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November 10, 2024

Cross-media queuing and its components

The term “Cross-media queuing” refers to a call center methodology in which all incoming messages, be it a phone call, an e-mail, fax, interactive voice response (IVR) message, website submission or an instant message, is routed in the same way. As per a resource, Intel provided a whitepaper which states that the cross-media queuing application needs five components. Cross-media queuing is achieved with the help of technology tools that help in creating a queue engine, media interaction modules, agent application modules, configuration and administration modules and a statistical and reporting module.

The specified components and their functions have been described in detail below:

1.A queue engine:

The cross-media queuing requires a queue engine to act as a central coordination point. A system manager configures business rules. This coordination point negotiates all interactions with customers based upon these business rules.

2. Media interaction modules:

Customer queries may be received through a number of channels. In order to accept incoming customer queries from media channels and send the queries to agent applications as directed by the queue engine, media interaction modules are needed.

3. Agent application modules:

Customer queries arrive every now and then at call center agents’ desktops. Therefore, in order to enable automatic management of these queries, agent application modules are needed. The modules could be built by the system developers. Agent application modules can even be modified to be integrated into specific desktop applications.

5. Configuration and administration modules:

Configuration and administration modules are the ones that system administrators can use to establish business rules for routing media configure and manage queuing features.

6. Statistics and reporting module:

This type of module is required for recording and reporting purpose in a cross-media queuing system. A statistics and reporting module records and reports upon the flow of communication. It also lets you measure the system’s performance and record it as well.

November 9, 2024

Screen pop and its importance in a customer support center

A screen pop is an enticing feature of a computer telephony integration (CTI) application. It automatically displays all of the relevant caller and account information on a call center agent’s screen during a call. In order to match the incoming call against a customer database, caller ID , voice response or an automatic call distributor (ACD) may be used. This is done to identify the caller before the connection is made to the agent.

In other words, a screen pop is a feature that automatically displays caller information on call center agent screens when a call rings into the system. It is also known as automatic screen pop, automated screen pop.

How it works:

i) A customer or prospect reaches out via a phone call

ii) As soon as the call center software receives the call, it alerts the agent.

This alert includes information that there is a caller on the line and other relevant caller information found in the system. A screen pop can pull the data from a number of sources. As an example, some of this information can be pulled from public databases like data.com. However, the main information present in a screen pop should come from a company’s robust database as accessed through their call center software and helpdesk systems.

A number of advanced call center software solutions allow for customized screen pops, where companies can choose specific information to be displayed. Generally, this may include the caller’s name, phone number, address, email address, company, job title, information entered in your IVR, and other relevant information.

The screen pop feature is of utmost importance for a customer support center as it is a way to ensure that call center agents are primed to help customers even before the call is answered. Also, it is easy and automatic. Moreover, it allows agents to personalize conversations from the get-go, which improves customer satisfaction. This personalized service speeds up call resolution and helps your company stand out of the crowd.

November 9, 2024

Why issue tracking system is important for a call center

As mentioned in our earlier post, issue tracking system is a software application that allows an enterprise to record and follow the progress of every problem or issue that a computer system user identifies until the problem is resolved. An ITS enables the user to:

i) report an issue

ii) track progression towards its resolution

iii) know who is responsible for resolving the issue.

Moreover, it allows the manager of the system to customize the tracking procedure so that unnecessary documentation on the part of the problem solvers does not become a waste of time.

An Its is of great importance to any customer support center as:

1. It facilitates the communication:

Using an issue tracking system within a customer support center helps facilitate the communication and lets the staff know what happens with each issue. As a matter of fact, when there are numerous ideas and issues, there is a high probability of these issues or ideas being misplaced. Moreover, due to a poor communication, staff may even perceive they are not being heard or being ignored. This may further result in the employees quickly disengaging and the project being damaged.

2. It enables you to keep a track of issues:

An efficient issue tracking system helps keep track of every issue that has been raised. Apart from this, staff may suggest new ideas or may request new functionality. An issues tracking system allows you to keep a track of these ideas and issues and also to keep a history of these suggestions.

3. It helps keep track of the action taken:

As soon as an issue is submitted, some action is going to be taken on the issue. These actions may include- under consideration, completed and closed, needs more info, etc. An issue tracking system allows you to keep a track of any actions taken on an issue.

