After spending the last couple of crazy months executing all of our contact center business continuity plans in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, let’s pause for a moment to reflect on what’s next for the work from home call center. Our CEO Paul Jarman has a saying that he’s used often these days and I think it applies broadly to any business or contact center leader when thinking about how to manage through this uncertainty: “we’re going to be short-term realistic and long-term optimistic.”
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Transforming customer experiences
Shawn Smith joined the NUG board in 2020 as the Analytics Chair.
Since the dawn of the contact center, there has never been a larger impact than the one we face with COVID-19. Many contact centers unprepared for a dramatic increase in customer contacts have scrambled to develop work from home plans and ramped up the use of self-service and automation.
Maintaining a strong performance management process with remote contact center agents can feel daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. On a regular day in the contact center, a supervisor will usually walk the floor, check on performance levels and coach agents face-to-face. In a remote contact center, performance management processes look a bit different, but the fundamentals remain the same.
A typical 500-agent contact center allocates approximately $2M a year to coaching contact center agents, but leaders often struggle to measure the ROI of coaching. With vast amounts of data available from evaluations, third-party assessments, automatic call distributors (ACDs) and more, leaders also find it difficult to understand what they need to focus on to affect their most mission-critical KPIs.
Tracey Koehler joined the NUG board in 2014 as the Director of Business Applications. She has served as the Chief Administrative Officer and currently contributes as the Voice of the Customer Product Chair, a position she has held since August 2018.
One of the top ways to make life easier for customers is by improving (or implementing) your interactive voice response (IVR) system. IVR is an automated self-service voice menu that accelerates resolution and improves routing. It integrates with your automatic call distributor (ACD), leveraging natural speech to collect caller information and determine optimal handling.