Prayers are Answered with New Contact Center Software - Literally

Most contact centers have traditional hours with ordinary caller inquiries ranging from credit card suspicions or payments to asking general questions. But what if your contact center had no specific working hours, rather, you could remain on the line for as long as you felt compelled to? This is exactly the type of environment experienced in the Christian Broadcasting Network’s contact center, which is called the Prayer Center, where agents discuss callers’ spiritual needs at any time of the day. While this is an amazing and inspiring organization, the center needed something to help better train their employees who so selflessly devoted the majority of their time to their abundance of faithful customers (pun intended).

So, the company invested in Knowlagent’s RightTime contact center software, which helped improve agents’ training and performance by sending company messages, updates and training programs directly to their desktops, according to Tracy Swager, director of the network’s contact center. This means the agents would essentially never have to leave their stations again to review the latest and more relevant training methods as well as learn about new TV programming that would help better shape the customer call, she added.

Engaging in traditional classroom training sessions either took too many agents off of the floor at once or left too many agents unaware of new and better training to help further business continuity, which would better address the needs of their unique client base.

By bringing everything straight to the agents, scheduling worries were ultimately eliminated altogether, which opened a great door of opportunity for renewed focus on operations, Swager explained. Further, the center’s managers can see which agents received training and how they fared.

While some call centers have 24/7 call times for automated assistance, CBN’s Prayer Center impressively never closes, thanks to its encouraging 275 agents’ willingness to work various shifts to cover as many as 15,000 daily telephone and e-mail-based interactions. The Network, which boasts the popular show The 700 Club, is certainly thankful for Knowlagent’s software, which efficiently works to determine which contact center agents are busy and which are free, quickly distributing customer calls accordingly.

When it comes to this kind of “business,” some caller’s needs can be exceptionally urgent, which is exactly why this aspect of the software is so vital.

"We're reclaiming those wait minutes," she said. "We're also reducing the minutes an agent would spend before calls checking new information."

The company’s contact center headquarters can be found in Virginia Beach, VA, and CBN has also made it known that over the course of the next year, it’s hoping to start increasing its number of virtual call center workers, which also ties into another expectation of its new RightTime software.

Working from home has never sounded so essential than for a call center that is open for live communication 24/7 – thanks to the advancements made in efficient contact center software.

Edited by Jamie Epstein