisors. He’s a founding member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association’s CX Expert Panel, Advisory Board Member for Customer Value Creation International (CVCI), and Advisory Board Member for CX University.

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