November 9, 2024

All you need to know about ITS in a call center

In call centers’ context, ITS stands for issue tracking system. It is also known as trouble ticket system, support ticket, request management or incident ticket system. An ITS is a computer software package that manages and maintains lists of issues, as needed by an organization and is used in its customer support center. They are basically used to create, update, and resolve reported customer issues, or even issues reported by that organization’s other employees. As a matter of fact, support ticket should include vital information for the account involved and the issue encountered.

In most cases, an issue tracking system also contains a knowledge base containing information on each customer, resolutions to common problems, and other relevant data. An ITS is similar to a “bug tracker”, and often, a software company will sell both. In fact, some bug trackers are capable of being used as an issue tracking system, and vice versa. Consistent use of an issue or bug tracking system is considered one of the “hallmarks of a good software team” as it enhances the quality of customer service.

A ticket element, within an issue tracking system, refers to a running report on a particular problem, its status, and other relevant data. They almost always have a unique reference number, also known as a case, issue or call log number which is used to allow the user or help staff to quickly locate, add to or communicate the status of the user’s issue or request. Also, they are commonly created in a help desk or call center environment

As far as issues are concerned, they can have several aspects to them. An urgency value may be assigned to each issue in the system, based on the overall importance of that issue. Of all the issues, low or zero urgency issues are minor and should be resolved as time permits. Other details of issues include the customer experiencing the issue (whether external or internal), date of submission, detailed descriptions of the problem being experienced, attempted solutions or workarounds, and other such information.

November 9, 2024

What is meant by skills-based routing?

Skills-based routing refers to a call-assignment strategy used in call centers to assign incoming calls to the most suitable agent, instead of simply choosing the next available agent. It can be considered as an advancement to the ACD systems found in most call centers. Call centers these days have become larger and have to deal with a wider variety of call types. Skills-based routing comes as a perfect solution to this problem. A successful skills-based routing strategy enables you to increase agent productivity by allowing agents to draw on their personal knowledge and experience base to answer questions faster. this further reduces call-handling time, increases the likelihood of first-call resolution and increases customer confidence and satisfaction.

A simple automatic call distributor (ACD) system might do nothing more than route calls to the next available agent irrespective of that agent’s expertise and skills. On the other hand, skills-based routing allows contact centers to designate agents as specialists in certain products or issues. Basically, skills-based routing is used to assess the skills needed for a particular call by the dialed telephone number and the calling number or caller’s identity, as well as choices made in any associated IVR system. Thereafter, this highly efficacious system attempts to match the call to a suitably trained agent. The basic idea behind the functioning of skills-based routing is that an agent with matching skills will be able to provide a better service and enhance the customer experience.

According to manufacturers skills- based routing provides the following benefits:

i) it improves customer service

ii) shortens call-handling time

iii) makes training shorter and easier

iv) increases agent utilization,

v) boosts productivity

vi) increases revenue growth

Thus, skills-based routing has become a major selling point, over the simpler ACD that it replaces efficaciously!

November 9, 2024

Tips to reduce call center shrinkage: II

1. Forecast down to appropriate intervals:

A particular number of agents is needed at different times of day to handle typical call volumes. This number is termed as “Base staff” and varies by time of day or day of the week. It is said to be a good practice to forecast down to about 15- or 30-minute intervals and to take into account variations in both volume and average handling time. This would help reduce call center shrinkage to a large extent.

2. Employ WFM application:

A WFM application with schedule adherence allows you to measure call center shrinkage at a granular employee level. It has the ability to track the exact time spent in planned and unplanned shrinkage. It can help manage shrinkage in a suitable manner in the season based environment. Moreover, it enables you to calculate the impact of absenteeism, late individuals etc on the service that you deliver to your customers.

3. Avoid flat lining or rounding off the shrinkage:

You should avoid flat lining the call center shrinkage across the year. Instead, consider analyzing the trends related to shrinkage. The reason being, categories such as sickness, training etc cannot always be the same every week or month of the year. Also, you need to make sure that you use decimal points and do not round off the figures in the respective calculations. This is because even 0.1% has the potential of adding up to a cost over the course of a year.

4. Consider individual calculations for different departments:

In a multi-department call center, shrinkage should be calculated individually rather than for the centre as a whole. This leads a better and more efficacious calculation.

Individual calculations of different departments

5. Determine strategies that would reduce shrinkage for your business:

Based on the trends related to call center shrinkage and further calculations, base staff can be determined so as to facilitate a productive work schedule. Consider analyzing the data gleaned from monitoring the factors affecting shrinkage and discussing it with the entire team. Thereafter, you can determine and employ strategies that would work best to reduce shrinkage in your business

November 9, 2024

Tips to reduce call center shrinkage: I

Call center shrinkage can be quite jeopardizing. So, the call center managers should consider taking measures to minimize it. Here, we have mentioned some tips that would help with the same:

1. Consider tracking the negotiable categories of shrinkage:

The non-negotiable category of call center shrinkage includes paid holiday time and paid breaks, as well as training, meeting time, and more. Since all these categories are fixed and can be defined clearly. On the other hand, the negotiable category consists of off-phone time, sick leave or unexplained absence. All these should be tracked closely to maximize productivity and minimize call center shrinkage.

Chris Dealy

Sick leave

2. Treat it as a critical planning assumption:

Shrinkage requires the same focus and analysis as workload forecasts and performance metrics. You need to know that shrinkage is the sum of the parts, so if you conduct two x one-hour communication sessions per week, per Full-Time Employee (FTE) , then you have to calculate what this number is for the week, the month and the year.

3. Split up the categories further:

While creating categories for shrinkage you need to be extremely careful. The best practice is to split categories down further. As an example, sickness may be split into long and short-term, annual leave may be split into bank holiday and annual leave, communication can further be split into one-to-ones and team meeting. Using this approach can help you monitor performance and identify specific areas for improvement. Thus, you can work on these areas and increase call center productivity.

4. Planned and unplanned shrinkage:

Consider split your shrinkage categories into planned and unplanned ones. Planned shrinkage would include holidays, lunches and training that can be planned in advance, while unplanned shrinkage would point out to last-minute meetings and unplanned training. This would make your categories more organized.

November 8, 2024

All you need to know about call center shrinkage

Call center shrinkage is a measure the time wasted in the call center due to things like vacation, breaks, lunch, holidays, sick time, training and more. Shrinkage is a measure used in contact centers that helps calculate the difference between the number of staff that a forecasting system says is required and the practical considerations of how many employees are available at a particular time.

It consists of two main components namely:

i) Internal shrinkage:

This type of shrinkage is also known as in- center shrinkage. The factors responsible for this type of shrinkage include training, team meetings, unplanned facility breaks, system downtime etc.

ii) External shrinkage:

This type of call center shrinkage is also called in- center shrinkage. It is caused due to sickness, holidays, public holidays, paid breaks etc.

Mostly, call center managers take all these factors into consideration. However, there are a few factors that affect the shrinkage to a great extent. Some of them include lateness, talking to associates, personal calls, and emergencies, leaving early and taking longer breaks. The bottom line on shrinkage is the number of minutes per day that agents are being paid to be on the phone when they are not actually working or available to receive calls or work on customer related issues.

Calculation:

The mathematical formula for calculating call center shrinkage is:

Shrinkage (%) = [Total hours of external shrinkage + Total hours of internal shrinkage] / Total hours available * 100

Call center shrinkage is a major factor in failing to meet service level targets. According to a research, all centers that take shrinkage parameters into account in their forecasting and scheduling achieve higher service levels at lower operating costs. This is achieved by including all call related activities into the forecast and schedule planning process beforehand. This helps in exceeding the expected level of service.

November 8, 2024

Importance of callback messaging for call centers

Callback messaging is a service that allows callers to leave personal contact information, either spoken or through the number pad so that an agent can call them back and they retain their place in the queue. This is very useful when call volume is high. This amazing feature offers the caller an alternative to either holding on the line or losing their place in the queue.

1.Shortens the call length:

Keeping your customers on hold for long intervals can cause frustration. They tend to loose patience with time and finally when the call is connected they often waste time complaining. Instead of starting off with the query that they called for, they angrily talk about their bad experience hence, increasing the length of the call. Callback messaging can help you start every conversation off smoothly, resulting in lower handle times.

2. Exempts call abandonment:

With high call volumes, call centers are left with the only option of telling their customers that “your call matters to us, please be patient” so many times. As a result, they hang up the phone and abandon the call. With the help of a callback messaging solution, customers have an option of receiving a call whenever an agent is available. This reduces call abandonment to a large extent.

3. Deflates telecom costs:

As a matter of fact, a PSTN line is occupied the whole time when a caller is kept on hold. Often, a toll-free DID at a premium per-minute rate. Callback messaging facility eliminates the telecom costs associated with hold time as no PSTN line is occupied.

Cost reduction — diagram of slope on white background

4. Enhances customer experience:

When customers are kept on hold, they tend to get irritated and abandon the calls. Since their calls go unattended in these cases, so, this leads to bad experience. Replacing hold time with a callback enhances the experience you provide to customers, hence, exceeding their expectations.

5. Increases productivity:

Callback messaging helps make more efficient use of agents by smoothing out the peak periods. this aids in improving call center productivity and reducing the need to hire additional resources. It further lowers the number of repeat callers, hence, reducing spikes efficaciously.

November 8, 2024

Why you should employ a predictive dialing system: II

1. Helps organize and maintain client database appropriately:

Making use of a predictive dialing system can help organize and manage the client database and maintain all relevant records systematically. In other words the manual process of manually scribbling down the notes is replaced by an automated one. Also, it can rework the call structure based on the record of previous calls, so the fear of misplacing the data is eliminated as well. Predictive dialing provides you a separate list of numbers which were busy or had received no answers, so that, you can call these. In addition to this, it also mantains a do-not-disturb log so that the manager knows who doesn’t want to be called again. The entire process helps filter the other numbers which don’t have any potential of generating sales so that the agents can focus entirely on the productive ones.

2. Keeps the database updated:

The predictive dialing system helps ensure the database is always up to date. Relevant information about the customer and past call history are taken into consideration. Also, separate call-back lists are maintained along with the time of preferred calling. The predictive dialing system automatically places the call at the right time, puts an agent on the call and supports him on a real-time basis with the relevant and updated information required to handle the call and solve the queries.

3. Improves administration-workforce relationship:

Sice in this system, workload is assigned by an automated system, so, all the agents get an equal chance to improve. This makes the work challenging and hence, improves the efficiency of each agent working in a team. Also, it helps improves agent morale and makes it easier for them to fulfill sales targets. This further improves the professional relationship between the administration and the workforce.

4. Cost reduction

With this highly efficient system, there is no room for an expensive PBX setup or an operator who manually maintains the call log or routes calls to agents. Thus, it helps in cost reduction to a large extent.

November 8, 2024

Why you should employ a predictive dialing system: I

As we all know, predictive dialing refers to a state-of-the-art pacing mode used to call a large number of customers within a short period of time. Predictive dialing system helps optimize agents’ time by reducing the idle times between connected calls and freeing agents from dialing calls. Predictive dialing gathers statistics related to the duration of calls, how long it takes for calls to be answered, and how often calls are answered. The system places several calls when an agent is about to become idle.

1.Enables call blending:

Predictive dialing system can help blend calls in a call center which deals with both outbound sales and inbound customer service. Calls can be efficiently assigned to the agents if predictive dialer and an automated call distribution system are used in combination. This system provides a provision for keeping the callers on the queue if agents are not available. It further allows the agent to pass on a message regarding the same. Thereafter, the agent can call the customer back and provide him and proceed with the query resolution.

2. Encourages unbiased delegation:

Predictive dialing system encourages unbaised assigning of calls such that all the available call agents have calls to attend. Since all agents on the team are expected to be equally competent professionally to handle any call, so, equal opportunities are given to all of them. Also, this eliminates the chances of the agent ignoring a call.

3. Allows call monitoring:

Employing a predictive dialing system means, it is possible to monitor the performance of agents through the integrated call monitoring and recording interfaces. In addition to this, these systems also include in-built reporting tools that allow the managers to extract the performance reports of each agent. Based upon these reports, agents can be provided with adequate training in order to improve the agents’ call handling skills and hence deliver an exceptional customer service.

November 8, 2024

Advantages of using a power dialing system: II

1. Improves idle rate per agent:

Power dialing system refers to an automated telephone dialing system that connects prospects with agents more efficiently by allowing agents to focus on live connections instead of manual dialing. It makes use of a manually-configured calls-to-agent ratio based on which the system automatically dials the next contacts as soon as the agent becomes available. As a result, the agents do not have to waste their time managing list of telephone numbers and rectifying errors. They can simply focus on enhancing their interaction skills with frequent coaching and training sessions. Power dialing system ensures maximum engagement with the customers such that the agents are always connected to a live call hence improving the idle rate per agent and boosting customer satisfaction.

