January 14, 2015
It’s not just a cliché that a New Year calls for some new resolutions; it makes good business sense to look at the year just passed, throw out what didn’t work and try something new.
That’s the gist of a new blog post by Jennifer Waite, Product Marketing Manager at inContact, a leading provider of cloud contact center software and contact center agent optimization tools. Waite takes a bird’s-eye view of the modern contact center and offers some suggestions to help reach its full potential.
“The start of a New Year brings resolutions and ideas for change,” she notes. “This may be a good time to take a look at your quality monitoring form to identify potential revisions that will bring positive outcomes for your contact center and agents.”
A good quality monitoring form makes it easy for call centers to adapt to needed changes, including both yes/no questions and rate-scoring questions. If your form seems to be falling short and not providing the strong raw data you need, it might be time for a change.
“Making changes to your form will allow you to implement new processes and expectations that will enable you to achieve the goals you have set for the year,” Waite says. “One way to successfully do this is to ensure that the goals set for your organization are represented as elements in your scorecard.”
Those elements can be widespread and varied, but there are several points to consider, as she mentions. They include:
- Are there elements that speak directly to your previous year’s goals, or are they outdated? If so, remove irrelevant past goals to ensure that your evaluation form is concise and unencumbered.
- One of the easiest ways to help align your behavioral scoring is to create clear definitions of each behavior and definitive definitions of each scoring element.
- Look for other ways to bring attention to the behavior you are looking to drive in your team. Make sure that new agents are hearing about your goals in new hire training and post signs and messages throughout your center to keep these items top of mind. You can also incorporate these goals into any incentive you are offering so that everything is delivering one clear message of your expectations.
Waite’s overarching point is, you can’t just expect people to know what you want. Your success depends on telling them, and then guiding them in the right direction. It’s where teamwork in the call center truly comes in to play.