3 min
Just when we think that the new world of hybrid and remote work could make life easier for employees, several experts point out that it has perhaps created new complexities.
Although agents are directly related to being able to meet growing customer expectations, they are now also divided according to where they want to work. This puts some pressure on managers by adding an additional layer of complexity to the already complicated business of managing a contact center.
But Why Is Simplicity so Important and What Are Its Benefits for Agents, Operations Managers, and Clients?
Finding people with the right training and then retaining them is an age-old challenge for call centers. This has been further complicated by the drive for people to return to offices in conflict with the desire of many of them to continue telecommuting.
In fact, many employees “threaten” to quit their jobs rather than stop working from home, citing “no commuting” (84%) and “cost savings” (75%) as the top two reasons for continuing with remote work. So now is the perfect time for companies to step up their staff engagement program and consider simplification from a human point of view.
5 Ways to Simplify the Agent Experience
Here are five tactics for tackling these new complexities from an agent’s perspective:
1) Use Control Panels
The opportunity to benchmark personal performance is a critical part of agent empowerment and shouldn’t stop just because most of them are working from home. How can organizations gamify day-to-day metrics from afar? Control panels in the cloud allow you to measure compliance with the KPIs of remote workers.
2) Keep Information Understandable and Accessible
Contact centers must focus on the metrics that matter, since it must be considered that having access to unlimited information in the call center can be overwhelming, so “noise” (unnecessary information) must be filtered by creating personalized panels in the agents can see the metrics that matter to them as soon as they sign in.
3) Establish Flexible Break Times for the New Lifestyles of Teleworkers
Teleworkers typically combine activities during the day that would have traditionally been eliminated in the workplace. Allowing agents flexibility, through self-programming, makes it easier to increase morale and reduce emotional exhaustion.
Dynamic scheduling tools can instantly optimize agent time to better align with shifts and call volume changes, while allowing supervisors to provide the opportunity for overtime or voluntary time off.
4) Develop Virtual Communities
It is important to strengthen the bond of the call center team, including the agents who work in the call center and those who telecommute. For this, the development of virtual communities is very useful, since they can share concerns, hobbies, knowledge, etc. In addition, strengthening the emotional connection with Voice of the Employee (VoE) analysis captures and analyzes how front-line personnel are feeling and identifies agents who need additional support. Any challenges as a result of working remotely are alleviated if employees feel better understood, valued, and cared for.
5) Aim for the Easiest
Constantly changing systems to find the correct information is frustrating and increases the complexity of remote work. Aiming for a single Control Panel where agents can view complete customer journeys on a single screen to serve customers quickly and efficiently is the most convenient.
A new work-from-anywhere model for call centers can create an additional variable, but with the right approach and technology it doesn’t have to mean more complexity from an agent’s point of view.
In conclusion, simplifying the agent experience to attract and retain the best talent optimizes call center performance and improves CX.
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