Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Today's Ideal Contact Center Agent Has Changed
There has long been an assumption that the best contact center agents are people who are good on the phone, and those that have some selling skills. While these are important for a good agent, today’s contact center is a much more complex place in years past. Agents today need to be good users of technology, good at multiskilling, able to type e-mail and chat messages in addition to using the telephone, and have skills in researching the answers to customer questions.
While this may prove bad news for “old guard” call center agents who have honed their skills entirely on the telephone, it’s good news for younger agents who may be great at technological multitasking, according to Chuck Ciarlo, CEO of Monet Software, in a recent blog post.
“Those will the ability to adapt to different communication channels will be more in demand,” he wrote. “Also, those with outstanding written skills, but who are not as comfortable with interaction via telephone, now have an opportunity to work successfully in this environment.”
While courtesy, empathy and phone skills will continue to remain important for successful contact center agents, today the laundry list of skills required by multichannel agents is much greater. Today’s agents must be able to work in a twenty-first century environment, and this includes:
Multitasking. Customers today expect to jump between media channels, even within the same transaction, so the days of putting agents on one communications channel are gone. Agents must be able to transfer from the telephone to the Web site to chat to e-mail and back again. For some contact centers, video chat is even becoming a reality.
Collaboration and teamwork. As customer interactions become more complex, they will often require the resources of more than one person. Many of today’s contact center platforms allow agents and other knowledge workers to collaborate and share knowledge. Agents should be willing (and able) to reach out for help so they don’t need to “reinvent the wheel” each time a customer has a less common problem.
Problem-solving. In the contact center environment today, answers to customer issues may be found in a variety of places: knowledge bases, customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, in online manuals and even on message boards and in videos. Contact centers should hire people capable of using their own initiative to hunt down answers, whether from inside or outside sources.
Time-management and schedule adherence. To avoid wasting time and money, the modern multichannel contact center agent must be able to adhere to often rigorous schedules, wrote Ciarlo.
“Specific contact centers will have additional expectations, such as the ability to work a non-traditional schedule. Agents that communicate with customers through a video chat will also need to maintain a professional appearance, with appropriate body language.”
It may be time for your contact center to reevaluate your criteria for hiring new agents. What worked 10 or even five years ago may no longer be a benefit to the company.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi