Ask any contact center manager
what their best resource is, and they will immediately tell you: my
agents. Agents are also the most costly resource, eating up more than half
of a contact centers budget. Countless dollars are spent each year on
training new agents, and turnover rates are high, meaning the training
starts all over again, begging the question, What can I do to retain my
agents and why are they leaving? The job of an agent in a fast-paced
contact center is grueling, highly measured and often frustrating. Among
the prime reasons agents have for leaving is a feeling of powerlessness,
which is caused by having little or no input into how they work. They can
also develop a feeling of uneasiness that comes from not knowing how they
are doing and not having a constant source of measurement other than
weekly or monthly reviews.
Making the workplace a better place for agents and supervisors alike,
and thus improving productivity, is the idea behind the Emvolve
Performance Manager from Performix Technologies (www.performixtechnologies.com).
I recently spoke to a contact center agent, Michelle Taylor, at Spherion (www.spherion.com)
to find out how her job performance has changed since Spherion implemented
Emvolve in the contact center where she works in Victoria, Texas. Also in
on the call was Michelles supervisor, Randall Morich, assistant site
manager.
Spherion provides recruitment, outsourcing and technology solutions for
its clients, and Michelle works customer service for pre-paid calling
cards, handling an average of 100 calls per day. Spherions quality
assurance department monitors call quality, and other performance
measurements include adherence to scheduled breaks and lunch times, as
well as etiquette, volume, tone and pace. Before implementing Emvolve,
agents used to have to wait for a supervisor to have time to sit down with
them to review their scores, but now, when checking in each morning,
Michelle logs on and the Emvolve screen pops up. She said she can easily
pull up reports on her desktop and she can see how her scores have gone up
since Emvolve was put in place. Feedback is good, said Michelle, as
she now get reports on a daily basis. Michelles main area of
improvement was quality, and she can compare her scores weekly, monthly,
quarterly and yearly. She can also check to see areas where she needs
improvement.
When agents exceed goals, they have an awards program, and Michelle can
see what she needs to do to achieve scores that will earn her rewards. The
company sets expectations, which helps keep me focused on callers, she
said. It helps me to challenge myself instead of having the supervisor
do it, so it motivates me more. She admitted she was always
apprehensive of performance reviews before because she didnt have any
feedback and she couldnt anticipate how she was doing, but that using
Emvolve has helped reduce her anxiety because she now has instant access
to her performance data.
Allowing the agents access to this information also saves supervisors
time. Managers can see the performance of various teams and encourage
supervisors as well. Randall said, Agents like to see data, and we want
to give customers a high-quality call, which also helps maintain and
retain customers as well as agents. Emvolve has improved the overall
quality of the monitoring program and has helped the coaches. We have
improved the overall quality of the call center, most likely improving
agent retention and really increasing agent satisfaction. Emvolve is a
good tool. It has helped turn average agents into good agents and good
agents into superior ones. And it took the agents only 30 minutes to learn
how to use it.
Based on the success of Emvolve Performance Manager at Spherions
contact center in Victoria, the solution is currently being rolled out
across all of the companys eight contact centers in the U.S. and will
be used by over 1,300 agents.
Moving Beyond The ABCs
Another factor in delivering consistent service and agent satisfaction is
providing an excellent training program because, as everyone knows from
personal experience, you feel more comfortable answering questions or
doing your job if you understand what you are doing.
If you have just a few agents, providing a consistent training program
is similar to teaching in a one-room school: the students may be at
different levels, but there is only one teacher. When you have hundreds
(or thousands) of agents, ensuring a consistent curriculum and measurement
system for all can be difficult, especially if you have contact centers
spread out across town or across the globe. To provide a consistent
training program for all agents, no matter how far-flung, is the idea
behind Envision Telephonys (www.envisiontelephony.com)
Click2Coach Multisite Edition.
Ron Strandin, vice president of sales and marketing at Envision
Telephony, said that most computer-based training has failed because most
of what agents do in contact centers is talk, not read, and that one
advantage of Click2Coach is that it can deliver verbal training (as well
as written) through examples. Typically, most technology for quality
monitoring and teaching is siloed in contact centers, said Strandin.
With the Multisite Edition, there is one central point for the collection
and distribution of enterprise reporting, administration and training that
pulls together information from all of an enterprises contact centers.
Click2Coach offers integrated quality monitoring, performance
evaluation and e-learning in one coaching solution, providing tools for
scheduling and recording customer interactions, evaluating agent skills
and producing personalized training content. The authoring tools can be
used to create personalized training videos on-demand as well as integrate
existing training content in any format into the curriculum. From one
central location, supervisors can review recorded interactions, complete
an online evaluation and attach existing training or create a personalized
video that addresses the agents specific needs. This coaching package
can then be sent directly to the agents desktop, no matter where the
agent is located. Agents receive an instant alert telling them they have
received new information and are able to access their supervisors
coaching instantly. The browser-based Multisite Edition also provides a
global view of agents, groups and contact centers from a single interface
and consolidated, real-time reporting for instant access to critical data.
We all strive to do our best at our jobs, and Performix and Envision
Telephony are providing tools to help agents improve how they work; and
improving agent performance and job satisfaction improves the bottom line.
Sincerely,
Rich Tehrani
Group Publisher,
Group Editor-in-Chief
rtehrani@tmcnet.com
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