September 2002

By Rich Tehrani, 
Group Editor-In-Chief, Technology Marketing Corporation

Making the workplace a better place for agents and supervisors alike, and thus improving productivity, is the idea behind the Emvolve Performance Manager from Performix Technologies (www.performixtechnologies.com). I recently spoke to a contact center agent, Michelle Taylor, at Spherion (www.spherion.com) to find out how her job performance has changed since Spherion implemented Emvolve in the contact center where she works in Victoria, Texas. Also in on the call was Michelles supervisor, Randall Morich, assistant site manager.

Spherion provides recruitment, outsourcing and technology solutions for its clients, and Michelle works customer service for pre-paid calling cards, handling an average of 100 calls per day. Spherions quality assurance department monitors call quality, and other performance measurements include adherence to scheduled breaks and lunch times, as well as etiquette, volume, tone and pace. Before implementing Emvolve, agents used to have to wait for a supervisor to have time to sit down with them to review their scores, but now, when checking in each morning, Michelle logs on and the Emvolve screen pops up. She said she can easily pull up reports on her desktop and she can see how her scores have gone up since Emvolve was put in place. Feedback is good, said Michelle, as she now get reports on a daily basis. Michelles main area of improvement was quality, and she can compare her scores weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly. She can also check to see areas where she needs improvement.

When agents exceed goals, they have an awards program, and Michelle can see what she needs to do to achieve scores that will earn her rewards. The company sets expectations, which helps keep me focused on callers, she said. It helps me to challenge myself instead of having the supervisor do it, so it motivates me more. She admitted she was always apprehensive of performance reviews before because she didnt have any feedback and she couldnt anticipate how she was doing, but that using Emvolve has helped reduce her anxiety because she now has instant access to her performance data.

Allowing the agents access to this information also saves supervisors time. Managers can see the performance of various teams and encourage supervisors as well. Randall said, Agents like to see data, and we want to give customers a high-quality call, which also helps maintain and retain customers as well as agents. Emvolve has improved the overall quality of the monitoring program and has helped the coaches. We have improved the overall quality of the call center, most likely improving agent retention and really increasing agent satisfaction. Emvolve is a good tool. It has helped turn average agents into good agents and good agents into superior ones. And it took the agents only 30 minutes to learn how to use it.

Based on the success of Emvolve Performance Manager at Spherions contact center in Victoria, the solution is currently being rolled out across all of the companys eight contact centers in the U.S. and will be used by over 1,300 agents.

Moving Beyond The ABCs
Another factor in delivering consistent service and agent satisfaction is providing an excellent training program because, as everyone knows from personal experience, you feel more comfortable answering questions or doing your job if you understand what you are doing.

If you have just a few agents, providing a consistent training program is similar to teaching in a one-room school: the students may be at different levels, but there is only one teacher. When you have hundreds (or thousands) of agents, ensuring a consistent curriculum and measurement system for all can be difficult, especially if you have contact centers spread out across town or across the globe. To provide a consistent training program for all agents, no matter how far-flung, is the idea behind Envision Telephonys (www.envisiontelephony.com) Click2Coach Multisite Edition.

Ron Strandin, vice president of sales and marketing at Envision Telephony, said that most computer-based training has failed because most of what agents do in contact centers is talk, not read, and that one advantage of Click2Coach is that it can deliver verbal training (as well as written) through examples. Typically, most technology for quality monitoring and teaching is siloed in contact centers, said Strandin. With the Multisite Edition, there is one central point for the collection and distribution of enterprise reporting, administration and training that pulls together information from all of an enterprises contact centers.

Click2Coach offers integrated quality monitoring, performance evaluation and e-learning in one coaching solution, providing tools for scheduling and recording customer interactions, evaluating agent skills and producing personalized training content. The authoring tools can be used to create personalized training videos on-demand as well as integrate existing training content in any format into the curriculum. From one central location, supervisors can review recorded interactions, complete an online evaluation and attach existing training or create a personalized video that addresses the agents specific needs. This coaching package can then be sent directly to the agents desktop, no matter where the agent is located. Agents receive an instant alert telling them they have received new information and are able to access their supervisors coaching instantly. The browser-based Multisite Edition also provides a global view of agents, groups and contact centers from a single interface and consolidated, real-time reporting for instant access to critical data.

We all strive to do our best at our jobs, and Performix and Envision Telephony are providing tools to help agents improve how they work; and improving agent performance and job satisfaction improves the bottom line.

Sincerely,
Rich Tehrani
Group Publisher,
Group Editor-in-Chief
rtehrani@tmcnet.com

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