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Managing call center performance is not an easy task; however, it plays an essential role in contact center success. Here at Qualishore, our team leaders and managers incorporate performance management into their day-to-day work ethics to achieve real results.

A significant amount of system data and management information is underutilized in contact centers. Fortunately, this information is typically at hand and can be put to work to improve performance. With that in mind, here are some quick call center performance management tips that we have been using to leverage information at our disposal.

1.  Determine Your Best KPIs

Defining clear KPIs can help establish the right business goals for your organization, which you can then break down into team and individual performance targets. Focus on the key revenue drivers for your business, whether it’s new sales, repeat business, debt collected vs. debt outstanding, or even number of appointments booked. Follow these through to the agent level to align their goals with those of the business.

Other call center metrics that you can use for performance management include the total number of calls handled (inbound and outbound), wait time, average call duration (talk time and wrap time), and the percentage of abandoned calls. In addition to being utilized for performance management, service level agreements can be set against these numbers.

2.  Motivate and Encourage Agents and Managers

In outbound sales or collection environments, you can reward top performers by giving them access to the best dialing data with league tables or similar reports. Or start trainees on old or recycled leads. You can keep them excited and improve their opportunities as they progress by giving them calls to reach customers. You should also consider quality measures – e.g., customer satisfaction ratings, employee engagement, call quality scoring, and first contact resolution – as these all play a role in the overall effectiveness of the operation. You can use quality monitoring and customer survey tools to identify potential problem areas.

Also, keep an eye on real-time dashboards to identify underlying performance issues like too much time in wrap up or ACW. A common problem, spending too long on after-call work, slows the pace of campaigns overall. You can relay these types of issues to agents and offer training and incentives to improve performance.

3.  Take Advantage of Time Saving Tools

With the proper features, you can save valuable agent time. For example, we have an outbound dialer that does not waste time calling mobile phones that are invalid, turned off, or roaming. In a typical call center environment, this equates to efficiency savings of up to 15%. It also increases talk time by 30% on average, meaning agents can concentrate on speaking to those customers who are available.

Local and mobile number presentation is also another great time saver. Used in conjunction with your performance management solution, it can improve customer pick-ups. In fact, your customers are 20% more likely to answer a call from their local area code than a call from an out of area location. And if they missed the call, they’re twice as likely to call back.

4.  Allocate More Agents to a Single Campaign

Do you segregate leads among specific agents? Are you overly reliant on personal callbacks? You might have fallen into the account ownership trap. Sometimes your customers don’t care whom they speak to as long as they receive quality service on time. If you use a predictive dialer, you can boost productivity by allocating more agents to a campaign. And don’t implement a well-meaning but misguided bonus plan that encourages agents to disable predictive by hoarding potential leads and repeatedly scheduling personal callbacks.

5.  Enable Personalized Customer/Agent Contact

It would be great if every call resulted in the desired outcome, but in the real world, many calls require additional follow-up to close sales or collect debts. While we pointed out in tip #4 that you don’t want to fall into the account ownership trap, some campaigns and customers call for a deeper rapport. Improving contact center performance management doesn’t happen overnight. Make sure you dig into the details when analyzing data and use your call center reporting tools effectively to help gauge success.

Cloud-based solutions are likely to dominate the future

Before COVID-19, the vast majority of contact center workers turned up to an office every day where colleagues and managers surrounded them. The future of work is likely to look very different and may take on one or more of the following characteristics:

• most people working from home at least some of the time
• some people working from home most of the time
• split shifts that mean fewer staff members are in the office at once
• some workers going back to the office more or less full time.

This will create a strong need for flexible and agile systems that can support workers and managers regardless of their location. Cloud is the only infrastructure option that will deliver the kind of flexibility and agility required to provide a consistent and engaging experience for all staff members. It improves the availability of applications and infrastructure and removes the burden of management from the IT team.

Key benefits of a cloud-based contact center environment

1. Cost savings

Cloud-based infrastructure removes the need to spend capital investments on infrastructure in the office and in people’s homes, should they choose to (or be required to) work from home. With a cloud-based environment, the physical location of staff members becomes irrelevant, as everyone can access the same systems and applications regardless of where they’re sitting.

