How Can a Call Center Increase the Engagement of Remote Customer Service Agents?

Towards the most challenging times of 2020, many customer experience leaders believed that reaching 2021 was a milestone, given all the hurdles the contact center industry has faced.

In fact, in relation to customer service in 2021, more challenges may arise, although they are seen as opportunities by innovative leaders looking to expand business continuity plan through valuable customer experiences, and how to train agents.

What Are Some of These New Challenges or Opportunities in Customer Service?

To discover them, you have to ask yourself questions such as the following:

• How have digital transformation and new technologies changed the way companies or competitors serve customers?
• How have Artificial Intelligence (AI), automation and cloud integration increased personalization in the customer experience market?
• What is the threshold for the customer experience team, agents, supervisors, or even the entire company?
• What will the new work environment look like in the future?

Of course, customer service went remote in 2020 when it was needed. But is it the remote workforce, or even the hybrid work environment, what really awaits us in the future? And if so, how can you keep employees engaged, avoiding burnout, reducing costly churn, and delivering profitable customer experiences from anywhere? And what impact does the digital transformation have on the empowerment of agents?

How Can a Call Center Increase the Engagement of Remote Customer Service Agents?

1) Assessing Employee Needs

According to CCW Digital research conducted in late 2020, 75% of leaders in Contact Center, Customer Experience, Customer Service, Marketing, IT and Operations believe that remote work will be a more permanent option for their workers.

It is important to understand that leaders and employees, especially in customer service, agree that remote work is here to stay. But it is also essential to understand that persistent challenges are occurring, such as Internet / phone connection. Many agents are satisfied with what they have or what their company offers them. Most importantly, the same concept can be applied to other technologies such as remote workspaces / desktops, CRM systems, cloud management, staffing, and the ability for agents to deliver common channel experiences in the remote environment. For this reason, knowing and understanding your employees is key to providing what they need, including demographics, skills and competencies, and familiarity with different technologies.

It is also important to help staff understand customers. For call center managers and agents to gain a better understanding of users in a personalized way, the right KPIs need to be measured consistently.

What Are the Most Important Metrics Used to Manage Agents Working in a Remote or Hybrid Environment?

• FCR (First Call Resolution): It is the percentage of customers whose query is resolved in their first call or interaction.
• Customer Effort: Measured through customer journey analysis across all channels to identify areas of friction.
• CSAT (Customer Satisfaction): Measured through VoC (Voice of the Customer) and customer journey analysis. Higher CSAT rates generally suggest higher CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) scores, leading to higher long-term profitability for the overall organization.
• Emotional Issues: Measures through positive or negative indicators in the interaction.

2) Motivating Agents With the Workforce Management Tools They Need

Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) tools leverage Artificial Intelligence to provide “tailored” goal setting based on employee personality and to support adaptive training methods, motivating each worker through advanced gamification that creates a shared sense of achievement.

Successfully engaging and motivating agents in a personalized way reduces attrition levels, hiring and onboarding efforts, and improves the experience level of the team, resulting in a better experience for end customers. In fact, according to research from CCW Digital, 37% of call center leaders have difficulty measuring and monitoring agent performance.

Now more than ever, employees expect to see their schedules and make changes from their device, anywhere, anytime. That’s why it’s important to provide flexibility by including mobile capabilities to request time off, swap shifts, and accept offers to work overtime or take time off, and receive real-time alerts.

The Required Solution Must Provide Capabilities that Give Employees the Power to Create or Modify their Schedules through:

• Analyze intraday data on all types of contacts to proactively identify staffing gaps caused by changes in customer demand and / or employee availability, and then notify the appropriate individuals (agents, supervisors and managers) of requests or changes through your mobile device, to take the right action at the right time.
• Provide a real-time mobile dashboard where agents can view their current schedule and manage their preferences for voluntary time off (VTO) and overtime hours.
• Have a gamification and incentives tool that increases motivation among employees by introducing rewards in the time change experience. You need to ensure that “hard to fill” time slots are automatically designated as “bonus wages or bonus points.”

3) Integrating Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in the Cloud

Machine learning, automation and AI capabilities need to be integrated to improve internal processes, from implementing chatbots to generating more accurate staffing forecasts, or automatically categorizing interactions based on content and sentiment – all used to through cloud technology. Additionally, cloud-based RPA helps to significantly reduce the amount of time-consuming and manual tasks that agents and employees must perform, allowing them to engage in value-added activities.

These solutions allow companies to make the right decision during individual interactions, eliminating errors and offering future guidance on the best action.

What Are the Benefits of Cloud Solutions?

• SaaS-based cloud solutions enable organizations to keep up with the latest features and functionality, creating the necessary benefits for those who may be lagging.
• Cloud solutions offer pay-per-use capability (and all associated maintenance, upgrade, and resource utilization), and the ability to create sustainable geographic redundancies in the event that primary systems fail.
• The best experts who can manage and ensure that solutions work without failures or interruptions in customer service.
• The latest and the best in security solutions, to avoid any intrusion into the data and its transfer.