Hewlett-Packard Call Agent Performance-Centered Design
Closing the Gap Between Training & Working

Performance-Centered Design (PCD) Competition 2001 Entry

HP’s Consumer Business Organization manages call centers throughout North America and abroad that offer technical support for home, small business and corporate users of low-end HP products such as PCs, printers, scanners, digital cameras, handheld devices and such. North American agents are employed through contracted service providers who manage staffing according to the fluctuations in call volumes.

HP's web SOURCE provides an always-on learning and customer support solution tailored to the unique needs of call center agents. The pilot project dubbed “Hurricane” (which was the precursor to HP's web SOURCE) was designed to measure the performance difference between agents who received product training in a CBT or classroom setting, versus agents who received no product training but instead were given access to HP's web SOURCE EPSS, an internally designed performance system.

Performance Issues Addressed

High volume call centers have a number of unique performance challenges that aren’t adequately addressed through traditional training scenarios:

• High employee attrition rates: There is very little time to build experience in agents when they stay on the job for only a short time. Call centers in all industries show some of the highest ever ongoing attrition rates, a well-known phenomenon of call center environments. Most recent data stated 67% of call agents had been on-the-job for 6 months or less.
• Constantly increasing product types, product volumes and product data: The volume of information that agents need to know continues to increase at a fast pace. It becomes tremendously difficult to “teach” agents everything they need to know to perform successfully with increased volumes of data and shorter employment time.
• Customer assistance must be consistent and accurate: The customer experience should be consistent, regardless of the agent’s physical location or experience level. It should be transparent to customers whether they’ve contacted an agent in Dallas or in Boise, and agent behaviors and knowledge must be consistent.
• Training always takes a back seat to more immediate business needs: When faced with the decision to answer the customer call or attend training, answering the call will always win. Agents are rarely given the time to fully participate in all the training opportunities designed for them. This is a stark business reality of these call centers and traditional training methods do not address this issue.
• Training addresses product features rather than agent performance: Agents are expected to memorize information rather than learning how to manage the information. It’s simply impossible for agents to memorize large quantities of information for multiple products. Instead, agents need to have solutions and resources at their fingertips.

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