Call Center Management Featured Article
Automate Performance Management and Make Use of Raw Data
Most business functions are undergoing some kind of automation today, and one of the hottest areas for automation is people management. Human resources eats up a huge portion of most company’s budgets, and many HR departments are strong holds of outdated technology, manual processes and poorly integrated systems. They’re also not very effective.
The contact center is one of the more complex areas for people management. Turnover tends to be high, the job is busy and has little down-time, and managers are already over tasked. Performance management often slips to the bottom of the list, and when companies do engage in it, they often rely on bare bones interactions, according to a recent blog post by Chuck Ciarlo, CEO of workforce optimization solutions provider Monet Software (News - Alert).
“Most call centers engage in some form of performance management, whether through ongoing meetings to assess progress or an annual review,” wrote Ciarlo. “It’s an essential process, and it can be a difficult one without software that tracks and analyzes the performance levels of your call center team.”
Analytics are bringing new opportunities to contact center performance management. Software solutions can process the plethora of raw data that can be collected from contact center operations and make it easy to see whether the contact center is meeting its metrics. Data is delivered in a way that makes it easier to identify the skill sets of your agents, as well as any skill gaps that need to be filled by additional training, according to Ciarlo.
“What used to require stacks of paperwork and tedious manual operations now gets completed automatically; saving valuable work hours that can now be devoted to other tasks,” he wrote.
An easier and more in-depth look into performance statistics can reveal the performance of individual agents or workgroups. It can also provide a look into the times when the contact center is meeting its goals and metrics, and when it’s missing them. This information can help companies determine where the roadblocks to a great customer experience lie and fix them. It’s important, however, to look for a solution that tracks things that are most important to your business. Avoid bells and whistles you don’t need. Since “performance management” is an umbrella term that can refer to any number of functions, from planning to developing agent skills, to evaluating performance based on metrics, know what you’re looking for in advance and shop for a solution with these capabilities in mind.
It’s also important to get your data sources cleaned up and get rid of “the sludge at the bottom of the tank,” so to speak. The old adage “garbage in, garbage out” will apply.
“As you investigate, always keep in mind that performance management is only as good as the data it receives,” wrote Ciarlo. “Your workforce management and quality management efforts, as well as those devoted to training and billing and other specialties, must collect accurate numbers for the system to work.”
Edited by Alicia Young