5 Best Practices To Guarantee The Success Of Remote Agents

According to the report “A Blueprint for Successfully Deploying Remote Agents”, prepared by Liveops, having agents that work remotely supposes 4 main benefits for companies: a more scalable, agile and flexible business; access to the best talent, no matter where they live; reduction of hiring and training costs; and less wear of the agents.

The deployment of remote agents requires new technologies and best practices that are quite different from those used by a traditional contact center. For example, a way to maintain the level of supervision and follow-up of the key performance indicator is needed. Managers will have to train, supervise and monitor agents remotely. Equally important, you must continue to provide a secure environment that protects customer and organization data while agents telecommute.

5 Best Practices To Guarantee The Success Of Remote Agents: 

1) Select The Right Technology Ecosystem

First, a contact center ecosystem in the pay-per-use cloud is needed that automatically routes calls to the correct agent and allows remote agents to access calls using a device connected to the Internet. This ecosystem must provide an integrated set of capabilities to support a remote workforce:

• Enable interactive distance learning.
• Provide access from any device.
• Tracking agent actions and call recording.
• Ensure full visibility and data security.
• Call routing support based on performance and omnichannel.

There are many innovative and flexible options. For example, a Virtual PBX in the cloud allows access to the control panel when the agent needs it, wherever it is and from any device. Thus, corporate communications can be managed quickly and easily.

2) Enable Real-time Performance Management

When agents work from home, performance management has to do with communication and transparency. Agents need someone to inform them, provide comments and suggest ways to improve performance. What is necessary to enable effective real-time performance in a cloud call center?

• Record each call so agents know that someone may be listening.
• Support real-time agent-to-agent chat sessions to help and train.
• Allow supervisors to listen for calls.
• Audit calls to evaluate the agent’s performance.
• Access to agent performance information to act quickly.
• Facilitate user feedback on agent performance. 

It is also basic to have an automated way to capture and report all the relevant performance metrics of the agent: calls in queue, call retention times, time management, effectiveness, etc.

It is also important to establish multiple modes of communication such as real-time chat so agents can talk with supervisors and other agents. With the right combination of communication tools, supervisors have a broader scope and faster response times.

3) Optimize The Development Of Skills With Distance Learning

With distance and online learning, the performance of the agent is boosted because it rewards participation, motivation and independence. Agents can choose which learning sessions to participate in and learn at their own pace.

4) Maximize Agent Security

There are several ways in which greater security monitoring and stronger controls can be achieved in a telecommuting environment. Modern data protection controls should focus on the data instead of focusing on the location, protecting the data no matter where it resides.

Generally, the more tasks and functions their agents perform, the greater the access they need to systems and data. The key to maintaining strict security is to limit access to data and applications on a “need to know” basis. For example, if agents need access to credit card data, allow only access to the last four digits.

5) Foster A Sense Of Community

It is important to provide remote agents with tools to ask questions of other agents and supervisors keep in touch with the organization and create a meaningful social network.

The establishment of open communication lines increases job satisfaction and talent retention, and provides management with an internal view of the areas of agent frustration.