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To Improve Call Center Operations, Closely Analyze Customer Satisfaction and Agent Productivity

Call Center Operations


TMCnews Featured Article


February 14, 2012

To Improve Call Center Operations, Closely Analyze Customer Satisfaction and Agent Productivity

By Jamie Epstein, TMCnet Web Editor


Agents hold the crucial responsibility of ensuring that customers feel as if their questions, concerns or problems will be resolved in an extremely short period of time and on the first try. Streamlining call center operations and increasing customer satisfaction are constantly topics on the minds of all of those involved in the call center industry. Recently, Jacada (News - Alert) CEO Gideon "Giddy" Hollander spoke about these very issues on his radio show called Business Technology News Hour.


Hollander also closely looked at why CRM is stopping call center agents from interacting more efficiently with their customers, mainly because of automated processes and complicated systems. "I believe that CRM systems were not originally built to help your call center agents talk to your customers, they were built to manage the customer. Traditional CRM solutions route and re-route customers through automated processes and wind up making seemingly simple tasks into very long and drawn out processes," Hollander said in a statement. "You could say that ultimately CRM creates expensive customer conversations."

Although CRM systems are an invaluable tool to many divisions within an organization such as sales, marketing, legal, and procurement, for a call center agent there are many tasks and features within a CRM system that are have nothing to do with their daily tasks, which can cause productivity to be adversely affected.

In order for both call center operations and agents within the environment to see continuous success, user interfaces must be extremely easy to use, allowing customers to receive almost instant assistance. In fact, Hollander adds that his company has seen through research that its customers are not overly concerned with the length of the call, but that it ultimately gets resolved.

"It's easier to measure average handle time versus first call resolution –whether they call again or not," Hollander stated. "The shortest route an agent has to take to increase their first call resolution is far and away the primary concern of our customers. When agents have to work through a cumbersome CRM system they are wasting precious time. We believe there is a better tool for agents to use than a CRM system."

TMCnet recently sat down with Knowlagent, a provider of a suite of services to raise the bar of call center operations. The company predicted that in 2012, there will be an increased focus on customer satisfaction.

Company officials stated, “With the increasing use of social media, reliance on Web-based or IVR self-service, customers are calling into call centers with more complex issues than previously. If a customer cannot resolve the issue on their own, they’ll call the center to speak to a live operator. Agents need to be even better prepared to handle these types of calls.”


Jamie Epstein is a TMCnet Web Editor. Previously she interned at News 12 Long Island as a reporter's assistant. After working as an administrative assistant for a year, she joined TMC (News - Alert) as a Web editor for TMCnet. Jamie grew up on the North Shore of Long Island and holds a bachelor's degree in mass communication with a concentration in broadcasting from Five Towns College. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Amanda Ciccatelli







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