October 18, 2012
New Call Center Software is a Godsend for The Christian Broadcasting Network
By Rich Steeves
TMCnet Managing Editor
If call center managers at The Christian Broadcast Network thought they could get every soul in the company together for training at the same time, well, they didn’t have a prayer of achieving that goal. Since the call center agents are there to address the spiritual needs of thousands of callers, it is not easy to pull them away from their duties, and therefore a holy terror to try and coordinate training sessions. That is, until the company found the right call center software, which proved to be a heaven-sent gift.
The company had previously attempted to perform training sessions in a traditional classroom fashion, sort of a Sunday School for the Lord’s call center agents. But that proved to be impossible, and management was forced to go in a different direction. Rather than attempt to tweak the in-person model, the manager opted to implement call center training software from Knowlagent.
The RightTime call center software sends training programs and company messages directly to the desktops of agents, meaning that they do not have to leave their stations in order to learn the latest training procedures and get up-to-date on the new programming coming out from the Christian Broadcasting Network.
The CBN call center, known as the Prayer Center, is open all day, every day, and 275 agents receive as many as 15,000 calls and e-mails every single day. The agents offer spiritual advice and prayers to the callers as well as more typical call center duties such as taking orders for products. The call center software can route training modules to agents who are not on a call, taking up no more than seven minutes of their time. The software also allows for the scheduling of training sessions during the periods of greatest downtime.
CBN has estimated that it has recovered almost 8,500 minutes of productivity per month. "We're reclaiming those wait minutes," said Tracy Swager, director of the contact center. "We're also reducing the minutes an agent would spend before calls checking new information."
Edited by Rachel Ramsey