2. Eliminates time wastage:

Whenever a call is placed, there are a number of reasons for agent time wastage, some of them being uninterested parties, busy signals or empty households. Employing a power dialing system helps eliminate all these possibilities and ensures that the agents connect with the right prospect at the right time. It further eliminates unanswered calls, dropped numbers and automated answering machines. This is how time wastage is eliminated and unproductive calls are avoided.

3. Boosts sales:

Now, with all the advantages mentioned earlier, call centers can gain huge profits and long-term customer relationships. As mentioned earlier, power dialing system helps you eliminate time wastage, increase agent productivity, generate and nurture leads more efficiently, and also avoid missing opportunities. Collectively, all of these advantages lead to a bigger advantage i.e. boosted sales. With the help of power dialing system, call centers can witness their sales to get double or more. It further leads to improved ROI as it not only increases the quality of calls dialed but also the quality of customer interaction and hence, customer satisfaction.

November 7, 2024

Advantages of using a power dialing system: I

In our previous article, we made you familiar with the concept of power dialing system. Now let’s have a look at the benefits that this highly efficacious technology can provide to the call centers:

1. Enhances the lead generating and nurturing process:

Filtering out the blacklisted numbers is one of the main advantages provided by the power dialing system. When power dialing system is clubbed up with lead management software, it helps in eliminating the wastage of time due to useless calls. Power dialing is quite useful for organizing all the sales information, lead data, and customer history. It also helps in organizing the call-back info with the help of a CRM and can quickly pass it on to the agents, thereby obtaining more successful leads. Thereafter, it efficiently takes care of lead nurturing, such that it intelligently manages the journey of your leads, prospects, and customers across their engagement cycle. This further enables the agents to sort and prioritize the generated leads.

2. Improves your right party concerns:

Power dialing system has a provision for retry strategies. Since there is always a possibility that agents cannot get connected to all the numbers in the lead list in the very first try, so, it becomes quite necessary to contact such leads again. Retry strategy is the best solution for such instances. Based upon the last dialer details, you can set different retry strategies for different occasions. As an example, you can try a “No answer” after 3 hours, “Abandoned” call after 72 hours, a ‘Busy” call after 5 minutes etc. This eliminates the chances of missing any important lead and increases the probability lead sale conversion rate. Moreover, it takes into consideration, the compliance norms and improves your right party connects by over 10%. Hence, it helps in boosting your revenue growth.

November 7, 2024

Your guide to predictive dialing system

Predictive dialing refers to a state-of-the-art pacing mode used to call a large number of customers within a short period of time. Predictive dialing helps optimize agents’ time by reducing the idle times between connected calls and freeing agents from dialing calls. Predictive dialing gathers statistics related to the duration of calls, how long it takes for calls to be answered, and how often calls are answered. The system places several calls when an agent is about to become idle.

The performance of predictive dialing depends upon the accuracy of the contact lists and the policies on nuisance calls. If the contact list is poor, the performance of the predictive dialing campaign may be affected negatively as agents are not connected to live contacts and are not able to do business.

A predictive dialer is a type of dialer that dials a list of telephone numbers and connects answered dials to people making calls, often referred to as agents. Using statistical algorithms, predictive dialers minimize the time that agents spend waiting between conversations while minimizing the occurrence of someone answering when no agent is available.

There are two possible sources of delay when dialing numbers one at a time:

i) Only some fraction of dials are answered. As an example, if 1 out of 3 dials is answered, a predictive dialer might dial 3 lines every time an agent becomes available.

ii) Dials that are answered take some time before being picked up. If it typically takes 10 seconds for someone to pick up, and conversations typically last 90 seconds, a predictive dialer might start dialing at 80 seconds.

Predictive dialers may either be standalone hardware devices, or they may be integrated with software with call center or contact center platforms. Dialers integrated with software perform less aggressive dialing modes, such as power, progressive, or preview dialing.

November 7, 2024

All you need to know about power dialer

The term “dialer” refers to an electronic device that is connected to a telephone line to monitor the dialed numbers and alter them to seamlessly provide services that otherwise require lengthy national or international access codes to be dialed. A dialer automatically inserts and modifies the numbers depending on the time of day and country or area code dialed. This allows the user to subscribe to the service providers who offer the best rates.

