The do’s and don’ts of implementing omni-channel in call centres

Call centres are about agents, and if you want to manage agents’ performance and quality of work, you need to be able to measure it, especially if you want to incentivise your staff. Omni-channel allows accurate and transparent monitoring and reporting, something that is difficult to achieve using disparate systems.

One of the daily balancing acts for call centre management is scheduling. Too many agents mean wasted salaries as agents sit idle waiting for a call, while too few agents could result in customers being abandoned. Skilling agents to manage more than just voice calls resolves many of these issues as agents can keep busy with queries via emails and instant messaging.

Once you have implemented Omni-channel, make sure that your different media types are correctly prioritised. Your omni-channel system needs to be able to allow agents to handle multiple interactions concurrently. 

Many multimedia interactions may need more research before the agent can respond to a customer with an answer. Ensure that your Omni-channel solution offers the agent the ability to ‘shelve’ an interaction, setting reminders and tagging with notes so that the agent can come back to the interaction at a later time. Fit-for-purpose technology solutions will allow reminders and escalations.

In order to fully understand an agent’s performance across all media, you need to be able to measure all interactions in a consistent and reliable way. All media channels need to be reported on, recorded and quality assessed using the same methodology as a voice call. 

As many call centres use legacy PBX systems to handle their voices calls, the temptation is to implement separate email and chat systems to handle multimedia. However, an agent’s performance won’t be measured correctly with separate queues and reporting for each media channel. Disparate systems will also be unable to prioritise interactions for agents, and there is the risk of agents taking advantage of the inaccurate reporting system and the lack of a 360-degree view of their work load. Make sure all interactions are recorded in a central channel so that agents can get all media when looking for a history of interactions.

Agents who have a great phone manner may struggle with written interactions. Agents need to have a good grasp of spelling and grammar to handle multimedia interactions and touch typing is a bonus. Make sure agents are fully trained, not just in product knowledge but also in their ability to handle written responses to your customers.

There is an old belief that multimedia interactions are a cheaper form of communicating, but this is not the case. Written responses take longer, cost more time and therefore more money. Where possible, ensure the agent has access to responses for frequently asked questions and uses formatted templates. To save time, encourage agents to call customers on the phone if the situation is complex.

Many call centres use prioritised queues to decide which media type should be handled first. This is good practice, but a very busy call centre will start to suffer from queue starvation. This happens when a prioritised queue is busy and other interaction types are not offered to agents. A good Omni-channel solution will offer dynamic priorities, adjusting the multimedia interaction so that the target service-level agreement is met. 

With most call centres already managing or considering multimedia support in their business, the key lies in being aware of the complexities of managing more than one communication channel.

For more information, visit 1stream.co.za. Alternatively, connect with Hewson on Twitter.