Remote Call Center Agents

The call center agent’s job isn’t easy. Most of the day is spent interacting with customers and keeping them satisfied. When time permits agents may be asked to complete training and coaching activities that enable them to do their job well.

Finding the time to train, coach and even communicate with agents remains a challenge for many centers.  As transaction types become more complex, the agent learning curve has become even steeper. Many agents become frustrated with the endless grind, lack of...

Mobile WFM: Defining Success for Next Generation Contact Centers

Many contact centers now draw their staff from the millennial generation who largely use smartphones and tablets for their personal and social communication. For these progressive organizations, adopting a mobile WFM solution is often the defining element in successful operation. Leveraging  mobile Web-enabled devices to connect contact center managers, supervisors and agents can increase efficiency as well as staff and customer...

In a recent call center agent productivity study conducted by Ventana Research, 81% of those call center leaders polled cited improving agent performance as a top priority in their organization. So, if improving agent performance is a key initiative for most call centers, and coaching is a proven contributor to positively impacting agent performance , why do so many call centers continue to struggle with providing agents with enough effective coaching?

It certainly isn’t for a lack of effort. In...

“Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.”
~Phillips Brooks

Call center agents hold the power of your brand promise in their hands.

The moment of truth can be when customers need to talk to an agent after exhausting self-service options.  Or, it can be the accumulation of experiences across all channels.

As problem calls increase and interaction points expand, companies need to adjust their customer experience strategies to ensure agents are equipped to...

Over the last ten years, interest in remote agent contact center models has steadily increased. For example, attendance at the February 2012 Remote Agent Summit increased by 30% over 2011. And home agent models are not limited to the United States and Canada. Several firms are operating home agent models in Europe and a UK version of the US Remote Agent Summit is planned for July. Michele Rowan of At Home Customer Contacts which hosts the Remote Agent Summit and Workshops reports that:

Survey...

When you hear the term “contact center” today, the image that may come to mind is a large operation with hundreds of agents in headsets busy on calls.  However, if you were to visit the most typical call center, you would only see a couple of dozen frontline staff.  That’s because most call centers are actually small in size with three out of four centers employing fewer than 20 agents. 

According to Pelorus Group statistics, 75% of call centers have between 1 – 20 staff and another 15% have...

Knowlagent recently surveyed 312 call center executives, managers or supervisors. Respondents represented a range of company sizes and types.  A majority of companies report tracking the obvious things that keep an employee offline – such as absenteeism, tardiness, and log-in times. Many track some of the more hidden issues that take up call center agents' days.

-- Close 50% of the companies track time spent on training.
-- 40 % report they track the amount of “idle time” agents spend waiting...

According to the comScore 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review, social networking sites accounted for 12% of all time spent online in 2010, and the average American spent more than 14 hours watching online videos in December, a 12% increase over the previous year.

As social media continues to gain popularity in our culture.  Many call center agents are comfortable with social learning in their personal lives and, as a result, more and more companies are adopting social and informal learning platforms...

The staff of CRMXchange was present at the IQPC Las Vegas Call Center Week. IQPC did a commendable job with the content and speakers in the event. The exhibit hours were long, running close to 11 hours on day one, but the vendors were pleased with the amount of interest that people showed in their products and services. 

We traveled the exhibit hall. Below are some vendor highlights.

Analytics

Contact Solutions – The Continuous Improvement Practice (CI) is based on a unique methodology and supported...

Sharing updates with call center agents during downtime is an ideal way to improve your staff’s knowledge and skills. This can be done at minimal cost and without disrupting the flow of operations – which is what happens when agents are pulled from the phones to attend a training/coaching class. The contact center has to be able to send out training/coaching or other information as soon as a slow period is identified, as these lulls generally do not last long.

This means that you will need a...

My colleague, Brent Holland, continues our series on "Generational Hiring for the Optimal Customer Experience".  The second installment considers two important questions:  (1) how to define generational groups and (2) whether contact centers rely on generational groups to guide recruitment.

How does FurstPerson define generational groups for this research?

When we began studying the impact of generational classifications, one of the first things we noticed was that many people disagree on who is a...

Your company’s brand and reputation depend on your team’s ability to deliver a superior customer experience. Yet, people, processes and technology often conspire to create headaches for management and unsatisfactory interactions for customers.

Do these problems sound familiar? You receive calls from management demanding answers about why a host went down or why customer complaints are up. You may be  off for the  weekend but you still worry that a problem will not be detected as quickly as it...

Second in a two-part series

Yesterday we looked at the Payment Card Security Council and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard which were established to protect the credit card user. Today we look  specifically at the standard and the requirements it places on contact centers.

DMG Consulting LLC is a leading provider of market research and consulting services for contact centers. The 2009 – 2010 Quality Management/Liability Recording Product and Market Report is the definitive guide to...

Customer needs are increasingly being handled by employees who work outside a formal contact center. This trend is confirmed in Ventana Research’s benchmark research into agent performance management. Their research found that customer interactions typically are handled by a variety of business units – primarily the contact center (in 94 percent of companies) but also sales (42 percent), home-based agents (32 percent), back-office departments (31 percent), customer service (30 percent) and...

How to Purchase Durable Call Center Cubicles

There are many considerations when purchasing call center furniture, in particular cubicles, which range from design, space utilization, ergonomics, durability, and warranty. The call center space needs to be warm and inviting, ergonomically friendly, and designed to last.

Specifically, durability is important because call center agents handle a steady stream of incoming phone calls and emails, meaning that they rarely have a chance to step away from...

For eight straight quarters Sprint has improved its overall customer experience. The improvement in Sprint's customer satisfaction scores, according to third-party studies, is a result of introducing its best-ever handset lineup with Android phones HTC Hero and Samsung Moment, simplifying cell phone plans with Any Mobile, AnytimeSM and Everything Data, and offering 4G service in 27 markets.

 

All of these new products, plans and services create a complex and ever-changing customer...