4 min
One of the biggest challenges for contact center leaders is balancing the needs of agents with excellent customer service. The pandemic has ushered in a new era in which employees are reassessing the impact of their work and personal lives, mental health, and meeting goals.
Why Has This Situation Affected The Call Center Industry More?
Stress levels have increased exponentially and are causing agent retention problems. According to Salesforce, 71% of customer service employees have considered quitting their job in the past six months, while 86% say they need more from their company to get fair compensation, career growth opportunities, better job opportunities, and management on the part of your wish list.
In addition to higher salaries, agents are also demanding greater flexibility in their work. Although different options have been implemented to address this, such as the introduction of preferences and shift changes, none have worked 100% in favor of frontline employees. So what solution can be offered to this problem? Agent self-scheduling. Let’s find out more about her below.
6 Ways To Crack the Code Using Agent Self-Scheduling
By combining new thinking with technological advances, contact center leaders finally have a chance to crack the code, offering organizations the dual capability of giving agents more freedom to self-manage their own schedules and maintain service levels under control. When agents can plan their work around your life and not the other way around, stress levels naturally drop and customer satisfaction increases.
Ideas To Start Implementing Agent Self-Scheduling
1) Change The Mindset
In a world where there are many interactions with users and not enough agents, the culture has to change. Traditionally, the notion that the customer comes first has prevailed, but more and more organizations are realizing that agents are also very important.
Why not add custom dashboards so agents can track their own performance to stay focused and motivated? This would be a particular advantage when most people work remotely.
2) Implement Easy and Smart Solutions
That is certainly the case when it comes to the latest agent self-scheduling solutions that allow agents to create and edit their own schedules in real time and on the go, using their mobile devices. In this way, employees can change lunches, catch up with colleagues and make time for new learning as they serve customer demands. Self-scheduling is great for morale and group collaboration because the simple act of eating lunch or taking a break together helps, in his words, “build chemistry” between teammates.
3) Give Agents The Freedom To Create The Ideal Work-Life Balance
One of the things agents like best about self-scheduling is that it’s “easy to fit into your lifestyle.” Adopting modern self-scheduling capabilities allows them to achieve even greater influence on their workday, while allowing call center managers to maintain control of overall staffing levels.
For example, agents can add work hours on unscheduled or scheduled days. An employee looking for additional shifts can go to the self-scheduling app, see where agents are needed, and sign up for more hours. At the same time, they might even consider swapping part-time shifts with their colleagues.
4) Remember The Secret Ingredient of Self-Service Automation
Comprehensive rule sets and real-time service level controls across all skills ensure that agents can fully self-manage, create and modify their schedule, without intervention from the Workforce Management (WFM) team. Without this secret ingredient of rule sets, the Workforce Management (WFM) team would have to manually verify and approve changes, which is too time-consuming and time-consuming for most contact centers.
5) Incorporate Self-Regulations
Look for agent self-scheduling tools that are configured to automatically take into account global employment regulations, as well as the legal parameters of individual agent contracts. Being able to track and manage team compliance with labor laws means you can always rely on automated approvals to protect business and staff while building the highest levels of efficiency to better serve customers.
6) Raise Self-Scheduling Status
Agent self-scheduling is just one way to engage and motivate employees. When combined with call recording, quality management (QA) and training, today’s analytics-driven solutions offer a complete and comprehensive personal development toolset. Personal development plans and self-managed/individual performance insights drive the employee experience (EX) and, as a consequence, improve the customer experience (CX).
In short, self-scheduling is easy and smart for the agent and the WFM team. It also offers tangible value, enabling organizations to gain a competitive advantage when it comes to recruiting and retaining the best call center talent essential to business success.
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