TMCnet
TMC Launches New Sites ::  NGC  |  4GWE  |  Green Tech  |  Satellite  |  IT |  IVR |  ITEXPO SHOW NEWS  |  Healthcare  |  Cisco News  |  Skype News  |  Microsoft News  |  AVAYA News
  INDUSTRIES
  VERTICALS
  HORIZONTAL
  PUBLICATIONS
  FREE RESOURCES
  INTERNATIONAL
  EVENTS
  ABOUT TMC
  COMMUNITIES


April 21, 2008

Performance Management Drives Efficiency in the Contact Center

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Performance management is often perceived as one of those buzz words that corporate will use in order to drive efficiency within company departments. While such perception can encourage some to overlook the importance of the concept, many organizations are stepping up their efforts to implement solutions that actually impact performance.



In the contact center industry, many employees are in a position where their everyday activities change very little from day to day. Their goal is to handle customer interactions as efficiently as possible, while also driving other performance metrics set by corporate management.

Merely worrying about the loss of a job is rarely enough of an incentive to drive performance improvement within the contact center. And, considering the costs associated with replacing agents, the contact center cannot afford to consistently threaten job loss to spur motivation.

Instead, performance management can play a key role in actually motivating contact center employees to not only want to perform their job well, but to excel within his or her position. Why? It helps to outline the agent’s specific and important role in the overall success of the company and allows him or her to measure activities against standards and against his or her own performance.

Implementing an effective performance management strategy helps to create an empowering environment where agents take it upon themselves to determine their own performance and how it can be improved. Such an approach can not only improve overall performance of the center, but also significantly reduce the amount of time supervisors must spend in mentoring agents on areas of improvement.

An environment with an effective performance management system in place will find that agents feel a part of the larger team and that their efforts contribute to the overall failure or success of that team. Such an environment will find motivated individuals who not only seek to improve their performance, but also encourage others on their team.

Let us now forget how important such an environment is for the bottom line and for customer satisfaction. Performance management solutions can help to keep agent attrition at a manageable level, can improve first contact resolution, and increase the number of calls handled per hour for each agent. These statistics and more will help to drive costs of operation down as efficiency improves.
 
For the customer, the overall experience will be significantly heightened. When interacting with an agent in the contact center, the customer will be talking with a motivated employee that cares about the customer’s happiness. What better way to ensure customer satisfaction.
 
For more, be sure to check out the Performance Management channel on TMCnet.
 
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC (News - Alert) and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

(source: http://www.tmcnet.com/channels/performance-management/articles/25831-performance-management-drives-efficiency-the-contact-center.htm)

Directory Assistance As A Value-Add Proposition
Performance Management Drives Efficiency in the Co.....
Consumers Relying on Social Media to Share and Res.....
What Is "Crowdsourcing"?
Performance Management Helps Create Efficient, Eff.....
A Study On Best Practices In Hiring BPO Talent In .....
SugarCRM 'Full Monty' Offered by BT
Avistar Picks NICE for Compliance & Risk Managemen.....
Performance Management Channel Launches on TMCnet
TuVox to Support Intelligent Customer Front Door
Live Event: The Benefits Of Hosted Solutions For T.....
Forrester Research Highlights Nexidia For Speech A.....
CRM and Obama, CRM in the Gulf, LS2 and Microsoft .....
A NICE Summit
Consumer Acceptance of Automated Communications


Subscribe FREE to all of TMC's monthly magazines. Click here now.