“Work smarter not harder”. How many times do we all hear that? I think a common misconception is that an informal call centre is all about the customer. I’m here to tell you that it’s not!
How staff answering calls have to work is super important to the final view of customer experience. “Why?” I hear you ask! Well, how many times have we dealt with someone answering the phone who is miserable and sound like they really couldn’t care less about your problem?
So, what is causing that staff member to behave like this? One answer lies in the way that they are expected to work. Imagine if that person, instead of being chained to their desk for 8 hours, is working from their bedroom in their pyjamas? Alright, I might have gone a bit far there, no one wants to imagine that, but you get the point?
Informal call centres drive staff happiness and productivity. Let’s look at some of the features that help this.
Remote / mobile working
Allowing staff to work anywhere is a fundamental proposition of UC. Gone are the bad old days of PBXs where the only way to pick up the phone was to be physically sitting right next to it. With the advent of clients for mobile phones and laptops, any worker can pick-up calls from any location (even their bedroom – shudder!).
Now the question is how do the calls get routed to them in the first place? Enter…
Dynamic queue agents
Putting customer calls into queues is a foundation of good call experience. With individual queues for different company functions, the right staff with the right expertise are answering the right calls which drives customer satisfaction and employee wellbeing.
No staff member wants to be put into a queue where they feel they cannot help or do not have enough knowledge. So, the concept of queues is extremely important – even distinct messaging (music-on-hold per queue) helps the customer experience.
Allowing staff to login and logout of queues means that they can take time out of the queue to do other jobs; it also means people can be added to cover lunches or seasonal demand. Think more call handlers at a Christmas tree shop in December.
What we’ve got to there is the very definition of an informal call centre – the fact that the member of staff’s entire job is not to answer calls – it’s way more fluid than that.
Management
I always say that the ethos of a business comes from the top. Prime example: Pubs. If the main landlord is miserable, so are the staff! How do pubs translate to informal call centres? Well, the informal call centre leaders need to be able to see what their staff are doing, such as how many calls are being answered. Then they can see when departments or people are overloaded, and add more resource, thus everyone is happy.
Monitoring and reporting
Tied closely to management is reporting. How well a manager can see what is happening is key. When someone works remotely nothing should change, they should answer as many calls as if they were in the office. If a manager can see this happening, then they are more likely to endorse flexible working, and everyone is happier.
Happy staff = happy customers
To summarise, I believe informal call centre features are essential not only for happy customers but – equally as importantly – for happy staff too. And I think that without happy staff you can’t have happy customers. So, look after the people answering calls and everything else falls into place.
Sangoma is here to help, if you’d like to talk to us about any of these features then contact Sangoma at europe@sangoma.com to learn how we can help.