A power dialer is defined as an automated telephone dialing system that connects prospects with agents more efficiently. It allows the agents to focus on live connections instead of manual dialing. The power dialing system automatically dials the next contacts, when an agent becomes available. With such a powerful setting, the contact center is given ultimate control over the automatic dialing rates. The power dialer is quite useful when a contact center has a small number of sales executives and a large number of prospects.

As an example, Dolphin dialer is autodialer software that enables telemarketers, sales teams, and call centers to dial a list of phone numbers automatically and completely hands-free. It basically helps them save valuable time and energy that would otherwise be wasted dialing by hand.

An agent is always available to talk to the customer in the case of power dialing. Moreover, it can be utilized for a number of campaigns like customer care follow-up calls, telemarketing etc. In order to automatically place a call to the agent, the automated dialers consider the priority and the skills of the agent.

The power dialer, also known as progressive dialer enables you to manually set a calls-to-agent ratio, so you can take advantage of automated dialing benefits while retaining control over dialing rates. Also, contact centers can spend more time talking to live prospects. This avoids wastage of time, leads to more sales and increases revenue growth.

November 7, 2024

Agent status and its importance : II

1.Ensures efficient call routing:

Agent statuses are taken into account by the call center software in order to direct calls only to those agents who are available to take calls. As a result, the likelihood of inappropriate routing is eliminated. In other words, it helps avoid such situations where callers are routed to an agent who is not ready for their next interaction. This further ensures that calls are distributed appropriately among agents.

2. Provides the required guidelines to new agents:

A thorough analysis of agent status metrics enables the managers to determine the standard cadence of the work of the agents at their call center. It can actually act as a useful onboarding tool because it allows new agents to have a set of guidelines for how they should spend their time. This helps them to have a thorough understanding of the work they are supposed to do. So, they can efficiently handle all the calls, resolve customer queries in real time and provide exceptional customer service

3. Helps in proper billing:

Agent status is very helpful for billing purposes especially if you outsource your call center. Monitoring the agent statuses consistently helps ensure that you’re not being charged for minutes that agents aren’t actually working. Moreover, it ensures that your third party call center is meeting the terms of your SLA.

4. Schedule adherence:

Schedule adherence refers to a key metric that helps ensure that your agents are logged into the queue during their scheduled times. Call center agent status enables you to monitor, measure, and optimize this KPI. By viewing historical reports, you can actually see whether an agent is currently active or is on pause. This further helps you make sure that you’re scheduling enough agents at the right times, and that they are actually available during their scheduled shifts.

November 7, 2024

Agent status and its importance : I

Agent status refers to a feature that allows call center agents to display their present state of work to the rest of the team. The most common method of doing this is to select a status from a pre-created drop-down menu. Generally, there are six agent statuses. All of them have been listed below:

i) Available

ii) On a Call

iii) Busy

iv) Away

v) After Call Work

vi) Offline

Here we have mentioned the most important reasons for inculcating agent status in call centers:

1.KPI optimization:

With the aid of this feature, it becomes easy to extract agent status reports for the call center as a whole as well, as specific agents. These agent reporting metrics further enable managers to know exactly how agents have spent their time. Moreover, the agent status reports can also be utilized for diagnosing a number of call center issues and inefficiencies. Based on these key performance indicators, managers may determine if additional agents should be hired or that staff need to be let go to properly handle the call volume. Employing the agent status feature actually enables them to notice exceptional agent productivity and detect inefficiencies. Thereafter, strategies can be adopted to exempt the shortcomings of the system.

2. Encourages teamworking:

Agents can easily determine who is available to make and receive calls, with the help of this call center software feature. In the case of call transfers, agent status is very useful as it helps ensure that customers who are transferred are connected quickly with available agents. It enables the agents to easily stay updated with the present status of all the others, hence further encouraging teamwork. This efficacious software helps them know exactly when to reach out, when to transfer a call and when they should take a break. Thus, the entire staff can work as a team with the help of this software.

