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Contactcenters especially struggle with how to train, manage, and engage agents properly. Since contactcenteragents interact with customers daily, it is essential that you create a plan and strategy for keeping at homeagents engaged from afar. Tips to Keep At-HomeAgents Engaged.
You know something is pretty important or interesting these days if it’s referred to as being on-trend, or trending. It’s not the same as being trendy, which to my ear sounds like it’s less important than something that is on trend or trending. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, trendy is defined as: “Very fashionable, up […].
Chances are you have pivoted toward remote agents, and maybe not by choice: Most organizations were forced into work-from-home situations. The race will soon be on to either replace agents lost during the pandemic or restaff your team—whether they will be brick-and-mortar or virtual agents.
Has anyone besides me noticed how many contactcenter industry work-from-home (WFH) experts there suddenly are? That would be Michele Rowan and I wrote about her in my April column (“On-Trend: At-HomeAgents”). I thought there was only one, really. The timing of that column was totally serendipitous.
After more than 20 years in the on-demand contactcenter industry, I’ve come across some great work-from-home practices. Whatever the workstyle or workspace, an agent needs to be efficient and productive. While remote work from home is free range, it isn’t a free-for-all. And a few not-so-good ones, too.
In the face of COVID-19, many organizations have had to shut down their contactcenters, and send agents to work from home. One of the big concerns with at-homeagents is whether they have the right environment to effectively handle calls. This has been accomplished on impossible time tables.
There is a great deal of debate about what metrics callcenters should measure now, especially with COVID-19 and the accompanying shift to work-at-homeagents, staffing shortages, and persistent supply chain issues straining customers’ patience. What metrics should callcenters and BPOs focus on?
Customer expectations for service are rapidly evolving, so training a team of at-homeagents to align with these expectations can bring tangible benefits to any company. Save valuable time, money and effort by investing in agile tools that prepare contactcenteragents to meet the increasing expectations of your customers.
For the callcenter industry, it’s becoming apparent that the at-homeagent model is here to stay. The at-home-agent model is the most functional approach during uncertain times, safeguarding services from the impact of pandemics, weather, traffic, and unforeseen issues with on-site facilities.
In some cases, organizations saw themselves dealing with more calls while transitioning to a WFH practice. This rise of at-homeagents, coupled with an increase in new contactcenteragents, has raised concerns over information security. The post Is social engineering damaging your contactcenter?
It’s not surprising that contactcenter predictions for 2018 accounted for two of the most popular posts in January. A look at the common characteristics shared by award-winning contactcenters; tips to help work-at-homeagents stay productive and focused; and an update on the state of remote work in […].
It’s too early to brush COVID-19’s sweeping impact aside, but callcenter leaders are already looking for ways to proactively ready themselves and their teams for the next crisis—or the second wave of this one. A real strategy for sudden increased call volumes. Continuous training for “what if” instances.
No industry is safe from rising labor costs, especially the contactcenter industry where a majority of employees are the heavily affected low-wage earners. Aside from just wage inflation, recruiting cost increases and benefits additions have put a major strain on the margins of domestic contactcenters.
What surprised you the most about how the callcenter industry responded to uncertainty in 2020? In a matter of days, it seemed that nearly everyone had managed to pivot to an at-homeagent model. At-home work is here to stay, at least in some form. These organizations, however, were the outliers.
Providing feedback to agents in your callcenter is entirely needed to maintain and improve a quality facility. The right encouragement, or even criticism, could dramatically alter agent performance, both for on-site employees and at-homeagents. Letting agents self-evaluate.
There are a lot of smart — very smart — individuals managing and directing Call and ContactCenters today. This is my top ten list of really dumb things that smart call and contactcenter executives do. Not staying current on new technologies impacting Call and ContactCenter operations.
Inundated with Inbound Calls. A large technology company was being inundated with inbound calls and needed an approach to “insulate their contactcenter.” ” They wanted to throttle the amount of calls that route to an agent in their callcenter. Your success is our success.
Looking into flexible scheduling options is one way to offset callcenteragent turnover. For some, this might mean allowing your workers to select shifts that best support their home lives. Transitioning from a team of 100 percent onsite callcenteragents to a more flexible working environment can be daunting.
Remote work is increasingly becoming the norm in many industries around the world, including contactcenters and customer service departments. The benefits are clear and proven for both remote callcenteragents and the companies they work for. Add new comment.
However, after taking the remote work model for a mandated test drive, many employers – including outsource callcenters – have embraced the idea as a permanent option. So how do you keep your remote contactcenteragents engaged? Here are a few must-haves: Provide Virtual Communication Channels.
Agents juggle phone calls, quickly type out emails and talk down angry callers. We’ve seen the typical callcenter in TV shows or in movies. This scene makes for good drama, but today contactcenters look different. . Contactcenters are no longer confined to those windowless rooms with cubicles.
Momentum remains strong for cloud contactcenter solutions, with most deployments still in their early stages. While a solid business case could be made solely for how IT would benefit, there’s a bigger story to tell that considers other stakeholders, both in and out of the contactcenter.
