Intelligence is the most important part of effectively running a call center operation, and it’s not just about the smarts of your staff. Having the resources to collect and distribute information to your staff leaves them better prepared to deal with customers, and ultimately leaves customers more satisfied with their interactions.
The question becomes, what information is essential to the operation of your office as its happening and what makes more sense to leave for analysis? Status reporting and performance reporting are two different approaches to data collection that work best under different levels of call center maturity, and choosing the right one is essential to equipping your agents with the best possible tools to do their job.
Status reporting works best in a call center that’s been trained effectively and has a track record of success. Agents in this type of setting should be performing at a high level with little need for training and coaching. This call center knows what they are doing, knows their SLA's, the agents know their goals and regularly achieves them. This call center will have turnover that is lower than the industry averages and have agents that adhere to their schedules.
Reports for real-time status will include things like number of calls in queue, service levels, abandonment rates and the average time it takes agents to answer a call and handle it. Metrics like these are less about identifying weak links in your chain and more interested in developing their skills, giving the information they need to independently correct their actions for better service.
Performance reporting works a little better for a younger call center that’s still experiencing challenges. This could be a call center that has recently experienced high levels of turnover, or that despite significant investment in training continues to fall short on service goals.
In a setup like this additional focus is made on identifying overall performance in the each agent. Building on the metrics tracked in the status reporting model, performance reporting adds on to adherence levels and agent availability, giving a clearer picture of who is making a concerted effort to meet goals.
At a glance these two reports look very similar, however, when examining them further there are subtle differences. Knowing what these differences are and selecting the correct reports for your call center levels more room for effective redistribution of resources.
Both models work, but are best utilized when taking the circumstance of your call center into consideration. Using these strategies in conjunction with analytics suites that track the progress of each and uses call center wallboards to display the information is an easy way to boost the overall success of your call center.
Chris DiMarco is a Managing Editor for TMCnet. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Quinnipiac University. Prior to joining TMC (News - Alert) Chris worked with e-commerce provider Suresource as a contact center representative and development analyst. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page. Follow him on Twitter (News - Alert) @cpdimarco.
Edited by Jamie Epstein