According to Carlos Muñoz, contact centres are sometimes too efficient for their own good leading to poor customer service and high agent attrition rates. It’s time to introduce a ‘less haste, more speed’ culture supported by the latest technology. Here, he explains how to build highly effective teams using WFM.
Running a contact centre takes me back to my school days and Aesop’s Fable of the ‘Tortoise and the Hare’. We all know the one, it’s ingrained into our psyche but in a world obsessed with speed, do we really put its teachings into practise? The faster hare is so confident of winning the race that it falls asleep and is beaten by the slower tortoise – the first to reach the finishing line using a steady, measured pace. In a similar way, contact centres are often so determined to handle infinite numbers of calls as quickly as possible, they put unnecessary pressures on agents and lose sight of the customer. In the process, staff leave along with customers and it takes much longer to get both back again.
Then, there’s the constant battle between operations (who want ‘fast and cheap’) and the contact centre (whose job is to make ‘customers feel loved’). This perennial tug of war is damaging to agent morale, the customer experience and health of the overall business.
The proverb ‘more haste, less speed’ springs to mind and contact centres should look to introduce a ‘less haste, more speed’ culture into their operations. Real effectiveness is about providing agents with the right environment to give customers what they really want (fast, accurate answers to their problems first time around) while maximising resources as cost-effectively as possible.
It all comes down to the basics so let’s start with how contact centres measure their success. Most make the mistake of developing a set of metrics that focus entirely on satisfying their internal customers rather than those on the outside who are keeping them in jobs and the organisation in business! The top three culprits are:
Thinking from the outside in will yield a set of metrics that enable agents to focus 100% on the customer – the true meaning of effectiveness.
With customer-centric success criteria in place, turn to innovative workforce management (WFM) technology to build a highly effective contact centre environment:
Why be a hare when you can be the winning tortoise? Put in place the metrics that really matter then back them up with WFM to build a highly effective contact centre where talented agents are proud to work and go the extra mile to delight customers at every turn.
Carlos Muñoz Director, Sales Engineering, Calabrio Americas