3rd Party Remote Call Monitoring Feature

Call center work has seldom been regarded as easy, gratifying, or well-paid. It's often been regarded as the job of last resort, somewhere around retail and telemarketing. So what do call center workers want as we go into 2016? The answers, as found in a recent Customer Think article, make a strange kind of sense, and one that call center managers should be watching closely.

Time for team meetings was right on the list, even just a little that allowed for questions, answers, and a little praise to help keep the call center's spirits up and workers engaged. Changing the way success is measured was also important; metrics like average handle time (AHT) just don't cut it any more, especially as interactive voice response (IVR) and other self-service tools change the nature of questions asked.

Call center reps also hoped to see updates in technology, and beyond merely new computers to encompass the range of options available today like customer relationship management (CRM) tools, speech analytics or even omnichannel options, things that make a customer experience better. A fair quality management system that the agent knows about is also important, and reps want to be better able to deviate from scripts, if such are even allowed to exist any more beyond the barest guidelines.

Perhaps the biggest issue was in the treatment of the reps themselves. Some recommended an employee satisfaction measure, operating under the basic principle that unhappy employees are unlikely to yield happy customers. Employee performance measurement needs to be relaxed as well, with the goal achievable by the average employee, not solely superstars. A call center environment where everyone's sub-par except the best is a breeding ground for ill will and unhappy employees, who, once again, do not make happy customers. Using broader averages for recording and allowing employees to see their own stats will also help the employee make adjustments alone, without needing potentially humiliating intervention “from above.” In the end, call center reps wanted to be treated with the same respect as a customer would be, a change that may now be necessary.

The call center has gone from a money sink that needed to be on hand to a major force for customer service in just a few short years. Since the balance of power has shifted to the consumer, the call center needs to now address things it often didn't have to, and so its job has fundamentally changed. How companies respond to that change often varies, and many still treat the call center like a resented money pit than as a potential powerhouse and the public face of the company.

Making changes on this front—putting a lot of investment in the call center, and in the call center employees—will likely be one of the best changes a company can make in 2016.