CRM - August 2008 - (Page 24)

AGENT MORALE have targeted, relevant training modules developed and provided to agents to help improve skills that they’re truly showing a lack of.” eGain’s Roy believes that a successful (and happy) agent needs to have the right tools to do the job. The two most important weapons, he says, are a unified agent desktop and a “usable” knowledge base. “A lot of companies say they have search on [their] intranet, but when you sit behind agents and watch them do their job, they completely ignore the knowledge-base tool,” he laments. “After the agents enter in search terms, they receive 20 responses. With the caller on [the] line, you can’t [take the time to] go through 20 articles.”Agents armed with a truly usable knowledge base, he says, can avoid having to go through “an incessant amount of training and product configuration, because expecting them to remember everything will end up burning out agents.” (See “CRM Searches for Search,” page 39, for more on the ongoing hunt for useful information.) Roy adds that it’s also important to focus on the right functionality to provide to agents instead of completely emphasizing key performance indicators and other internal metrics. “Measurement helps highlight areas [for] improvement,” he admits. “But what we find often is that measurement becomes the be-all/end-all in a lot of these environments. Instead of empowering agents with [the] right tools, the way contact center executives try to improve performance is by just whipping the agents based on a lot of measurements on every possible aspect of [their] performance.” That isn’t to say that measurement has no place in the contact center. John Jennick, head of customer experience and action for Egg, a British online bank, says that his firm turned to Oslo, Norway– based Confirmit, a market research and enterprise feedback management software company, to better measure cusa say in their company’s policies, their own hours, and even their workspace. “Empowerment can come from something as simple as giving them some power [over] their schedule, to input the different times that they want to work, or from different locations that they might want to work,” Verint’s Brown says. Dan Hicks, senior vice president of home agent operations at outsourcing and consulting firm West, says that a flexible schedule is important in keeping agents—especially virtual agents—happy and wanting to work for his company. “An average home agent isn’t going to want a set schedule working 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, every week consistently, because of things going on in [her] life,” he explains. “That’s why [she] worked from home in the first place.” Home agents aren’t alone. Alaska Airlines’ Harbeson says the airline had a very cumbersome way of setting schedules for its contact center agents, a process known as bidding. She says that, due to union rules, there were very specific guidelines and specifications regarding how long bidding could last, and what days or times the bidding could take place. Because there was no automated system in place, everything was done in person and on paper, leading to agent complaints about having to come in at a special hour just to set the schedule. “They had been asking for an online bidding tool for years because it was so cumbersome,” she recalls. Eventually, she says, the company turned to eSchedule Planner from Aspect Software, which made agents feel the company cared about their well-being and concerns. Another boost to agent morale at Alaska Airlines came through its homeagent program. While Harbeson insists that the company will not require all of its agents to work from home, 60 reps from each of its three contact center locations (Boise, Idaho; Phoenix, Ariz.; and Seattle) have the option to work remotely. “The home-agent program is really improving agent morale,”she reports.“I talked to several of my coworkers that work from home, and they are just so undistracted and working very efficiently.” “You have newer people and less training. How does that work?” tomer feedback—but improvement in agent morale was an unexpected benefit. Because the bank has no unique account managers in its customer service department, Jennick says the new statistics the company was receiving on its customers allowed for agents to be more empowered, and as a result, more excited about their jobs. Having access to customer measurements, he says,“created much more ownership [by] our front-line staff.” ARMED WITH OPTIONS Knowledge can help boost agent morale, but it doesn’t end there—agents also get a lift when they feel as though they have People Metrics Share of agents moving to another role within the organization Annual agent-attrition rate Agent-absenteeism rate Supervisor-absenteeism rate Average annual number of training days per agent Share of permanent full-time employees within the organization Agent-to-supervisor ratio 1997 10% 14% 5% 2% 13 days 87% 1:12 2007 13% 27% 11% 4% 13 days 73% 1:12 Change 30.0% 92.9% 120.0% 100.0% none -16.1% none SOURCE: DIMENSION DATA 24 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | AUGUST 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - August 2008

CRM - August 2008 Contents Front Office Feedback Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Maximum Security A Code Win Doesn’t Blow Forming the Platform CRM on Twitter CRM Class Is in Session Making CRM Mandatory for University Administration Required Reading Cover Story: Calling it Quits Wouldja Look at That? 8 Enterprise Strategies That Stick CRM Searches for Search All Lines Are Not Busy UC: As Easy as A-B-C Even Contact Centers Have Room for Improvement Money Lying Around? Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - August 2008

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