November 7, 2024

Advantages of having blended agents

In the context of a call center, the term blended agents refers to the agents who manage both incoming and outgoing calls and applications as needed. Need is determined by contact center traffic levels. The blended agents in any call center are trained to handle both incoming and outgoing calls. This training generally involves:

i) Automatic call distribution system identifying a rise in incoming call volume a

ii) Switching outbound agents’ duties to handle the overflow.

As an alternative, inbound agents can be assigned to outbound calls when the incoming volume is low.

In a blended call environment, the managers can decide when more agents are required for as particular role and instruct them to swith. And all this can be done in the absence of an automated system. Having blended call agents at your call center has a number of advantages like:

i) Increased occupancy

ii) Promotion of short-term offerings

iii) Reduced queueing

iv) Greater staff satisfaction

Blended agents have a huge potential of adding value to a variety of contact centres, and are especially useful in centers with few seats. The reason for this is that small centres are vulnerable to low levels of occupancy which further leads to low efficiency, based on peaks and troughs in call volume. In centres where low occupancy is a major issue, adopting a blended approach can prove to be highly profitable. Instead of revisiting scheduling practices, this technique can act as an efficacious solution to such a problem of low occupancy. Moreover, blended agents can be used on a short-term basis to promote campaigns. Inbound agents can be trained against a simple script to make outbound calls for the duration of a promotion. Employing a blended environment in call centers can also help utilize the resources efficiently and effectively.

November 6, 2024

Steps to design an effective quality monitoring process

Quality monitoring process aims at evaluating the agents in an effective manner. It is employed to identify the calls failing to meet predefined standards. Thereafter, you can make informed decisions to make the process better, faster and quicker. The following steps need to be followed when trying to design an effective quality monitoring process:

1. Determine and define the objectives:

The very first step of this process is to determine important goals. Once it’s done, these goals need to be defined along with intended results. Based on the goals and intended results, tasks should be assigned to the various individuals.

2. Educate the agents about the process’s merits:

When you decide to install a quality monitoring system, you may face resistance from the agents. You can combat this problem by explaining the merits. This would encourage them to support you.

3. Call selection:

Non-routine customer calls need to be selected for greater effectiveness of your QA program. These calls include the ones:

i) that were transferred multiple times

ii) those were either shorter or longer than usual

iii) that originated from certain geographies or customers

iv) that involved some particular activity on the PC screen of the agent

4. Conduct a monthly audit procedure:
Conducting a quality audit procedure can help examine the various qualities and skills like adherence to processes, product knowledge, call control, courtesy, empathy, accuracy, and clarity of voice. The scoring evaluation should be capable of reflecting the goal of a contact center. Moreover, scorecards or quality monitoring forms should be arranged by categories.

5. Make use of process maps:

Consider creating and documenting a process map for the call center’s quality monitoring system. The document should describe responsibilities of people, their roles, and the techniques/tools to be used. Calls recording should be employed and the agent must listen to his/her own calls from time to time to conduct a self-assessment.

November 6, 2024

Tips for designing an effective call scoring evaluation form

These days, call scoring evaluation forms are being extensively utilized when analyzing live or recorded calls. These forms, when used along with call recording are highly beneficial for the call centers as they can be used to help enrich the feedback provided to agents during coaching sessions. This helps enhance the agents’ motivation to improve their performance. As a matter of fact, a poorly designed call scoring evaluation form will result in data that does not accurately assess agent performance, lacks key performance areas and is not reliable. So, it is very important to design a call scoring evaluation form that eliminates all of the above errors. Here, we have mentioned some useful tips that you should consider while designing the same:

1. Encourage employee engagement at different levels:

For designing an effective call scoring evaluation form, consider involving employees at various levels to help you in your quality assurance program. Engaging employees fro various levels means, taking assistance from everyone starting from managers, trainers, supervisors, to even agents in the call center.

2. Leverage your internal Q&A system:

An internal Q&A system helps you determine the efficiency level of all the internal processes being employed. The measurement should be done based on the points that are regarded as important by customers.

3. Prioritize the categories in the form:

In order to make the call scoring evaluation form effective, you need to prioritize the decided categories with respect to their relevance and importance.

4. Test and review:

Once you are done with the form making process, you need to test and review your call scoring evaluation before it can be rolled out for implementation.

5. Train your agents:

After you have tested and reviewed the form, consider training all employees in your call center on the new scoring evaluation form. This will help them have a proper clarity on what items are being measured in the evaluation form and what is the process of doing that.

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