Many businesses start their fiscal new year on July 1.
Which is coming up fast.
If this is the case for your contact center, Employbridge’ Contact Center Advisory Council has created a short list of the newest tools – and trends – it’s determined will be of best use for contact center operations in 2022 and beyond.
These are broad tools and processes designed to improve customer workflow, experience, and your center’s profitability.
We truly believe they will have the most significant positive impact on your contact center.
Video communication training systems for frontline agent training, meetings, and one-on-one coaching
Due to cost and the fact that many contact center agents worked in the center (with in-person training), most video training systems often were reserved for contact center leadership rather than frontline agents.
That’s so 2019…
Many of our clients and other contact center enterprises are embracing video capabilities for their agents for new-hire onboarding, platform training, mentoring, coaching, and more.
- Customized modern performance management systems
These systems, which collect data from different sources, are no longer used by just contact center executives and managers: agents also access them via employee-specific platforms.
These tools can help frontline agents stay aligned regarding targets, expectations, and individual performance, often providing this information in real-time.
Many contact centers use analysts to create weekly/monthly performance reports via Excel or other report systems. Still, others have moved to these management systems, allowing agents to see how they’re doing on several different metrics – and thus potentially improving them.
One of our favorites is TouchPoint One’s Acuity system,
It’s among one of the first modern performance management systems designed specifically for contact center operations. It also offers several features and functionalities, including support.
- Gamification solutions that engage agents and align/reinforce performance targets.
Gamification technology has been used in the contact center sector for a while, but mainly in a training environment, providing agents with awards or tokens when they passed a test, learned a new skill, or earned a technical or soft-skill certification.
They really couldn’t be called “true” gamification programs.
This has changed: real gamification solutions have entered the contact center arena in which different locations and teams can compete against each other in friendly yet performance/metric-driven contests.
As a result, we’ve seen much greater agent engagement and – more importantly – performance improvement.
Tip: it’s best to ensure the games are played in a team vs. team format, rather than person vs. person, because players enjoy being part of a team – and winning as a team – when it comes to “beating out others” in meeting a goal set by management.
- Digital performance review and coaching tools.
Continuous coaching and development of contact center agents are critical to improve agent performance and ensure agents stay engaged and employed at your center.
We were surprised to learn that many – if not most – contact centers don’t have a digital process or system for the filing of supervisor/agent interactions and communications, coaching, and more.
Instead, most contact centers still use outdated tools such as Microsoft Word forms, modified question/answer forms, and other “use it once and it’s done” forms.
We have seen more centers starting to use digital coaching tools, particularly those within technological performance management systems.
These tools allow managers to schedule digital coaching sessions, suggest and get buy-in for improvement, set goals/targets, schedule follow-up sessions, track performance trends before and after coaching sessions, and more.
These remote tools are valuable in any contact center environment but are critical for a remote or hybrid workforce.
The world as we knew it is gone.
In so many ways, the reality of late 2019 and early 2020 reads like fiction. (Imagine it: you had to have contact center agents gathered in a single large room working side-by-side at their terminals. Was it all a fever dream?)
Yet as a direct result of the COVID pandemic, contact center tools and techniques had to evolve to meet your agents’ and customers’ needs.
More and more contact centers will embrace these new tools and techniques this year and beyond.
As such, they will enjoy the dramatic improvements in both metric/KPI performance that many early-adopting contact centers already have experienced.
Employbridge, specializes in sourcing, screening, and placing talent contact center agents in contract, contract-to-hire, and direct-hire assignments at contact centers throughout the contiguous United States.
Contact us to learn more.
Whether you’re a company looking to improve your customer service, or a job seeker looking for customer service jobs, Employbridge can help!