Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Take Contact Center Management and Scheduling Inspiration from Sports Wisdom
Most of the time, the contact center business is a team effort. In a way, it can be likened to a sports team. Managers serve as coaches, and supervisors serve as trainers. Players who attempt to compete with one another won’t get the best results. Training needs to be ongoing and address known weak spots rather than a one-time process that is never repeated again. Managers need to understand when to put their strongest players in, and when it’s a good time for rookies to learn the ropes.
As with any team, the contact center is just as strong as its weakest link. Keep this in mind when you’re attempting to use the contact center team you have to achieve your business aspirations, your customer excellence plan, and your financial goals, according to Chuck Ciarlo, CEO of Monet Software, in a recent blog post.
“If you don’t have a good team on the field, you are not going to achieve your goals,” wrote Ciarlo. “The best football coach can make a good team great, but he can’t make a bad team into a Super Bowl champion. In the contact center, the right coaches and managers can inspire their agents to always improve their game, but they probably won’t be able to transform an unmotivated employee into ‘Agent of the Year’ material.”
Agents, of course, will have different strengths and weaknesses, and different skill sets. Scheduling can help make the most of these differences: putting the best outbound agents on during quiet times to try and cross-sell and upsell, for example, or ensuring the agents best equipped to deal with pressure are scheduled to work during traditional heavy call volume periods. Creative scheduling, however, can’t be a fix-all for a contact center that employs a number of weak or disengaged agents, however.
“…Having 47 out of 50 well-performing agents is not sufficient,” wrote Ciarlo. “Just as one bad player can fumble away a game, one bad agent can turn customers away and lower the center’s performance standard. When you are drafting new agents, be careful to avoid a bust.”
Good managers (like good coaches) should get to know their agents and gauge their strong spots and weak spots. While scheduling around the weak spots can work for a little while, managers need to use remedial training and simulations to strengthen agents’ skills where necessary. Treating agents fairly, paying them fairly and offering a good work-life balance can also work wonders in boosting agent attitude (and therefore engagement). Finally, it’s a matter of ensuring that you’re offering the right tools to succeed.
“NFL teams invest in training facilities and equipment to give their players the tools they need to excel,” wrote Ciarlo. “Do your agents have the technology tools they need to deliver service to customers, and match call types with the agents best equipped to handle them? Can you provide service via web chat and email and social media with the same professionalism?”
If the answer to these questions is “no,” it’s time to take a good long look at your managers and the agents they have trained, and determine whether your processes and your technologies are helping to make the most of the skills your agents do have.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi