Now that technology has evolved to the point that the center in the call center is no longer a requirement, do you wonder at times if this limits the features you can leverage in the virtual call center? It can be easy to assume that you would have to give up call monitoring or call recording or lose your ability to measure performance. The reality, however, is that the virtual call center creates an environment in which your agents can thrive and so will your customer service.
Contactual (News - Alert) recently covered this topic in a blog, focusing on a ContactBabel (News - Alert) survey. Participants in this survey were asked to rate the most effective and important ways they can improve the customer service levels provided by their call center agents. At the top of the list were call recording, monitoring and performance dashboards. When launching a
virtual call center, all of these things can be managed, captured and improved.
According to call center supervisors, the most effective tool to improve customer service in the virtual call center is call recording. The technology involved in call recording does get more sophisticated every day and the more features and functionality that the call center can offer its supervisors to measure agent performance, the more efficient the process for resolving customer issues becomes.
Even in a virtual call center environment, supervisors can track the calls of the agents according to skill-sets, ID or inbound/outbound activity. Supervisors can review and enhance agent-customer interactions to improve overall performance. Plus, training sessions can become more
effective as interactions used are actually real-world examples that have been captured by the call center application.
Call center managers can also help to improve performance of the virtual call center by monitoring calls in real-time. This gives management the complete visibility into call center operations at any given time. It is productive to combine call monitoring with statistics provided by a robust call center software application, including service levels versus goals, number of calls in progress, the number of calls in the queue and the longest-waiting interactions. This can give the supervisor insight into an agent’s performance.
Call monitoring is only successful for the virtual call center if supervisors actually communicate with call center agents on the true purpose of the monitoring to improve overall quality. The purpose is not to monitor every activity, but to help the agent to improve his or her performance so that every customer receives the service they expect.
Finally, performance management is also important in the virtual call center. A performance dashboard can provide the supervisor with the ability to zoom in and focus on the nitty-gritty details of their work. This transparent process enables supervisors to provide valuable feedback so agents can effectively improve their performance in the virtual call center.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Chris DiMarco