Struggling to figure your why your call center AHT (Average
handle time) is up???
* Disclaimer for follow up questions… I cannot share in specific info about my current or previous employers ****
Video summary points below
1. Agent desktop performance issues** RAM ** CPU’s *** or do they have the tools they need???
· Work with you IT Dept. to benchmark your agent’s desktop PC’s to make your they are all equal and preforming up to par
· Listen to your agents when they complain about performance or a lack of tools, they need to do their job
2. Why does one agent performance faster than another???
· Simply sit with your best performing agents and your worst preforming agents and find out why there is a major difference between your best and least preforming agents
· Find out how agent A works faster than agents B or C buy working with a checklist and or your QA department to create one to be able to work through your call flow and see why your top agents work faster
· Once you tally more info work with your training department to help implement training on how to improve the efficiency of agent B and C from what you learned from agent A
3. Are your legacy systems slowing you down and costing you money over the long term as supposed to investing into newer technology
· This one is simple folks... if the software you use for your customer databases or transactions is outdated. Invest into or make a budget for newer software and or technology. Its not cheap but over the long run the ROI is worth it.
· Old outdated software or legacy systems can cost tons of lost call revenue when you do a time study and find out just how much extra time is spent dealing with slow moving or outdated databases or transaction software
4. Employee Burn out??? Are your agents to overworked is your occupancy over 90%??
· If your occupancy is over 90% to 95% then you are burning your agent’s out
· Agents will find ways to take longer on calls so they don’t have to take one after the other
· A good spot for occupancy is to be is in-between 80% to 85%. This will create a much more productive environment and keep your good agents from quitting… which in the long run cost money via negative attrition and employee dissatisfaction(**Less sales**)
5. For WEB chat. Effective concurrency comes from ensuring your agents have the right systems to access information and complete ** multiple transactions **
· For your chat platform to work effectively and to reduce the cost per contact... The systems your agents access have to be just a strong as the platform itself... The major hurdle to a good concurrency rate in a chat environment is multisession capable software.
· (Concurrency rate) explained simply is how many multiple chats sessions an agent can handle simultaneously each interval ** the exact formula and how to build it into your metrics will be coming in later blog posts **
· So, if your agents cannot access more than 1 account at a time... then your chat platform will be useless and it will cost just as much as a voice call which is a 1:1 Ratio
· If you do have a multisession capable customer database … ensure it can also handle multiple customer transactions. It would serve no purpose in a chat environment if you can look up multiple customer accounts and then be able to only process once actual transaction at a time
6. How many pages or systems does your employee have to access to look up product info our updates to be able to assist your customer base
· It’s important that you minimize the effort it takes to look up information on your products and services
· The best approach is to centralize the information and have 1 easy spot (HUB) were your agents can access all product and training info and or updates they need to answer all your customers inquiries
· Sometimes agents will not or don’t have time to look up that info ... so make sure to meet with them once daily during a pre-shift meeting or huddle to ensure they capture the most important updates
