Call centers worldwide are implementing Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to completely revamp the way in which they connect with consumers while simultaneously measuring up to increasing demands from these individuals who expect a response to a variety of questions, complaints and issues in a short period of time. These environments are also required to continuously drive agent productivity, which is why many of these contact centers are increasingly turning to multi-skill and multi-channel routing strategies.
Defined as solutions that can be leveraged to better equip a center to have the right agents in place at exactly the right times, according to a recent article, “Essentially, these strategies create larger pools of contacts and agents, which leads to the greater likelihood of an agent completing a contact just as another comes in,” commented Pommie Lutchmann, CEO at specialist contact center solutions and services provider, Ocular Technologies.
Lutchmann added, “This is a desirable position as it creates economies of scale and leads to increases in occupancy, which is the amount of time individual agents are working. The greater productivity lowers the overall number of agents required.”
What this means is that as things like video and social media websites are being leveraged even more by customers, VoIP-based call centers must not only remain at the forefront of next-generation technologies but must increasingly embrace the use of these communication channels to see an array of benefits and enable individuals to communicate in the way in which they feel most comfortable.
Workforce management tools can also be utilized to accurately gauge how efficient agents are which will help call centers to expand over the long term and improve customer satisfaction rates. However, multi-skill employees that can successfully complete many projects at one time is a crucial elements in this process because if someone is only good at one thing it won’t help the center to thrive overall.
Lutchmann concluded, “The multi-skilled staffing problem can be solved by dividing types of contacts into forecast groups and types of agents into staff groups. The multi-skill routing logic relating forecast groups to staff groups should be captured within a third layer known as a routing set. With staff groups, analysts can track the contribution of agents with specific skills sets so that the economies of scale achievable through partial cross-training and utilization of skills-based routing can be accurately calculated.”
PowerNet Global (News - Alert) is major company focused on the VoIP call center space and powers NetDialer. Touted as the company’s outbound dialer long distance service that has been created to be utilized within outbound call centers that mandate a cost- effective product that can get a specific message out to a large amount of people rapidly, the company enables users to benefit from Tier 1 call quality on high velocity, short duration (HVSD) calls without any associated fees.
To find out more about how PNG can help your organization, click here.
Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2012, taking place Oct. 2-5, in Austin, TX. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. For more information on registering for ITEXPO click here.
Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO. Follow us on Twitter.
Edited by Amanda Ciccatelli