COPC standards
COPC standards: this article describes COPC in a practical way. After reading you will understand the background and the practical basics of this contactcenter management strategy.
Background
The family of standards was developed because several American companies such as Dell, Motorola and American Express were dissatisfied with their outsourcing of customer contacts. They wanted to make the quality of customer contact measurable. This is why a group of customer contact centre consultants decided to develop a model with which cost and quality can be controlled and managed.
In 1996, COPC Inc. was established to promote and commercially exploit the new standard. This commercial exploitation mainly consists of auditing contact centres for certification. Companies can only retain the official accreditation if they recertify every two years.
COPC stands for …
This standard is an internationally used operations management system for handling customer contacts. It is an abbreviation of Customer Operations Performance Centre. The approach is an instrument to measure performance and quality of customer contacts. The findings of approximately 200 leading customer contact centres worldwide have served as a model for this standard. Companies can only work with this standard if they are certified.
Benefits of implementing COPC
The success lies in the fact that it immediately proves itself. There is a noticeable improvement in the quality of contact centres. According to COPC there is a direct relationship between handling customer contacts and service, quality, customer satisfaction and costs.
Customers will be satisfied when their calls are dealt with correctly and as a result costs will be reduced. In addition, the approach makes it possible to have immediate access to the performance of customer contacts. As a consequence, customers are approached and helped in a consistent manner.
Benchmarking
With benchmarking can be conducted; the outcomes and service provision of several contact centres can easily be compared with one another. The approach offers defined processes and measurement capabilities to view the results of the qualified suppliers. To be certified, COPC Inc. offers suppliers consulting services, training, benchmarking services and installation of the operations management system.
COPC Standards
COPC Inc. offers two certification standards: the 2000 CSP Standard and the 2000 VMO Standard. The 2000 Standard CSP helps define customer service centre performance. This includes transaction processing operations, e-commerce centres and contact centres. The 2000 VMO Standard is closely aligned with the 2000 CSP Standard. It helps organizations rate the performance of third party customer contact centres. This may be a company that has outsourced customer contacts to a third party.
Both standards highlight performance in four categories:
- leadership and planning
- key people processes
- key business processes
- goals
Improvements
The approach always ensures process improvements within customer service centres. They will have to take immediate action according to the system when thresholds are not met or when three consecutive measuring points are below standard. The improvements and modifications are recorded accurately in a plan in which both the party with the final responsibility and the final result are described. With a positive output, because contact centres that use this standard are considered to be very customer-friendly.
It’s Your Turn
What do you think? Is COPC applicable in today’s modern economy and contact center management world? Do you recognize the practical explanation or do you have more suggestions? What are your success factors for the good contact center management?
Share your experience and knowledge in the comments box below.
More information
- COPC (2014). CSP Standard: Performance Management at Its Finest. Retrieved [07/11/2014] from COPC.com
- Green, P. (2013). Sitel Australia Awarded Certification to the COPC CSP Standard. Retrieved [07/11/2014] from Tasmaniantimes.com
- Wikipedia (2014). COPC Inc. Retrieved [07/11/2014] from Wikipedia.org
How to cite this article:
Van Vliet, V. (2010). COPC, a performance management strategy. Retrieved [insert date] from Toolshero: https://www.toolshero.com/management/copc/
Published on: 07/11/2010 | Last update: 03/25/2022
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Vincent van Vliet
Vincent van Vliet is co-founder and responsible for the content and release management. Together with the team Vincent sets the strategy and manages the content planning, go-to-market, customer experience and corporate development aspects of the company.