2. Security

When employees work from home, the physical layer of security that was provided when they worked in the office is no longer present. This creates a potential security risk for organizations that must be addressed. Contact centers tend to have a great deal of valuable information, including credit card details and purchase history; this information must be protected according to the Privacy Act and other relevant legislation. Cloud-based contact centers environments, or contact center-as-a-service (CCaaS), include built-in security features that maintain data protection, giving businesses peace of mind that valuable customer data will be safe.

3. A consistent customer experience

Customers interacting with the contact center need to have a consistent experience regardless of whether the employee is in the office or working from somewhere else. That means information must be available at the employee’s fingertips, and the business must be able to deliver a seamless experience.

Contact center agents don’t just need a phone and a customer relationship management (CRM) system to work from home. They also need access to knowledge bases, resources, colleagues, and coaches. All of these elements of the contact center ecosystem feed into the customer experience. Cloud-based systems put that information at the fingertips of all employees no matter where they’re working from, delivering a consistent experience.

4. Transparency and an engaged workforce

When employees work from home, it can be difficult to tell whether they are being productive, focusing on work, and delivering strong customer experience. Using a cloud-based system with voice, text, and desktop analytics capabilities drives detailed insights on what employees are doing. It can reveal when employees are engaged with customers versus when they’re browsing websites, doing online shopping, or perusing social media platforms. It can also show areas where contact center agents could benefit from additional training, for example.

With a cloud-based contact center solution, artificial intelligence-based metrics can also be used to measure employee performance not just in terms of traditional productivity metrics but also in terms of the impact of customer-centric behaviors.

5. Better coaching for employees

Employees working from home don’t have the benefit of a nearby manager who can listen to their calls and provide advice and coaching in real-time. This means coaching has fundamentally changed because it can no longer leverage the social capital that is created when coaches and agents interact face-to-face. This is a critical area that needs to be addressed when employees work from anywhere. Workforce engagement and automated quality measurement solutions help enterprises identify the key improvement areas that need coaching.

With artificial intelligence (AI)-based metrics, managers can see if agents are listening and being empathetic if they’re acknowledging loyalty, and if they’re building strong relationships. This approach makes it easy to see which agents would benefit from additional training and which agents are the top performers. Gamification can help deepen employees’ commitment to ongoing improvement. And these same tools must be available to employees in the office or at home to ensure consistency.

6. A technology-proofed contact center

A cloud-based solution can help technology-proof the contact center so that it can continue to provide exceptional experiences even as technology evolves, without having to invest in expensive, monolithic, on-premise upgrades. For example, the collaborative nature of work is expanding to include the customer. In this evolving field, the cloud is the linchpin that makes collaboration, communication, and availability possible.

7. Digital twins to help employees be productive from day one

Some new employees may never have seen the office. Working from home for these people can mean that some things take twice as long. A digital twin, which acts as a virtual assistant, can help walk these employees through customer interactions, guiding them on the next best action so that they can deliver an excellent customer experience right from their first day.

From monitoring employee desktop activity to automating mundane tasks, digital twins participate in every key event in the employee’s day.

Ensuring that your customers are happy, begins with taking their point of view. During their interactions with your company, there may be times when your service falls short of their expectations. However, to identify these moments, it is essential to create a customer journey map. These maps allow companies to gain a visual understanding of the entire customer experience, anticipate problems that may arrive at each step, and ultimately find solutions proactively. Here are four specific reasons why your brand should create a customer journey map.

To better understand customers’ feelings

When you map out the customer experience, you can anticipate why customers might choose each channel and how they might feel at each touchpoint. For example, what might a customer who contacts you for service via social media expect from the interaction? What is your brand’s typical response time in this situation? You can use a map to anticipate the needs of customers at each step and consider all the possible outcomes when you interact with them. By consulting customer feedback and data, you can also apply the information you have already learned about actual experiences.

