A modern contact centre stands and falls on the quality of its individual agents. Therefore, it is important not only to select reliable employees, but also to divide a given team of agents according to their skills and abilities.
Today’s contact centres communicate with customers through different channels and agents should be able to provide services on all communication channels without any problems.
Today’s contact centres communicate with customers through different channels and agents should be able to provide services on all communication channels without any problems. In practice, this means that we do not only assign a specific area of communication to each agent (e.g. for travel agencies, this may be a selection based on the location of the tour), but also the individual communication channels that will be served, e.g. calls, webchat, social networks, etc. Of course, there is always a combination of parallel activities that need to be communicated at a given moment, how many agents are available in the contact centre, etc.
It is also about how to make the operation of the whole contact centre as efficient as possible. It would be easy to say that there is a “simple solution” to increasing contact centre efficiency, but reality is different. Improving contact centre efficiency requires measuring the right KPIs, using appropriate routing techniques, optimising agent processes and gathering and acting on feedback.
Agents are only as effective as the individual communication platform tools allow them to be, i.e. the quality of the application they are working with. If a company wants to increase contact center efficiency, it needs to optimise agent workflows and identify any time losses and weaknesses in their productivity.
Call agents are responsible for receiving customers’ calls and answering their questions or resolving problems, concerns or complaints regarding the company’s products and services. Depending on the purpose of the call centre, agents may also make outbound calls to set appointments, make sales, or gather information for surveys.
Some companies create what are called hybrid centers to centralise communications and create a seamless and consistent customer experience. Agents are then responsible for both inbound and outbound calls. Both types of communication require different skill sets from them.
Each agent performs dozens to hundreds of activities using different communication channels on a daily basis. Managing the workforce and distributing the workload evenly across the team is therefore key. The work of agents in our Daktela V6 web application can be thoroughly streamlined using a “distribution matrix” set up best suited to the situation.
The key is therefore how to best set up the number of activities that agents can handle at the same time. It is logical that agents cannot handle two calls at the same time, but could most likely handle multiple web chats, Facebook chats or emails.
It is the distribution matrix that allows these numbers to be set, so agents can handle e.g. four webchats at the same time without a call and Facebook Messenger, or they can possibly call and answer email and not handle chats.
It is the distribution matrix that allows these numbers to be set, so agents can handle e.g. four webchats at the same time without a call and Facebook Messenger, or they can possibly call and answer email and not handle chats.
For example, a sample matrix might look like this:
The current trend is to automate and modernise customer support. Although voicebots or chatbots are now taking over a large part of customer and client interactions in contact centres, the human side of the entire customer interaction is still very much relevant.
For the smooth operation of contact centres, the correct setup and subsequent optimisation of processes related to the management of work efficiency is essential. Contact centres that do not monitor and subsequently manage their workload risk inefficient use of manpower, agent burnout and a deterioration of the customer experience.
