4 Ways to Help Agents Manage Their Own Performance

Research has shown that agents achieve more when allowed to monitor their own performance. CallMiner looks at 4 ways you can help them.

1. Offer ongoing training and support

Forget the contact centre for a moment. Employees in any environment would find it hard to thrive without proper training, coaching, and support from management. After all, what’s the motivation for employees to succeed without feedback on the work they’re already doing?

Providing agents with feedback isn’t enough. Contact centres that want agents to manage their own performance must encourage suggestions for how managers can improve training programmes and best practices.

This type of input is a win-win; agents feel empowered to make changes to improve their performance and contact centres get better-performing agents.

2. Provide a comfortable working environment

Agent performance can be about more than actual performance. Sometimes the external factors, such as peer-to-peer interactions, office culture/morale, and workplace environment have the biggest impact on productivity levels and individual fulfilment.

“One of the most respected (and successful) contact centre managers motivated her staff simply by learning each agent’s name (even though there were hundreds), walking around the floor to ‘greet’ each shift, acknowledging agents who she passed in the hallway or elevator, and establishing a contact centre ‘break room’ with phones and vending machines to help agents maximise their 20-minute break time,” said Donna Fluss, President of DMG Consulting Ltd.

3. Invest in speech analytics software

According to Forrester Research, just one-third of organisations closely monitor the quality of agent interactions with customers. However, 92% of contact centre leaders see high value in sharing metrics (i.e., number of calls in queue, service level, customer satisfaction, schedule adherence, and first contact resolution) in real time with agents.

With speech analytics software in place, managers are alerted to customer service issues as they occur, as opposed to discovering them after the call has ended. What’s more, such real-time monitoring systems deliver performance feedback to agents during the call, which provides them with actionable information they can use to improve their performance.

4. Choose the right agent desktop software

A good agent desktop set-up can help to improve agent productivity and reduce stress levels by giving agents access to the information and tools they need. With all of the relevant information in plain view, agents can focus on providing customers with swift, efficient answers to their questions or concerns.

For example, some solutions provide next-best-action guidance in the form of links to relevant information or advice when certain items of interest occur on the call (i.e., a technical issue with a product or a specific objection to an agent offer).

For more information about CallMiner, visit their website.