To identify gaps in service

Customer journey maps enable your call center to identify any potential gaps in service. When customers switch from one channel to another, what problems may arise? Will a customer’s data be available for the next agent who handles the case, or will the customer have to repeat information? These maps can be used to determine how seamlessly one can move across channels and different devices such as computers and smartphones.

To offer more exceptional customer experiences

Once you have identified any problems with your service, your company can work as a whole to improve them. Both customer service and sales teams can receive additional training and mentoring, and they may be invited to share their own feedback. It is also essential to define clear goals for the entire company as well as for each department. The better your employees understand what they should be working toward, the more successful everyone in the organization will be.

To drive brand growth

Ultimately, customer journey maps are excellent tools for driving brand success. By recognizing problems before they arise, you can avoid the cost of losing customers who might otherwise abandon your company. At the same time, more effortless experiences will surely attract the attention of both new and current customers.

Any brand that claims to embrace a customer-centric attitude must take mapping seriously. By seeing your company through the eyes of your customers and striving to surpass their expectations with seamless experiences, you will achieve greater success in the long term.

Customer experience is a top priority for any company, and a well- functioning one is vital in winning customer loyalty. But just what does it take to have a stellar reputation in this industry? Here are five qualities of an exceptional contact center that we have used, which lead to outstanding customer service.

1.  Matching agents to the best roles

There is a remarkable saying that everyone is unique in one way. Similarly, agents bring all different kinds of experience and skills to the table. So why not ensure that they are matched with the roles that suit them best? For example, extroverted personalities may be a great fit for the voice channel, whereas agents with strong writing skills may shine on live chat. Even if they are working across multiple channels, they may be invited to share their skills with others during training sessions. Lastly, placing agents in the best roles empowers them and prevents the need to restaff roles frequently.

2.  Great communication skills

Communication is, after all, what customer service is all about. But the big question is, do your employees communicate well with each other? An excellent contact center needs efficient internal communications. Managers should always mentor agents and invite them to share feedback. Training sessions and employee retreats are ideal for allowing employees to share skills and experiences. Besides, don’t forget service interactions—agents need to communicate clearly with each other when customers need the help of more than one person.

3.  Analyzing data for continuous improvement

Contact centers collect plenty of data. Exceptional ones act upon this data to improve their practices. Average handling times and first contact resolution rates, for example, may indicate if there are recurring issues that need to be addressed. Surveys offer precise information about your customers’ feelings, helping individual agents improve their skills. Lastly, the Net Promoter Score reveals the likelihood of your customers becoming brand advocates—an excellent marker of your contact center’s overall success.

4.  Creating an effortless customer experience

What’s the best way to win customers’ affection? Make every experience painless and fun! Friendly agents immediately put customers at ease, and a lighthearted tone can make a customer experience a memorable one. When it comes to technology, customers should be able to contact agents quickly and never wait too long. Service interactions become complicated when customers need to be transferred to another agent or department, so always make sure that information is well noted.

5.  Connecting with the company as a whole

The contact center is an integral part of a larger team—the company itself. Executives must communicate the brand mission to the customer service teams so that employees know how to approach their work. Contact center management must then work with other technical teams—such as web development—to determine if all technical processes are running smoothly and that the brand website and social media channels reflect important contact information. Such communication enables a brand to be more coherent and appeal to customers.

A contact center is a very busy place – transparent processes are essential to making it run seamlessly. Keeping customers’ best interests at heart, communicating clearly, and maintaining an open attitude toward ongoing improvements can turn a functioning contact center into a truly exceptional one.

At Qualishore, our prime focus is solving customers’ issues in the first instance that they have contacted us. However, First Contact Resolution (FCR) is more than just friendly agents. In order to achieve this goal, it requires a combination of agent training, a robust omnichannel solution, and an efficient contact center protocol.

Here are five (5) steps we use to achieve first contact resolution for maximum customer satisfaction.

1.  Discuss FCR goals with your staff

In an effort to serve customers well, your agents need to know what goals are expected of them. Besides, ensure you have established whether first contact resolution should take priority over other metrics such as average handle time, among others. Most importantly, let your agents know if they are permitted to spend more time on an interaction if it helps them find a permanent solution to the customer’s issue.

