Twenty-First Century Problems for Call Center Management

While call center managers have always had a difficult job to do – juggling the needs of customers, the requirements of upper management and the issues of call center employees – there are some problems that are more modern than others. Twenty years ago, a call center manager didn’t need to wonder if workers were being distracted by social media. Avoiding work looked more like standing around the water cooler, or chatting in the break room. Today, it’s harder to pinpoint.

Following are a few way call center managers have had to adapt to more modern issues.

Customers are more demanding. There’s no denying that customer expectations are higher than ever today. They know all about their other options when it comes to a business’ competition, thanks to a ubiquitous Internet connection. They’re always willing to complain about a company’s product or service – or quality of customer support – widely and loudly on social media.

Workers expect more guidance. The days of training contact center agents, putting them on the phone and largely forgetting about them until review time are over. Younger employees from the Millennial generation expect more from their managers. They want guidance and encouragement. They want morale boosting. They want opportunities to learn more skills and train for more responsibility. Is it hand-holding? Maybe, but it often results in more engaged agents.

Better self-service. Self-service, once limited to an awkwardly designed interactive voice response (IVR) system, is now better than ever. IVRs are more customizable and nimbler, speech-to-text allows for automated responses to customers, chat bots can handle basic requests by text. Customers prefer to find their own answers. This improvement in self-service hasn’t eliminated the need for contact centers, but it does mean that call center agents are now getting more complex calls that can’t be answered via self-service. These calls are taking longer and requiring more training for agents.

Tracking multichannel quality. It’s no longer just about phone calls. Customers are emailing, texting, asking questions via social media and posting issues on a company’s Web site. This makes keeping track of quality metrics and making sense out of all thee data even harder. Call centers managers are having to work harder to track the omnichannel customer experience to ensure a consistent quality of service is being offered.

In short, home-grown solutions can no longer serve the needs of twenty-first century call center management. Look for newer, customizable platforms that can bring both the employee and the customer experience together, making for more centralized monitoring, training, reporting, metrics and problem resolution. It’s no longer 1999. 

Edited by Maurice Nagle