As reported last week, Five9 (News - Alert) recently revealed its latest release of its cloud contact center software. One of the flagship highlights of the release is the new Five9 mobile supervisor app for the iPad.

The new app is designed to allow contact center supervisors to monitor and manage staff from any location, whether it is walking the call center aisles or from the doctor’s office waiting room. Managers can chat with agents; monitor real-time queues stats and agents; and listen to calls, whisper, or barge-in at any time from any place, all via their iPad.

Mayur Anadkat (News - Alert), director of product marketing at Five9, told TMCnet that supervisor capabilities are one of the two or three biggest areas that really call for an update in terms of contact center mobility.

“They are the hall monitors of a call center,” he explained. “They coach agents and make sure the entire operation is running smoothly. While they are typically tied down to a desk staring at random dashboards , flashing green or red depending on how things are going, they also want to be able to jump into situations to help specific agents out. Many times, this requires them to get up and physically walk around, leaving the information dashboard behind.”

Other times, supervisors need to jump in to help an agent talk through a difficult situation from their desk, so they’ll use a desktop chat interface or directly jump into the call. With Five9’s new supervisor app, they can do a great combination of both on the fly. Having the freedom to walk around the call center without abandoning critical information monitoring dashboards, supervisors can aid their agents without being disruptive to the function of the contact center as a whole. They can now physically whisper into an agent’s their ear or use the iPad app’s mobile capabilities to jump into the conversation if they notice something is wrong. 

“They key is they’re able to walk the aisles of the call center, getting a closer view of the entire situation,” said Anadkat.

The need for mobility in the contact center space is pressing, as Liz Osborn, vice president of product and solution marketing at Five9, described to TMCnet.

“In our everyday lives, we take mobility for granted, but the contact center is pretty behind in these types of technologies,” she noted.

Many companies are thus turning to Five9, one of only a handful of providers to offer mobile contact center solutions, to get ahead of the curve. Five9’s system is configured to enable both at-home agents as well as at home supervisors. This is a huge advantage for those companies looking to allow their employees to work remotely or that desire 24/7 total access to monitoring and management capabilities while off-site and on the move.

“The issue is fundamentally visibility and control,” said Anadkat. “Contact center supervisors wanting to meet their performance metrics just want visibility. When they’re at their desk they have a whole lot of visibility. Right now, technology is evolving so that you get the same kind of control and visibility regardless of where you are physically.”

With the addition of Five9’s supervisor app for iPad, both agents and managers can work from anywhere with the exact same visibility and control, regardless of whether they’re on site, at home, or on the go.