How to Improve Call Center Agent Performance
- July 6, 2023
- Categories: Agent Performance, Speech Analytics
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Although technology is vital to the functioning of call centers, the core of any call center remains the call center (or contact center) agents. Call center executives invest heavily in technology to reduce costs, enhance efficiency, and boost revenue. But the fundamental question remains: “How can you improve call center agent performance?” The answer lies in utilizing call center technologies to their fullest potential.
Recent tech advancements have greatly helped supervisors, QAs, and training managers to improve call center performance. But Speech Analytics ecosystem has been at the forefront. This tool enables 100% call monitoring and saves countless hours spent on manual call reviews. It also provides access to data insights essential to drive agent performance. Thus, making this tool your all-in-one solution for compliance and performance management.
Before we talk about how speech analytics improves agent performance, let us review the problems faced in driving agent performance today.
Common problems faced in improving Agent Performance
Improving agent performance is a crucial aspect of any thriving call center. It leads to better business outcomes, such as improved AHT, enhancing customer experience, increasing revenue, and replicating top performers’ methodology. However, there are a few challenges that leaders face along the way. These include:
- Lack of data insights due to manual QA process of random 2-5% of calls
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High resource cost in managing traditional quality assurance programs.
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Disconnected data systems such as Dialer, QA tool, CRM, and collections system reduce efficiency and effectiveness of agent improvement plans.
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High investment of time and resources required to create performance improvement plan suited to each agent.
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Hiring and training resources skilled in managing data, dashboards, and client reporting
By addressing these challenges, call centers can improve agent performance and achieve their desired business outcomes.
Business Impact of inefficient Agent Performance
Inefficient agent performance can have detrimental effects on your business. It is important to be aware of the challenges and their impact on your revenue streams. The consequences of this performance can result in missed and lost revenue opportunities.
Lost revenue refers to direct loss of existing revenue, such as customer churn. Missed revenue refers to lost opportunities to increase revenue, such as cross-selling and up-selling. In the context of sales or collections, substandard agent performance finds it challenging to improve call outcomes. This results in lower sales or recoveries, a decrease in customer experience metrics and agents not meeting standard KPIs. All of this combines to increase the cost of doing business.
Why do you need Speech Analytics to improve agent performance?
If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. This is equally applicable for all call centers.
Random monitoring of 2-5% of calls is not sufficient for improvement, making strong operational data necessary. Speech Analytics allows for the monitoring of 100% of calls, providing compliance and performance insights in one platform. It can also analyze, transcribe, and create business-specific scorecards, performance dashboards, and other customized categories.
Defining Speech Analytics: Speech analytics is the process of analyzing recorded spoken language to extract valuable insights and data. It involves using advanced technology and algorithms to transcribe and analyze speech data. This allows businesses to gain a deeper understanding of their consumers’ needs, preferences, and behavior. Speech analytics can help improve customer service, identify trends and patterns, and provide valuable feedback to improve overall call outcomes.
How can speech analytics improve call center agent performance?
Speech analytics tech, such as Provana’s ICAP, provides a fully managed and customizable solution for call centers. This technology improves call center processes like collections and insurance sales, driving compliance and enhancing performance. Such speech programs have a higher ROI since it runs on high touch high engagement model suited for business specific requirements. Here are some ways speech analytics can empower your agents’ performance:
- 100% monitoring: This enables identification of non-conformities and reduces manual QA efforts.
- Data-driven decision making: ICAP gives you access to customized dashboards, and agent scorecards to help you improve agent performance.
- Coaching opportunity calls: Access to individual agent performance dashboards and coaching opportunity calls for better tracking.
- Customized training programs: Speech-powered dashboards and reports provide a true picture of the skills that need improvement. Hence, allowing supervisors to create specific training programs for each agent.
- Weekly trend analysis: Evaluate your business performance week by week. Track collection amount variation week by week for each of the teams and for each of the agents. Helps in determining root cause, creating solutions, and then tracking improvement. You can also track compliance score variations, supervisor feedback on calls, see the progress made on coaching opportunity calls.
- Customized agent performance dashboards, scorecards, and templates: Provana’s ICAP assists you with dedicated analyst support to build custom reports and scorecards.
Implementing call center improvement plan leveraging speech analytics
Once you’ve implemented the speech program for improving agent performance, the next question is – ‘what do you need to do to maximize the benefits of your investment?’
Here are some ways to make the most of your QA and supervisor resources:
- Instead of having QAs listen to calls manually, have them provide inputs for call calibrations for your speech program, which can be used for calls remediation and coaching opportunities.
- Cut down on the time supervisors spend in 1:1 meeting with agents for creating improvement plans. With the data, coaching insights, opportunity calls, and skills to coach for each agent, the process becomes simpler, transparent, and objective.
- Utilize resources aligned for client reporting towards outcomes from your speech programs. They can help in creating training plans, tracking continuous improvement initiatives, and coordinating with other team members to ensure business policies, performance, and productivity metrics are on track.
Hear it from Industry Leaders
Improving agent performance through speech analytics requires focus and discipline. While it may not be an easy feat, it certainly is achievable. Check out this example of how an award-winning collection agency used speech analytics to drive their agents’ performance and achieve success.
Every industry needs speech implementation specific to its requirements. For example in the context of collection agencies, agent performance improvement needs a methodology unique to each agent and not one size fits all approach. Learn more on how these strategies can help improve Agent Performance.
Summary
To summarize, Speech analytics is an excellent tool for improving the performance of your call center agents. However, its effectiveness is only as good as its implementation and usage. Clear objectives, quality implementation, and timely feedback are essential to meet the program’s success criteria. During a recent webinar, Provana experts discussed how speech analytics can improve call center KPIs, including agent performance. The discussion revolved around ways to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of a speech analytics solution in a call center environment.
If ‘Improvement in Agent Performance’ is one of your priorities for 2023, look no further! Your business results are just a meeting away. Talk to our expert or book a demo to see how Speech technology can do wonders for your call center program.