How CCaaS Improves Contact Center Agent Performance

The rising expectations of customers have made experiences even more important than the product or services that businesses provide. When a consumer has a miserable experience, they will quickly move to your competitor without giving it a second thought.

Welcome to the experience economy, a new digital world where price alone is no longer the main differentiator.

Gartner has already declared that customer experience (CX) is the new marketing battlefront. But this is just the beginning.

With high expectations, come high expectations of your customer service agents and how they respond and communicate with your customers. It is the customer service agent whether on the other side of the phone or behind the web chatbox that are on the front lines representing your business.  

In this article, we address how a contact center as a service (CCaaS) platform provides opportunities to either directly or indirectly improve the performance of every customer service agent on your team.

The Benefits CCaaS Can Bring to a Remote Worker’s Performance

Flexible working has already become the new normal and has increased globally by 173 percent since 2005.

According to one study, 77 percent of remote workers advised that they were more productive when working away from the office. Remote workers also claimed in the same study they get 30 percent more done in less time.

Less Stress: 

Removing the lengthy commute during rush hour is becoming increasingly attractive to digital-savvy employees as it reduces stress levels and helps them feel more relaxed in their own environment.  

Work-Life Balance:

Cutting out commute times also helps employees have a healthier work-life balance by creating more available time for taking care of self, friends and family, thereby reducing personal stress even further.

Increase Morale: 

Happier staff are not only more likely to stick around for longer, but they are also more productive. CCaaS can help increase the performance of a call center agent and improve their morale.  

You can read more about the correlation between agent satisfaction and job performance in this post here. 

Don’t forget, remote workers can also have many attractive benefits for businesses too.

Lower Overhead Costs:

Remote working can help reduce office overheads and expenditure. It also enables businesses to scale their workforce without the need to expand their office space.  Utilizing tools such as softphone apps that avoid the unnecessary expense of deskphones also helps alleviate overhead costs.

Remove Regional Hiring Restrictions:

Recruiting and retaining the best staff is no longer restricted to your local region. Remote working enables managers to cast their recruitment net nationwide to hire the best talent.

Sounds like a win-win for everyone. 

Unified Communications in CCaaS Help Agents Increase Productivity

If you and your business are serious about creating an exceptional customer experience, you will need a new set of tools to further help your service agents excel at their jobs with confidence. 

With CCaaS this is made possible more so than ever as tools that come with CCaaS platforms can also help increase productivity.

Call monitoring and recording, silent monitoring, video meetings, instant messaging, file sharing, and other features are at the core of collaboration tools used across teams to reduce inefficient business processes and communication. 

This technology should be used to empower agents to quickly resolve issues, increase productivity, and reduce frustrations of everyone involved. The more productive agents are the more they will excel and job satisfaction increases. 

Improved Reporting and Analytics Improve Agent Performance

By properly utilizing agent metrics and call analytics, management is better able to provide the right support that your agents need, when they need it.

Workload

For example, unexpected heavy call volumes can overtax and frustrate customer service agents trying to keep up with the influx all the while keeping a positive and pleasant disposition.  

With the proper analytics and real-time reporting, managers can quickly recognize the need to add or shift agents around to disperse the call load from other agents.  

This can make a huge difference in performance as well as the customer experience. 

Individual Training

Likewise, these data insight tools can help managers and supervisors recognize when agents may need additional training or oversight. Collaboration tools and apps can make training just as efficient if not more so than in a group setting. 

Contact centers are known for their high employee turnover rates, so making sure your agents are properly supported throughout their employment, not just at the start, enables them to perform their jobs efficiently and effectively.  

Recruiting and training new talent can be costly in both time and dollars, not to mention the added workload other agents must endure to account for fewer helping hands. Why not focus on empowering your existing agents with right tools and platform that encourages a positive experience for the employee resulting in longer-than-average employment?

You can only improve what you can measure. The ability to use your company data to drive better results will ultimately set you apart from your competitors. 

It’s time to think bigger in this experience economy. This means taking care of your customer service agents, and they’ll in turn take care of you.   

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