Contact centers serve a specific purpose for the organization: to provide a point of interaction between the customer and the company. These interactions can be anything from gathering information, to completing a sale or paying a bill. One of the most important elements within these interactions is the performance of the agent.

 

While it is true that contact center agents need to be focused on delivering a high level of customer service, it is not enough to just make this blanket statement and expect it to mean something. Agents need to be provided with specific requirements, standards and goals as well as the proper training and equipment to deliver on these expectations.

To monitor and assess the performance of an agent, contact centers for years have been implementing and using applications that capture interactions. Supervisors and managers then evaluate these interactions to determine how much coaching and/or training an agent may need to improve performance.

 

While such a method has proven to be successful in certain environments, research within the contact center industry has also found that agents who are empowered to do their job well perform better overall, are more likely to stay with the company and deliver a better total experience for the customer.

Such capability can be provided with performance management solutions. IEX (News - Alert) is one company that provides such solutions that are tailored to meet the unique needs of the contact center and back office. And, by allowing agents to view their own metrics, they can implement self-management activities and drive their own performance improvement.

Beyond the benefits that the contact center can realize by allowing agents to manage their own performance and improvement, performance management solutions also enable supervisors to spend less time reviewing performance data and more time coaching agents.

In addition, executives can make faster, more accurate decisions, employee appraisal and review processes are streamlined, users can access a variety of sales and performance data and the organization can see near immediate results. Such performance of a platform ensures a significant return on investment.

The IEX Performance Manager Platform not only delivers these benefits to the contact center, it also is designed along open standards. This ensures a faster time-to-market by integrating multiple data sources into one platform. Ultimately, it will deliver an optimal experience for all users within the contact center.

While it is true that each contact center has to determine the methods that work within their specific environment, driving performance that empowers the agent to feel like they are able to contribute to the overall goals of the company will ensure optimal performance and loyalty for a better total contact center operation and environment.