The power and flexibility of modern cloud-based contact centre solutions has allowed agents with access to high speed internet to continue working remotely during the massive Covid-19 disruptions.
Companies fortunate enough to have invested in solutions supporting remote work were able to continue trading, but whether due to technological limitations or lack of experience, many were unprepared for the demands of managing remote staff.
The tools to empower, monitor and motivate remote staff has become one of the most requested features in our contact centre engagements.
Here are a few points that can assist with managing your agents regardless of their location:
- Keep communication lines open and engage pro-actively
- Many solutions exist that allow your business to bridge the physical divide between staff.
- Engage using Chat and Video regularly.
- Chat is powerful in letting staff stay in contact between themselves and with management.
- Video is great for meetings but also when providing feedback as this allows the agent to see your physical emotions and create a more real environment.
- Use video conference services to regular group training and feedback meetings
- Use of a CRM system
- CRM system makes it easy for the agent to access information regarding the client and various items they may need during the call
- CRM also provides easy tracking for communication with the client in the past and future follow up calls that may be required
- Planned work schedule
- Create a proper work schedule as if the agent was coming to the office.
- Honour the agents working schedule as it is easy to ask agent to just log in to a shift due to short staff as they are at home
- Help agents set proper work / home boundaries
- Use of team management tools
- Use advanced feature like coaching and chat
- Chat feature can allow agent to quickly engage with the supervisor while on the call
- Supervisor and then listen or coach the agent through the call by being part of the call without the client even being aware
- Supervisor can easily barge into the call is if required and talk to the client with the agent, this can very quickly resolve issues before they become a problem.
- Real time Analytics
- Use the real time information your call centre solution offers
- Monitor live the activity of the agents to allow quick response to issues
- Use of QA tools
- Have a proper quality assurance plan for your company
- Randomly play recordings to ascertain how the agent is performing
- Give agent positive feedback as well as pointers on how to improve.
- If your communication solution support it, consider implement
- Survey
- Lots of solution offer a form of survey solutions, this is very powerful to get quick feedback.
- Use customer survey to get an idea of agent preformation
- Run agent surveys to get feedback on any issue’s agents may have
- Invite customers to give you feedback on your company and services.
- Motivate the agents with Gamification
- Gamification allows you to create a game like challenge for your agents. Give you the ability to set tasks and goals on a visual screen.
- This allow for internal competition between agent and all agents can see where the other agents are on the game board.
- You can then easily assign rewards based on levels reached to motivate the agents.
- Company Culture
- What are you core values?
- How should our customer feel when engaging the agents?
- How should our agents represent our company
- How should our agents represent themselves
- How would we like the agents to feel about the company
