Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

Three Contact Center Software Necessities for Quick ROI

April 07, 2011

Improving the quality of a call center operation is something that all communications operation managers wish they could do. Getting results out of your team means you’ll need each of them performing at top quality, and to make sure they do this there are a number of contact center software solutions that you can incorporate.


Workforce management solutions, for example offer insight into the best ways to staff your communications operation. Their predictive faculties can give estimated call volumes weeks in advanced, allowing you to plan for seasonal peaks and valleys. WFM software can also automatically handle scheduling based on the skill set of an agent. By marking the schedule adherence of your agents you’ll be able to rank their availability and quality of work which will hopefully lead to an increase of customer service.

Call recording solutions also offer a way to hold your agents accountable. Incorporating this strategy means that managers will have an archive of superior service to hold agents to and a tool to uncover flaws of technique. According to call center software provider Contactual, “When supervisors are able to track agents' calls by skill-sets, agent ID or inbound/outbound activity, their ability to review and enhance agent-customer interactions improves multifold. Likewise, training sessions become more effective because the interactions used are real-world examples captured by the call center application.”

While recording can allow managers to build a library of examples, monitoring offers a real-time window into the daily routine of an agent. With this piece of software, supervisors can listen in on the interactions of an agent, critiquing in real time and even intervening should the need arise. Combining call monitoring with the stats that most call center software suites record, (like service levels versus the number of calls in progress, number of calls in the queue, and the longest-waiting interaction per queue) provides genuine insight not only on an individual agent level but on the contact center ecosystem as a whole.

Numerous additional solutions exists, but these are three quick contact center software suggestions that can get you quick ROI on both service and agent effectiveness if your strapped for ideas. More to follow next week.


Chris DiMarco is a Web Editor for ContactCenterSolutions. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Quinnipiac University. Prior to joining TMC Chris worked with e-commerce provider Suresource as a contact center representative and development analyst. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Janice McDuffee



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