TMCnews Featured Article

The most important resource in any contact center is the agent who actually communicates with the customer. Don’t forget to support these agents properly.

While lists, customer relations management software and computers are vitally important in the contact center, they amount to nothing without a good agent on the other end of the phone; even the best lists will fail if agents are not connecting well with customers.

Likewise, contact center agents are the single highest expense in any contact center operation. The contact center is all about its human capital, more than most businesses.

Supporting these agents means not only having good training programs in place, it also means helping these agents be efficient. Mind-numbing work and wasted agent productivity can both hurt morale and reduce a contact center’s effectiveness substantially.

One of the best ways to support agent productivity is through a quality automated dialer.

With an auto dialer such as the SpitFire X Auto Dialer, the time agents waste not talking to customers can be reduced by up to 20 percent according to some calculations. The time savings from an auto dialer may be only a few seconds per call, but it adds up.

An auto dialer should include features such as different messages for live answers and answering machines, automatic time zone adjustments, query-based dialing, full do-not-call list compliance, robust reporting, and features such as campaign pre-scheduling and queuing.

The most important benefit, however, is the most basic: It keeps agents on the phone by making sure they are always talking to customers and not waiting to reach those on the other side of the line.

Agents are the most important component of the contact center, and automated dialers play a huge role in these agents living up to their potential.

So don’t forget to support your agents properly. And definitely don’t skimp on auto dialer software.