Utilizing the time of agents is currently one of the most challenging aspects of the callcenter industry. Often, callcenter supervisors can be seen distributing and redistributing resources repeatedly to different departments and operations. Blended callcenters. What is a blended callcenter?
Today, some of the legacy callcenters are being converted to multi-channel contactcenters. In addition to taking phone calls, the agents also provide service via other non-voice channels like: live-chat, social media and emails. Noise removal for at-homeagents. Is the noise different?
ContactCenter Workplaces Are in the Midst of a Renaissance. This is the case for many contactcenters, where agents have been under-appreciated, under-recognized and under-rewarded for decades. It’s time for this to translate into lasting improved treatment for contactcenter employees.
Our 2022 research shows that 70% of agents say that working remotely has improved their job satisfaction, and 56% of respondents say they’d consider leaving their jobs if they couldn’t work remotely. Our survey uncovered five ways contactcenter managers are adapting to remote work. Keep More Agents On Board. Leanne Y.,
A short history of how the pandemic has unfolded – how contactcenters have faired and how fraudsters have taken advantage. As a critical customer interface, contactcenters have felt the effects directly, regardless of geography and industry. INSIGHT 2: THE WAVE HITS IN EARNEST.
Contactcenters have been hiring increasing numbers of work-at-homeagents in recent years and it looks like this trend is expected to grow. According to the National Association of CallCenters, over 50% of contactcenters in the United States tout that some percentage of their agents are now working from home.
The cloud has revolutionized almost every sector in the last decade or so, including the callcenter industry. billion this year, according to Gartner, it’s likely more callcenter managers will invest in cloud technologies that improve performance and day-to-day operations.
The benefits of a home-based agent model are undeniably exciting. From cost savings to reduced attrition, the work-at-homeagent model is attractive to say the least. However, deploying it in a way that is successful for both business and agents can prove challenging. Hiring the Right Agents.
The holiday season — less than seven weeks away now — is almost always the busiest time of the year for contactcenters. Call volume was up 41% in the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday last year as customers flooded phone lines with inquiries, requests, and complaints. Follow these nine holiday contactcenter tips!
Chat in the ContactCenter - an Expert Panel Weighs in – Part 3/3. Recently, our expert panel of ContactCenter Consultants had a discussion on the role of chat in the CallCenter. Chat is one of many tools in the ContactCenter arsenal and we need to understand where it can work best and why. .
Other industries are quickly catching on for services such as furniture moving, dog walking and at-home makeup styling and the contactcenter isn’t far behind. In the contactcenter, you can think of customer contacts as representing the work to be done (or the packages to be delivered in the case of Amazon).
When you think of working from home, several benefits come to mind. And, if you usually eat out for lunch, you can save money by eating home-cooked meals. Working from home can also improve one’s work-life balance and help reduce the […]. The savings in both time and money to commute back and forth to work.
But despite this growing movement to the cloud some contactcenters are still running on legacy on-premises software that stunts the customer experience. In this post: What is a cloud contactcenter? What is a cloud contactcenter? How can the cloud improve customer experience? Scale quickly and easily.
Companies have learned from past experiences to ensure that their applications and data are hosted in more than one data center, preferably in different cities or countries. The start of 2020 brought a new challenge and opportunity to our contactcenter service – working from home on a global scale.
Coronavirus has officially kicked the work from home (WFH) trend into a permanent reality — and the callcenter is no exception. At the outset of the pandemic, as families rushed to stock up on toilet-paper and canned goods, contactcenter leaders were scrambling to transition customer service agents to remote status.
What does it mean for a callcenter solution to be in the cloud? And cloud callcenter solutions offer many benefits to companies that make the switch. To understand what a cloud-based contactcenter is, we first need to understand what we mean by the cloud. And many agents prefer working remotely.
While face-to-face agencies are closing, contactcenters are vulnerable at this time, and companies must find swift solutions for ensuring business continuity without jeopardizing their staff. Their contactcenters are comprised of 600 agents providing omnichannel support for their core services as well as commercial services.
Support – BPOs continue to refine training and agent support, including customer experience as well as employee experience. Specialization – Many outsource contactcenters pride themselves on being flexible enough to help many types of clients, but others have chosen to double down on a handful of core industries and services.
As we settle into 2022, it seems like callcenteragents may continue in their WFH (work from home) mode even beyond the pandemic. This will be done either part time or full time, for some agents or for all of them. Just like the on premise callcenter, the cloud solution ends up with some new challenges.
Top 10 Technological ContactCenter Trends Cloud: Cloud-based infrastructure is the fastest growing area in the callcenter industry, which DMG predicts will almost double between 2013 and 2015. Video Support: Video is making its way to the callcenter; thanks to the amount and detail of information it provides customers.
As their customer support inquiries increased, Columbia Sportswear knew they needed a new contactcenter solution to support seasonal call volumes, e-commerce, and their unique brands. Searching for the Ideal ContactCenter System. Scalability to satisfy seasonal call volumes. Flexibility to handle growth.
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