Successful Contact Centers Measure, Coach, Rinse, Repeat

They say the more things change the more they stay the same. When it comes to contact center environments that rings true. Then again, not so much.

Change is inevitable, of course. And what happens in and around contact centers is no exception to that rule.

Traffic coming into the contact center varies based on an array of factors. Those factors include time of day, day of the week, time of month, seasonality, new product releases, new customer offers, and even things like weather. So successful contact centers, like any smart businesses and departments, do their best to plan for these kinds of change and adapt to them in both the short and long term.

But while change is a constant, approaches and tools to address that change tend to be pretty consistent. For contact centers that includes using the factors noted above to forecast traffic volumes and the talent demands related to them and setting schedules based on that intelligence. It also includes training agents so they’re prepared to support new campaigns, channels, and customers. And it should involve quality monitoring to assess the performance of agents, processes, and systems so contact centers have a better idea of what’s happening and why, and can move to improve customer service and satisfaction, adherence to key performance indicator goals, and overall business outcomes.

Another constant is that some people will come to the job motivated, excited to learn, and ready to help. Other folks may want to do a good job, but are more tentative about their ability to do that and need a bit more handholding and encouragement. Meanwhile, some workers may exhibit high confidence but when if look at their actual output, they may be lacking. And then there are those who simply don’t seem to care for whatever reason.

Carefully vetting candidates during recruitment and hiring can go a long way toward attracting and onboarding more of the former and fewer of the latter types. But, as we all know, it’s tough to predict what people will do until they’re in specific situations. And sometimes slow starters can be the biggest success stories.

To keep every up to speed on the latest changes to contact center requirements, and to bring those who need a little extra guidance to improve (which is pretty much everybody), contact centers can do performance monitoring to listen to and analyze interactions in real time or after the fact. That can help them assess individual agents, interaction trends and keywords, and overall contact center performance. Contact center managers can then leverage that data to provide both general guidance and specific coaching to their agents. And they can keep tabs on whether agents are employing their new knowledge to improve performance.

Edited by Maurice Nagle