2.  Give every interaction a human touch

Connecting with customers emotionally is critical to helping them find quick solutions and ending the interaction on a positive note. Agents can do this by keeping a friendly tone, showing empathy, and listening attentively. These mannerisms can calm down frustrated customers and instill confidence in your brand. Through regular training and mentoring, agents may sharpen their interpersonal skills and increase their chances of achieving first contact resolution every time.

3.  Identify recurring issues

Understanding ongoing customer concerns is a vital way to achieve FCR. Use different means to determine recurring reasons for contact: Look at customer surveys, monitor calls, analyze social media and live chat transcripts, and use text and speech analytics to gain a clear picture of these issues. Once they have been identified, your brand will be better prepared to solve problems before they arise.

4.  Use an omnichannel approach

While some customers may prefer to interact on a single channel, sometimes it is in their best interest to make a switch. For example, if a customer asks a question on social media that requires sharing personal data, the agent should certainly move him to a more private channel. With such a gesture, the customer’s privacy is protected, and his problem is addressed on an appropriate channel.

5.  Verify the customer’s satisfaction

An agent may think a problem has been solved. But does the customer feel this way? Always check with the customer to learn if he has any questions or concerns regarding an agent’s proposed solution. If there are still lingering issues, and the customer needs more support, be sure to keep going until a genuinely satisfying solution is found. First contact resolution ultimately saves your customers time and sends the message that your brand takes them seriously. By supporting your agents consistently, you can ensure their success and the satisfaction of your customers.

To help deliver the very best customer experiences, contact us if you’re interested in learning more about our services.

Recruiting and hiring the right people is by far the most crucial part of any organization’s business plan. People are the most significant investment any company will make into its future. Talent acquisition is not only about filling open positions; it is about taking a long-term strategic view for filling future posts as well. It is about collecting relevant data and keeping in touch with candidates until the right position is available. It is more about building relationships with top talent in the industry than it is about simply recruiting for current job opportunities.

The process of hiring talent often involves many steps over several months. But generally, here are the steps we suggest:

1. Sourcing and Lead Generation

Starting with an irresistible job description, you would begin identifying social networks, industry events and conferences, online forums, and communities where specialists in your industry gather. There, you can network and schmooze, build relationships, and make your talent needs widely known. In doing so, you will generate a large pool of promising candidates and an even more robust pipeline of potential hires.

2. Recruiting and Attracting

Building a strong company brand, promoting your unique company culture, and designing a competitive compensation package are vital components of attracting and retaining stars in your industry. Candidate relationship management is as well, which means: creating a positive candidate experience, courting leads, and keeping in touch with those who aren’t a perfect fit now but could be in the future.

3. Interviewing and Assessing

Identify the 3-5 most essential tasks that the position requires and the key performance indicators that will help define success. Then, you can build your interview questions based on behaviors, such as, “What have you done that is like this…?” Aim for questions that check out a candidate’s ability to solve problems, be resourceful, and think on their feet. You can also assess candidates using other tools: a skills test (like a sample writing or programming task), a personality or cognitive evaluation, or a demonstrated pitch or close.

4. Checking References

Many hiring managers skip this step, but checking a candidate’s references can solidify your gut feeling about a candidate’s fit. Validate your choice by checking references to see if there are any final concerns or impressions you may have missed. If the reference agrees the candidate has the character and qualifications you’re looking for, you are set to start making offers.

5. Making Final Selections

Have a system for selecting from your most reliable candidates. Use people tracking and evaluative software or an internal grading system — both for your own talent team, but also any other stakeholders involved in the decision making. Assuming your C-suite and other employees are as busy as you are, make this final selection process as transparent and hassle-free as possible.

6. Hiring and Onboarding

Although this step does not necessarily fall under the responsibilities of the talent acquisition team, it is certainly the final phase of hiring top talent. Note that a robust onboarding process can make or break a new employee relationship, so prepare for and streamline this process as much as possible before your new employee starts.

While each organization handles and houses talent acquisition differently, the talent acquisition team is arguably the most critical driver of corporate culture and positive long term growth.