Virtual Call Center

 The National Retail Federation recently forecast that holiday retail sales are expected to increase 2.3 percent this year -- to $447.1 billion, a turnaround from a disastrous 2008 and a ho-hum 2009.

“An increase in store traffic, call center activity, transactions and interactions can stress customer-facing technologies and the employees who use them,” said Lori Wizdo, vice president, marketing at Knoa (News - Alert) Software, in a statement.

Wizdo said that Knoa has been helping companies optimize employee use of corporate software applications for the better part of a decade and the company has put together a series of ‘tips’ based on real-world experience and, proven results, to drive optimal performance of employees who depend on software tools to do their jobs.

Officials with Knoa said that the company has published five ‘tips’ to help companies drive high performance of their customer-facing employees.

It has suggested that the companies should monitor employee use of retail and call center technology; fix technology glitches fast; optimize training efforts; look for use of workarounds and implement better processes.

The company said that it is important that companies fully enable their front-line personnel, including retail sales associates, contact center sales agents and all customer service personnel. End-user management software gives organizations a new focus on end-user adoption, utilization and performance, uniquely capturing a complete picture of the end-user experience and behavior, including user-experienced response time for key system transactions; system and application error metrics as well as user-created errors; and application utilization, revealing which transactions are used, in what sequence and for how long.

Wizdo said that companies who invest in optimizing employee performance realize gains in customer traffic, revenue per transaction and customer satisfaction with the retail experience.