Call Center Management Featured Article
Helpful Tips for Improving Call Center Management
Call centers have a lot of moving parts. What this means is that – like a clock – when one part breaks down, it can affect the operation of all other parts, and throw the entire call center operation off balance. For this reason, call center management strategies are critical to get right. Call centers cannot operate on an ad-hoc, “cross your fingers and hope” method...not if you want to stay in business.
Most call center managers rely most heavily on several technologies, most notably call recording, playback and assessment, quality monitoring, call quality scoring, evaluation questionnaires and detailed reporting.
In a recent blog post, workforce optimization company Monet Software outlined a few call center quality management strategies and practices to consider to ensure that the call center is operating at maximum efficiency, for best-practices results.
Automate agent evaluation and spend more time on coaching and training Monitor your customer interactions and use data intelligence to make better decisions on service delivery and quality. Establish call evaluation standards that focus on agent behaviors and activities, allowing managers to identify positive agent activities as well as specific areas needing improvement. Reviews calls together with the agent and discuss actual examples from the call to illustrate key learning points. Enable agents to self-monitor and evaluate their own performance. These tips include:
Using evaluation questionnaires for deeper insights into customer interactions. Enhance and verify insights from quality monitoring with customer evaluation questionnaires, suggests Monet. Assess calls based on the perspective of customers and discover trends, opportunities and issues that might lead to longer calls, repeat calls or other problems that impact service quality and productivity.
Leverage automated screen capturing for liability protection, compliance and quality assurance.Capture and securely store video and audio transactions to minimize risk and liability, ensure compliance, and control costs from sales, service, claims, collections and other business disputes.
Measure results over time and across multiple agents. Identify patterns and analyze metrics at various levels for training and quality assurance purposes and establish quality standards and best practices. In addition, try to combine quantitative and qualitative information from various sources (call recording, quality management, scheduling, adherence and performance management) for a complete assessment of contact center performance.
While all of this may sound daunting, many companies succeed with the help of a dedicated technology partner, designing a workforce optimization solution that best fits the call center's needs and goals.
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Edited by Amanda Ciccatelli