6 Tips To Improve the Performance and Productivity of Call Center Agents

Call center managers trust their agents to deliver superior customer service with every interaction. If these are not productive, it can negatively affect the income and reputation of the organization. Therefore, to ensure continued success, the contact center must increase agent performance.

6 Tips To Improve the Performance and Productivity of Call Center Agents

1) Use the IVR to Segment Customers

One of the main factors affecting performance is poor or inaccurate distribution of incoming calls. With an IVR (Interactive Voice Response), information about the caller can be collected before they connect with an agent. The collected data is then provided to the agent in real time. An IVR menu means customers can get the solution they need faster, as well as agent’s can handle more complex queries.

2) Use the Power of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Do you want to optimize your communications and increase the effectiveness of your call center by evaluating the customer’s intention and offering the expected response 24/7? The chatbots and voicebots of the Enreach Omnichannel Contact Center will answer all calls and will not leave any messages on seen. In addition, they will automatically solve the most frequent queries and allow your agents to focus on more important tasks.

Using Enreach’s AI engine, you can train your bot to understand customer needs and resolve their queries. If you connect our bots with external systems, you will be able to complete their responses with information from your customers. Also, you can configure the bot in more than 120 languages, collect information from each interaction, analyse why they contact you and improve responses.

3) Eliminate Unnecessary Calls

When you can eliminate any unnecessary calls, agents take this time back to take the call that matters. How to do it? Blocking any unwanted phone numbers, creating FAQs to help answer the most common questions, and using the IVR menu mentioned above.

4) Invest in On-Going Agent Training

If you want to retain the team and ensure that they continue to guarantee the success of the call center, continuous training is essential. Agents must receive the necessary training and, as changes are introduced in products or services, they must be provided with additional training. It’s also important to invest in “refresher courses” on topics like dealing with angry customers or managing common problems. This ensures that agents are continually developing and improving their skills.

On the other hand, implementing a call monitoring function will allow you to provide valuable feedback to each of the team members. This makes it easy for supervisors to listen in on calls and, when necessary, provide feedback in real time.

The Enreach Omnichannel Contact Center supervision module allows:

• Analyse service level and agent performance: Monitor OCC activity in real time and make better decisions based on service level or agent occupancy.
• Wallboards and reports so you don’t lose detail: Improve agent productivity by identifying their level of effectiveness through reports.
• Help your agents in real time: Advise them during their calls (whispering), monitor their conversations and distribute calls selectively based on their skills.

5) Share Best Practices and Monitor Calls

When using the appropriate software for the customer service department of a call center, it is possible to implement the call recording function. This is a useful tool, especially for newer agents. Additionally, breakout sessions can be created that let everyone hear both good and bad calls examples. By putting this into practice, you can reinforce the right actions and push other agents to improve their own efforts.

6) Implement the Best Technology To Empower your Agents

Even motivated agents can be less productive if they use complicated or outdated technology. For this reason, it is important to implement the latest technology available to guarantee agent productivity at all times. When it comes to ensuring that the contact center achieves the desired results, there are many factors to consider. Taking this information into account ensures that agents have the best support and tools to ensure a productive and successful contact center. If managers carry this out, it is more than likely that agents will reach higher levels of productivity.